Micro-Teaching Lesson Plan-M.Ed.

Lesson Plan no: 1

Level: B.Ed. III Year                                                                                                                         Date: 24^th Kartik 2068

Title: Translation equivalence

Objectives:

1.       To define, classify and exemplify translation equivalence

2.       To find out problems in search of Traⁿ  equivalence

3.       To manage the problems of Traⁿ  equivalence

Materials: Hand-out, Teacher’s note

Content: Equivalence in Traⁿ

1. Definition:

·         The extreme possible correspondence between SL text and TL text on various linguistic levels such as morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, idiom and proverbs.

·         emerges during 1950s and 60s (Hatim, 2001:14)

2. Types:

·         Nida (1964)

                                i) Formal Equivalence                     ii) Dynamic Equivalence

·         Catford (1964)

                                i) Textual Equivalence                    ii) Pragmatics Equivalence

·         Newmark (1981)

                                i) Semantic Equivalence                ii) Communicative Equivalence

3. Problems: Krishnaswami says:

“Translation is like a Woman if beautiful, it cannot be faithful and if faithful, it cannot be beautiful.”

                                                                                                                (Cited in Das, 2008, p.1)

Cicero (First century BC) who forwards his viewpoint on word -for-word and sense-for-sense translation has put forward the following words:

“If I tender for word, the result will sound uncouth and if compelled by necessity I alter anything in the order or wording. I shall seem to have departed from the function of a translator.”                             (Cited in Das, 2008, p.37)

·         Lgs are different on lingu. features and cultural feature

·         No sameness betⁿ two lgs cause loss or gain in Traⁿ

eg.          SL: Kathmandu ma dosro Pashupatinath mileko jasto bhan parna thaleko thiyo

                TL: ………………some felt a living Apollo.    (The Wake of the White Tiger: 247)

·         Metaphore

                SL: kalo bhut jasto Madhya raat thiyo

                TL: The midnight was pitch-dark like a ghost.

                                                                                (The Stories of Conflict and War: 110 in Adhikari, 2009)

·         Same words have different meaning in different culture

        When we translate Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s Day” literally may not fit for the country where the summer is unpleasant (Bassnett, 2002.p30). Bhuja for rice is not acceptable in the culture where they prefer ‘bhat ’for the same; and they mean something else by ‘bhuja’.

·         Socio-cultural matrix i.e. culture-bound words

        Gundruk- fermented and dried vegetable

        Dhoti- loin cloth

4. Solution:

·         Transference

·         Notes & Paraphrasing

·         Naturalization

·         Glossary

·         Addition & deletion

5. Conclusion:……………………………..

6. References:

                Adhikari, Bal Ram (2009). Theoretical and Practical Consideration about Aesthetic Approach to Literary Translation,                   30^th Annual Conference of the Linguistic Society of Nepal

                        Baker, Mona (1992). In Other Words: A Course-book on Translation, London: Routledge

                        Das, B.K. (2008) A Handbook of Translation Studies, India: Atlantic Publishers & Distributers

                        Hatim, Basil (2001) Teaching and Researching Translation, London: Pearson Education

                        Newmark, Peter (1988)  A Coursebook of Translation, New York: Prentice Hall

                                                                                                                                                By: Ranjit Kr Singh

                                                                                                                                                M.R.C Tahachal

                                                                                                                                                ranjitks658@gmail.com

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar

For the 1979 film, see The Bell Jar (film). The Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef, with the protagonist's descent into mental illness paralleling Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression. Plath committed suicide a month after its first UK publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, pursuant to the wishes of Plath's husband Ted Hughes and her mother.

