Transition Culture

18 May 2007

Transition Tales – Introducing Peak Oil into Schools # Session 2.

**Peak Oil Session – Transition Tales.**

[Transition Town Totnes's](http://www.transitiontowns.org/Totnes”TTT”) **Transition Tales** project just did its first workshop with the local secondary school, year 9 students (13-14), which went well. It is part of a 3 session pilot we are doing, this being the middle session about peak oil and the degree of our oil dependency. We began by producing a large bag which contained all kinds of household objects, trainer shoes, hair gel, inner tubes, spoons, and so on, and asked them what all these things have in common. They didn’t get it, the answer being, of course, that they are all made of oil. I then asked them what is the hardest work they have ever done in a single day. Answers ranged from “last Friday, we had English”, to “well, my Mum made me wash up last week”.

I produced a litre bottle of oil, and made the point that a couple of tablespoons of it contained more energy than they could exert in a day, and that their current lives required the equivalent of 50 people in the back garden pedalling frantically on bikes day and night. We then split them into 5 groups and they each went to a table which had a different exercise. Every 15 minutes they moved round to the next table.

**1. The Journey.**

This session was about where does oil come from and what does peak oil mean in practice? What kind of state is the supply we depend on supply in? We had a computer online, logged onto David Strahan’s [Oil Depletion Map](http://www.lastoilshock.com/map”LOS”) and gave them a sheet called Depletion map exercise which asked them 6 questions they could only find out the answers to by roving around the map. This gave a good background and got them thinking about what peak oil means and in particular how vulnerable the UK is becoming.

**2. War and Oil.**

We divided the group into two teams, and invited them debate the question, “the war in Iraq was caused by oil?â€?. Cards with various reasons, such as ‘WMD’, ‘oil’, ‘democracy’ and so on were arranged on the table, and they were invited to rank them in terms of priorities as they saw them.

**3. What You Can Do With It.**

This is the table onto which the contents of the suitcase have been emptied. The card with the instructions on this table read as follows;

>Oil can be used to make a vast array of plastics, glues, paints, varnishes, medicines and other materials, most of which we take from granted in our lives. On this table are many of the things that we looked at earlier. Your task for the next 10 minutes is to find at least one thing in this room that is not made using oil. If you can’t do that, try and think of something at home.

>You will need to think about all the elements and components of the objects you are thinking of.

This led to lively discussions around what was and what wasn’t made of oil… the only three things one group could come up with were “ourselves, hair, and the water in that jug”.

**4. How is Oil Used In Totnes?**

On the table we placed a pile of copies of The Totnes Times and some red marker pens, and also some photocopies of copies of the Totnes Times from the 1930s. In pairs, they were asked to go through the papers and circle any article which involves the use of oil, including adverts. Using the 1940s cuttings offered an insight back to a time when the pressure was to use less, not more, and the contrast between the two was quite illuminating.

**5. Life Beyond Oil.**

The card on this table read “whether we see life beyond oil as a challenge or an opportunity will be down to us. Do we choose to see the move away from our dependence on it as a disaster, or as the opportunity to build something better?” We prepared sheets of flipchart paper with two columns, “What would you look forward to?â€? and “What would you miss?â€?. I’ll post these when they have been written up.

At the end of these we got them into groups and got them to think about tomorrow, where they will be asked to think of news stories that might appear on the local TV news in 2020 in a powered down Totnes. We will film these and try and get them into a YouTube-able format…. .