Peak Everything

by Richard Heinberg

  Axiom 3 is implied in the Natural Step’s third condition.

  4. To be sustainable, the use of non-renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.

  (The rate of depletion is defined as the amount being extracted and used during a specified time interval, usually a year, as a percentage of the amount left to extract.)

  No continuous rate of use of any non-renewable resource is sustainable. However, if the rate of use is declining at a rate greater than or equal to the rate of depletion, this can be said to be a sustainable situation in that society’s dependence on the resource will be reduced to insignificance before the resource is exhausted.

  This principle was first stated, in a more generalized and more mathematically rigorous form, by Albert A. Bartlett in his 1986 paper, “Sustained Availability: A Management Program for Non-Renewable

  Resources.”12 The article’s abstract notes:

  If the rate of extraction declines at a fixed fraction per unit time, the rate of extraction will approach zero, but the integrated total of the extracted resource between t=0 and t=infinity will remain finite. If we choose a rate of decline of the rate of extraction of the resource such that the integrated total of all future extraction equals the present size of the remaining resource then we have a program that will allow the resource to be available in declining amounts for use forever.

  Annually reducing the rate of extraction of a given non-renewable resource by its yearly rate of depletion effectively accomplishes the same thing, but requires only simple arithmetic and layperson’s terms for its explanation.

  Estimates of the “amount left to extract,” mentioned in the axiom, are disputable for all non-renewable resources. Unrealistically robust estimates would tend to skew the depletion rate in a downward direction, undermining any effort to attain sustainability via a resource depletion protocol. It may be realistic to assume that people in the future will find ways to extract non-renewable resources more thoroughly, with amounts that would otherwise be left in the ground becoming economically recoverable as a result of higher commodity prices and improvements in extraction technology. Also, exploration techniques are likely to improve, leading to further discoveries of the resource. Thus realistic estimates of ultimately recoverable quantities should be greater than currently known amounts extractable with current technology at current prices. However, it is unrealistic to assume that people in the future will ever be able to economically extract all of a given resource, or that limits of declining marginal returns in the extraction process will no longer apply. Moreover, if discovery rates are currently declining, it is probably unrealistic to assume that they will increase substantially in the future. Thus for any non-renewable resource prudence dictates adhering to conservative estimates of the “amount left to extract.”

  Axiom 4 encapsulates Bartlett’s 7th and 8th Laws of Sustainability. It is also the basis for the Oil Depletion Protocol, first suggested by petroleum geologist Colin J. Campbell in 1996 and the subject of a recent book by the present author.13 The aim of the Oil Depletion Protocol is to reduce global consumption of petroleum in order to avert the crises likely to ensue as a result of declining supply — including economic collapse and resource wars. Under the terms of the Oil Depletion Protocol, oil-importing countries would reduce their imports by the world oil depletion rate (calculated by Campbell at 2.5 percent per year); producers would reduce their domestic production by their national depletion rates.

  5. Sustainability requires that substances introduced into the environment from human activities be minimized and rendered harmless to biosphere functions.

  In cases where pollution from the extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources that have proceeded at expanding rates for some time threatens the viability of ecosystems, reduction in the rates of extraction and consumption of those resources may need to occur at a rate greater than the rate of depletion.

  If Axioms 2 through 4 are followed, pollution should be minimized as a result. Nevertheless, these conditions are not sufficient in all cases to avert potentially collapse-inducing impacts.

  It is possible for a society to generate serious pollution from the unwise use of renewable resources (the use of tanning agents on hides damaged streams for centuries or millennia), and such impacts are to be avoided. Likewise, especially where large numbers of humans are concentrated, their biological wastes may pose severe environmental problems. Such wastes must be properly composted.

  The most serious forms of pollution in the modern world arise from the extraction, processing, and consumption of non-renewable resources. If (as outlined in Axiom 4) the consumption of non-renewable resources declines, pollution should also decline. However, in the current instance, where the extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources have been growing for some time and have resulted in levels of pollution that threaten basic biosphere functions, heroic measures are called for. This is, of course, the situation with regard to atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, especially in relation to the burning of coal, a non-renewable resource; it is also the case with regard to hormone-mimicking petrochemical pollution that inhibits reproduction in many vertebrate species. Merely to reduce coal consumption by the global coal depletion rate will not suffice to avert a climatic catastrophe. The coal depletion rate is small, climate impacts from coal combustion emissions are building quickly, and annual reductions in those emissions must occur at high rates if ecosystem-threatening consequences are to be avoided. Similarly, in the case of petrochemical pollution, merely to reduce the dispersion of plastics and other petrochemicals into the environment by the annual rate of depletion of oil and natural gas would not avert environmental harms on a scale that could lead to the collapse of ecosystems and human societies.

