Our Response to Mad Maxers

by Paul Edwards

At one of the Sustainable Livelihoods seminars Sarah and did recently, three men in the audience were adamant that the future awaiting us will resemble the world of Mad Max. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie on which this scenario is based, it’s a fantasized snapshot of a future characterized by violence, fear, and brutality. In such a world, the three priorities in life will be food, guns, and ammo.

This is not our view of how we need to think about or plan for the future. Here’s why:

You can’t build a wall high enough or have a gun big enough to withstand the kind of weaponry too readily available today. If we want a secure future, our best bet is being part of a sustainable community of people who work together to support each another in providing for our basic needs and well-being, including physical security.

If we assume, as the Mad Maxers do, that the American population will shrink to about one out of ten of us today, we would have a populous roughly equivalent to the number of inhabitants just before the Civil War – about the time of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. That was a time when more people worked on their own than worked to the rhythm of a machine and when barter was always a choice for trade. We expect to see both these become trends in the emerging new economy we call the Elm Street Economy.

That was also a time when slaves in the South did much of the manual labor in that region. Slavery became unthinkable when just one gallon of gasoline being the equivalent to 500 hours of manual labor. Now automation is on the verge of replacing hand and stoop labor farm workers. But without renewable means of low-cost energy, slavery, indentured servitude and company towns could return. These we most certainly hope will not develop, but a world such as that just might devolve into a Mad Max world.

In a Mad Max world, to defend against nations and terrorists who bear grievances or perceive gains by vanquishing America, the U.S. would need to have a large standing military – something the pre-Civil War U.S. did not have. With only one in ten Americans remaining it is doubtful the population could produce enough wealth and resources to support such a military.

So while there are some who believe there may be enough oil still remaining in the ground to sustain a greatly reduced population for some time, do we want to take that chance? Do we want to risk the emergence of a Mad Max world? Or shall we begin now to build an Elm Street Economy, a resilient local communities based on renewable energies that will enable us to adapt to a declining amount of cheap fossil fuel? For myself, the latter is my choice. In part, because surviving in the social order or disorder of a Mad Max world would not allow me to be the kind of person I am willing to be.