As consumers, we are directly affected by the structure and conditions of the current goods movement system.  The things we have around us, the physical world as we have built it, are shaped by goods movement—what we buy, what we consume, what’s available, and the conditions by which these goods come to us—the fuel, technology and infrastructure. 

And underneath the structure and conditions of the goods movement, and truly our entire society is the energy system.  It’s important to understand the ways that we have utilized an oil-based energy system to make our world because we need to use the same whole-world thinking, innovation and action to transition to an energy system that will not damage us and our world.

In Paul Roberts book The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World, he addresses our entire global society’s reliance on energy.  He writes:

We live in a world completed dominated by energy.  It is the bedrock of our wealth, our comfort, and our largely unquestioned faith in the inexorability of progress, implicit in every act and artifact of modern existence. We produce and consume energy not simply to heat and feel ourselves, to move ourselves, or to defend ourselves, but to educate and entertain ourselves, to expand our knowledge, change our destiny, construct and reconstruct our world, and fill it with stuff.  Everything we buy, from a hamburger at McDonalds to a duck at a Beijing market, from plastic lawn chairs and opera tickets to computers and garbage service, from medical services to cancer drugs to farm fertilizers and Humvees, represents a measure of energy produced and then consumed.

Oil has created the world as we know it.  And yet, it is not too melodramatic to say that our dependence on oil may destroy the world as we know it.

A shift to a zero-carbon, and non-polluting energy system is our goal.  And there are infinite baby-steps to move in that direction, everything from shutting off more lights in your house, to bringing your own mug to the coffeeshop.  Yet, when thousands of scientists across the globe have implored that we are nearing the earth’s “tipping point” of irreversible climate change and its effects of extreme weather, drought, flooding, sea rise, and destruction of the earth as a habitable climate for living things, we know that we cannot just take baby steps.  Our action and understanding must be widespread and systemic.

Communities for Clean Ports work is port-centric because goods movement is at the core of the human and environmental damage, but it is also at the core of possibilities for change. We need aggressive and immediate policy mandates to not only enforce emissions reductions, but to make room for new technologies, fuels, and an infrastructure that will usher in a clean energy system that will keep our society functioning.