  Where reduction in emissions or other pollutants can be obtained without reducing non-renewable resource consumption, for example, by capturing polluting substances and sequestering them, or by curtailing the production of certain industrial chemicals, then a reduction in consumption of such resources need only occur at the depletion rate to achieve sustainability. However, society should be extremely skeptical and careful regarding claims for untested technologies’ abilities to safely sequester polluting substances for very long periods of time.

  This axiom builds upon Natural Step condition 2.

  Evaluation

  These axioms are of course open to further refinement. I have attempted to anticipate likely criticisms, which will probably say these axioms are not sufficient to define the concept of sustainability. The most obvious of these is worth mentioning and discussing here: Why is there no axiom relating to social equity (similar to the Natural Step’s fourth condition)?

  The purpose of the axioms set forth here is not to describe conditions that would lead to a good or just society, but to a society that can be maintained over time. It is not clear that perfect economic equality or a perfectly egalitarian system of decision-making is necessary to avert societal collapse. Certainly, extreme inequality seems to make societies vulnerable to internal social and political upheaval. On the other hand, it could be argued that a society’s adherence to these five axioms will tend to lead to relatively greater levels of economic and political equality, thus obviating the need for a separate axiom in this regard. In anthropological literature, modest rates of resource consumption and low population sizes relative to the available resource base are correlated with the use of egalitarian decision-making processes and with economic equity — though the correlation is skewed by other variables, such as means of sustenance (hunting and gathering societies tend to be highly equitable and egalitarian, while pastoral societies tend to be less so). If such correlations continue to hold, the reversion to lower rates of resource consumption should lead to a more rather than less egalitarian society.14

  Will local, national, and international leaders ever shape public policy according to t
hese five axioms? Clearly,policies that would require an end to population growth — and perhaps even a population decline — as well as a reduction in the consumption of resources would not be welcomed, unless the general populace could be persuaded of the necessity of making its activities sustainable. However, if leaders do not begin to abide by these axioms, society as a whole, or some aspects of it, will assuredly collapse. Perhaps knowledge of this fact is sufficient incentive to overcome the psychological and political resistance that would otherwise frustrate efforts toward true sustainability.

  5

  Parrots and Peoples

  ARECENT DOCUMENTARY FILM by Judy Irving, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and the book of the same title by Mark Bittner,1 have few obvious implications for global war or peace, resource depletion, or worldwide economic meltdown. Nevertheless, they’ve gotten me to musing about avians, freedom, and civilization in ways that may be relevant to those topics.

  Bittner, a native of Washington State, moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s with the goal of pursuing a musical career. His dreams were dashed by the ugly realities of the commercial music scene and he ended up homeless. Refusing to seek regular employment, he subsisted for years on handouts and odd jobs, eventually landing a caretaking position in a small house on Telegraph Hill, leaving him plenty of free time.

  A devotee of spiritual literature and Beat poets, Bittner imagined himself one day being a professional writer and living in wild nature — somewhere among rivers, mountains, and trees. Yet now he found himself stuck without money in a starkly urban environment, and without any motivation to improve his financial situation by the conventional means.

  One day, while reading an interview with Gary Snyder in the collection The Real Work, Bittner came upon the following passage:

  The city is just as natural as the country, let’s not forget it. There’s nothing in the universe that’s not natural by definition. One of the poems I like best in Turtle Island is “Night Herons,” which is about the naturalness of San Francisco.2

  Mark Bittner with a wild conure friend.

  Bittner writes: “There was an implication for me that I caught immediately: If I were really sincere about knowing nature, I’d start right where I was living.” So he began observing birds.

  One day in 1990, by chance he saw four wild parrots; in the following weeks, more appeared. He was intrigued by them. Where had they come from? He had been paying attention to the pigeons, sparrows, and seagulls around the rambling gardens near his cottage, but was unable to summon up much real interest in them. The parrots were different. They were obviously non-native, and were “always good for a laugh.”

  They would fly into the garden with their nutty urgency, a united, harmonious group. Then, the instant they landed, fights would break out. Sometimes while fighting they’d get tangled up in each other’s feet and fall from the lines, struggling to disengage before both birds crashed to the ground. They were affectionate with one another, too. Pairs had long preening sessions, at the end of which they’d puff up their feathers and sit cheek to cheek.

  Bittner’s book is essentially a diary of his interactions with the birds during the following years; Irving’s film, though necessarily containing far less detail, conveys the visual and auditory impact of parrots playing, fighting, flying, and interacting with their adopted human friend.

  And friendship is a good term for what develops. Bittner is keenly aware that most North Americans experience parrots only as caged birds, but he gains a deep respect for this flock’s freedom. Bittner himself has, after all, eluded the domesticating process entailed in getting a regular job and working for a living. He himself has experienced just enough freedom to understand why the parrots relish their wildness and vigorously repel any attempt to cage or tame them.

  Yet both Bittner and the flock exist in a state of paradox: they are wild animals — in Bittner’s case, only metaphorically so — within a largely domesticated environment. They are non-natives who are doing their best to make their way in an ecosystem for which they have not evolved. They gratefully accept whatever sustenance they get via the kindness of strangers, but only on their own terms: they insist on maintaining control of their own existence.

