Peak Everything (15 page)

One relatively recent iteration of style — the hippie aesthetic of macramé, tie-dye, beads, sandals, long hair, dulcimers, and herb gardens — may hold a few cues and clues for the post-carbon future. Hippie houses and ornaments were handmade, but often rather ineptly so. This in itself is perhaps a sign of what is to come, as we return by necessity to handcraft but without skill or cultural memory to guide us.

In its lucid moments, the hippie aesthetic (which was on the whole more musical than visual) articulated a coherent rejection of consumerism and an embrace of the “natural.” But while it attempted a profound critique of the industrial-corporate system, it showed only limited similarity to Arts and Crafts ideals. This was partly because of the changed infrastructural context: by this point in history, cars and electronic machines were so embedded in the lives of people in industrialized nations that few could imagine a realistic alternative. Moreover, the baby boomers' rebellion was at least partly enabled by the very wealth that abundant energy produced: rents were cheap, transportation was cheap, and food was cheap; as a result, dropping out of the employment rat race for a few months in order to tune in and turn on carried little real personal risk. Thus their rejection and critique were inherently self-limiting.

The counterculture expressed itself through dreams of foot-loose, motored mobility (
Easy Rider
), and in music amped to the
max with inexpensive electricity. The latter was hardly incidental: the voltage that made Harrison's and Clapton's guitars gently weep, and that wafted Grace Slick's and Janis Joplin's voices past the back rows in amphitheaters seating thousands — in short, the power of the music that united a generation — flowed ultimately from coal-fired generating plants. That same 110 volt, 60 cycle AC current energized stereo sets in dorm rooms and apartments across America, allowing ten million teenagers to memorize the lyrics to songs impressed on vinyl (i.e., petroleum) disks in the certain knowledge that these were revelatory words that would change the course of history.

If the hippie aesthetic was at least occasionally endearing, it was easily stereotyped and, when profitable, readily co-opted by cynical ad executives. It was also often naively uncritical of its own assumptions. If you want to appreciate for yourself the embedded contradictions of the movement, just rent and watch the movie
Woodstock.
The wide-eyed, self-congratulatory idealism of the “kids” — who arrived by automobile to liberate themselves through amateur psychopharmacology and to worship at the altar of electric amplification — is simultaneously touching and unbearable. It was no wonder the revolution failed: without an understanding of the energetic basis of industrialism and therefore of the modern corporate state, their rebellion could never have been more than symbolic.

Where the hippie aesthetic drew on deeper philosophical and political roots (such as the back-to-the-land philosophy of Scott and Helen Nearing), it persisted, as it still does to this day. Perhaps the most durable and intelligent product of the era was the design philosophy known as Permaculture, developed in Australia by ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. A practical — rather than an aesthetic — design system for producing food, energy, and shelter, Permaculture was conceived in prescient expectation of the looming era of limits, and it is endlessly adaptable to differing climates and cultures. In the future, its principles may serve as the fundamental frame of reference for builders and craftspeople as they elaborate new aesthetic styles.

Will industrial production survive in the post-hydrocarbon era? The answer will of course depend on how much energy humans will have at their disposal. The total amount, as well as the per capita amount, will certainly be substantially reduced, especially in what are currently the most highly industrialized societies — but by how much? The very earliest factories were powered by water and wind, resources that presumably will still be available to future generations. Will these sources provide enough power to run the machine tools to make the lathes to make the sophisticated wind turbines (and other energy production devices) that will be needed in order to maintain some semblance of an electrical grid, or a manufacturing economy? It is impossible to know the answer at this point.

What can be said with confidence is that everything in the post-hydrocarbon world will operate on a smaller scale (let us hope that E. F. Schumacher was right in insisting that “small is
beautiful
”). There will be less of nearly everything to go around, and virtually every process of production and transport will occur more slowly.

The prospect of returning to human muscles for productive power is both exciting and scary. Will this mean an explosion of craftsmanship, or a return to drudgery (particularly for women)? Most likely, it will result in both. However, if adopted widely, the Permaculture design system could at least minimize the drudgery and hence provide opportunity to devote more attention to the quality and beauty of products.

At first thought, aesthetics might seem utterly incidental, given the survival challenges imposed by Peak Oil, climate chaos, mass extinctions, and so on. However, art is part of the necessary process of cultural adaptation. People inevitably find ways not just to endure, but to enjoy — to find happiness in the midst of change. We are, after all, environment shapers. As birds build nests, we build camp-sites, fashion clothing, and (if we are civilized humans) build cities. But as we shape our environments, those environments in turn mold our perceptions, our judgments, our expectations, our very consciousness. Art, religion, politics, and economics will all have to adjust as the world's energy infrastructure shifts. And the forms we
create to express and embody those shifts and adjustments will in turn alter us. Cultural change is a process of reverberation.

It may be presumptuous to try to forecast what post-hydrocarbon style will look like, as people will have to make it up as they go along — and creativity is, almost by definition, difficult to predict. It will, by necessity, be true post-modernism — though the use of the term may be more confusing than helpful. In any case, the following are a few of the characteristics that must inevitably be part of the new aesthetic.

These are, of course, only the most general of parameters within which specific new regional styles may emerge over the coming decades. What exactly these styles will look like won't be known until millions of craftspeople and builders undertake the processes of (re-)learning skills and producing large numbers of buildings, tools, furnishings, and artworks. However, one can hardly help noting that most of the characteristics listed above apply to the products of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Perhaps the way down the hydrocarbon curve will, at least in the best instances, indeed look a little like the way up.

M
Y AIM IN THIS CHAPTER is to explore the history of the terms
sustainable
and
sustainability,
and their various published definitions, and then to offer a set of five axioms (based on a review of the literature) to help clarify the characteristics of a durable society.

The essence of the term
sustainable
is simple enough: “that which can be maintained over time.” By implication, this means that any society, or any aspect of a society, that is unsustainable cannot be maintained for long and will cease to function at some point.

It is probably safe to assume that no society can be maintained forever: astronomers assure us that in several billion years the sun will heat to the point that Earth's oceans will boil away and life on our planet will come to an end. Thus
sustainability
is a relative term. It seems reasonable to take as a temporal frame of reference the durations of prior civilizations, which ranged from several hundred to several thousand years. A sustainable society, then, would be one capable of maintaining itself for many centuries into the future.

However, the word
sustainable
has become widely used in recent years to refer, in a general and vague way, to practices that are reputed to be more environmentally sound than others. Often the word is used so carelessly as to lead some environmentalists to advise abandoning its use.
¹
Nevertheless, I believe that the concept of sustainability
is essential to understanding and solving our species ecological dilemma, and that the word is capable of rehabilitation, if only we are willing to expend a little effort in arriving at a clear definition.

The essential concept of sustainability was embodied in the world-views and traditions of many indigenous peoples; for example, it was a precept of the
Gayanashagowa,
or Great Law of Peace (the constitution of the Haudenosaunee or Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy) that chiefs consider the impact of their decisions on the seventh generation to come.