AFTER OIL: MODERN BIOCIVILISATION

By Ignacy Sachs and - - Reprint | | Print |

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PARIS, Jul 28 2008 (IPS) - We are at the threshold of the transition out of the oil and, hopefully, the fossil energy age, writes Ignacy Sachs, honourary professor at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Paris, and visiting fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Sao Paulo. In this article, the author writes that this transition has already begun, prompted by the recent spectacular rise in the cost of oil and the recovery of food prices. To avoid the continued warming of the atmosphere, we must drastically modify our energy use by: altering lifestyles and patterns of consumption; improving energy efficiency; and substituting fossil fuels with renewable energy. We also ought to reopen discussions on a new cycle of rural development to avoid the blind alley of excessive and premature urbanisation. The two objectives could be reconciled by promoting modern biocivilisations, which rest on solar energy harnessed through photosynthesis and explore the multiple uses of biomass – food for humans, fodder for animals, green fertilisers, bioenergies, building materials, fibres, plastics and other products of green chemistry (chemurgy) turned out by biorefineries, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. Biofuels are only a component of a larger whole.

This transition will take decades, but by many signs it has already begun, prompted by the recent spectacular rise in the cost of oil and the recovery of food prices.

Future historians of our time will thus look at the fossil energy age as a brief yet extremely eventful interlude, which brought about a massive increase in world population, now 6.7 billion and likely to reach 9 billion by the middle of this century, with the majority living in urban areas.

Since the start of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, unprecedented scientific, technological, and industrial breakthroughs have brought human activity to a level hundreds of times more advanced. Yet, two major challenges are looming: potentially catastrophic climate change, and extreme social inequality, which goes hand in hand with a severe deficit of opportunities for decent work.

In order to avoid the continued warming of the atmosphere, which is caused by excessive emissions of greenhouse gases, we must drastically modify our patterns of energy use. This requires a threefold approach: restraining energy demand by altering lifestyles and patterns of consumption; improving energy efficiency; and substituting fossil fuels with renewable energy – solar, wind, hydraulic, marine, or biomass fuels.

At the same time, we ought to reopen discussions on a new cycle of rural development to avoid the blind alley of excessive and premature urbanisation, as exposed in Mike Davis’s ”Planet of Slums”. Opportunities for decent work must be created for billions of rural poor.

The two objectives could be reconciled by promoting modern biocivilisations, which rest on solar energy harnessed through photosynthesis and explore the multiple uses of biomass – food for humans, fodder for animals, green fertilisers, bioenergies, building materials, fibres, plastics and other products of green chemistry (chemurgy) turned out by biorefineries, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. Biofuels are only a component of a larger whole.

All the great ancient civilisations were ”vegetal civilisations”, in the words of French geographer Pierre Gourou. The great civilisations to come will differ from them as mankind finds itself at a new and far superior level of knowledge. Modern biocivilisations should by no means be viewed as a regression but rather as a leapfrogging into the future.

To involve the masses of small rural holders in the sustainable production and processing of biomass, we will need technologies that are knowledge and labour intensive, and, at the same time, resource-saving. Solutions will come from agro-ecological, integrated food-energy production systems adapted to different biomes and informed by the principles of the ”evergreen revolution”, in M. S. Swaminathan’s words, also known as the doubly green revolution.

This is a tall order: it aspires to transform the looming energy and food crisis into an opportunity to move towards new, more equitable and sustainable civilisations. In the longer perspective, expensive oil and the recovery of food prices will prove welcome if they help us free ourselves from oil addiction and to improve the lot of small farmers instead of benefiting the transnational corporations active in the food business. Of course, in the immediate future, urgent measures are called for to assist the urban poor victimised by the hike in food prices.

Thus, a major struggle unfolds to show that another world is possible. The stakes are high but the outcome is far from certain. Venture capitalists are quick to seize the occasion to make money off of new energy technologies coming of age thanks to expensive oil and to promote them without any serious transformation of the social and economic fabric.

However, the beginning of the third great transition coincides with the exhaustion of the major development paradigms, which dominated the world scene since the end of the Second World War. Real socialism collapsed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Reformed postwar capitalism gave way to neoliberalism. To some observers, the recent financial crisis marks the beginning of the end for the latter. Social democracy is locked in the contradiction of saying “Yes” to market economy but “No” to market society. That is why, condemned to invent new paradigms, the next generation will be moving into unchartered and exciting territories.

One thing is certain: the emergence of biocivilisations will change world geopolitics, favouring tropical countries, which Gourou once dubbed the Lands of Good Hope. They will prove him right if they manage to enhance their natural climate advantage with research, an appropriate social organisation of production, and effective development of South-South cooperation. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)