After Oil
Public libraries will have an important role to play in our new post-peak-oil society
By Debra J. Slone -- Library Journal, 3/15/2008
Public libraries were indispensable resources for newcomers during the height of European immigration to the United States. They were havens for the poor and jobless during the Great Depression and bridges between rural and urban communities during times of major demographic change. An increase in the Spanish-speaking population has inspired increased availability of materials in Spanish. Public libraries assist children with homework and adults with literacy, distribute voter registration forms, and provide Internet access. A library in Alaska has so many travelers by water that books are often due when the patron's ship—literally—comes in. A library in Florida is the designated information center for the surrounding community in the event of a hurricane.
In other words, a major crisis represents both a challenge and an opportunity to librarians in the workplace. The approaching period of rapidly declining access to oil, which James Howard Kunstler referred to as “the long emergency” in his important Rolling Stone article in 2005, will impact our entire culture. There are massive potential effects of this new crisis on libraries and the role of librarians.
Peak oil
Oil is a resource of finite quantity. The amount we can extract from the ground daily will eventually peak and decline. Clothes, medicine, compact discs, garbage bags, computers, and almost everything we use are made with oil products, created or operated by machines that require oil, or distributed by vehicles running on oil. Though other energy resources can often be substituted, none are as dense, transportable, and adaptable as oil. Yet, a large and growing number of petroleum industry analysts have predicted a global peak in oil production. A recent study from the Energy Watch Group states that the world's oil production peaked in 2006.
According to a 2005 report from the Department of Energy, the potentially devastating results of “peak oil” could have been mitigated by alternative fuels and practices if intervention had begun ten to 20 years before the peak. Without such mitigation, however, demand for oil will continue to rise. Rather than a smooth transition to a “postcarbon society,” there will be a sharp adjustment with little time to prepare.
This is where U.S. culture finds itself now. If grand-scale fuel conservation and creation of alternative liquid fuels had begun two decades ago, the results of the decline would have gone largely unfelt. The demand for oil would have been lower and the rate of decline in production slower. Though the decline in peak oil is not yet a hardship on many, all institutions can benefit by introducing mitigation efforts now, since the impact of the decline is expected to be broad. “The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work,” wrote Kunstler.
This description of the likely aftermath of the “long emergency” of declining oil production must be understood by people in positions to help society adjust to new ways of doing everyday things. Even without knowing exactly when the peak will come or whether it has already arrived, the speed of the decline, or the rate of society's adaptation, it is helpful to recognize the signs of decline, the causes of new circumstances, and the resources necessary to alleviate related problems. Consider the following scenarios of possible outcomes and opportunities for U.S. public libraries as global oil production diminishes.
Rising transportation costs
A branch children's librarian notices that day after day there are fewer cars in the library's parking lot. For the past few weeks her preschool story times have been attended by fewer people from neighboring communities. Several people ask about bicycle racks or bus schedules, and at least one patron has been driving a golf cart to the building. One day on the adult reference desk, she fields inquiries about alternative forms of energy like wind, cooking oil, hydro, solar, and nuclear. The following week, she observes patron frustration because materials they requested were not delivered on time. Most complain about the costs of a wasted trip to the library. The same week, a huge pile of books is delivered, and the staff scurry to manage them. The librarian later learns that other libraries are cutting back on daily deliveries. Her library, too, plans to cut shipments from six days to three days per week.
The librarian knows that the cost of transportation is rising with the price of oil—most of the oil we use goes to transportation. The two commercial delivery companies left are reducing deliveries and dramatically raising rates. The U.S. Postal Service has increased the cost of a first-class stamp by a whopping 11¢ twice in six months. Activities like walking, biking, bus riding, and the use of hybrid cars have become popular. To conserve gasoline, people travel shorter distances to shop and work, creating more proximate communities. Individual travel is replaced by community forms of transportation like light rail and carpools. Laws restricting single-occupancy driving are passed as the nation attempts to stave off the decline. Airline travel plummets as fares outpace many incomes and airlines fold. Fueled by coal, trains make a comeback.
Costly manufactured goods
A reference librarian is asked about gardening and soil quality. One day, he gets three questions about the region's native plants and two about vegetable gardening. As the weeks pass, the questions expand to include agriculture in urban areas, soil types, native herbs, and sowing and tilling. In one week, he and his colleagues answer questions about how to obtain affordable medicines and how to use herbal remedies. The next week, the same reference department fields queries on operating a stove using solar panels, cleaning teeth without a toothbrush, and making soap, dye, pottery, and glue without using oil by-products. They begin to hear unfamiliar words and phrases like ecovillage, permaculture, farm village, and socially sustainable communities.