Plot summary

Esther Greenwood, a young woman from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, gains a summer internship at a prominent magazine in New York City under editor Jay Cee. At the time of the Rosenbergs' execution, Esther is neither stimulated nor excited by the big city and glamorous culture and lifestyle that girls her age are expected to idolize and emulate. Instead her experiences frighten and disorient her. She appreciates the witty sarcasm and adventurousness of her friend Doreen, but also identifies with the piety of Betsy (dubbed "Pollyanna Cowgirl" by Doreen, because she's from Kansas), a 'goody-goody' sorority girl who always does the right thing. She has a benefactress in Philomena Guinea, a formerly successful fiction writer (based on Olive Higgins Prouty), who will, later during Esther's hospitalization, pay for some of her treatments.

Esther describes in detail several seriocomic incidents that occur during her internship, kicked off by an unfortunate but amusing experience at a banquet for the girls given by the staff of Ladies' Day magazine. She reminisces about her friend Buddy, whom she has dated more or less seriously and who considers himself her de facto fiancé. She also muses about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who are scheduled for execution. She returns to her Massachusetts home in low spirits. During her stay in New York City, she had hoped to return to another scholarly opportunity, a writing course taught by a world-famous author. Upon her return home, her mother immediately tells her she was not accepted for the course. She decides to spend the summer potentially writing a novel, although she feels she doesn't have enough life experience to write convincingly. All of her identity has been centered around doing well academically; she is unsure of what to make of her life once she leaves school, and the choices presented to her (motherhood, as exemplified by the prolific child-bearer and vacuous Dodo Conway, or stereotypical female careers such as stenography) do not appeal to her.

Esther becomes increasingly depressed, and finds herself unable to sleep. Her mother encourages, or perhaps forces, her to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, whom Esther mistrusts because he is attractive and seems to be showing off pictures of his charming family rather than listening to her. He hastily diagnoses her with a mental illness and has her hospitalized. She receives electroconvulsive therapy, improperly administered, and feels she's being electrocuted like the Rosenbergs. When she tells her mother she refuses to go back, her mother smugly and callously announces, "I knew you'd decide to be all right."

Esther's mental state worsens. She describes her depression as a feeling of being trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. She makes several half-hearted attempts at suicide, including swimming far out to sea, before making a serious attempt. She leaves a note that says she is taking a long walk, then crawls into the cellar and swallows almost 50 sleeping pills that have been prescribed for her insomnia. She is discovered under her house after a rather dramatic episode in the newspapers has presumed her kidnapping and death, all taking place over an indeterminate amount of time. She survives and is sent to a different mental hospital, where she meets Dr. Nolan, a female therapist. Along with regular sessions of psychotherapy Esther is given huge amounts of insulin to produce a "reaction," and again receives shock treatments, with Dr. Nolan ensuring that they are properly administered. Esther describes the ECT as beneficial in that it has a sort of antidepressant effect, lifting the metaphorical bell jar in which she has felt trapped and stifled. Her stay at the private institution is funded by her benefactress, Philomena Guinea.

Esther tells Dr. Nolan how she envies the freedom that men have, but as a woman, worries about getting pregnant. Dr. Nolan refers her to a doctor who fits her for a diaphragm. Esther now feels free from her fears about the consequences of sex. She feels free from previous pressures to get married, potentially to the wrong man. Under Dr. Nolan, Esther improves and various life-changing events help her regain her sanity. The novel ends with her entering the room for her interview which will decide whether she can leave the hospital.

Parallels of Plath's life to the novel

The book contains many references to real people and events in Plath's life. Plath's real-life magazine scholarship was at Mademoiselle magazine beginning in 1953.^[2] Furthermore, Philomena Guinea is based on Plath's own patron, Olive Higgins Prouty, author of Stella Dallas and Now, Voyager, who funded Plath's scholarship to study at Smith College. Plath was rejected from a Harvard course taught by Frank O'Connor.^[3] Dr. Nolan is thought to be based on Plath's own therapist, Ruth Beuscher, whom she continued seeing into adulthood. A good portion of this part of the novel closely resembles the experiences chronicled by Mary Jane Ward in her autobiographical novel The Snake Pit; Plath later stated that she'd seen reviews of The Snake Pit and believed the public wanted to see "mental health stuff," so she deliberately based details of Esther's hospitalization on the procedures and methods outlined in Ward's book. Plath was a patient at McLean Hospital, an upscale facility which resembled the "snake pit" much less than certain wards in Metropolitan State Hospital, which may have been where Mary Jane Ward was actually hospitalized.

