ALICE IN ECO-WONDERLAND

ALICE IN ECO-WONDERLAND
Peter Goodchild
petergoodchild [at] interhop [dot] net
Although we should be preparing for the worst, it seems that 2008 is rapidly turning into the Year of Eco-Silliness. I’m doing my best to keep my own community unenlightened, but whenever I go through the blogs these days I encounter items such as the following:
TOWNSFOLK PREPARE FOR LIFE AFTER OIL
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/30/transition.town/
by Paul Willis
“LONDON, England — Imagine a life where you cycle each morning to work, and come home at night to tend your allotment and eat a dinner of locally produced food.
“Maybe after your meal you take a walk down the car-free streets to the nearest bar where you buy a round of drinks with locally produced currency and settle down in a corner to watch a troupe of musicians play some local folk music.
“It might sound like some kind of fairytale arcadia — a return to the simple lives of our forefathers, before fossil fuels and consumer culture turned everything on its head.
“In fact this is how many people are beginning to envision our future — a world where we come to terms with inevitable fuel shortages and work towards a less energy-dependent lifestyle. . . .”
— And so on and so forth.
To a large extent these “transition towns” (a.k.a. “eco-villages” etc.) are just make-believe. Without fossil fuels, any country can support only about 4 people per hectare of arable land (see Pimentel’s studies to get the details). That puts the U.K. population at triple the maximum sustainable size. Out of the present U.K. population of about 60 million, what is going to happen to the excess (40 million) between now and the year 2030 (when oil production will be down to a third of its present level)? Answer: either emigration or starvation. And even though the U.K. is one of the worst countries in terms of overpopulation, many other countries have the same general problem.
The post-oil world will be much grimmer than these people imagine, and that is partly because they are not looking at the big picture. Hydrocarbons supply fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, lubricants, plastic, paint, synthetic fabrics, asphalt, pharmaceuticals, and many other things. Electricity comes largely mainly from coal or natural gas. The energy for mining comes mainly from diesel fuel, or it is transmitted through electricity. So without fossil fuels there will be no electricity, and without those same fossil fuels there will be no metals. We’re looking at something less than Country Elegance.
Or are we supposed to believe that these middle-class English people are wearing clothing made from the flax they grew in their own gardens, or from wool they plucked from their own pet sheep? And are we supposed to believe that they live in houses that used no fossil fuels or electricity when the materials were prepared, transported, and assembled? And are we also supposed to believe that these same nice English people use donkeys rather than automobiles, and that their bathrooms are supplied only with sphagnum moss instead of toilet paper?
Yes, it’s nice to start preparing for the future, but this sort of doll’s-house mentality can also be a way of avoiding the truth.