Customer Reviews

The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times

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This is a lightweight gloss on an interesting topic. To take just one example, the chapter on food storage does not broach the concept of long-term food storage, which may turn out to be the most important topic of all when surviving a post-petroleum world. Nitrogen purging of containers is not mentioned. CO2 purging is mentioned, but not as a way of stopping oxygen-linked food deterioration, but only as a way of fumigating grains. The need for food-safe containers is mentioned, but an exact discussion of the forms of plastic (HDPE, PP, PETE, LDPE, PVC etc) is not given. The simplest web search gives more information than this book on almost every topic. Another example: a illustration is given of a solar dehydrator, but not the plans to make one, and the diagram of the dehydrator is not even sufficiently labelled so that you'd have some idea of how to make one. Again, turn to the web for proper information. Lastly, people living outside the USA will not be pleased to see everything denominated in inches, Fahrenheit, gallons and pounds. The book is essentially a primer and overview of a lot of topics without any satisfying detail. An appetizer, not a main course, the book is indeed like the "Swiss Army knife" it styles itself as, and like my largely unused Swiss army knife, it's not the tool of choice for any particular need.

Intentional community pioneer Albert Bates on surviving peak oil

by Erik Curren

Albert Bates doesn't think that either peak oil or global warming will usher in the apocalypse. Nor does he advise citizens to start stockpiling firearms and Krugerrands.

"There's a contingent of peak oilers who are survivalists at heart," Bates told me. But he isn't one of them. "We don't need to think of defending ourselves from packs of feral animals, we need to think of getting together quilting bees and sowing bees to make things.

"Honestly, what I think is coming is a good change. We'll find that we have more time. What we've really lost in the last century of development is that we've become slaves to the clock. We waste a lot of time we spend commuting over highways and stuck in traffic snarls in cities. As we begin to shift back to a more nature-based life rhythm, following the seasons and the flow of the day, we're going to find we have more time. We'll have time to do skills like painting, knitting and art that we have lost. It's going to create a happier population."

Last year, Bates, a civil rights and environmental attorney who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court who reinvented himself as a pioneer in the intentional communities movement, published The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times (New Society, paperback, 237 pp., $19.95).

This is not a book for survivalists.

Though Bates does briefly write about "Defending from Warlords," he does not give advice on how to recruit your golf buddies for a neighborhood militia or turn your basement into a secure bunker.

Instead, he writes, communities should have well trained law enforcement. "This might even be a good use for some of your gun nuts, as long as they owe their first allegiance to the community and don't come to think that they are in charge." As for families: "Learn and practice nonviolence and instill it as a value in your children."

Ideas for Urbanites from the Farm

What Bates's book does deliver is a concise summary of the problems of peak oil and climate change followed by chapter after chapter of ideas to prepare yourself and your family to live more self-sufficiently. Some ideas are practical ones that you might want to try now, like collecting rainwater or getting a kit to convert your car to run on biofuels. Other ideas you may want to save for later, such as quitting your job.

But two things make The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide stand out from the legion of recent tomes on simpler living, energy-efficiency or peak-oil preparation.

First, Bates peppers his text with dozens of actual recipes for cooking food. When Bates' s mother died in 2003, she left him twenty cookbooks, from which he drew for his own book.

I cooked his recipe for split-pea soup, and found it more fool-proof than others I've tried. I have not yet tried his recipe for grasshopper quesadillas and probably need to work up more courage before I will. But many of his other recipes follow the same principle, if less aggressively - they substitute things you can make or find yourself (or cheaply buy) for meat or other ingredients that rely on today's industrial food network and might become more expensive when peak oil hits. For example, take Bates's Country Soysage [sic] Gravy, made with textured vegetable protein, his Tempeh Gravlax or even his Creamy Balsamic Milkweed.

Of course, there are plenty of hippie cookbooks out there too, but the other thing that makes Bates' book unique is his thirty years experience working in appropriate technology, including his current stint helping to run one of the best-known intentional communities in the U.S., the Farm, near Nashville, where he has lived since 1972.

