After the Collapse: What am I willing to give up for our low-energy future?
One way or another, we are headed toward a low-energy future. As a civilization, we have reached The End of More. We cannot continue to extract and burn energy-dense carbon fuel sources. We cannot continue to have the few ultra-rich pricks and teeming masses of ultra poor people. If the earth’s sustainable resources were shared equally among the nearly eight billion of us, we could not all enjoy the high energy, high consumption lifestyle we have become used to in advanced western nations. We have to learn to be happy and prosperous with a much lower energy and consumption lifestyle (especially frivolous and luxury consumption). So what am I personally willing to live without?
Let me set the stage for my personal situation. I am a white American with an upper middle class income and retirement savings/investments that I will soon be relying on. (Not because I’m broke. Because I am retiring soon.) I am very privileged compared to national and world averages. I am definitely living far in excess of the world’s necessary low energy future lifestyle. I must be willing to give up a lot.
Frankly, there is a lot that I’ve already given up or never acquired in the first place, compared to the image of a typical upper middle class American. I don’t have a jet ski, a vacation home, or a motor home. My partner and I own only two vehicles. Being older and content with where I am, who I am, and how I live, I’m not interested in travel, vacations, or fashionable clothes. Being an introvert, and COVID having brought paradise to introverts, I’m not interested in concerts, theatre, bar-hopping, or parties. For health reasons, I gave up alcohol, caffeine, and snack foods many years ago. (I even gave up on sex, but that is neither here nor there. I expect we can still have sex in our low-energy future. Well, you can, anyway; not me.) Yes, I lead a pretty boring life! I work a lot, sitting home on my couch writing software (which I find quite interesting and challenging), saving up for my looming retirement. I take walks in the redwood forest where I live, and I spend most of my down time watching Netflix and reading, though not simultaneously.
What is left for me to do without? I don’t drive much except to the grocery store and to the doctors, so my partner and I could get by with a single car. My car is an EV but maybe we keep the ICE vehicle in case we need to take a long trip for some reason, such as to flee a climate catastrophe.
I would gladly not own any vehicle at all if there were a way for me to get groceries and medical care without driving. I do pretty much all of my other shopping through Amazon, and I get four dinners a week delivered as meal kits. (We currently use EveryPlate.) I guess I would be willing to get all of my groceries delivered. However, I don’t think Amazon and other delivery services will be part of our low energy future, so that isn’t a good long term strategy.
So bring on the self-driving cars! They can take me everywhere I need to go! While I would love that solution, I do not think self-driving cars are part of our low-energy future either, even if they do get them working someday. Best answer: I would love to live in a community where I could satisfy all of my needs (not wants) within walking distance. But I don’t know how I get from where I am today to living in such a community. Hey, maybe I’ll be shuffled off to an old folks home soon and this issue will be totally taken care of for me!
I definitely have to let go of my mid-sized house (1540 sq ft). The low energy future cannot support small families living in large houses. I would not mind moving to a smaller house or an apartment. (Though not a “tiny house,” I think.) But housing is such a mess in our current, failing society! Apartment rents are too high and houses are being treated as investment commodities rather than vital shelter. If reasonable, denser housing options become available, I will be happy to move down (in square-feet per me) to them. I am NOT willing to, voluntarily, give up my house to live in a barracks, homeless shelter, or refugee camp type situation, or huddled with others around a fire in cave. Even a cozy, warm Native American teepee would be tough for me to manage at this point in my spoiled, pampered life. I think a dormitory with private or semi-private rooms and a community kitchen, similar to a college dorm, would be as low as I would care to go. I have gotten quite used to having some privacy, a room of my own. (Although yes, privacy-wise, I am very much over-sharing on the Internet. So sue me.) If I stay in my current home, I would be okay with taking in a needy climate-change refugee or two at some point. But I think my anxiety-ridden sweetie will have a tough time with any such housing changes.
What about the “stuff” in my house? I feel like I would fine with losing it all except for a very few things. In fact, I’ve seriously considered this possibility because my house is at risk of being lost in a forest fire. I often contemplate how that would make me feel and what I would do then. Just give me a computer (if our low energy future has the Internet, which is doubtful), a few clothes, and some pots and pans to cook my food, and dishes and silverware or chopsticks with which to eat it. Some blankets to keep me warm.
And books. If Netflix goes away, I definitely want books so I can fill my time with reading. I’m happy to read a book and pass it on to somebody else. But how did people fill their time before the printing press and radio and TV? I guess I could try having conversations with others, but that sounds pretty dull. LOL.
Let’s talk major appliances. Dishwasher? Don’t have one. Trash compactor? Don’t have one. Washing machine for clothes? I wouldn’t want to give that up. I really don’t want to pound my laundry clean with rocks. The dryer, on the other hand, I’d let go. I’m willing to use a clothes line and clothes pins. Refrigerator? Yes, very necessary. Oven/stove/microwave oven? I need some way to cook food, and I don’t want it to be over a dung fire. I’ve read that they’ve come up with some pretty good solar powered cook stoves, so maybe that would work for me. If there is no electricity, I’d have a really hard time about the clothes washer and the refrigerator.
Vaccuum cleaner? Buh-bye! I hate vacuuming! (I hate is so much, I have a robot that vacuums and another robot that washes floors. But I’d be willing to give them up.)
Now here is the big one, and it gets back to the housing issue: Hot and cold running, potable water and indoor plumbing. I’ve had to live without hot water for a few days, and it is not fun. And outhouses are … ugh! I really hope our low energy future can hold onto the water and indoor plumbing, or I may not make it.
The one other big energy use in my home is for heating. (I don’t have air conditioning.) I guess in California’s mild climate, I could get by without home heating by bundling up warmly. But it would be tough for me. I can certainly see that in most of the places people live, heating and sometimes A/C are really not optional. Even the cave men and women had fires. If we’re not going to burn fossil fuels for heat in the future, we’re going to need another solution. Electric heat works, if we have electricity. If not, well, I just don’t know. A lot of people freezing to death, and dying of heat stroke, I suppose.
In short, I’m more than willing to live like Tessa Schlesinger and Jessica Wildfire, but not much below that. (Funny that all three of us happened to write around the same topic this week. Great minds think alike?) Of course, they are living it right now, God bless them, while I am only theoretically willing if need be!
Well hell, what’s the point of all this? I suppose I’ve discovered that I really want to see humanity muddle through this climate crisis somehow and transition to a low-energy lifestyle that preserves a lot of the infrastructure I am used to: electricity, hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, and a transportation solution beyond just walking, whether it is private vehicles (boo! hiss!) or public transport (hooray!). But I’m afraid this is exactly what we will not have. Once the millions of climate refugees start moving and the tens of millions start dying from thirst, starvation, and disease, I don’t believe we will be able to keep the water and electricity flowing. There simply won’t be enough of the right people around to operate and maintain these systems. We are going to fall into a new Dark Age, and I don’t think I, personally, will make it.
You know what? I’m not looking forward to giving up any of my spoiled, luxurious lifestyle. But I do wish I had been born and raised in a culture where I would have learned to, and expected to, survive and thrive with much less.
— Lannie Rose, November 2022
preferred pronouns: she/her/hers