In a 2006 interview, Joanne Greenberg revealed that she had been interviewed in 1986 by one of the women who had worked on Mademoiselle with Plath in the college guest editors group. The woman claimed that Plath had put so many details of the students' real lives into The Bell Jar that "they could never look at each other again", and that it had caused the breakup of her marriage and possibly others.^[4][5]

Film adaptations

Larry Peerce's The Bell Jar (1979) starred Marilyn Hassett as Esther Greenwood, the protagonist and featured the tagline: "Sometimes just being a woman is an act of courage." After the movie came out, Jane Anderson claimed she was portrayed as the character "Joan" in the movie and filed a lawsuit. She felt that her character was ill-represented, which resulted in her subsequent emotional trauma. In 2008 Plum Pictures announced plans for a Hollywood version of the novel, the movie to be written by playwright and screenwriter Tristine Skyler and Julia Stiles to star as the novel's protagonist^[6], with Rose McGowan as Doreen. As of January 2011, the film remains in development.^[7]

ESL/EFL in Multilingual Classroom

A multilingual class is a class where the learners speak a variety of first languages. Multilingual classes can be compared to monolingual ones, where all the learners speak the same first language.

Example
Multilingual classes are typically found where learners have travelled from other countries to learn a language, e.g. summer schools.

In the classroom
In a multilingual class there can be much more use of the target language, because it will be the only common language between the learners, who will use it for their normal interactions both in and out of class. Learner behaviour and cultures can be very different, which may create problems but can be used as a focus of comparison and discussion.

Americans speak more than 150 languages at home, from Bengali to Tatar to Swahili. More people speak Spanish in the United  States than in Spain.

But in America's all-English classrooms, what's a teacher do when faced with students for whom English is a foreign language?

Jesi Holschbach, a high school science teacher in New York City, worries. Many of her students are native Spanish speakers. She has Spanish-speaking tutors in the classroom to help, but she says her students don't just need to understand the concept. In order to pass their classes in New York, they need to be able to explain it in English.

"My tutors try to explain a concept and continue to get frustrated until they explain the topic in Spanish. Then tell me that the students understand the material but they cannot convey their understanding to me," Holschbach says. "But they need to complete state exams in English."

She says her students are often tripped up "by words that many English speakers take for granted." For example, she says, "when the state exam asks what the benefit of a particular thing is and students answer with a disadvantage."

Tammy Conard-Salvo, the head of Purdue University's Writing Center, says that even students who speak English with a good degree of fluency can get tripped up by idiomatic phrases like "tripped up." Idioms are hard for native-English-speaking teachers to avoid, she says: "One reason they are idiomatic is because they are so ingrained." But phrases like "miss the boat" and "back to back" which mean something different than the words mean on their own, can be baffling for a student who didn't grow up speaking English.

The most important thing, she says, is to gives students space and time to ask questions without being embarrassed. Teachers also need to be good judges of body language. "Students won't tell you when they're confused," she says, "because they're too embarrassed to say they don't understand it."

Holschbach says she pairs up her Spanish-speaking students, and works with them to express their ideas creatively. They portray their knowledge in pictures, or through their tutors.

The students who don't understand Spanish don't always like to hear it spoken. "The English-only speaking students feel as though when the other students speak Spanish, they are talking about them." Holschbach says. "Then the English-speaking students start fights with the Spanish-speaking students."

Even so, Holschbach says teaching to a mixed-language audience changes her teaching in a good way. "I present new vocabulary with pictures to help the students," she says. "I do not necessarily slow down, and the things I do also benefit English-speaking students."

