Peak Oil: the 20% Remedy

We interrupt FAR Future for a moment…

It has often been said that “less is more,” and that may apply especially to the suburban lifestyle that has come to define the American consumer in the last couple of decades. We end up with too much house, live too far away from work, drive vehicles far larger than needed, then we fill that house with too much stuff. We’re dissatisfied with our lives, and think even more stuff is going to make it better.

I read a great book a while back, Your Money or Your Life, which outlines an iterative process for defining (and having) “enough” — and then going beyond that, to becoming truly financially independent (defined as not having to work for a living). It’s actually quite logical: you track your spending by categories, analyze it every month, and then determine whether you’re overspending, underspending, or spending enough in each category. It’s not about depriving yourself of things you really want, it’s about figuring out what you really want instead of just shotgun-buying more stuff.

What does that have to do with peak oil? Well, both peak oil and the book use a bell curve to illustrate their main points. Oil production, whether looking at one well or the world in aggregate, starts out low, climbs to a plateau and peaks (which is, according to the most reliable experts, where we are now), then falls back. The book puts its own bell curve in a graph (PDF, see page 12), with “stuff” on the X-axis and “fulfillment” on the Y-axis. On this graph, the plateau is what defines “enough.”

Beyond lines on a chart, though, the Culture of More is really what is making peak oil a problem. Bigger houses require more energy to heat or cool. Bigger vehicles and longer commutes require more energy to run. Demanding more stuff at cheaper prices is what has sent our manufacturing jobs to Asia, and sacrificed so many local business to Wal-Mart. With all the money pouring into China and India, their economies are booming… and guess what their growing middle class is doing? Yup, looking to America as the model for the good life. So with production leveling off, and demand still climbing, the plateau is rapidly becoming “not enough.” In classic supply and demand terms, demand is about to overtake the supply, and supply is “constrained” (a fancy way of saying it can’t be increased, despite happy-talk from industry groups and the Saudis).

In FAR Future, I’ve been writing about what things could be like in five years, when there’s not enough fuel to go around. I’m making a rather large and optimistic assumption, though: that governments will accept that supplies are dwindling and most people will make the best of the situation. Delusional conservatives insist that “the free market” is capable of optimizing fuel distribution, but they overlook a crucial point: the “market” is reactive, and we need to be proactive to minimize disruptions in what President-in-Fact Cheney calls “our non-negotiable way of life.” Every gallon of gasoline we use now, every cubic foot of natural gas, is that much we won’t have in the future — when it’s gone, it’s gone (over geological time spans, that’s not completely true, but I don’t expect humans to be around in 50 million years).

Thus, the 20% Remedy. My personal theory is that the country as a whole has overshot the “enough” plateau, and that we would be happier and better off if we cut about 20% out of our resource usage. Why 20%? I’ll admit I pulled the number out of my back pocket, but it can represent (among other things) one day of the work week. Some people are using close to the optimum amount of energy for a satisfying life now, others are using more than 20% too much, so think of 20% as an average figure, or a first approximation. You can arrive at your own figure through the same iterative process as Your Money or Your Life advises for optimizing your expenditures.

What does 20% mean in practical terms?

Commuting: Telecommute, or use transit, once a week — or take a two-person carpool twice a week. Indirect benefits come with scale (i.e. enough people embracing 20%): less traffic means you get “there” faster, and reduces the need for road construction (lower taxes, and asphalt is a petroleum product). Replace your vehicle, when the time comes, with one that uses 20% less fuel for the same amount of driving. Better driving habits won’t net you 20% better mileage with the car you have, unless you’re a serious lead-foot, but 5% to 10% is certainly possible. Combine your trips and plan those combined outings to minimize mileage — it can be fun, like solving a puzzle.

Electricity: Hang out the wash instead of using the dryer, every fifth load. Set the thermostat so that the air conditioner runs 20% less often. Skip every fifth shower to reduce hot water usage. The old standby, switching to CF light bulbs (at FAR Manor, we’re replacing the incandescents as they burn out, to delay that trip to the landfill). Watch 20% less TV and spend the new-found free time walking or getting to know your family.

Food: Fertilizer requires fossil fuels to produce, and winter veggies don’t fly themselves here from South America. Try to grow some of your own food — 20% might be difficult, though. Make up the difference by buying local produce — especially organic produce — at farmers markets or subscription co-ops. Get more than you need and preserve the extra for the winter (canning, dehydrating, etc.), so you aren’t as tempted to look for those South American tomatoes. Skip that fifth “dinner out,” or replace it with a picnic. Make Eat4Today a regular web-stop if you don’t already, and lose some weight (again, 20% might be difficult, but again YMMV).

Plastics: Plastics are a petroleum product! Over non-geological time, plastic doesn’t degrade much, so just using less of the stuff (say… about 20% less?) makes sense. Crafty Green Poet recently wrote a great article about how (and why) to reduce use of plastic in general. There was recently a flurry of articles about bottled water causing a huge upswing in plastic bottle waste — if you don’t like your tap water, consider filtering it and reusing those water bottles. Reuse the plastic you bring home as much as possible, then recycle it.

That’s a start, anyway. By using fewer resources, we can get ahead of the oil depletion curve — and when constraints become mandatory instead of voluntary, they won’t affect us as much. Even if you think a technology-fix is just around the corner, you might still find a more satisfying life inside a smaller footprint. I’m sure I’ve missed a few examples, feel free to provide them in the comments!