Richard Heinberg's new book, Peak Everything, is subtitled Waking Up to the Century of Declines. The emphasis is on “Waking Up,” rather than the details of the resource peaks and declines. It is a collection of loosely related essays, many previously published, on how basic realities of life will change as fossil fuel supplies dwindle.

One basic reality is that the fossil fuel-powered tools that we use for just about everything we do, from food production to heating to transportation to communication, will become obsolete in a “techno-collapse.” Another is that available fossil fuels will be insufficient to support an industrial food system in which less than 2% of the US population farms. Heinberg even addresses the aesthetics of the post-hydrocarbon age, which he believes are likely to resemble those of the Arts and Crafts movement, characterized by the book and fabric designs of William Morris and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Heinberg's introduction is a nod to what I expected from the title Peak Everything, a technical rundown of the availability and projected or historical year of peak for many more resources than oil: e.g., uranium (2035), fresh water availability (1999), grain production per capita (1985), and marine fish catches (1995).* Even in that introduction, however, he stays with our individual and psychological needs. Heinberg notes many “resources” which need not peak and decline in the 21st century: e.g., community, personal autonomy, intergenerational solidarity, leisure time, happiness, and beauty of what we build.

The organizing principle for the book is clearly stated (and italicized) in the introduction: “our central survival task for the decades ahead, as individuals and as a species, must be to make a transition away from the use of fossil fuels—and to do this as peacefully, equitably, and intelligently as possible.” When I interviewed Heinberg for WGDR, he acknowledged that the transition away from fossil fuels will happen regardless of what we do.

I suggested that people who know nothing about energy can teach Nonviolent Communication or work for a more equitable tax code, and he agreed that there are many ways to work to make the transition peaceful, equitable, and intelligent.. “There are so many areas in which this is going to come down to specific behavior change that it would be impossible to even begin listing them all. Of course, a really important one is food production: changing our way of producing and processing and distributing food and eating food from the current industrial model to a post-industrial model that doesn't use fossil fuels. And there are lots of organic farmers, permaculturalists and so on who are already well along the way to doing this and really showing how it can be done. But we're going to need millions more people doing the same thing in order to produce enough food through this more localized, labor-intensive, knowledge-intensive way.”

He means about 48 million more people, in this country alone. One of the essays in Peak Everything that sticks with me the most is “Fifty Million Farmers,” in which Heinberg grapples with the multiple challenges facing US agriculture. (A version of the essay is available on Heinberg's web site.) The coming fossil fuel shortages leave food production especially vulnerable. We can cut out trips to Disney World or Italy with little pain, and we can carpool or take the public transit to work or work from home with (sometimes) improvements in the quality of our lives. But when 350 gallons of oil equivalent is used in feeding each person in the US annually, fuel shortages may also mean food shortages, and food shortages mean pain.

In addition to fuel shortages, other challenges facing US agriculture include the increasing scarcity of fresh water for irrigation and the increased droughts, floods, and storms of a changing climate.

Heinberg turns to Cuba for one example of how a nation has responded to a drop-off in oil supplies. At the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost its cheap oil imports, and the basis for the fuel- and chemical intensive agriculture practiced on the island disappeared. With a combination of land reform that put more people working their own land, increasing the number of farmers, a more vegetarian diet, and urban farming and gardening, Cuba came through the hardships of what they call the “special period.” True, the average Cuban lost 20 pounds, but overall health actually improved. (Contrary to advice it would have received from the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, Cuba increased rather than decreased its investment in health care facilities during the economic downturn.)

World War II-era Victory Gardens in the US are another source of inspiration for Heinberg. They were also born of a time of fuel shortages; the movement was so successful that for a while, 40% of vegetables eaten in the US were coming from private gardens.

The key to these successes in food production despite adversity, Heinberg argues, was that more people were farming. Smaller farms are more productive per acre than larger farms, and more people working means less need for tractor fuel or chemical inputs. In Cuba, 15-25% of the population now farms. In the US before the age of petro-agriculture, in 1900, 40% of the population farmed. From those numbers, Heinberg estimates that one in six of us in the US, or 50 million people, will need to farm. At Vermont's scale, that's 100,000 farmers.

What it means to be a farmer will change, of course. They will be more like the David Zuckermans and other small farmers you can meet in Vermont farmers' markets every week than the California owners of 10,000 almond trees or 3,000 dairy cows who provide so much of the food today.

Somehow, for me, the vision of a United States with 50 million farmers is a much clearer, more profound example of a successful response to declining oil availability than other potential changes: more trains and bicycles, better insulated buildings, unheated bedrooms, etc. I can see the landscape and people transformed, maybe because I know so many gardeners and small farmers.

In Peak Everything, Richard Heinberg writes about a potentially gloomy future, and he manages to see the possibilities for improvement, or at least survival, where others might only get depressed. Not only that, Heinberg asks what needs to be done to achieve the improvements he envisions, and he lays out both concrete policy steps and guiding principles. He also recommends and even exemplifies habits of thinking that are likely to make it easier to weather a century of declines.

At the beginning of my interview with Heinberg, when I asked him just to talk while I adjusted the sound levels, he said he was looking at a news web page with the story of a woman in New York who found a python in her toilet. We both laughed at the absurdity of editors who thought this was an important story for us to be talking about. Let's hope we see more news coverage of the issues Heinberg raises in Peak Everything and less about toilet-bound snakes.

* The peak years are from graphs and are not precise.

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The complete interview with Richard Heinberg, in which he also talks about why community radio stations are important for a successful transition to peak oil, is available for download in the Audio section of the Vermont Peak Oil Network website.

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The blog Relocalizing Vermont focuses on relocalizing the Vermont economy in a time of energy constraints brought on by peak oil and other factors. To "relocalize" is to return to local production of food, energy, and goods.