Peak Oil and Localism
Think about the things in your life. Your clothing. Your food. Your furniture. Think about it all, everything tangible that surrounds you in daily life.
How much of that stuff was created within 100 miles of where you live, or where you bought it?
The distances traveled by the products we buy are truly staggering. I read an article once that noted a study in Germany of strawberry yogurt; it found that the inputs to a container of yogurt traveled a total of something like 3000 miles before landing on the table, even though the strawberries and all the other food ingredients were produced inside the country. All of this travel led to a container of yogurt that was metaphorically drenched in oil.
As another example, Emily and I recently went to the local unfinished wood furniture store downtown, to look for a new dresser (we’re still using some pretty sad furniture from our broke college days). As it turned out, the one we liked best was built by a company out of North Carolina that recently went out of business. We were told not to worry, that another company had bought their equipment, plans, and materials, and would soon resume production. Some of this is beside the point, but something shocking came out of that conversation. We learned that while the dresser was made of wood from North Carolina (not surprising, given the company’s location), the raw materials were in fact shipped over to Malaysia to be cut into wooden kits. These kits were then shipped back to the states to be assembled (and optionally, finished) by our local furniture store. That’s right, as if it weren’t bad enough that we were looking at a dresser made in North Carolina (probably about a 8-hour drive from us), this dresser would actually travel half a world away and back on its way to us. How much oil was used instead of paying a reasonable, American wage to have the wood cut into kits state-side??
Furniture aside, let’s talk about groceries. Many of the produce items we buy wind up coming from California, or this time of year, even Chile. It actually takes quite a bit of effort and sacrifice to avoid these items; they’re everywhere. Recently, I bought some raw sugar that I thought was a responsible purchase…the brand was Florida Crystals. When I got it home and tried to find out where in Florida the sugar was produced, I realized to my dismay that it actually came from Mauritius! Again, half a world away from us. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan reveals that fully one in four products sold at a typical grocery store contains some input derived from corn, if not corn itself. All of this corn is grown on fields that are utterly devoid of life except during the growing season, when (ideally, at least) the only living thing then is…corn. The normal system of nutrient fixing, transfer, and recycling that takes place in healthy ecosystems is basically absent, replaced by fertilizer and pesticides that are derived from oil and natural gas. Behemoth tractors running on diesel tend the crops, and more diesel is used to move the corn into the food supply. Once it enters the edge of the food system, untold quantities of electricity - generated using natural gas and oil, among other things - are used to transform that corn into starches, sweeteners, and who-knows-what-else before it lands in a product that you buy. That’s not even dipping into the fact that the corn-production system now feeds directly into the beef-production system, where still more oil is used carting corn to the cows, cows to the CAFOs (think: apocalyptic feedlots) and slaughterhouses, and beef to you, the consumer.
The point is this: our entire world floats on an ocean of oil. This would be alarming even if there weren’t reason to believe that world oil production either has peaked or will peak in the next five years or so. Natural gas is predicted to trail by only a couple of years at most. US oil production actually peaked at the beginning of the 1970’s, over 35 years ago. Yet our consumption of oil continues to ramp ever upward, supporting our broken, dysfunctional economy more and more every year.
What happens when the oil becomes truly expensive? Not $4.00 a gallon, but $10.00 or more? Every kilowatt of electricity generated using petroleum, every ounce of corn or beef, every stitch of clothing will feel an exponential effect of skyrocketing prices. We hear about airfares rising due to higher fuel costs, but that’s less than 15% of their cost of doing business. What about the oil embedded in literally every step of making the products that circulate in the modern economy? What happens when you can no longer afford to travel to the office every day?
What makes this particularly worrisome to me is that the modern economy is based squarely on the principles of globalism and distribution. This means that entire regions of the United States really have no idea how to be self-sufficient, to say nothing about individual towns and cities. Really, food is one of our smallest problems here, since you can find local farmers with expertise they can share in almost every corner of the country. Things like clothing, building materials we’re used to using, and the like may simply become too expensive to transport…and with all of the local suppliers of these things long since driven out of business, how can modern communities hope to hold together?
This is one more reason why I’m starting to think localism is the key to heading off these disasters. We need to start investing in very local ideas of self-sufficiency, and stockpiling know-how at the local level around the country. We need an effort at this equal to the effort to build a nationwide interstate system, or greater. I’m not saying that communities should become insular, isolated, xenophobic islands of humanity. Trade will always be critical, and we should always strive to exchange ideas, expertise, and certain specialty products with neighbors near and far. However, the reality of the ride we’re on is it’s coming to an end. We need to reassess how much of what we buy really needs to come from 6000 miles away, and start thinking about what this sort of trade for trade’s sake is buying us. Someday, we may not be able to afford to keep these trade relationships open and thriving…will we be able to scrounge up enough to survive in an enforced, locally-oriented economy when that day comes?
This doesn’t have to be a message of doom and gloom. Thriving local economies are places where people tend to be very happy. Inherently, they’re easier to trust that the goods flowing through the an economy won’t hurt its participants. There are actually a lot of good reasons why localism makes sense in terms of an economic choice, but that’s going to have to be a post for another day. In the meantime, if you want to explore the concept, I’d suggest reading Going Local by Michael Shuman. You’ll find a link to it on this blog.
Think about it, and please keep reading…it doesn’t matter whether it’s this blog or not, just keep reading. Have a great day.
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