Conard-Salvo encourages teachers to see multi-lingual classrooms as an opportunity.

"A lot of times there's that expectation that students learn English and become acclimated to American culture," she says, "when we could be a lot more open minded and looking to what we can learn from students from other backgrounds."

______________________________

Tips for Teaching Conversation in the Multilingual ESL Classroom

Cara Pulick

Introduction

Leaving aside completely the matter of potential cultural conflicts and misunderstandings, teaching conversation in the multilingual classroom presents challenges beyond those faced in the monolingual classroom. The difficulties inherent in a conversational ESL class--namely, speaking and listening in another language--are multiplied when the participants in those conversations are neither native speakers nor from the same linguistic background. Problems ranging from grammatical mistakes to vocabulary limitations to, perhaps most troublesome, pronunciation issues complicate the process of conversing in a foreign language.

From a classroom management standpoint, however, a bigger challenge is when such obstacles turn to frustration and students from differing linguistic backgrounds begin to tune each other out or, worse, exhibit irritation. Fortunately, when handled well, a multilingual classroom is a great place for students to try out their real-world conversation skills. If they can make themselves understood not only to ESL teachers and to others linguistically like themselves, but also to the world at large, then they are communicating.

The following are some suggestions for increasing cross-cultural student-to-student engagement and understanding in the ESL classroom.

Mix It Up

• Incorporate as many communicative activities as you can into your lesson plans--role plays, Q&A sessions, information-gap exercises, realistic problem-solving tasks--and group students from distinct linguistic backgrounds together.

Keep the Student on Their Toes

• After a student answers a question, tells a story, or makes a sentence, throw a mini listening pop quiz. Choose a student from a different linguistic background to see if he understood the original student's comments. Ask him to rephrase, repeat or summarize what he heard. This is a good double-check on both speaker and listener.
• Play linguistic Hot Potato in the classroom: If a student asks you a question, divert the question back out to the class to see if another student can provide an answer or explain it to the others. In this way, students won't tune out while the others are talking and they have yet another chance to interact with each other.

Let the Students do the Work

• At the beginning or end of class or after a comprehension exercise, have students ask each other questions about the material covered. That will get them used to listening to each other's accents, not just to yours. Plus it provides an oft-needed review of the frequent problem of question formation in English.
• Try not to echo your students or summarize their comments.If you "help out" students with pronunciation difficulties in this way, the others will feel free to ignore them and wait for you to repeat it more clearly.

Work on Everyone's Difficulties

• If you are doing a pronunciation exercise or discussing a false cognate for one linguistic group follow it up with one for another group. This will help teach the students to be patient with each other's linguistic limitations, as they learn that while the problems may not be the same for each group, each group has its own problems.

Explain It to the Students

• Emphasize that communicating effectively means not only speaking so that a teacher can understand, but speaking so that everyone can understand. Students who speak the same language often understand each other not because they speak correctly but because they make the same mistakes. If you can do so tactfully, you can use a multilingual conversational exercise to point out the difference between what a student thinks he is saying and what his classmates actually hear.
• As students tend to forget, communication also means accurate listening, not just to the video or to native speakers, but to each other as well. For those students who think it is pointless or even detrimental to listen to other non-native speakers, remind them that in today's global society, the chances are that they will find themselves conversing, doing business, or otherwise interacting in English with other non-native speakers.

