The simultaneous onset of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilisation. Global oil peak has the potential to shake if not destroy the foundations of the global industrial economy and culture. Climate change has the potential to rearrange the biosphere more radically than the last ice age. Each limits the effective options for responses to the other.The strategies for mitigating the adverse effects and/or adapting to...
More DescriptionThe simultaneous onset of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilisation. Global oil peak has the potential to shake if not destroy the foundations of the global industrial economy and culture. Climate change has the potential to rearrange the biosphere more radically than the last ice age. Each limits the effective options for responses to the other.
The strategies for mitigating the adverse effects and/or adapting to the consequences of climate change have mostly been considered and discussed in isolation from those relevant to peak oil. While awareness of peak oil, or at least the energy crisis, is
increasing, understanding of how these two problems might interact to generate quite different futures is still at an early state.
Future Scenarios presents an integrated approach to understanding the potential interaction between climate change and peak oil using a scenario planning model. In the process it introduces permaculture as a design system specifically evolved over the
last 30 years to creatively respond to futures that involve progressively less and less available energy.