The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience is an incredibly important book because it provides an introduction to two critical and related issues that we face today. Rob Hopkins first introduces Peak Oil (which received increasing public attention with skyrocketing oil prices this spring) and then explains the role that global warming will play in exacerbating the Peak Oil crisis. Following the description of the crisis, the author attempted to provide a prescriptive formula to address the crisis in individual towns.In the first section, describing the Peak Oil crisis, Hopkins explains why some of the “new” sources of oil are insufficient. As someone who has not followed the Peak Oil crisis closely, I appreciated some of the simple analogies that Hopkins provided, including his description of retrieving oil from the tar sands in Alberta.
“Tar sands are akin to arriving at the pub to find that all the beer is off, but so desperate are you for a drink that you begin to fantasize that in the thirty years this pub has been open for business, the equivalent of 5,000 pints have been spilt on this carpet, so you design a process whereby you boil up the carpet in order to extract the beer again.”
What was challenging, however, was the use of oil prices along as evidence that the crisis is hitting a pivotal point. While supply had an important impact on price this past spring, so too did hedge fund speculation and the precipitous decline of the American dollar versus other world currencies. The Peak Oil issue did not disappear this fall when oil prices fell, but the oversimplification could lead some people to conclude that it did. The author would have been better served to explain the process to “develop” oil reserves (thousands of years) versus the pace at which those reserves are being depleted.
In addition, it would have been helpful to have a more diverse set of sources to support the peak oil claims (since they exist). There are reports even from the US State Department that indicate that peak oil will be reached sometime between 1990 and 2010, and that the maximum oil reserves are ~2,100 billion barrels (State, 1982). These types of references would help to bolster the argument for the lay person reading the book.
The author is much more effective at linking the peak oil crisis to global warming. Although set in a British context, Hopkins clearly helps to debunk the current political claims that the way to solve the oil crisis is to (A) drill more and (B) use America’s extensive coal reserves to “create” oil. He provides a well articulated argument as to why these solutions would only serve to exacerbate global warming. It would have been helpful to explain the inclusion of that topic in the title, since it is of vital importance to Hopkins’ argument.
Hopkins' solutions and recommendations, such as the 12-step transition town program, are at times overly-prescriptive, overwhelmingly detailed, and difficult to follow. In addition, the view of the world that he paints post peak oil is so entirely unappealing to a huge segment of the population (no global travel, extreme re-urbanization, etc) that it is hard to understand how people would buy-in to the plan. The same solution would be more powerful if it were presented as a “realistic” view of the world, where there are both opportunities and challenges. It is clear that people need to act before the crisis hits, but it is unclear how a large portion of the population will be motivated by Hopkins’ vision. Hopkins does not entertain the idea that transformational technologies could help to smooth the transition (or even a step change in the way we utilize energy for existing technologies). If the author presented his “power down” view along with a call to encourage research into how to do more with less energy, the book would have broader appeal. While he explains why current alternative energy solutions would be ineffective (which was extremely helpful context for those of us who didn’t previously understand that it takes energy to make energy), it was a dismal view of the future that the only way to survive would be retrenchment into a world that looks a lot more like the 1900s than the future.
In spite of the above, this book is great first introduction to the concept of Peak Oil and the need to Transition. It has certainly motivated me to action, if only to research more about what can be done on a personal level to help combat this issue.
--Andrea Sparrey
For more information on the book and on Transition Culture, visit transitionculture.org
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