  The parrots, mostly cherry-headed conures (also known as red-masked parakeets), have come from South America. There, presumably, they had been trapped in the wild. A few may briefly have been kept as pets before escaping (or being deliberately turned loose by their frustrated “owners”); the rest were born and fledged in the wild — not in their native habitat, but in the gardens and parks of San Francisco.

  Bittner finds himself committed to a strange vocation. He is an uncredentialed ethologist and amateur ornithologist. And his commitment is considerable: he spends hours each day with the parrots, feeding and observing them. He takes copious notes; he saves up money for film so that he can photograph them; and he occasionally resorts to soliciting donations from the neighborhood when a parrot falls ill and needs a veterinarian’s attention. The parrots become his closest comrades.

  Throughout the book and film we get to know individual birds and learn their stories. We are witness to their courtships, alliances, disputes, births, illnesses, and deaths. Among others, we get to know Connor, the blue-crowned conure, who, though somewhat of an outcast because he is of a different species than the rest, maintains a dignified, kind presence; Tupelo, a victim of a virus that recurs each year in the younger birds, whom Bittner takes into his home, nurses, and becomes deeply attached to; and Mingus, an escaped cherry-head pet who joins the flock and then takes up residence in Bittner’s cottage, eschewing life on the wing. Mingus has the infuriating habit of biting, but displays the endearing trait of bopping his head up and down in perfect time whenever Bittner plays the guitar and sings.

  The most striking aspect of this narrative is having a window into parrot society, and into the emotional lives of individual birds. Here’s a summary paragraph from Bittner:

  Parrot society is complex, but I don’t think it is so different from ours. It’s a community made up of pairs and individuals. Mated birds squabble with one another and with other couples. Certain individuals have it in for each other. Most couples are in it for the long term, but some get divorced. Although the flock functions as a single community, nobody makes decisions for the flock as a whole. When a parrot thinks it’s time to leave a foraging spot, he starts up a conversation about it. If the flock leaves, it’s a community decision. Often, some birds will dissent from the general consensus and stay put.

  The book brims with charming anecdotes about bird behavior. Just one: When a lone little budgie (“Smitty”) briefly joins the flock, nearly all of the other birds shun it. Connor, however, befriends the parakeet, letting it eat crumbs he drops and even occasionally holding a piece of food with his foot so that the much smaller bird can bite into it. This is behavior that is difficult to explain in strict Darwinian terms. What was Connor getting from the relationship? Surely not enhanced survival chances or reproductive success.

  As I savored Bittner’s account of the wild parrots, I couldn’t help but think back on what I’ve read over the years about wild humans — that is, about descriptions of hunter-gatherer society, or life among tribal peoples at the time of first European contact.

  Take for example, this passage from Baron de Lahontan conveying the statement of a Huron from the end of the 17th century: “We are born free and united brothers, each as much a great lord as the other, while you are all the slaves of one sole man. I am the master of my body, I dispose of myself. I do what I wish. I am the first and the last of my Nation...subject only to the great Spirit.”

  The analogy is inescapable: people who live a civilized life are like birds in a cage. As long as we stay within well-defined social bounds (and assuming we are lucky enough to have been born in a wealthy parasitic society, rather than a victimized poor one), we are rewarded with cheap food as well as comfort and convenience in a myriad of forms: telev
ision, shopping malls, glossy magazines. We have our seed cup, perch, mirror, and toys. What more could a bird — or human — want?

  Moreover, life in the wild is unpredictable. There are hawks waiting to snatch us (life as a wild parrot, thrush, or finch is like living in an apartment building with neighbors who happen to be serial-killing cannibals). But, of course, we civilized humans have managed to extinguish just about all of the large predators who might otherwise make off with the occasional child, sick cousin, or doddering grandfather. The only predators we have to worry about now are other people.

  NORTHWEST MUSEUM OF ARTS AND CULTURE

  Salish men stand by tepees near St. Ignatius Mission, Flathead Reservation, Montana, July 4th 1903.

  Like wild parrot society, wild hunter-gatherer society could be fraught with conflict. Fights evidently arose over sexual jealousy, food, and etiquette.

  According to Raymond C. Kelly’s calculations in his book Warless Societies and the Origin of War, the typical rate of homicides among even the more peaceful foraging societies was in the range of 40 to 90 fatalities per 100,000 persons per year.3 Compare that with the homicide rates of modern America (5.5 per 100,000), Germany (1.1), or the Netherlands (0.75). In civilized society we have police, laws, courts, and prisons to keep the lid on interpersonal mayhem. However, we also have occasional wars, which can be horrifyingly lethal (one in every fifty individuals died during World War II; the American Civil War had a similar fatality rate). If I were living in Iraq these days, I might find the statistical likelihood of violent death in hunter-gatherer society decidedly preferable to my own odds.