Energy Constrained Learning: Part 4

Note: This post is part 4 of 6 in a serialization of Energy Constrained Learning.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Peak Oil and Climate Change
Part 3: What’s the Concern?

---

 

Scenario of Scarcity Industrialism

E.F. Schumacher makes a useful distinction between forecasts, which he calls “presumptuous,” and exploratory or feasibility studies:^[1]

In the one case I assert that this or that will be the position in, say, twenty years’ time. In the other case I merely explore the long-term effects of certain assumed tendencies.

We first need a scenario of how peak oil and climate change may play out in the future. This provides Schumacher’s “long-term effects of certain assumed tendencies.” It is then possible to explore the implications for learning.

There are no end of peak oil scenarios from which to choose. I’ll use one that is based on extensive work in three books and a popular blog.^[2] The work is that of John Michael Greer and the scenario of tomorrow is one he calls “scarcity industrialism.”^[3]

Map the likely results of current trends onto a scale of human lifespans and a compelling image of the future emerges. Imagine an American woman born in 1960. She sees the gas lines of the 1970s, the short-term political gimmicks that papered over the crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, and the renewed trouble in the following decades. Periods of economic and political crisis, broken by intervals of partial recovery, shape the rest of her life. By the time she turns 70, she lives in a beleaguered, malfunctioning city where nearly half the population has no reliable access to clean water, electricity, or health care. Shantytowns spread in the shadow of skyscrapers while political and economic leaders keep insisting that things are getting better.^[4]

Greer follows this paragraph with a second one about the American woman’s great-grandson born in 2040 and then a third paragraph about the great-grandson’s great-granddaughter born in 2120. Respectively they represent an age of salvaging and an ecotechnic age that Greer suggests may follow scarcity industrialism. Ecotechnic refers to a non-utopian future in which humans finally move beyond the unsustainable patterns of today and see themselves as “subject to the same natural laws and ecological patterns as every other living thing on Earth.”^[5]

It’s difficult to do justice to Greer’s notion of scarcity industrialism in a single paragraph. To help fill out the scenario, here are phrases that Greer uses to describe what follows our present age of abundance. The more dramatic of these phrases would tend to appear deeper into scarcity industrialism or even in the age of salvage.^[6]

limits to growth begin to bite; serious declines in energy availability; industries like tourism that use titanic flows of energy shut down; commuter lifestyle no longer viable; neighborhoods form around jobs; increased housing density with apartments and row houses; an RIP for the global economy based on cheap transportation; less dependence on foreign resources; less influence of multinational corporations; more willingness of governments to use force to control resources; decentralized energy infrastructure; the end of the information age; human labor becomes less energy-intensive than machines, increasing substitution; relocalized economic activity; economic contraction; frugality; backyard gardens, organic farms, food-coops, farmers’ markets; no retirement; money less relevant; household economies viable again; social conflicts; gutting of social safety nets; slashing of salaries and benefits; impoverishment of millions of previously affluent people; circle of wealth and privilege narrows; unwillingness of society to acknowledge it is in decline; faltering corporate food system; local networks of mutual exchange and support; refurbishing salvage; increased use of appropriate intermediate technologies; conservation; transition toward sustainability; renewable resources; passive solar home heating; long period of trial and error; incremental steps; nature has the final say; depopulation; human migrations; warmer, wetter, ecological change; volatility in energy prices; wars; paper wealth becomes worthless; people work many jobs; established institutions go to pieces; national bankruptcies; hunger; adaptive human efforts and nature’s responses; muddling through; dissensus useful to increase breadth of ideas and experimentation; non-market economies of custom, reciprocity and collective benefit; work of human hands and minds is once again the main source of value; low-tech transportation and communication; Internet is an early casualty, although some government, research, and corporate use; decline punctuated with periods of rebound; collapsing public health; political turmoil; electricity an urban amenity used mostly by the wealthy; transportation unravels, but trains viable longer; critical freeway corridors; auto industry withers; the predicament we face is as least as much a social and cultural crisis as a technical one; experience guides efforts rather than ideology.

Greer’s work provides a rich resource for thinking critically about tomorrow. It’s a thoughtful and well-written depiction of the near future that challenges readers to consider what happens to industrial societies that, in a mere 300 years, managed to blow away nearly one-half of the recoverable fossil fuels that it took nature half a billion years to make. If you have any interest in tomorrow, I highly recommend Greer’s work. It will force you to reconsider how you understand change.

Lest anyone too quickly dismiss the possibility of scarcity industrialism, it’s important to note that Greer stands on firm historical footing. Many previous civilizations have risen, flowered, matured, and then collapsed. For numerous examples, see the academic work of Joseph Tainter^[7] or the more popular but still extensively researched work of Jared Diamond.^[8]

Notes

1. ^ E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, New York: Harper Perennial, 2010, p. 251.
2. ^ All three books are published by New Society Publishers. The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age (2008); The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World (2009); and The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered (2011). John Michael Greer blogs at The Archdruid Report.
3. ^ Several scenarios might be used in a formal analysis, typically differing on the level of change anticipated (e.g., none, significant, or likely). Peak oil scenarios commonly anticipate substantial change, as does Greer’s scarcity industrialism. The advantage of divergent scenarios is that they can be compared and contrasted, which sometimes helps in the exploration. However, in the limited space of a single post only a single scenario can be considered.
4. ^ Greer, The Long Descent, p31.
5. ^ Greer, The Ecotecnic Future, p245.
6. ^ These phrases are not direct quotes. They are what I’d call near quotes that stick as close as possible to the actual words but incorporate my editing or interpretations when needed to make the phrases concise yet consistent with what I believe Greer intended. I used all three books listed in citation 26 and Greer’s blog post How Not to Play the Game. Note that scarcity industrialism, the age of salvaging, and the ecotechnic age are what Greer calls “workable sketches” that occur in slow, overlapping, and uneven ways that make assigning specific phrases to specific ages a little difficult. In some cases it was a judgment call as to whether a phrase should be associated with scarcity industrialism.
7. ^ Joseph A. Tainter. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
8. ^ Jared Diamond. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.