ENERGY
One of the major global developments that galvanized the Vermont Commons group was the dawning awareness that petroleum production was approaching its all-time maximum extent and could, from this point forward, only decline, despite increasing demand in both advanced industrial nations and the rising economies of China, India, and other populous nations. Starting around the beginning of the new century, journalists and oil industry analysts including Thom Hartmann, Richard Heinberg, Kenneth Deffeyes, and Colin Campbell began explaining this phenomenon of “peak oil” and cataloging its very dramatic implications for the global economy, politics, and modern civilization itself. James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency, 2005), John Michael Greer (The Long Descent, 2008), and Heinberg (particularly, The End of Growth, 2011) argued convincingly that the end of cheap fossil-fuel energy would profoundly change every aspect of modern society. If their analysis is correct, the world economic system will be forced to abandon its aims of global domination and perpetual growth and yield instead to a more localized way of life.
The essays in this section demonstrate that energy issues are closely intertwined with the other concerns we are exploring. Money, food, governance, technology, imperial expansion, and even healthcare and cultural endeavors will be severely influenced when the cost of energy soars. Our call for a transition to a more localized, decentralized, resilient society is not only a moral vision but an eminently practical one. Peak oil exposes the deep structural flaws of globalized empire.
A skeptical reader may wonder: Is this for real? Or are we just conjuring the specter of peak oil as a scare tactic (similar to the global warming “conspiracy”) to promote a countercultural agenda? Apologists for free markets, endless growth, and globalization dismiss peak oil writers as “doomers” and assert that capitalism, technology, and ingenuity will prevail. There is, they say, plenty more oil (and natural gas) to be discovered and extracted. Indeed, these essays were written before the recent expansion of “fracking” to tap a seemingly huge reservoir of natural gas that lies under American soil, and before ambitious new offshore oil drilling in the Arctic (which is, ironically, more accessible thanks to climate change) and off the coast of Brazil. However, the evidence and analysis provided in the peak-oil literature speak for themselves, and when we consider that evidence without having a significant financial and political stake in the corporate empire, it is quite compelling. I invite readers to explore this literature for themselves and reach their own conclusions.
Even if there are still untapped reservoirs of fossil fuels, another compelling body of evidence provided by climate research strongly suggests that we need to keep them in the ground rather than release their carbon into the atmosphere. As the Transition movement has emphasized, peak oil and climate change together constitute an extremely formidable challenge to business as usual.
FOOD
Everyone eats, and so we are all linked to the economic, environmental, political, and cultural issues surrounding food, whether or not we recognize these connections. During the past decade, an increasing number of people worldwide have become more conscious about the sources, quality, and environmental effects of their food. They are seeing how the globalized, corporate food industry causes extensive harm to communities and ecosystems around the planet. It puts small farmers off their land, pumps petrochemicals into the soil, introduces genetically modified “Frankenfoods” into croplands and diets, and transports agricultural produce thousands of miles, consuming huge amounts of energy, before it reaches consumers, excessively refining and processing our food along the way. Millions of people have begun looking for alternatives, and a popular movement for healthy, locally and sustainably produced food has begun to spread across the United States and elsewhere in the world.
Food activism encompasses numerous issues, from the astounding surge of obesity and diabetes, to peak oil’s looming limitations, to the poor conditions of agricultural labor, to the corporate patenting—the confiscation for private profit—of genetic material, the very building blocks of life. At one end of the food movement spectrum, epicures and gourmet chefs are rediscovering the joys of local and regional ingredients, while at the other, activists for “food sovereignty” expose the blatant exploitation of farmers, indigenous populations, and colonized nations by powerful economic interests. The food movement shows up in the burgeoning popularity of farmers’ markets and CSAs (community supported agriculture projects); demands for labeling, if not outlawing, genetically modified products; fair trade and migrant worker campaigns, Slow Food principles, heirloom seed preservation; and resiliency planning by community transition groups. Many writers, such as Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, Eric Schlosser, and others, are examining the dangers of the industrial food system and exploring alternatives.
Vermont is one of the world’s leading regions for the renaissance of local, sustainable, and healthful food systems, and Vermont Commons writers have frequently highlighted our agricultural innovations as examples. Yet the state still only produces a tiny portion of the food it consumes, and if national and international supply lines go down, it is estimated that we would only have enough to eat for a few days. Though Vermonters are diligently working toward resilience, we are still far from achieving it. In agriculture, as in the other areas of society we examine, a massive paradigm and policy shift is very much needed.