Goods made with oil or with machines that require oil have become expensive. Everyday items like dishes, eyeglasses, tires, office supplies, hearing aids, antihistamines, makeup, aspirin, and vitamins are more costly. Sundry shops, retailers, and pharmacies that rely on cheaply produced manufactured goods and medicines raise prices significantly. Rather than replace books, curtains, furniture, paint, electronics, and other wares, consumers try to preserve them. Manufacturers that use oil to prepare and package foods pass the high costs on to their customers. People turn to locally grown foods and other natural resources to try to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. This requires them to work closely with others in their community to achieve common goals.
The economic decline
A library worker notices that a computer is broken. It takes longer than usual to fix it, but eventually it is repaired. A week later, another computer fails, and an increasing number of people complain about the shortage of Internet access. More and more people wait outside the building for the doors to open every morning. A growing number of adults seem to simply “hang out” at the library. Their number increases as the weeks pass. The librarian finally becomes aware that only two staffers are now assigned to the public service area instead of the usual four. Weeks later, she is working on the information desk alone. She is working harder than usual, and there are many people with problems she cannot solve. She wonders if her daily commute is worthwhile, and, at the same time, hopes her library can remain open.
Similar changes are happening throughout society. The American lifestyle is being downsized. Social ills have become more pronounced. Many “haves” become “have-nots.” People fear layoffs and are stunned by the high costs of essentials like food and computers. Finding it uneconomical to commute, many people work from home while others become jobless and even homeless. Those who are laid off lose their work-related computer access. Many are unable to replace their old home computer systems. Their primary information sources become the local newspaper, public access to the Internet, local bulletin boards, and other people. All of these can be found at local libraries, but many facilities are threatened with closure.
Ensuring essential services
Public libraries use terms like enhancing the quality of life; cultural, economic and social well-being; education; free access; partnering with other community organizations; equal access; responsiveness to community needs; and empowerment in their mission statements. Starting with these values, the concept of “social responsibility” is not a huge leap for public librarians. In the face of the challenges brought on by the end of cheap oil, social responsibility becomes a duty, not an option.
Despite library closings, diminished hours of service, and other hardships, public libraries will be havens of information and comfort for the public in a time of declining oil supplies. People will have increased needs for information and access to resources in their communities. Public libraries, among the few local public agencies, will be needed more than ever. As a result, library services must change to accommodate the new realities.
Immediately, beginning at the highest administrative levels, libraries must advance the idea of communal resources, identify community needs, and educate the public to these ideas. For instance, as home computers fail and replacement costs skyrocket, librarians will provide communal computers, even setting aside specific machines for specific needs, such as shopping, email access, and job searching.
Librarians will have to locate and provide information about local resources for food, medicine, travel, and shelter. They will be required to identify local talent and experts and list plants native to the area. They will carry information about the environmental needs of the region, its transportation and the source of the community's water, and whether it is healthy. Libraries will have to maintain current travel information (walking, bus, car, golf cart, etc.) and knowledge about local land use. Librarians will also identify and address barriers to information access. They will facilitate local access to people developing alternative means of transportation, energy, and more. They will keep track of available housing and whether there is enough of it.
Armed with data about the resources that make communities function, librarians can begin to develop an information, communication, and referral system that addresses the unique needs and assets of their region. Collections must grow to include real-time and electronic information about local bus schedules, bike routes, carpooling, agriculture, crop maintenance, and energy-efficient housing. Librarians will have to maintain barter systems in which people with little or no money can exchange goods and services. Using library meeting rooms and other resources, patrons will share expertise about soil, vegetation, energy conservation, and so on. Nutritionists can talk about preventative medicine or carpenters about sustainable housing. In partnership with other organizations, public libraries can locate small branches in hospitals, community centers, and health centers. Such outlets will put more resources in more communities and reduce the burden on larger facilities.
These efforts will educate people on how to survive for the short term and alter their behavior for the long term. People will learn ways to stay healthy, conserve energy, eat better, and travel without denying future generations the opportunity to do the same.
Motivated to help
When Hurricane Ivan struck Cuba in 2004, two million people were moved out of harm's way. No one died. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, 100,000 people needed help to move, but few received it. Thousands died. Our society was and is still unprepared for that kind of crisis on a grand scale, especially when it impacts poor people. As access to oil and related resources declines, the ranks of the poor will grow dramatically. Library systems must prepare now, not motivated by fear but by a desire to help communities cope with and be prepared for that future. Librarians should be forming partnerships now with citizens, hospitals, health centers, community centers, health food stores, fitness centers, and even flea markets to advance the concept of communal resources and socially sustainable communities.
