David Holmgren, one of the originators of the permaculture concept, has recently written what I believe is one of the best books on the societal implications of peak oil and climate change to be published over the last several years. His book “Future Scenarios, How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change” (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008), is a concise, well-written exploration of a range of possible futures facing humanity given certain assumptions about the interplay between the key variables of peak oil and climate change over the next few decades. ...

The author considers energy—and more importantly whether future energy supplies will likely increase, remain stable, or decrease—to be the most important variable in assessing potential futures. In the book, he first considers four meta-level energy-driven scenarios for the long-term future, these being ‘techno-explosion’, ‘techno-stability’, ‘energy descent’ and ‘collapse’. ....

The ‘Brown-Tech’ scenario results from the combination of slow oil decline rates and the rapid onset of adverse climate impacts. There is a strong emphasis on providing liquid fuels from unconventional oil such as tar sands and coal as described in the Hirsh report. Strong national / corporatist governments provide centralized responses to the energy crisis, though unfortunately ones that exacerbate the release of greenhouse gases. Over time, this scenario devolves into the lifeboat scenario described below.

In ‘Green-Tech’, enabled by benign climate change and low post-peak oil decline rates, much emphasis is placed on developing renewable energy resources, especially wind and solar. The economy is robust enough that relatively large scale deployment of these renewable energy technologies is possible. A resurgence of local and regional economies helps the country power-down to the extent necessary to take advantage of the lower amounts of energy (compared to that available from fossil fuels) available from the larger scale solar and wind projects developed under this scenario. Holmgren believes that over time - decades perhaps - this scenario will evolve into the Earth Steward scenario as available energy continues its relentless decline.

In the ‘Earth Steward’ scenario, severe economic impacts from rapid oil decline - ten percent or more per year - bring about a complete collapse of the world monetary and financial system, thereby preventing the rapid, large scale deployment of renewable energy technologies as in ‘Green-Tech’. However, small scale deployment of these at the household and village level is a key component of the energy mix in this scenario. Climate change is relatively mild. This is a very agrarian scenario, with permaculture playing a large role in how food is produced. ‘Earth Steward’ appears to be similar to the ‘catabolic collapse’ scenario mapped out by John Michael Greer in his book “The Long Descent”. ‘Earth Steward’ perhaps best expresses the vision of long-term sustainability as envisioned by Permaculture and the Transition Towns movements.

The ‘Lifeboats’ scenario is the most challenging of the energy descent pathways. In this scenario, severe economic impacts from rapid oil decline combined with the severe rapid onset of climate change disruptions lead to a rapid decline in societal complexity and the ability to maintain large, centralized governments and institutions. Still, enough knowledge and technology makes it through this transition to allow civilization to continue in somewhat isolated pockets.

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Voir aussi : Future Scenarios