"I could easily take this as a collection of loose-leaf binders from our courses," Bates told me. About 5,000 visitors per year from 50 countries take courses on such subjects as sustainable design, natural building, permaculture and restoration ecology at the Farm's Ecovillage Training Center, which Bates directs.

The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide is more than a how-to reference for Bates. It's also "a narrative of where we stand at this time. If we do it wrong, we will waste a lot of resources. The accumulation of our inheritance from the fossil-fuel era is precious. We should draw on it for the centuries ahead. This is one guy's opinion of where we're going; so let's do this right."

New York is Where I'd Rather Stay

City traffic. Though Bates lives in a rural community founded by like-minded folk, he doesn't suggest that America follow him there en masse any more than he suggests stocking up on 12-gauge shotgun shells.

"It would be disastrous for the planet if we suddenly had a Kampuchean revolution where we spread everybody over the countryside; they would devour it like locusts. We need to stack people vertically in cities and supply them from the countryside as we did in the nineteenth century. Then, we need urban green design for water catchment on roofs and we need home gardens that don't violate zoning codes."

Bates says that a relatively low-density city like Nashville is perfectly suited to turn lawns into gardens and grow much of its own food, unlike more tightly-packed cities such as Washington or New York. Manhattan in particular only has a three-day supply of food on the island itself, leaving residents particularly vulnerable to any disruption in transportation or in the national food supply.

So, should New Yorkers just move to Nashville?

"No, but New Yorkers should think about where their food comes from. They should start thinking about community-supported agriculture (CSAs) in the Hudson River Valley and in New Jersey, which used to be the Garden State for a good reason. Of course, now New Jersey as well as Staten Island have been industrialized and paved over with suburbs. But New York has a really good rail network, unlike other areas in the country. To have train service in and out of the city means you can bring in food from further away."

From his time in Russia in the early 1990s, Bates remembers how Muscovites dealt with the economic collapse and empty grocery store shelves by cultivating gardens in the countryside. They would grow food on the weekends in the summer and then preserve and dry it to carry them through the winter in the city.

"We could do that on a neighborhood or apartment building basis. In Boston, there are the Fenway Victory Gardens where anybody can have a little plot of land and grow food for themselves."

Pick One: Global Warming or Peak Oil

In 1990 Bates published one of the first books on global warming, Climate in Crisis, complete with a preface from fellow Tennessean Al Gore. But today he thinks that peak oil is the more immediate problem.

"Climate change occurs over centuries or millennia. But now we're coming close to the half-way point in our oil reserves and we will reach it in the next ten years."

Bates worries about the political tension that could arise as oil prices rise high enough to destroy demand in poorer countries and set the U.S. at odds with China and India. With China in particular holding so much U.S. debt, a standoff with Beijing over dwindling oil supplies could have dangerous consequences for the American economy.

And while Bates is more optimistic about alternative energy sources than many peak oil activists - for example, he likes ethanol if done on a small-scale as David Blume does - Bates does not believe that our society can replace all of the fossil energy we use today and will demand in the future with clean energy sources.

"The problem is you really can't match the BTU punch of fossil fuels with the current solar income of biofuels. You're talking about millions of years of stored up solar energy in oil or coal and then trying to make that up with solar energy you get every day from solar panels or fuel crops. It's interesting to see that civilizations have always progressed from less to more concentrated forms of energy, from burning wood to coal to oil. We've never gone in the opposite direction. This may be the first time in history we have to do that unless we go totally nuclear. Otherwise, we will find ourselves going back to solar power after having been in fossil fuels."

Don't Forget Population

But more than either global warming or peak oil, Bates worries about population.

"It's the hardest problem we have to tackle. Compared to peak oil and global warming, it's the least tractable. We can figure out solutions to reduce carbon and partially replace fossil fuels, but we're going to have a hard time to deal with the religious and cultural momentum that's making the world's population double every thirty years and which, in turn, is placing huge demands on the world's systems, not just fossil fuels. All our problems will get much worse and much worse if we don't deal with it."

Bates does think that population can be stabilized, but he looks to culture and not public policy for solutions.

