Oil, health, and health care
British Medical Journal / Angela E Raffle / 01 September 2010
Some cities in the UK are aware of peak oil implications. For example, leaders in Bristol commissioned a report in 2009 on the implications of peak oil. This has helped stimulate work to develop a Bristol Energy Company and a local currency, to analyse the vulnerabilities of the current food supply system, and to adopt a “climate change and energy security framework.” Incorporating peak oil preparedness into England’s official local government planning mechanisms—local transport plans and local development frameworks—is an uphill struggle because central government policies still favour the needs of big food corporations, construction industries, and the road lobby above the need for resilient local systems.
The healthcare conclusions in Bristol’s peak oil report are that oil is a primary raw material for many drugs, equipment, and supplies; that transport for patients, staff, deliveries, and services is heavily oil dependent; that currently suppliers are not required to provide business continuity plans around fuel supply shortages; and that rising oil costs would seriously affect health service budgets. On the positive side, the report noted the resilience afforded by the following facts: most people live within a mile of their nearest general practice; the NHS is used to responding to emergencies and making rapid changes; walking, cycling, and locally grown food are good for health; and the NHS Carbon Reduction Strategy for England does acknowledge peak oil. What this means is that health care will change, whether we like it or not, and that carbon reduction, fuel depletion, and financial stringencies have to be looked at together.
Experts on peak oil and health experts have examined this challenge together at three workshops, and some common themes emerge. These concern the need for simpler more robust systems that are capable of local maintenance, and the importance of fairness regarding access to food, water, transport, and essential health care. The box [see Full Article] summarises possible features identified as characteristic of a healthy prosperous society in the future. Because the workshops explored success not failure the goals may appear idealistic. The alternative could be very different.
A related comment from Bukko Canukko on The Automatic Earth today:
[...] I sincerely believe that the world has come to a time of dying. With peak oil, peak food, peak credit, etc. we have hit the point of peak humans. The world cannot support exponential expansion of the our species. We coulda slimmed our numbers down the easy way if we had done things sensibly, or even semi-brutally like China. But we didn't. So we're going to do it the hard way.
I look at the people who I am paid to keep alive in hospital, bless their poor suffering hearts. I hustle my ass off to keep them clean, nourished, medicated and free from pain. But when the money system sputters and society can't afford it any more, the 52-year-old guy in Bed 640 who's been shooting heroin for 20 years and now has a bone infection that started with dirty syringes will not have the fancy PICC line that's infusing IV antibiotics for the 6 weeks it will take to clear it up. The 38-year-old HIV+ First Nations prostitute with the paralyzed left arm from the brain bleed after her boyfriend punched her in the side of her head is going to be turfed back to her Downtown Eastside slum hovel, where she will be raped to death. The 65-year-old guy who's gorped from early onset dementia and was admitted due to dehydration because he doesn't know what to do re: swallowing the pureed mush we spoon into his mouth -- he'll die of thirst.
And that's just part of my patient allocation. One nurse, one part of one ward in one hospital in one town. When the hard crash hits, the money to extend these existences will go away. Sick old people as a class will be eliminated from the population. Tens of millions will die prematurely in North America alone because the money will not be there to keep them alive. My job, and the jobs of millions of workers like me, will disappear in this tidal wave of death.
We're not even getting into deaths from starvation when the food distribution system breaks down in the Third World after a catastrophic financial hiccup. The resource wars. The hand-to-hand ethnic slaughter as old grievances play out because central authority ceases to have the power to stop them. The clashes when masses flee eco-disaster and crash into the people who are already living on the land that the refugees are fleeing to.
Some of the horror! the horror! could be alleviated if sensible policies were implemented. But who would have to implement them? People with power. People with money. Remember how Kanye West said in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: "George Bush doesn't care about black people"? Well, rich powerful people don't care about average people.
The rich, they are different from you and me. They truly don't give a shit. Ask Lloyd Blankfein how much he cares about you, if you can get past his armed guards. Ask your elected representative, but make sure you have $1,000 in your hand if you want to get a word in edgewise.
We are ants to them. We will be left to fend for ourselves and die when the "you're on your own" time comes. We won't die by intent, just by neglect. The rich -- not the Jews, although some of are Jewish -- so supremely don't care. It will be just fine with them, because we ants can be easily hired and disposed of.
Ask any illegal immigrant in America how that goes. In the future, we will all be Mexicans in our own land. Those of us who survive, that is. I reckon when it plays out, say by about 2100, there's going to be 999 million of us left to serf the Masters.
September 7, 2010 2:47 AM