Preface. I encourage you to read Heinberg’s entire “A simple way…” post. It is a great overview of history and how we came to this point of energy decline. And as usual, easy to read, clear, and wise as is all his writing. Much of this repeats what other “what to do” posts recommend, but I think that his first idea is important, to use “renewable” energy to supply electricity for applications that are especially important. That is the main reason to build solar and wind turbines at all, to keep the grid up until we run out of the natural gas to do so, since it will be hard enough to adjust to a tremendous decline in transportation and manufacturing.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity, Index of best energyskeptic posts
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Richard Heinberg. 2020. A simple way to understand what’s happening … and what to do. Resilience.org
…we must deploy remaining energy strategically—not with the intent to maintain current patterns of industrial production and consumption, but with the goal of keeping necessities available while the amount of useful energy declines. Forget 5G, the Internet of Things, and self-driving cars. Concentrate on low tech for the most part, and use renewable energy to supply electricity for applications that are especially important. During the last few decades we have digitized all human knowledge; if the grid goes down, we lose civilization altogether. We must choose what knowledge is essential and let the rest go, but that will take a while; in the interim, we need electricity to keep the grid up and running—and solar and wind can provide it.
Food is also top priority. Provide incentives and education for city kids to move to the country and start small farms. Make land available to them if they will work it sustainably, and do whatever is necessary to enable them to make a decent living. Promote urban gardening. Support local food distribution networks as well as small-scale, energy-efficient local storage and processing facilities.
Ratchet down production and consumption of manufactured goods controllably. The best way to do this is to remove the elements of profit and affordability from distribution as much as possible. That means distributing necessities more by quota than by price. Rationing has often worked well in the past; we need it now more than ever.
Reducing inequality will help. If inequality remains at current levels, social cohesion will be difficult to maintain. Reduction in inequality can substitute for overall economic growth in keeping the poorest from descending into destitution. Tax the rich.
Focus on the local economy. That means letting go of empire-building aspirations and many aspects of global trade—but re-localization will yield upsides from more robust and satisfying community relationships.
Forgive debts. Start with student loans, but don’t stop there. Defaults will occur anyway; what’s important is that there is support for people thrown out of work as a result of bankruptcies. Save bailouts for industries that are actually essential (we really don’t need hedge funds, airlines, and car companies).
Reduce population by incentivizing small families rather than large ones, and by fully supporting the rights of women.
Reduce harms to the environment so that it doesn’t cost as much to recover from natural disasters or to clean up pollution. Reducing population, production, and consumption will certainly help, but we could achieve just as much by transforming agriculture so that farms build topsoil rather than ruining it, and capture atmospheric carbon rather than adding to it.
With regard to the pandemic, everyone should emulate New Zealand. That means total lockdowns for a period of weeks, then massive testing and tracing efforts directed by compassionate but strong, science-minded leaders. No excuses. No arguments about facemasks and contact questionnaires. Just do it. Eliminate the virus. Then we can move on and celebrate.
Which brings me to a final point: life is about more than survival. We are all more likely to engage willingly in the collective effort described above if we are able to enjoy ourselves in the process. Over the next few decades, we need to build a social system that differs radically from the industrial, consumption-oriented, growth economy of the 20th century. Let’s make it a beautiful human world, filled with opportunities for singing, dancing, reflecting, remembering, imagining, mourning, meditating, and all the other life-sustaining activities that go on in a healthy culture. Enlist creative artists in the process, and enable everyone with even an ounce of creativity to find ways to express it.