"Don't wait for governments. It'll be a lifestyle change of individuals making conscious decisions. We may see a sense of honor among youth who choose not to have children or have fewer children. It's a sense of pride, which drives vegetarianism or other movements.

"Look at the rich and see what's fashionable. The future is pretty much determined by teenagers in Japan. If you can get them to start adopting a sustainable lifestyle, you're on the way."

This book is great intro to all the issues relating to peak oil and our other looming crisis; water, food, transportation, economics, etc., with hints, tips, sidebars, recipes, quotes, so it's not really heavy going. In a fairly non-apocalyptic way, it covers all sorts of stuff, for example: bug out bags, various alternative fuels, lists of things to stockpile, ecovillages and community, humanure, chart of bean cooking times, a first aid guide. Nothing in a huge amount of depth - it's just one book; but mostly practical and down to earth information, and while I don't agree with everything (he's too optimistic about ethanol, and that compost tea will be anaerobic) on the whole it seems balanced and accurate.

For anyone who's just coming to learn about peak oil, especially in the early panic stages, I particularly recommend this book; there are so many books that will just scare and overwhelm you, while this book has a practical and less we're-all-doomed approach. If you're a peak oil old-timer and have been simplifying your life for a while it is probably all stuff you know already.

For many years, friends, fans and even publishers have been asking me for another Living on the Earth. I really, really wish I could have accommodated them. The truth is that I haven't been living communally in an ecovillage, nor have I really been keeping up with innovations in sustainable technology and permaculture. I've been recording and performing original music, caring for my elders in a big city, and writing/illustrating other things that are closer to my actual experience.

Happily, the person most qualified to write the new Living on the Earth has stepped up and written it. That would be Albert Bates, a founding member of the Farm, which is the largest and most influential hippie commune ever, and also Director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology. He travels the world teaching sustainable design, natural building, permaculture and restoration ecology. He's also argued cases before the Supreme Court.

Like Living on the Earth, The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook (New Society Publishers, 2006) is eclectic. It can scare the bejesus out of you with worst case scenarios, and then invite you into the kitchen to sample grasshopper quesadillas (if you don't have one hundred grasshoppers, you can substitute locusts, crickets, or corn smut).

Albert's definitely written more of a guy book. He explains with charts how to build things like root cellars, dehydrators, solar cookers and composting systems (now, that's my kind of Prince Charming). He lists what you need in your fallout shelter (I'm pleased to report that musical instruments are included). And he envisions as a benefit of the post-petroleum age, the opportunity for "creative loafing" including "leisurely love-making." (Yes!)

You and everyone you know definitely need this book. Hopefully later rather than sooner, but it's never to soon to be prepared.

The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and cookbook by Albert Bates is an intriguing and well constructed look at what every citizen in the oil addicted world should know and begin to move toward if any kind of survival is possible when oil is no longer readily available. Bates begins by giving convincing evidence that the availability of plenty of oil and gas is not in the world's future. But the book is not a dooms day end of the world account. After explaining the supply/demand situation for the world relying mainly on oil and gas as the key source of energy, he then goes on to spend most of the book detailing ways in which the average consumer can begin to do things in a daily way that will make everyone less dependent on petroleum as the main energy source. The book details everything from creating one's own energy supplies to food preparation and storage to the way to save in transportation. The margins of each page of the book contains menus of dishes that help to form a more energy efficient approach to cooking. The book is well written with good explanations of approaches the author feels are key to beginning the change to living in a world without abundant petroleum supplies

Albert Bates draws upon his expertise and experience that has included being the Director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology since 1984 and the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm in Tennessee since 1984 to write and compile "The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide And Cookbook", a practical, informative, positive, upbeat, optimistic manual for making the transition from a petroleum-based lifestyle to a way of life that will come into play when the world's supplies of petroleum run out. Bates addresses a wide range of subjects including the rebuilding of a civilization based on petroleum energy and products when they are no longer cheap and affordable; changing our needs to adapt to petroleum-free conditions; water and waste disposal; energy and transportation that don't rely on petroleum; equipment and tools; food storage; and even first aid. Also featuring a series of superb recipes for organic, flavorful, locally grown produce, "The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide And Cookbook" is a strongly recommended addition to personal and community library reference collections and supplemental reading lists. This is a book to have on hand when the inevitable happens - be it next year or the next decade. Also highly recommended from New Society Publishers are four other thematically appropriate titles: "Better World Handbook"; "Better World Shopping Guide"; "Eating Fossil Fuels" ; and "Oil Depletion Protocol" .

