Rethinking Lifestyle

When we hear about climate change due to the use of fossil fuels, it’s easy to take away the wrong message. On the one hand, an immature environmentalist (like me in my twenties) concludes that fossil fuels are inherently bad, and should stay in the ground at all costs. On the other hand, a confirmed industrialist, reacts against a misguided attack on the prosperity that fossil fuels have provided so abundantly. But there is a third viewpoint that reconciles both positions: Fossil fuels are unbelievably precious.

I was first exposed to this concept while participating in a Permaculture course presented by the Harvest Moon Society in Clearwater MB. As the course was concluding, we were briefed on plans for a forest garden on a steeply-sloped vacant site in town. The natural terrain made it next to impossible to retain water for plantings, so the decision was made to terrace the slope with a bobcat. The instructor made the point that diesel-powered hydraulic machinery could accomplish phenomenal amounts of work with just a few dozen litres of diesel. If the work was chosen and executed with care, it would never need to be redone. Once completed, the site would require vastly fewer inputs than a pumped irrigation system, and would accomplish water retention and distribution “work” passively, by virtue of its carefully selected shape alone, for multiple generations. This was an example of a good, careful use of fossil fuels.

It has taken a while, but finally accepting this concept has changed how I think about the use of fossil fuel. However, rather than softening my view, it has sharpened and refined it. I’ve since discovered, through excellent thinkers like Richard Heinberg, that a simplistic “renewable energy only” view in the short term is naive (even though 100% renewables will necessarily be our ultimate fate). He and others have reasoned that if, in addition to having enormous costs (destructive mining, poisoned air & water, and climate change), fossil fuels also boast staggering benefits (cheap, super-dense, portable energy), then they must be used as sparingly as humanly possible. The future of clean energy that we depend on for survival cannot happen without immense, immediate efforts to adapt our fossil fuel-based infrastructure to those new technologies. The fact is that we cannot build the necessary solar panels, electric batteries, and windmills without significant investments of fossil fuel energy in the short term – even while we reduce our overall use of fossil fuels.

Looking at things this way, it is possible for the environmentalist and the industrialist to arrive at common ground. Both would reasonably agree that fossil fuels give us the power to carry out whatever task we set it to, and that doing so is important to our survival. Both must also agree that this very fact makes oil incredibly valuable, and that wasting it is both inefficient and unethical. The only question is: what is a worthy use of precious fossil fuels?

For me, this perspective makes watching an SUV idle for half an hour just to warm it up even more infuriating. Similarly I find casual international shipping and airline vacations to Mexico exasperating. Not only do these activities worthlessly pollute the environment, but they also squander the lifeline of future generations. Surely we can do better than that.