From The Independent, a report on how — by necessity — the city of Juneau, Alaska (pop 30,000) reduced its energy consumption 30% within a month.
The article also references the fact that in 2001, Brazil (population 180,000,000) cut its electric consumption 20% within two months.
This is why I part opinions with some peak oil pessimists about how society will revert to anarchic barbarism* in the (imminent) post-peak years. I think communities are a lot more adaptable to hardship than pessimists give them credit for.
=====
*incidentally, the term barbarian has a cool etymology; I learned it — wow, fifteen years ago — from a Classical Studies professor. In James Robinson’s latest book, he notes that the naming system of the Middle East could have played a role as well: bar is a patronym in Aramaic, and is sometimes used in Jewish names (though “ben” is more frequent). Thus in the Christian New Testament, one finds characters such as Bartimaeus or Barabbas. (More about Barabbas, another time…)
Robinson suggested that Greeks dealing with Aramaic peoples would’ve remarked at how often they said bar-this and bar-that during introductions and decided to call them “bar-bar-ians”. No word whether Aramaics called the Greeks “son-of-son-of-ians”. Regrettably, like a number of Robinson’s arguments in this particular volume, it seemed a bit weak. From this reasonably widely-read unaffiliated non-expert’s perspective, Goulder’s lectionary theory seems stronger, by virtue of its elegant simplicity.