Have Fun

• One of the best aspects of multi-lingual classrooms is that the widely varying cultural, linguistic and personal backgrounds of the students provide a constant source of interesting conversational material. Use this to your advantage by creating activities where students have to speak--and actively listen--to each other describe how things work in their culture or country

There are two broad categories of situations in which non-native English speakers may learn English. Multi-lingual classes are with students from various nationalities normally in a country where English is the native language. This may be considered as teaching ?English as a Second Language (ESL). Monolingual classes are usually in the students? home country and this context is ?English as a Foreign Language? (EFL). In multi-lingual classes the students are living in an English speaking country and are exposed to the language, either for a limited period of time or permanently. In class they must use English to communicate even if there are some other students with the same native language (L1). The teacher will probably ask them to sit separately, and even if he/she speaks their native language it will not be used in class because the teacher?s job ?is to serve as a model of fairness and neutrality and only English is the surest way to achieve this in a multilingual classroom? (1). In multi-lingual groups students are likely to have a higher intrinsic motivation (1a) which the teacher should take into account in his approach and lesson planning. Task based activities can involve extra-classroom activities in ESL teaching e.g. interviewing , and it is said that a teacher can ?focus more intensively on accuracy? (1) in speaking because there are opportunities for fluency practice outside the classroom. Culturally related activities can be used to great advantage in multi-lingual classes. Rosemary Richey (2) feels that intercultural training is not just an added ?extra? in Business English but that it is essential to ?genuinely communicate in a real life business setting?. The teacher could find difficulty in multi-lingual classes because students from different cultures will have different language problems and learning styles. The Japanese have been classified as ?reflective learners? whereas Brazilian students are ?impulsive learners? (1). In a monolingual class, students could have a low intrinsic motivation (1). They find themselves in classes of 30 ? 50 at university and have to pass an examination or study English as part of a compulsory curriculum. Alternatively a high extrinsic motivation in certain situations e.g. businessmen with promotion prospects in smaller classes, can give good results (1). The classroom activities in monolingual groups can be related to the students? culture and will need to have as much student talking time as possible since there is otherwise very little opportunity to speak English. It is very important to aim the activity at the students? level otherwise they will resort to the use of L1 either through boredom or because they are out of their depth. At a presentation on English Language Teaching in Japan in 2004, the conclusion reached was that ?properly trained Japanese English teachers will more often do a better job ? (3) than the EFL teachers in Japanese High Schools. In the future, as globalization continues, cultural awareness will become increasingly more important. This should be taken into greater consideration in the English Language teaching field especially regarding monolingual and multi-lingual groups. 

You can make it easier for students to use English by:

• Describing your rationale clearly and getting their support from the beginning,

• Deciding where you place yourself in the classroom. The groups nearest you are more likely to use English than those further away. So take an interest in what each group is doing and move around so that groups have less chance of switching back to their own language.

• Monitoring more overtly: for example, by having a pen and paper in your hand.

• Making the work task-oriented. If the final product has to be in English, whether it is a story, a film review or just answering comprehension questions, a greater use of English is ensured.

• Keeping speaking activities short until the students have more confidence and increased fluency. It is better to have a shorter time than is strictly necessary than having time to spare at the end of group work.

• Making sure that the students have the English to do what you ask. You might find it helpful to start off with very structured activities after you have taught some essential words and expressions so students are not at a loss for words.

• Starting with “open” pair work (a dialogue in front of the class) as a model for the “closed” pair work (every pair working simultaneously).

• Assigning roles. If everyone knows what he or she must do, they are more likely to do it in English. You might consider giving someone the role of “language monitor” - someone to make sure English is used in the group – or “evaluator” - someone who will report back on the of the group overall, including their use of English and of their mother tongue.

Finally, don’t be too concerned if your students resort to their mother tongue in group work or pair work activities. Sometimes it saves time in the long run, as when they are clarifying instructions before they begin the task. It is worth remembering that if you are doing group work as an alternative to whole class work, then even if only 2 people are using English simultaneously you have doubled the amount of student talk for that time.

