Bread and Oil

Interesting article from Orion magazine (newly discovered by me) by Bill McKibbon, in which he ponders whether we'll have a soft or hard landing when our inevitable peak oil future catches up with us.

Can you feel the mood shifting? I can.
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It reminds me a little of the very early days in the fight over global warming. Appalled at the forecasts of global destruction, some of us demanded immediate and strong action—high taxes on carbon emissions, for instance, and never mind the pain. Others—more moderate or more politically realistic—advocated a suite of what they called "no regrets" policies. They suggested, say, gradual rises in gas mileage, higher efficiency standards for appliances. Even if climate change proved to be overblown hooey, they pointed out, such rational and easy measures would still save us money, reduce conventional pollution, and so on. These steps were like taking out a modest amount of insurance; whatever happened we'd have no regrets about having adopted them.

In actual fact, of course, we took neither the urgent nor the more relaxed steps. Instead we bought Ford Explorers. Now everything that was frozen is melting and soon we will have . . . regrets.
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In any event, the real question is what to do in the face of uncertainty. In policy terms, the answer is easy, since cushioning the end of oil would require precisely the same steps as slowing down climate change: raising gas mileage, converting to hybrid cars, building trains, imposing carbon taxes, giving tax breaks for insulation.
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The no-regrets options are different, and seductive. They all involve communities learning to fend more powerfully for themselves—communities ratcheting down their dependence on the overstretched and oil-dependent lines of supply that mark a globalized economy, and ratcheting up the semiforgotten, close-to-home economies that might prove more stable in an energy-starved world. Some of this work is already underway, but it will be given a new urgency if the price of oil just keeps on leaping.

Consider, for instance, the fine small city of Burlington, in Vermont. It has its own in-town farming district, the Intervale—land that once served as the town dump and now has about five hundred acres of vegetables and berries and grains, selling mostly to people who appreciate freshness, who think organically, who want to support their neighbors. The Intervale already provides 8 percent of the fresh produce that the town's residents consume, and 8 percent is not insignificant. But it still leaves 92 percent arriving by truck, boat, and plane from around the planet—apples from China, say, even though Burlington lies in the Champlain Valley, one of the planet's finest apple-growing belts. In a cheap-fuel economy you can take advantage of cheap Chinese labor and sell Chinese apples for a cheap forty cents.
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With a little lead time, we can put in place the no-regrets kinds of policies that make sense for a less spendthrift society. Consider, for instance, Burlington Bread. That's the local currency that a few people developed in Burlington six or seven years ago—one of several thousand such currencies that have sprung up around the world. But like most of the American experiments, Burlington Bread has never broken out of the backrub and vegan-restaurant ghetto; it's basically a medium of exchange between earnest masseuses. Now, though, locals led by University of Vermont economics professor Bob Costanza are trying to make something more of it. Costanza, one of the founders of ecological economics, has proposed having the city issue Bread. If they could use the currency to pay some municipal expenses, and in turn accept it for taxes and fees, then it would stand a chance of gaining a real foothold. In time, say Costanza's colleagues, 20 percent of Burlington's economy might use Bread instead of greenbacks—which, because it would give people money that only had value in the metro area, would automatically make local goods more competitive. Move that produce number from 8 percent to, say, 28 percent. Suddenly the town is a lot better situated for the post-oil world. And suddenly the town is not just a collection of unrelated individuals living in a vast planetary economy, but a real community in a real place filled with people who depend on one another in real ways.