

A quick decline could come if some combination of events starts oil production on a downward spiral.





We don’t know if such an adverse situation will arise, but if such a situation is even a possibility, it seems as though it should affect our approach to transition. The ideas I would suggest for dealing with this adverse situation are the following:

1. Resetting our view of the world to match what people historically have had.

2. Planning for the basics, to the extent we can.

3. Living life now as fully and completely as we can, since we really don’t know how bad the decline will be.

While this whole approach may be shooting too low, I think it can be a useful exercise for reshaping our thinking. People throughout the ages have lived without fossil fuels, and many have lived happy fulfilling lives, in spite of their circumstances. If our circumstances actually turn out better than this, everything will seem better in comparison.


We now expect a life expectancy of about 78 years. This is wonderful, but far in excess of what people historically have experienced. Wikipedia shows that before modern times, average lifespans at birth were in the range of 25 to 30 years. I am sure that some people lived to the age of 60 or 70, but these were the exception, rather than the rule.

Perhaps we need to start thinking about things differently–how much better we have it than people without fossil fuels have historically had it. In comparison to this yardstick, most of us have lived as long as people have in the past have lived. However long that we are able to live in excess of non-fossil fuel averages can be thought of as a gift.

We live in large heated homes, eat food imported from around the world, listen to televisions and the radio, use the Internet, talk on the telephone, and drive cars. Before fossil fuels, people didn’t do any of these things.

Perhaps some had heated homes, but these were very small homes, with limited heat. They sang songs, played musical instruments, visited with each other, and played various types of games. A few lucky ones might have had books, but not most.

2. Planning for the Basics

The major areas of basics that a person needs to think about are:

1. Water supply
2. Food supply
3. Transportation

Transportation is in some sense the easiest. The basic transportation mode is walking, and most of us have walking available, without doing anything special. It isn’t perfect, but throughout the life of the planet, it is pretty much what most people have used for transportation.

In areas where water is available for transport, small sail boats or row boats are also fairly easy options, without requiring too much in the way of resources. There are fancier methods of transportation, but these are the basics. They are cheap, and don’t require much investment.

Water, unless we can depend on city water, depends on some method of making water gathered as rainwater, or from shallow wells, or from streams, potable. One historical method has been to drink hot beverages (such as tea), so that water is cooked before eating. Another historical method has been to make some type of alcoholic beverage, and mix it with water, to kill microbes.

These approaches don’t get rid of pollutants, so somehow we need to work around this issue. Charcoal filters would seem to be possible with local materials. Another approach would be to only use water from less-polluted sources–something that is difficult with so many people on the planet.

Regarding gathering water supply, one approach that has been used in the past is gathering run-off water from tile roofs, and storing it in cisterns. It would be possible to start building more water catchment systems, since they are likely to be sustainable with local materials.

Food is more complicated. We know that people around the world, and throughout the ages, have eaten a wider variety of foods than we do now. Foods that we would consider unpalatable for food, such as acorns, have been eaten. Kudzu, a plant that many of us in the US South would consider a weed, seems to have many valuable purposes, including use as a food.

Many of the world’s people eat insects of various kinds. Rodents have also been used a food source. Also, parts of animals that we would not think of as a food source can be used for food. For example, Google shows many recipes for blood soup, using blood from various types of animals. My guess is that the people who are able to adapt to the new environment will be ones who are most flexible in adapting to the use of more diverse food sources, to supplement others.

With respect to cultivated foods, in an environment without fossil fuels, we will need foods that require very little in the way of outside inputs. In a way, what we want is “weedy” versions of plants–ones that eagerly reproduce on their own and do not have precise fertilizer and water requirements. Rotation, and growing among plants with complementary needs, should be able to handle most of their requirements.

Similarly, we want to raise animals that are basically animals that could live in the wild in the area where they are grown, so that there is not significant need for heat, non-local foods, and other inputs that will be difficult to provide. Animals will most likely need to be raised in small groups, by individual households, to prevent the spread of disease.

There may be a few things that we can carry over. Clearly, hand tools such as knives are helpful. Some recent inventions, such as solar hot water heating and solar ovens for cooking, may continue to be useful. If metal that we have today that is no longer needed can be reprocessed, it may serve to be a source of tools for the future. I would expect mining of all types to drop dramatically, without fossil fuels.

Relearning old techniques for making ropes and knots may be helpful, as may relearning many other technologies (such as for cloth and paper making) which were used in the past without fossil fuels, but are not used now. Technologies such as small wind turbines for pumping water and water mills for grinding grain may also be helpful.


Fortunately, declines don’t happen overnight. Even a fast decline will take place over a period of years, since we have clothing and machinery that can continue to be used, at least until it breaks and cannot be repaired. Hopefully, local production chains will stay in place, even as international production chains start breaking.

There are many things we can do now while we have a chance–for example, talk with friends and relatives on the phone or over the Internet, even if we don’t have funds to go see them in person. We can help others in ways that our skills permit–perhaps teach English as a second language to a neighbor, or help take care of a neighbor’s child, when the parents are not available. Some of us may feel inclined to work on developing a transition to a much lower type of economy–but probably not everyone.

Sitting around and obsessing about what may happen in the future does no one any good. A person may want to have a little food and water on hand, because of the possibility of temporary outages, but it is not clear how much good huge hoarding will do.

What a person really needs is an ongoing supply of the basics required for living, and this is likely to be a challenge. Hoarding is likely to encourage others to attack you, to take what you do have, so is not necessarily as helpful as it looks.

All of us are going to die at some point. We don’t know when. In a sense, this really hasn’t changed. Our challenge is to live the best life we can, in the time we have remaining.

This post originally appeared at Oilprice.com.

This post originally appeared at OilPrice.com. Copyright 2013.