FROM ___GOOGLE

MOTHER FIGURE

Housewife Lucy has the difficult job of looking after the children alone whilst her husband is away. This job of looking after the children has taken over her life; so much so that she never leaves the house and doesn't even have the time to change out of her pyjamas. Concerned neighbour Rosemary decides to come around to check on Lucy and to give her the number of her husband Harry who has been trying to call her for a while, and is shocked to find Lucy rushing around trying to look after the children and revealing that she doesn't listen to bells. Rosemary enlists the help of her husband Terry to discover what is wrong with Lucy. Terry is a chauvinist with no respect for Rosemary, and this attitude is clear in the way he speaks to both Lucy and Rosemary. However Lucy, in her permanent state of the "mother", treats the pair in the only way she knows how, as children. This approach quickly puts Terry in his place and puts an end to the petty squabbles between Rosemary and Terry, and the end result is the pair leaving hand in hand (if rather reluctantly).

ENERGY CRISIS

An energy crisis is any great bottleneck (or price rise) in the supply of energy resources to an economy. In popular literature though, it often refers to one of the energy sources used at a certain time and place, particularly those that supply national electricity grids or serve as fuel for vehicles. There has been an enormous increase in the global demand for energy in recent years as a result of industrial development and population growth. Supply of energy is, therefore, far less than the actual demand.

Causes

Market failure is possible when monopoly manipulation of markets occurs. A crisis can develop due to industrial actions like union organized strikes and government embargoes. The cause may be over-consumption, aging infrastructure, choke point disruption or bottlenecks at oil refineries and port facilities that restrict fuel supply. An emergency may emerge during unusually cold winters due to increased consumption of energy.

Pipeline failures and other accidents may cause minor interruptions to energy supplies. A crisis could possibly emerge after infrastructure damage from severe weather. Attacks by terrorists or militia on important infrastructure are a possible problem for energy consumers, with a successful strike on a Middle East facility potentially causing global shortages. Political events, for example, when governments change due to regime change, monarchy collapse, military occupation, and coup may disrupt oil and gas production and create shortages.

 Historical crises

• 1970s energy crisis - caused by the peaking of oil production in major industrial nations (Germany, United States, Canada, etc.) and embargoes from other producers

·         1973 oil crisis - caused by an OPEC oil export embargo by many of the major Arab oil-producing states, in response to Western support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War

·         1979 oil crisis - caused by the Iranian Revolution

• 1990 oil price shock - caused by the Gulf War
• The 2000–2001 California electricity crisis - Caused by market manipulation by Enron and failed deregulation; resulted in multiple large-scale power outages
• Fuel protests in the United Kingdom in 2000 were caused by a rise in the price of crude oil combined with already relatively high taxation on road fuel in the UK.
• North American natural gas crisis
• 2004 Argentine energy crisis
• North Korea has had energy shortages for many years.
• Zimbabwe has experienced a shortage of energy supplies for many years due to financial mismanagement.
• Political riots occurring during the 2007 Burmese anti-government protests were sparked by rising energy prices.

Emerging shortages

Kuwait's Al Burqan Oil Field, the world's second largest oil field, will be depleted within 40 years.

Crises that exist as of 2008 include:

• 2000s energy crisis - Since 2003, a rise in prices caused by continued global increases in petroleum demand coupled with production stagnation, the falling value of the U.S. dollar, and a myriad of other secondary causes.
• 2008 Central Asia energy crisis, caused by abnormally cold temperatures and low water levels in an area dependent on hydroelectric power. At the same time the South African President was appeasing fears of a prolonged electricity crisis in South Africa.
• In February 2008 the President of Pakistan announced plans to tackle energy shortages that were reaching crisis stage, despite having significant hydrocarbon reserves,. In April 2010 Pakistan government announced the Pakistan national energy policy, which extended the official weekend and banned neon lights in response to a growing electricity shortage.
• South African electrical crisis. The South African crisis, which may last to 2012, led to large price rises for platinum in February 2008 and reduced gold production.
• China experienced severe energy shortages towards the end of 2005 and again in early 2008. During the latter crisis they suffered severe damage to power networks along with diesel and coal shortages. Supplies of electricity in Guangdong province, the manufacturing hub of China, are predicted to fall short by an estimated 10 GW.
• It has been predicted that in the coming years after 2009 that the United Kingdom will suffer an energy crisis due to its commitments to reduce coal fired power stations, its politicians' unwillingness to set up new nuclear power stations to replaces those that will be de-commissioned in a few years (even though they will not be running in time to stop a full blown crisis) and unreliable sources and sources that are running out of oil and gas. It is therefore predicted that the UK may have regular blackouts like South Africa.