As in past national crises, libraries will address the problems and obstacles related to peak oil and be the models for other institutions as access to cheap oil declines. They must strive to remain open, public, free, and relevant. By becoming an integral part of the sustainability infrastructure, libraries will meet the challenge of social responsibility and demonstrate their value to the community.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Information
Debra J. Slone is an Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of South Florida, Tampa
Public libraries will have an important role to play in our new post-peak-oil society
By Debra J. Slone -- Library Journal, 3/15/2008
Public libraries were indispensable resources for newcomers during the height of European immigration to the United States. They were havens for the poor and jobless during the Great Depression and bridges between rural and urban communities during times of major demographic change. An increase in the Spanish-speaking population has inspired increased availability of materials in Spanish. Public libraries assist children with homework and adults with literacy, distribute voter registration forms, and provide Internet access. A library in Alaska has so many travelers by water that books are often due when the patron's ship—literally—comes in. A library in Florida is the designated information center for the surrounding community in the event of a hurricane.
In other words, a major crisis represents both a challenge and an opportunity to librarians in the workplace. The approaching period of rapidly declining access to oil, which James Howard Kunstler referred to as “the long emergency” in his important Rolling Stone article in 2005, will impact our entire culture. There are massive potential effects of this new crisis on libraries and the role of librarians.
Peak oil
Oil is a resource of finite quantity. The amount we can extract from the ground daily will eventually peak and decline. Clothes, medicine, compact discs, garbage bags, computers, and almost everything we use are made with oil products, created or operated by machines that require oil, or distributed by vehicles running on oil. Though other energy resources can often be substituted, none are as dense, transportable, and adaptable as oil. Yet, a large and growing number of petroleum industry analysts have predicted a global peak in oil production. A recent study from the Energy Watch Group states that the world's oil production peaked in 2006.
According to a 2005 report from the Department of Energy, the potentially devastating results of “peak oil” could have been mitigated by alternative fuels and practices if intervention had begun ten to 20 years before the peak. Without such mitigation, however, demand for oil will continue to rise. Rather than a smooth transition to a “postcarbon society,” there will be a sharp adjustment with little time to prepare.
This is where U.S. culture finds itself now. If grand-scale fuel conservation and creation of alternative liquid fuels had begun two decades ago, the results of the decline would have gone largely unfelt. The demand for oil would have been lower and the rate of decline in production slower. Though the decline in peak oil is not yet a hardship on many, all institutions can benefit by introducing mitigation efforts now, since the impact of the decline is expected to be broad. “The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work,” wrote Kunstler.
This description of the likely aftermath of the “long emergency” of declining oil production must be understood by people in positions to help society adjust to new ways of doing everyday things. Even without knowing exactly when the peak will come or whether it has already arrived, the speed of the decline, or the rate of society's adaptation, it is helpful to recognize the signs of decline, the causes of new circumstances, and the resources necessary to alleviate related problems. Consider the following scenarios of possible outcomes and opportunities for U.S. public libraries as global oil production diminishes.
Rising transportation costs
A branch children's librarian notices that day after day there are fewer cars in the library's parking lot. For the past few weeks her preschool story times have been attended by fewer people from neighboring communities. Several people ask about bicycle racks or bus schedules, and at least one patron has been driving a golf cart to the building. One day on the adult reference desk, she fields inquiries about alternative forms of energy like wind, cooking oil, hydro, solar, and nuclear. The following week, she observes patron frustration because materials they requested were not delivered on time. Most complain about the costs of a wasted trip to the library. The same week, a huge pile of books is delivered, and the staff scurry to manage them. The librarian later learns that other libraries are cutting back on daily deliveries. Her library, too, plans to cut shipments from six days to three days per week.
The librarian knows that the cost of transportation is rising with the price of oil—most of the oil we use goes to transportation. The two commercial delivery companies left are reducing deliveries and dramatically raising rates. The U.S. Postal Service has increased the cost of a first-class stamp by a whopping 11¢ twice in six months. Activities like walking, biking, bus riding, and the use of hybrid cars have become popular. To conserve gasoline, people travel shorter distances to shop and work, creating more proximate communities. Individual travel is replaced by community forms of transportation like light rail and carpools. Laws restricting single-occupancy driving are passed as the nation attempts to stave off the decline. Airline travel plummets as fares outpace many incomes and airlines fold. Fueled by coal, trains make a comeback.
Costly manufactured goods
A reference librarian is asked about gardening and soil quality. One day, he gets three questions about the region's native plants and two about vegetable gardening. As the weeks pass, the questions expand to include agriculture in urban areas, soil types, native herbs, and sowing and tilling. In one week, he and his colleagues answer questions about how to obtain affordable medicines and how to use herbal remedies. The next week, the same reference department fields queries on operating a stove using solar panels, cleaning teeth without a toothbrush, and making soap, dye, pottery, and glue without using oil by-products. They begin to hear unfamiliar words and phrases like ecovillage, permaculture, farm village, and socially sustainable communities.
