The Upside of Down

"A lot of people won’t have heard of this one. It’s by a wonderful Canadian writer and academic with a great historical sweep. He examines how the Roman Empire extended its influence all over the world and how it sustained that imperial control for so long, but then suddenly imploded. He then builds on that to look at civilisation, and suggests that we too may be heading for that kind of implosion. The global economy is so dependent on fossil fuels. It sounds depressing, but it’s really about how we can change positively, how we can develop self-reliant structures. Well, not the kind of unthinking globalisation that we have today, no. We would still be trading and would still be interconnected, of course, but we wouldn’t be trading what we don’t need to trade. Instead of oil and gas, why don’t we start using renewable energy? The trouble is we don’t pay a real price for fossil fuel and we don’t pay for the carbon we emit – so renewable energies are not ‘competitive’ at the moment. Governments the world over have benefited massively from cheap fossil fuels, agriculturally, logistically, distribution-wise. Take away the cheap fossil fuels and the world looks very different. If they were taken away without any preparation it would be very painful indeed."