10 Things to do to prepare for a Post-Carbon Future

To Prepare For A Post-carbon Future...
Feeling blue about Climate Change and Peak Oil?
Rob Hopkins recommends some simple steps
to help you get ready.

10 THINGS TO DO

1. ORGANISE A SCREENING OF
‘THE END OF SUBURBIA’1
This excellent film is a brilliant introduction
to Peak Oil. Show the film at
a local venue, advertise it widely, it
can act as a great catalyst for triggering
discussion and action around the
Peak Oil issue.

2. INSULATE YOUR
HOUSE
Imagine heating your
home when fuel costs 3-4
times the current price. It
is worth taking the time
now, while insulation materials are relatively cheap, to make
your house as energy efficient as possible, insulating where
practical and making the house draught proof.

3. GET OUT OF DEBT
When the shortage of
oil starts to hit home the
economy will enter a very
difficult period. It will not
be a good time to owe
large amounts of money
to a bank. Take a look at
your situation, to what extent do you live on credit? If you
have a large house could you make do with a smaller one,
and reduce your repayments? Make getting out of debt
a family priority and use it as an opportunity to simplify
your lifestyle.

4. START A GARDEN
We are still in a time when food
is artificially cheap. Although it is
still not really cost effective to have
a food garden, nothing tastes like
food you have just grown. Also,
this is the time to start learning how
to grow food, as it will become a
far more pivotal part of our lives in
the near future. Who already grows
food in your area? Make contact, see what grows for them,
swap seeds, learn to make good compost.

5. BECOME MORE AWARE OF
YOUR SURROUNDINGS
Nowadays we have become disconnected
from the world around
us. We know more about what is
happening in Nature on the television
than on the other side of the
garden fence. Challenge yourself
to learn the names of the local
rivers, of five trees native to your
area, the names of 10 ‘weeds’ growing around you and their
uses, and what kind of soil you are on. Reconnecting to the
natural world around you is a very powerful process.

6. TAKE A PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE (PDC)
A PDC is a fantastic opportunity
to learn a complete
toolkit of practical skills to
allow you to design a lower
energy lifestyle for you and
your family. Inspirational
and positive, a design course equips you to start building
a lower energy future, safe in the knowledge that it will be
far nicer than the present!
www.permaculture.co.uk No. 46 Permaculture Magazine 11
“Permaculture is a design system for agricultural
systems and landscapes... It is a thinking tool. It is
also a process for reclaiming our place in nature.
Part of the problem in the current psychology that
prevails in our culture is that we are separate from
nature and not constrained by its limits. Clearly
energy peak and descent will smash that mistaken
view once and for all. What is also necessary is to
realise that we are not some contradiction of nature
– a destroyer of it – but that we have a place in it
and can reclaim that place.”
David Holmgren, speaking at the ‘Fuelling the Future’
Conference, 2005.

7. ASK YOURSELF ‘DO I NEED IT?’
When stepping into a shop these
days, we are bombarded with
subliminal pressure to buy things.
Our houses are full of things we
no longer need, all of which we
had to pay for, and then dispose
of. A good discipline to get into
before you buy anything is to ask
yourself, ‘Do I really need this?’.
Is it healthy for me, for the planet, for the people who
made it? Do I already have something similar that I could
make do with instead? Try to keep advertising out of
your life as much as possible, it is remarkably efficient at
undermining your dedication to living more simply.
Probably the best first step is to get rid of the TV!

8. TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR
WORK SITUATION
If you live a long way from where
you work, maybe it’s time to reexamine
your work situation.
Travelling long distances to work
will become less and less feasible.
Could you drive to work when
petrol costs £2.50/$5 a litre? £5/
$10 a litre? Is there much point living rurally when all
your work is in town? Could you bring your work out to
where you are and work from home? What other ideas can
you come up with for a lower energy work situation?

9. FORM A COMMUNITY GROUP
These steps are far more easily taken
with others. Seek out others (you
probably already know some of
them, and some will come to your
End of Suburbia screening) who
are interested in working together
to explore how Peak Oil will affect
the community. This group can
plan awareness raising activities,
events, work days on each other’s
houses and gardens, a book club
for reading related books, basically
to inspire each other and support each other through this
transitionary time. The Community is the Solution.

10. CELEBRATE!
Organise a party to celebrate
each step that you take
towards being less dependent
on oil. It is important
that your friends and neighbours
get to see how positive
the steps you are taking are,
and what a good effect they are having on your life.
Positivity is infectious!

…and here’s a couple of slightly more radical ones!
HALVE YOUR INCOME
As part of your preparation for leaner times it is good to
try and live with more realistic expectations. Living with
less means you have more time to develop your gardening
skills, your building skills, the skills you will need.
PUT A TAXI METER IN YOUR CAR
Buy a proper taxi meter and fix it into your car. Set it to
what it would actually cost you to drive if petrol cost three
or four times what it currently does. It will act as a very
useful tool for developing an awareness of your motor use
and how you might set about reducing it

1 The End of Suburbia, Oil Depletion & the Collapse of
the American Dream DVD, price £12.95.
Some Other Sources of Ideas...
101 Solutions – The DIY Guide to Climate Change, The Naturesave
Trust, price £3.50.
The Energy Saving House, Thierry Salomon, price 12.00.
Go Mad! 500 Daily Ways To Save The Planet, The Ecologist
Team, price £6.99
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Nicky Scott, price £3.95.
All titles available from PM’s Earth Repair Catalogue.
See page 12 for other Peak Oil Resources including a special
DVD offer.
This article was first published in ‘Fuelling The Future’
Conference Proceedings and Articles, 2005.
Rob Hopkins organised the ‘Fuelling The Future – The Challenge
And Opportunity Of Peak Oil’ conference in Ireland
in June 2005. These strategies were printed in the conference
booklet as ‘10 Things To Do When You Get Home’.
A second ‘Fuelling The Future’ conference is planned for
2006. All of the talks from the 2005 conference can be listened
to online as mp3 files at: www.fuellingthefuture.org
Also available via the website is an excellent two DVD set
of all the conference lectures. Rob is now working on a PhD
in Energy Descent Planning at Plymouth University.