Goods made with oil or with machines that require oil have become expensive. Everyday items like dishes, eyeglasses, tires, office supplies, hearing aids, antihistamines, makeup, aspirin, and vitamins are more costly. Sundry shops, retailers, and pharmacies that rely on cheaply produced manufactured goods and medicines raise prices significantly. Rather than replace books, curtains, furniture, paint, electronics, and other wares, consumers try to preserve them. Manufacturers that use oil to prepare and package foods pass the high costs on to their customers. People turn to locally grown foods and other natural resources to try to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. This requires them to work closely with others in their community to achieve common goals.
The economic decline
A library worker notices that a computer is broken. It takes longer than usual to fix it, but eventually it is repaired. A week later, another computer fails, and an increasing number of people complain about the shortage of Internet access. More and more people wait outside the building for the doors to open every morning. A growing number of adults seem to simply “hang out” at the library. Their number increases as the weeks pass. The librarian finally becomes aware that only two staffers are now assigned to the public service area instead of the usual four. Weeks later, she is working on the information desk alone. She is working harder than usual, and there are many people with problems she cannot solve. She wonders if her daily commute is worthwhile, and, at the same time, hopes her library can remain open.
Similar changes are happening throughout society. The American lifestyle is being downsized. Social ills have become more pronounced. Many “haves” become “have-nots.” People fear layoffs and are stunned by the high costs of essentials like food and computers. Finding it uneconomical to commute, many people work from home while others become jobless and even homeless. Those who are laid off lose their work-related computer access. Many are unable to replace their old home computer systems. Their primary information sources become the local newspaper, public access to the Internet, local bulletin boards, and other people. All of these can be found at local libraries, but many facilities are threatened with closure.
Ensuring essential services
Public libraries use terms like enhancing the quality of life; cultural, economic and social well-being; education; free access; partnering with other community organizations; equal access; responsiveness to community needs; and empowerment in their mission statements. Starting with these values, the concept of “social responsibility” is not a huge leap for public librarians. In the face of the challenges brought on by the end of cheap oil, social responsibility becomes a duty, not an option.
Despite library closings, diminished hours of service, and other hardships, public libraries will be havens of information and comfort for the public in a time of declining oil supplies. People will have increased needs for information and access to resources in their communities. Public libraries, among the few local public agencies, will be needed more than ever. As a result, library services must change to accommodate the new realities.
Immediately, beginning at the highest administrative levels, libraries must advance the idea of communal resources, identify community needs, and educate the public to these ideas. For instance, as home computers fail and replacement costs skyrocket, librarians will provide communal computers, even setting aside specific machines for specific needs, such as shopping, email access, and job searching.
Librarians will have to locate and provide information about local resources for food, medicine, travel, and shelter. They will be required to identify local talent and experts and list plants native to the area. They will carry information about the environmental needs of the region, its transportation and the source of the community's water, and whether it is healthy. Libraries will have to maintain current travel information (walking, bus, car, golf cart, etc.) and knowledge about local land use. Librarians will also identify and address barriers to information access. They will facilitate local access to people developing alternative means of transportation, energy, and more. They will keep track of available housing and whether there is enough of it.
Armed with data about the resources that make communities function, librarians can begin to develop an information, communication, and referral system that addresses the unique needs and assets of their region. Collections must grow to include real-time and electronic information about local bus schedules, bike routes, carpooling, agriculture, crop maintenance, and energy-efficient housing. Librarians will have to maintain barter systems in which people with little or no money can exchange goods and services. Using library meeting rooms and other resources, patrons will share expertise about soil, vegetation, energy conservation, and so on. Nutritionists can talk about preventative medicine or carpenters about sustainable housing. In partnership with other organizations, public libraries can locate small branches in hospitals, community centers, and health centers. Such outlets will put more resources in more communities and reduce the burden on larger facilities.
These efforts will educate people on how to survive for the short term and alter their behavior for the long term. People will learn ways to stay healthy, conserve energy, eat better, and travel without denying future generations the opportunity to do the same.
Motivated to help
When Hurricane Ivan struck Cuba in 2004, two million people were moved out of harm's way. No one died. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, 100,000 people needed help to move, but few received it. Thousands died. Our society was and is still unprepared for that kind of crisis on a grand scale, especially when it impacts poor people. As access to oil and related resources declines, the ranks of the poor will grow dramatically. Library systems must prepare now, not motivated by fear but by a desire to help communities cope with and be prepared for that future. Librarians should be forming partnerships now with citizens, hospitals, health centers, community centers, health food stores, fitness centers, and even flea markets to advance the concept of communal resources and socially sustainable communities.
As in past national crises, libraries will address the problems and obstacles related to peak oil and be the models for other institutions as access to cheap oil declines. They must strive to remain open, public, free, and relevant. By becoming an integral part of the sustainability infrastructure, libraries will meet the challenge of social responsibility and demonstrate their value to the community.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Information
Debra J. Slone is an Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of South Florida, Tampa
posted by Read All Books @ 9:50 AM
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