“Energy slaves” don’t look like the workers honored on Labor Day: the lineman restoring your power after a storm, the backhoe operator digging a house foundation, or the nurse changing a patient’s bandages. They symbolize the energy sources that heat and cool the buildings and power the machines that run our society. One energy slave represents the power output from a human working as hard as a slave driver might drive a slave. A strong human working hard all day can put out roughly 100 watts of power, or 1/7 of a horsepower. Working hard 12 hours per day, 6 days per year, 50 weeks per year, a human can produce about 1 million Btu of energy—the amount of energy contained in a mere 8 gallons of gasoline.

From oil alone, 150 energy slaves serve the average person in the US. The electrical line worker drives a truck everywhere; the backhoe makes digging a foundation in flinty soil seem effortless compared to digging by hand in sand; and the nurse uses bandages and medicines made with and from oil, in a hospital heated with oil.

But now the slaves are starting to slip away. World crude oil production peaked in May 2005 and is down 2%—despite record-high oil prices and economic growth that normally translates into increasing use of oil. This world peak and decline has been forecast for over 50 years. When half the recoverable oil in a region is pumped out of the ground, the rate of production starts declining. US oil production peaked in 1971 and has halved since then.

Oil is finite; the permanent decline in world oil production is inevitable. Will we see some slight rebound before the long descent? In either case, we’re not prepared. A 2005 study for the US Department of Energy concluded that to successfully prepare for peak oil, the US needed to begin 20 years before the peak and with an Apollo project level of effort. Yet peak oil seems to have already arrived.

There’s not much that can substitute for oil. There’s a lot of talk about ethanol and biodiesel for vehicles, but their production worldwide can be increased by less than a million barrels per day in the next five years, while demand is expected to increase by more than ten times that much. Natural gas can heat buildings (and even fuel vehicles), but natural gas production itself is years past peak in North America, and increases in imports are unlikely.

In Vermont, we’re especially vulnerable. We have long, cold winters, a rural population dependent on cars, and we use oil to import 95% of our food (and to grow all of it). Vermont has no in-state sources of oil, and the US as a whole (once the world’s largest oil exporter) imports about 2/3 of its oil. As world oil production declines, oil-producing countries will likely use a larger proportion of their remaining production themselves. Oil may become scarcer, faster in Vermont than in the world as a whole.

It’s past time for us as individuals and society to start learning to live with fewer of these energy slaves. The key is to use energy much more efficiently and relocalize our economy, using food, renewable energy, and materials from our own backyards or state rather than from across the globe.

Much of this we know how to do, and some things can be done quickly, like cutting out some trips and take others by bicycle or carpool or public transportation. Some things take more time. David Zuckerman, a farmer and chair of the House Agriculture Committee, estimated that, with a massive effort, it would take a single growing season to replace imported food in Vermont. What would we eat in the meantime, if a hurricane or terrorist attack crimped the flow of oil that transports 95% of our food to us from outside the state?

Some things take even longer. We could save over $450 million dollars at today’s prices in heating expenses, the Douglas administration estimates, by investing $15 million a year in efficiency for 10 years. We could gradually and stably increase our local farmers’ ability to produce food for us by buying 90% local food for all the state employee cafeterias, prisons, and other state institutions, and helping schools and businesses to do the same. We could build out passenger rail and increase bus routes and frequency.

Individuals can grow more of their own food, drive less and bicycle more, heat with sustainably harvested wood, and superinsulate their homes. We also need strong public leadership for relocalization. We have it in agriculture (e.g., Northeast Organic Farmers Association, Rural Vermont, many individual farmers), in business (e.g., members of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, Local First Vermont, the Vermont Alliance of Independent Country Stores, and Renewable Energy Vermont), and in the legislature. Unfortunately, we also have a governor who blocks most attempts to relocalize and increase energy efficiency. Jim Douglas nixed the legislature’s proposal to save Vermonters money on their heating bills and has none of his own. He even exhorts Vermonters to buy local food while not committing most institutions of state government to do so. We need a governor who is serious about relocalizing Vermont and reducing our energy vulnerability.

The human workers honored on Labor Day are vulnerable to the effects of peak oil, as energy prices may double again and many businesses are likely to close in the economy no longer fueled by so many energy slaves. We need robust public policy to protect the most vulnerable and help us to work together to learn to live well with fewer energy slaves.