After the Gas Runs Out:
Civic Democracy and Prospects for Life and Living Inside the Blue Line
Summary of a presentation given by Dr. Bill Vitek in Keene Valley, NY on November 11th, 2005, as part of the Arthur M. Crocker Lecture Series sponsored by the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks
Bill Vitek
Imagine the year is 2055 and you are living somewhere inside the Adirondack Park Blue Line. What’s different about the place? How are you traveling these days? What are you doing for a living? Where is the energy coming from that’s heating your home in mid-February? Is your food still traveling an average of 1,800 miles to get to your plate, or is it grown regionally? Are you an active citizen helping to shape the region’s future? What sorts of events have occurred between now and then to shape your choices and decisions?
These were some of the questions addressed by Dr. Bill Vitek, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Clarkson University, at a recent talk in The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks’ Arthur M. Crocker Lecture Series. A native of Schenectady, New York, Dr. Vitekserved for a number of years as Associate Director of Clarkson’s Center for the Environment, where he directed campus environmental programs. He was also the founding Director and co-creator of Clarkson’s Environmental Science & Policy Program. With a B.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Union College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Vitek’s research and writing is focused on the intersection between social practices and the environmental, cultural, and historical contexts in which they occur. He is the author of one book, the co-editor of two books, and the author of essays and articles on professional ethics, community, and public life. Vitek is a jazz musician and a frequent invited lecturer and keynote speaker at conferences and universities, where he has offered ethics workshops to professional and corporate groups.
The title of Dr. Vitek’s talk is premised on the concern that the United States and the world is now, or soon will be, on the downward slope of a curve that predicts the end of cheap, easily accessible oil and natural gas. As described by Association President Peter Brinkley in his introductory remarks to Vitek’s presentation, the high point of this curve has been dubbed “The Hubbert Peak,” after Dr. Marion King Hubbert, of Shell Oil, the geophysicist who postulated in 1956 the concept of Peak Oil. He maintained that oil & natural gas are finite resources, evolving within the earth over millions of years, and that at some point global production will peak, plateau and begin to decline. The emerging debate concerns when oil peak will occur. If Hubbert’s calculations and concerns are accurate, there is likely to be a period of discontinuity, with social and economic disruptions potentially unparalleled in American history.
Dr. Vitek expanded on Brinkley’s remarks by claiming that the end of cheap, powerful, and accessible energy also signals the end of a concept of American liberty focused almost exclusively on the economic freedom to consume without limit and without concern about the sources of our goods or the sinks in which we place our wastes. America has always relied on, but rarely acknowledged, its geological inheritance for its economic independence—from soils, water and forests in colonial times, to coal in the 18-19th centuries, to oil and natural gas in the 20th century. With this inheritance greatly depleted and our increasing reliance on energy sources in politically unstable parts of the globe, the question remains: Is this economic freedom sustainable in the future or must there emerge an alternative and equally viable and attractive concept of liberty to replace it?
Vitek’s talk focused on a thought experiment about what the Adirondack Park and its citizens might look like fifty years from now, after the worse of the potential fallout of the end of the age of cheap oil. He believes that if we start the thinking process now, we might be better prepared for the transition, instead of meeting it with panic and despair. He made a case for seeing Adirondack ecosystems, economies, and communities bounded by the blue line as an excellent region in which to imagine a creative and productive transition to a “post-carbon” world. To this end he claimed that proponents of a vibrant Adirondack Park in such a world need to accomplish three tasks:
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Put the Adirondack biosphere to work in a Contemporary Solar Economy
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Create a civic haven focused on Local and Regional Political Autonomy
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Promote the Park’s cultural heritage, legacy of wildness, and its aesthetic dimensions as a Training Ground for Citizenship
To put it another way, the Adirondack Park could meet the challenges posed by the end of the age of oil and make a relatively smooth, carefully-planned transition to a more sustainable energy economy. Rather than suffering an economic and ecological collapse, it could instead develop into an example of a region that depends on local sources of renewable energy, that derives a thriving economy without destroying or downgrading Adirondack ecosystems, that produces and consumes a regional food supply, and that engages its inhabitants in an active and inclusive civic agenda. Some of his suggestions included:
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Modern Ward Republics (Thomas Jefferson’s idea to create a political unit below the county level, the purpose of which was to: 1) check petty tyrants; 2) provide a base for general education; and 3) ensure a space in which citizens can become proficient in the art of politics.
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Local Currencies (perfectly legal and already used in a number of US cities and towns)
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Putting the Park’s ecosystems to work without diminishing them
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CO2 Sinks (sequestering carbon in forests to help combat global climate change)
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Tourism that capitalizes on complementary management of public and private lands
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Attracting the right kind of development
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The Arts
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A New Homestead Act that would focus on sustainable housing and communities
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Attracting people with unique backgrounds, skills, and interests to the Park
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Adirondack Prize for innovative work with specific application to the Park
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R&R, Adirondack Style: Reflection and Research
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Developing educational models that prepare students for the century they’re in, not the one we just left
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Getting our Adirondack educational institutions involved
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Regional and Renewable energy, transportation, economic systems
Vitek encouraged his audience to think like system builders and founders of a new America, one that guarantees political, social, and economic freedoms, but without the freedom to consume without limits. If the “end of oil” experts are correct in their assessments, this is the America we will inhabit, and quite likely within our lifetime. So why not think about positive and workable solutions now, rather than waiting for the lights to go out? At its best, it will be a world with less oil, but more social and civic engagement; more healthful food; innovative and efficient transportation systems; and an economically vibrant Adirondack Park without over-development or the stripping of resources. It will be a world in which both natural ecosystems and human communities thrive together. It is a vision that is more than possible. It is, in Wes Jackson’s words, “a most necessary revolution,” and one that has already begun. With a bit of luck and a good deal of hard work and thought, the Adirondack Park will emerge as an exemplar of a post-carbon community that has thrived—rather than merely survived—the peak oil transition.