John Michael Greer, writing today in his ever insightful blog “The Archdruid Report”, reminds us of the real lesson of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption: nature cannot be ignored with impunity. He isn’t talking about volcanoes—he is talking about the turning tide of cheap and abundant energy—itself an expression of nature rather than something we created. It is ironic that it was the temporary abundance of that natural resource that created the illusion that we can free ourselves from natural limits, an illusion that was pricked this week.
We are at peak energy now. One aspect of peak is that “it has never been so good”. We still have large enough energy margins to maintain the operational fabric and hub infrastructure that allows us to take e.g. aviation for granted. It takes something as extraordinary as a volcano to give us a faint reminder that there is something peculiarly fragile about a system that provides us with strawberries in January.
The flipside of peak is that it will never be so good again. We are rapidly losing the energy margins that underpinned the hubris of the last 50 years. As hub infrastructure systems of which many of us aren’t even aware succumb, such events are going to become commonplace, and cumulative in their effect. The peculiar sense of dislocation we feel when something that “should just work” doesn’t, the administrative and logistical inadequacy of our systems to respond to relatively small displacements of people from their normal living arrangements are all a foretaste of that which is to come. We move toward interesting times. Sadly, this wake up call will be ignored by politicians and citizens alike.
