‘Plan C’ Promotes Community as Tool for Abating Ecological Threats

Building the Green Economy, Human Health, Quipu Economic Forum, Renewable Resources, Water Scarcity, Zero-combustion paradigm :: Comments (5)

19 May 2009 :: by J.E. Robertson

The book Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change addresses the problem of resource depletion and the degradation of our environmental base by illustrating how community erosion due to a culture of excess leaves human society without adequate means of planning for a world in which exponential growth is not the norm. Resource depletion already means the endless expansion of resource consumption is not possible, so author Pat Murphy proposes a localized community-oriented approach to overhauling the prevailing economic paradigm.

Questioning the political culture in which pollution-intensive industrial infrastructure dictates what we take to be quality of life, cast as standard of living, the book provides insight, tracing statistical evidence, into how human life is undermined by the very system put in place to support and sustain it. The logic of infinite growth has meant that humanity broadly has reached far beyond its fair share of natures resources, now imposing on the life-sustaining ecosystems on which we depend for our habitable world and natural resource base a demand beyond replacement capacity.

Plan C takes on key myths in the “hype” surrounding the potential of hydrogen fuel cells. Although electric vehicles (EV) are cheaper to produce, do in fact work and can be operated in a zero-emissions manner (with clean electric energy), hydrogen requires an extraction process that may involve combustion and emissions, and the use of costly technologies that have never been perfected. The book’s focus is on finding ways to understand how close we are to reaching an across-the-board peak in nature’s capacity to supply for our expanding consumption, and implement innovative strategies for consumption “curtailment”, i.e. conservation, in order to make the world work more sustainably.

Part of the logic of the Plan C argument is the peril inherent in relying on information produced for or by mass culture. As Murphy notes:

We never experience an actual event unless we are present and participating. Media may claim that they place everyone at the scene, but this is never true. What we see or hear on TV, radio or the Internet is selected and scripted by media experts. The eyes, ears and all the other senses of someone present at the scene would be taking in much more than media recording devices. In fact a person present at the scene might notice that the camera operator was viewing a minuscule part of the actual scene. The camera presumably never lies, but the camera might have a severe case of tunnel vision.

The problem of fashioning a coherent narrative, free of mystery or uncertainty is a temptation inherent in this process and may cause the reporting of an event to be “shaped” to fit the narrative, even where no agenda is present other than cohesion.

In our own circumstances, we have personal experiences of phenomena —those inexplicable apparitions that present themselves to our senses, our consciousness—, which we are able to interpret due to our own cumulative sensory experience, record of events and perceptual ability. Media, on the other hand, mediate: they shape events and deliver experience as a story, not a phenomenon. The fact and fabric of community are lost in the tenor of a broader narrative, so thinking and acting locally becomes a vital part of any effort to counter the whims and standards of mass culture and restore reason to our economic activity.

Efforts to use less energy and move away from the model of ever-expanding resource consumption are highlighted throughout the text. Public transport is favored as a model of community-oriented investment designed to establish broad efficiencies and reduce overall demands on space and energy. Housing also falls into the excess-as-engine paradigm of hyper-exploitation:

In 1950 the average new house size was approximately 1,000 square feet; today it is about 2,400 square feet. At the same time, the average family size has decreased from about 3.7 to 2.6 people. Thus the average square feet per person has increased from 270 square feet to 815 square feet, a factor of three times. Style changes have raised the average ceiling height and added more windows, further increasing energy consumption. New appliances have been added to the household, increasing fuel consumed in operating the home.

Murphy admits that advances in technology have allowed for greater efficiency in energy-use and in heating the home, but observes that even so, overall consumption has continued to expand. A simple truth, of course, is that doing more with less would be better than seeking to find ways to do consistently do more and consume more. Using less space, reducing one’s footprint, is the first and most personal responsible step that can be taken.

While observing that there are flaws related to early-stage development of green building —techniques are not standardized and green homes tend to be custom-designed by architects for more affluent buyers—, he stresses the point that technology is not the solution to problems generated by technology. Over-reliance on technology, he says “obscures the fact that it is not technology but personal will that is needed to bring about change”.

He calls for a concerted national effort to incentivize the retrofitting of existing structures to make them more energy efficient and reduce their ecological footprint. He suggests that due to the costs and the need for quick and committed action, such a program may require a kind of New Deal aimed at achieving environmental sustainability in housing and energy consumption nationwide.

It is interesting to note that the book was published in 2008, just as the stresses related to over-consumption were hitting the global economy in unprecedented ways. Interesting, because Pres. Barack Obama has this year followed through on his promise to enact an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which directs tens of billions of dollars to speeding the development of a green-energy infrastructure, a green economy, and reinvestment in communities to lessen the blight of vast wealth inequality and the drain from untended local environment and industrial infrastructure.

The think globally, act locally, ideal is at work throughout Plan C. Noting the disturbing trend of engaging in wars aimed at securing access to vast quantities of fossil fuels, Murphy suggests that:

To reduce the threat of resource conflicts and save ourselves and the planet, the US needs to change its three principal values of competing, hoarding and consuming to values of cooperating, sharing and conserving (or curtailing). These latter values are easier to implement in small local communities where people know each other and have a history of working together.

In what is more a burst of realism than of idealism, Murphy notes that “The first steps are personal ones”, a fundamental truth about the economic fabric of human society that must be understood if effective measures will be taken to steer the US toward an economy that aspires to and achieves the lowest possible consumption of energy suitable to the needs and aspirations of actual human individuals and communities.

The book tackles issues related to and intersecting across topics as diverse as peak oil and the possible outer limits of American global dominance, the limits of technology to reduce the impact of human activity in the environment and mass media and avenues of disinformation. It works toward proposals in curtailment and conservation, the energy impacts of building, transport and fuel consumption, problems related to food and health and the revival and restoration of community, in both the abstract and the concrete sense of the word.