No doubts
For anyone who doubts industrialized countries’ dependence
on oil, Black says to pick a product at the grocery store. Take milk. It takes
oil to drive to the store to buy the milk, and it takes oil to get the milk to
the store in the first place. It takes oil to run the refrigerators that keep
the milk cold, and it takes oil to run the milking machines that suck the milk
from the cow. Trace it back further, and the cow likely ate feed harvested with
a tractor fueled by, what else, oil.
With the use of fossil fuels so integrated into today’s lifestyle,
converting to sustainability isn’t an overnight process, and it can’t be done
successfully without the support of the community and major investments in the
development and production of renewable energy sources, Paddon says.
But the couple says that instead of using the remaining oil to research and
develop wind and solar power, current oil supplies are being used to feed the
U.S. appetite and to secure the remaining oil fields in the middle east.
“Their entire focus is profit, to make as much as they can in the time
that’s left,” Black says.
Black and Paddon are afraid that by the time people wake up to what is
going on it will be too expensive to produce and develop alternative energy
sources, and there won’t be the fuel to do so.
“There’s a lack of awareness that things will go wrong,” Black says.
“Technology will save us. The economy will save us.”
A struggle
But eliminating a dependence on fossil fuels isn’t that
easy, they say.
While television commercials are promoting cleaner coal, it still causes
acid rain and smog. Most of the easy-to-get coal has already been extracted,
which means that eventually it will take more energy to mine the remaining coal
than can be produced from the coal itself.
Natural gas isn’t the answer either, because it will peak in 15 years then
drop off, Black says.
Paddon and Black call hydrogen power a “diversion to give the public hope.”
They say hydrogen production always uses more energy than the resulting hydrogen
will yield, and that current hydrogen fuel cells are powered with hydrogen
extracted from natural gas.
“Other countries are all aware of peak oil,” Paddon says. “Spain just
launched a tidal power plant. Germany is buying solar panels up all over the
world.”
The couple say transitioning to a post-petroleum world isn’t a blip of a
challenge, or a scare like Y2K. Before the expansive use of fossil fuels, the
world’s population was about 1 billion. Today it’s 6.5 billion.
“We cannot feed the earth’s population with current farming methods,” Black
said, referring to the reliance on fertilizers that dramatically increase output
and the method of transporting food long distances.
What to do?
For now, Black and Paddon are starting by changing their
own habits.
“We don’t want to do the hard-core survivalist thing. Hole up in a cabin
with ammo. What’s the point in that?” Paddon says.
They’re conserving energy by things as simple as using energy-efficient
lightbulbs and hanging their wash to dry outside. They’ve cut their garbage in
half, and make sure to separate out burnables and cardboard for mulching.
They’ve put thermal windows in their house to make it more efficient.
There’s a “chicken tractor” in the garden, where chickens are put in a tiny
house without a floor. There they eat, defecate and scratch, helping with
composting and fertilizing the ground. The tractor is moved around the garden to
fertilize different areas.
They buy local, organic produce and local materials, and produce some food
themselves. An Oberhasli goat, Fanny, gives about 2 quarts of milk a day. Their
other goat, Bhri, is still a kid.
They aren’t keeping up the lawn, and will use the yard in the front of the
house for a pasture for the Percheran draft horse they plan to purchase, after
they finish building the barn.
Solar thermal and photovoltaic cells to provide hot water and some
electricity are propped up against an outside wall.
There’s a wood and coal-burning stove in their garage. Rusty farm
implements from 100 years ago sit waiting for Paddon to restore them. Even a
horse-drawn carriage sits in the garage. But while some of the items are dated,
Black says they aren’t trying to go backward.
“We as a culture are not going back to the 1800s,” Black says. “We’re
trying to model another way of life.”
Instead they hope to combine current technology with the old, for example,
applying regenerative breaking to a horse carriage.
They’re also trying to adopt a positive view of the future, focusing on how
the end of fossil fuels might allow people to spend more time with their friends
and families.
“We need to look at it as an opportunity to lead a simpler, slower life,”
Black says.