I bought the book for a gift but ended up reading it myself. It is a great book with lots of information in it. There are also some fine receipes. Albert Bates is an author who has researched his information carefully and he presents it in an easy to understand manner. I would recommend this book to everybody.

This book is beyond words. Finally I have found a book that I feel I have written, a person who sees the possible futures as I do. He actually states in his writing the theories set by many of how we cause our own future by merely deciding it will come. This is, of course, something I greatly believe in. HOWEVER, we must take into account that if the masses continue to act as they do with out reverence for what their actions are causing, then we are walking towards impending doom. Every action has a reaction or as many have said before me, every cause has an effect. When we walk mindlessly along the path and we do not contemplate our effects then they are free to wreak havoc as naturally drawn. If we decide our possible fates, and make an active change to steer away from a damaging future, as is one possibility described in this book, then we make a chance shot for a "happy ending" or I guess you would say in this case, no ending.

Please, PLEASE, read this book and/or any like it. Know the possible future and take action to protect yourself from it, while contemplating a better way we can live. The age of Oil is over, it's time to accept it and move towards the coming age as the dawn reaches Aquarius.

An easy read, plenty of humor, good suggestions on how to prepare for a post-petroleum world. If you've read the Heinberg and Kunstler books on petroleum depletion and the prospects for the future of civilization, then this one is a 'must-read'. After that, reading books won't get you very far. It will be time to consider fundamental life changes.

An interesting non-pretentious guide to the next 20 years. Ever since the stock market crash of September 2008, it has been obvious to even the masters of the universe on Wall Street that something is terribly wrong with our society. They have not grasped the cause of the change but those of us who make our living making things have noticed the slide years ago. The main theme in the book is sustainability, which in simple terms involves recycling as much of what you use as you can. In truth, as the author points out, there is no such thing as sustainability if there is such thing as entropy and inefficiency. The solution is living simple and keeping the population in check ¯something we have failed to do. We need to minimize our un-sustainability. The author explains it better (pg. 164):

"Dr. Albert Bartlett, a physics professor has been lecturing for more than 30 years on the subject of sustainability and what it really implies. He is quick to point out that you can't understand sustainability without first understanding some basic arithmetic."

"Bartlett gives the example of a bottle filled with bacteria. Bacteria grow by doubling, so one bacterium divides to become two; the two divide to become four; and so on. (geometric progression) Suppose, we had bacteria that doubled this way every minute. Suppose we put one of these bacteria into an empty bottle at eleven in the morning and then observed that the bottle was full at 12 noon.
First question: When was the bottle half full?
Answer: 11:59, one minute before 12, because they double in number every minute.
Second question: If you were the average bacterium in that bottle, when did you first realize that you were running out of space?
Answer: At 12 noon the bottle is full. One minute before that it's half-full. Two minutes before noon it's quarter full, then an eighth, then a sixteenth. At five minutes before noon, when the bottle is only 3 percent full and 97 percent open space just yearning for development, it is unlikely you, being a bacterium, would realize there's a problem. If bacteria had human intelligence, you might see your predicament in the last ten seconds."

Bartlett goes on to say that even science and technology won't save us ¯ it only gives us a little more time. "At 12 noon, one bottle is full and there are three to go. At 12:01, two bottles are filled and there are two to go, and at 12:02 all four are filled and that's it. Game over. They'd need to find eight more bottles to go another minute."

No, the only answer is to restructure to form a society that uses less, and recycles what it uses, with fewer people. Our only choice is how it happens. If past human history is our guide, then by famine, war, and mass extinction. Keep in mind that the world can only support about 10-15% of the people here today. We have a choice, to preserve what we know, and change the trajectory. The author has done a great job of minimizing philosophizing and presents numerous tools for our survival. And the recipes look great too!

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