At the root of our quandary is the treasure trove of fossil fuels that we discovered two centuries ago. These dense, high quality forms of energy included coal production at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and continued with the tapping of oil later on. Great prosperity has come from the production of fossil fuels, but we have produced the easy half of the oil available to the planet, and we will be producing less in the future since we have peaked. By the way, peak oil is an assumption of this website. If you want to know more about the issues, the 77 minute video, The Crisis of Civilization, below is a good place to start. For a shorter introduction to what happens when resources for a rapidly growing system diminish, click on Stuart McMillen’s very brief cartoon. The Reindeer of St. Mathew Island serve as an apt analogy for what peak oil could mean for us if we are not proactive about our quandary.

The reason for our impending crisis is that the abundant concentration of resources on earth is decreasing. Most of our economic growth results from the non-renewable consumption of the storage of fossil fuels, which then allows us to tap the other resources of the earth. Consumption has expanded, the balance is upset, and food and fuels are becoming more scarce. Each year more effort is needed to give to a growing population the fuels, water, wood, fish, soil, food, electric power, and minerals on which everything else is based. Since energy, the environment, and the economy are inextricably linked, our era of surplus energy and economic growth cannot be sustained indefinitely. A climax and contraction of our global economy will occur. More and more leaders who are concerned with the future are warning us of the impending economic crisis and of possible collapse. But while history records the collapse of countless civilizations, some societies and ecosystems have managed to escape collapse by descending in orderly stages. Can we do the same?

Most people are unaware of our quandary, as we attribute our successes to technology and not the power (the flow of energy over time) that drives the technology. Are we like goldfish living in a bowl of water, where we are immersed and unaware of the water that we live in? So that when endless energy comes to us at the flick of a switch on the wall or the swipe of a card at a gas pump, the process is so effortless and reliable that we never really see, question, or understand the energy? Can we continue on the path that we are on, and if so, for how long? If we are not proactive, how quickly can we change our systems to work with less energy throughputs, and does that modification need large amounts of fossil fuels to rebuild infrastructure? Is there another world out there where we might live happily within the limits that nature sets for us, as our treasure trove of fossil fuel starts to wane? As the 18 minute video from Iain McGilchrist suggests, there are two world views in opposition in our western society. The view sponsored by fossil fuels has become dominant. Have we lost our ability to view the world through a macroscope?

Consider the future with less fossil fuel. How can a lower energy lifestyle be peaceful and prosperous? Much thinking has already been done. Our civilization can thrive in a future where we live with less. Decisive, proactive changes in attitudes, policies and practices could divert a destructive collapse, leading instead to a prosperous way down, if we choose to do so?

The springboard for this site is “A Prosperous Way Down”, drafted in the mid 1980s by Howard T. and Elisabeth C. Odum, and published in 2001. Many of the energetic diagrams for the website are extracted from Mark T. Brown’s Emergy Powerpoints, which explain the meaning of energy diagrams and the method for Emergy Accounting and Synthesis.