An Answer in Somerset
George Monbiot: The Age of Entropy is here. We should all now be learning to live without oil.
Texas oil baron T Boone Pickens has announced that they are pumping 82M oil barrels a day, suggesting global production has peaked. Industrial civilisation is over imminently, unless another source of cheap energy is found. Unlimited sources of cheap energy could be provided as a miracle cure but we shouldn’t count on it and the alternatives to oil are expensive and without comparable Eroei. If the age of Entropy has begun, our lives require total reconstruction.
George Monbiot has been involved with Tinkers’ Bubble which has just passed its 10th birthday for several years. It is 40 acres of woodland, orchards and pastures in Somerset, which was brought by totally self-sufficient environmentalists in 1994. The only fossil fuel they use is paraffin for their lamps; although a partial exception was made, sharing two cars between twelve residents. Despite the prediction of disaster they have come through, making friends with the locals who have come to see the project, with its biodiverse land and standing orchards, as an asset. Their stall has won first prize in the local farmers market and doesn’t depend on heavy machinery, so unlike most, isn’t indebted to the bank. One hundred and fifty years after he published Walden, Henry David Thoreau is alive and well in Somerset, although bureaucrats have been deployed to murder him, as the settlers have found, peasant farming is effectively illegal in the UK.
The model is only viable if you build your own home on your own land using your own materials. The settlers imposed more rules on themselves so they would have the minimum of impact, environmentally and visually. The planning system however makes no provision for this and is unable to differentiate between a huge blot on the landscape and something very small. Planning was refused and despite winning an appeal, this was overturned and further attempts were turned down. Eventually the council realised that people were housing themselves without any cost to the taxpayer and relented.
Next environmental health struck. There are two sets of regulations in the UK, the ones who the big corporations campaign against and those who are tolerated and even encouraged, because they, unlike their smaller competitors, can afford them. Which is why it is legal to feed our farm animal’s antibiotics, our vegetables with pesticides, our processed food with additives and our water tablets with nitrate, but it’s more or less illegal to use any process without stainless steel, refrigeration and fluorescent lighting. A rise in food poisoning cases since the 1970’s has been blamed on small food businesses and possible bacterial contamination, although large-scale production and long distance transport provide a greater risk for infection. Tinkers’ Bubble is forbidden to sell processed food or drink, despite never poisoning anyone.
But they have learned to live with these constraints, just as they have learned to live with all the others and have shown a life which requires hardly any fossil fuel. Despite the obvious privations, their lives could become more comfortable than ours.
