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"Future Scenarios" av David Holmgren

"Future Scenarios " av David Holmgren är utgiven år 2009, omfattar 120 sidor och är på engelska. Den finns på AdLibris, där den kostar bara 94 kr.

Det är alltså en liten bok, men den är koncis och klar. David Holmgren vet vad han talar om, är ju en auktoritet inom permakultur.

Som framgår av framsidan finns två styrande variabler:

A. Peak Oil och den tilltagande energibristen

B. Klimatförändringar till följd av miljöutsläpp.

Holmgren ser fyra möjliga framtider: teknikexplosion, teknikstabilitet, energinedgång och kollaps.

1. Teknikexplosion

Förutsätter att nya fantastiska energikällor:

"Technoexplosion depends on new, large, and concentrated energy sources that will allow the continued growth in material wealth and human power over environmental constraints as well as population growth. This scenario is generally associated with space travel and colonizing other planets."

2. Teknikstabilitet

Förutsätter en omfattande satsning på förnybar energi och en viss - mjuk - nedgång i energianvändning:

"While this clearly involves massive change in almost all aspects of society, the implication is that once sustainable systems are in place, a steady-state sustainable society with much less change will prevail. Photovoltaic technology directly capturing solar energy is a suitable icon or symbol of this scenario."

3. Energinedgång

Förutsätter en minskning av ekonomisk aktivitet, komplexitet och befolkningsmängd:

"This suggests a ruralization of settlement and economy, with less consumption of energy and  resources and a progressive decline in human populations."

4. Kollaps

Innebär att snabbt sammanbrott av industrisamhället, kanske även en utplåning av både människan och många andra arter:

"It would inevitably involve a major 'die-off' of human population and a loss of the knowledge and infrastructure necessary for industrial civilization, if not more severe scenarios including human extinction and the loss of much of  the planets biodiversity."

 

David Holmgren skissar på fyra möjliga framtidsscenarior utifrån utvecklingen beträffande energitillgång och klimatförändring:

A. Brown Tech - Top-down Constriction

B. Green Tech - Distributed Powerdown

C. Earth Steward - Bottom-Up Rebuild

D. Lifeboats - Civilization Triage

A. Brown Tech

Långsam energinedgång, allvarliga klimatförändringar.

B. Green Tech

Långsam energinedgång, milda klimatförändringar:

"The relatively benign climate allows a resurgence of rural and regional economies on the back of sustained and growing prices for all natural commodities including feedstock and biofuels."

C. Earth Steward

Snabb energinedgång, milda klimatförändringar:

"This economic collapse and these political stresses, more than the actual shortage of resources, prevents the development of more expensive and large-scale nonrenewable resources that characterize the brown-tech scenrio or the renewable resources and infrastructure of the green-tech. International and national communications networks break down.

Electricity grids become nonfuntional as cost and availability of fuels and spare parts reduce production, and lack of paying businesses and customers reduce revenues."

Detta scenario innefattar också många andra otrevligheter, som övergivande av land och befolkningsomflyttningar, ransoneringar, svart marknad och matupplopp. Ökad brottslgihet, undernäring, sjuklighet och höga dödstal. Kollaps för skattebasen och svårghet att hålla igång infrastrukturer.

Men där finns även möjligheter:

"Organic and small farmers, close to markets and able to make use of labor and animal power, thrive... An explosion of home businesses based on building and equipment retrofit, maintenance,.."

D. Lifeboats

Snabb energinedgång, allvarliga klimatförändringar:

Här blir det de som kan jaga och bo i vildmarken som kan klara sig,och de som kan tillverka egna vapen.

 

De fyra framtidsscenariorna är främst applicerbara på olika nivåer, enligt denna skiss:

 

Ytterligare citat:

"While the energy crisis of the 1970s illustrated the vulnerability of industrial society to oil shortage, the oil glut and low prices of the 1980s, combined with a barrage of misinformation, saw these ideas lose favor."

"...the increasingly sedentary lifestyle created by the computer and other innovation is reguiring escalating expenditure in the health care sysem and in the health and fitness industry to compensate for lifestyles shat are compatible with human biology."

"Today Cubans have life expectancy and other indices of development comparable with the United States while using one-seventh the energy and resources."

"...debunkting of peak oil that continues in policy circles and the media. The steady climb in prices for eight years should have been enough to lift production it that were possible."

"Whatever happens in the future, the fundamental cause of this latest economic recession is the same as four of the last five global recessions: a sudden rise in oil prices. As always, energy fuels the economy while financial activity increasingly represents litte more than steam, smoke, froth, and bubble which confuses the picture."

"Flow of energy from more expensive sources such as tar sands, deep-ocean oil, gas-to-liquids, and coal-to-liquids slow the decline in fuels from crude oil."

"...my purpose ws to empower those committed to ecological values and social justice to be effective in their quest to create the world we want, rather than just resist the world we dont want... during periods of ecological chaos small groups of people have been instrumental in those transitions."

Jan Milld

oktober 2011