Social and economic effects

The macroeconomic implications of a supply shock-induced energy crisis are large, because energy is the resource used to exploit all other resources. When energy markets fail, an energy shortage develops. Electricity consumers may experience intentionally engineered rolling blackouts during periods of insufficient supply or unexpected power outages, regardless of the cause.

Industrialized nations are dependent on oil, and efforts to restrict the supply of oil would have an adverse effect on the economies of oil producers. For the consumer, the price of natural gas, gasoline (petrol) and diesel for cars and other vehicles rises. An early response from stakeholders is the call for reports, investigations and commissions into the price of fuels. There are also movements towards the development of more sustainable urban infrastructure.

In 2006, survey respondents in the United States were willing to pay more for a plug-in hybrid car

In the market, new technology and energy efficiency measures become desirable for consumers seeking to decrease transport costs. Examples include:

• In 1980 Briggs & Stratton developed the first gasoline hybrid electric automobile; also are appearing plug-in hybrids.
• the growth of advanced biofuels.
• innovations like the Dahon, a folding bicycle
• modernized and electrifying passenger transport
• Railway electrification systems and new engines such as the Ganz-Mavag locomotive
• variable compression ratio for vehicles

Other responses include the development of unconventional oil sources such as synthetic fuel from places like the Athabasca Oil Sands, more renewable energy commercialization and use of alternative propulsion. There may be a Relocation trend towards local foods and possibly microgeneration, solar thermal collectors and other green energy sources.

Tourism trends and gas-guzzler ownership varies with fuel costs. Energy shortages can influence public opinion on subjects from nuclear power plants to electric blankets. Building construction techniques—improved insulation, reflective roofs, thermally efficient windows, etc.—change to reduce heating costs.

Crisis management

An electricity shortage is felt most by those who depend on electricity for heating, cooking, and water supply. In these circumstances, a sustained energy crisis may become a humanitarian crisis.

If an energy shortage is prolonged a crisis management phase is enforced by authorities. Energy audits may be conducted to monitor usage. Various curfews with the intention of increasing energy conservation may be initiated to reduce consumption. To conserve power during the Central Asia energy crisis, authorities in Tajikistan ordered bars and cafes to operate by candlelight. Warnings issued that peak demand power supply might not be sustained.

In the worst kind of energy crisis energy rationing and fuel rationing may be incurred. Panic buying may beset outlets as awareness of shortages spread. Facilities close down to save on heating oil; and factories cut production and lay off workers. The risk of stagflation increases.

Mitigation of an energy crisis

The Hirsch report made clear that an energy crisis is best averted by preparation. In 2008, solutions such as the Pickens Plan and the satirical in origin Paris Hilton energy plan suggest the growing public consciousness of the importance of mitigation.

Energy policy may be reformed leading to greater energy intensity, for example in Iran with the 2007 Gas Rationing Plan in Iran, Canada and the National Energy Program and in the USA with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Another mitigation measure is the setup of a cache of secure fuel reserves like the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in case of national emergency. Chinese energy policy includes specific targets within their 5 year plans.

Andrew McKillop has been a proponent of a contract and converge model or capping scheme, to mitigate both emissions of greenhouse gases and a peak oil crisis. The imposition of a carbon tax would have mitigating effects on an oil crisis. Oil Depletion Protocol has been developed by Richard Heinberg to implement a powerdown during a peak oil crisis. While many sustainable development and energy policy organisations have advocated reforms to energy development from the 1970s, some cater to a specific crisis in energy supply including Energy-Questand the International Association for Energy Economics. The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas examine the timing and likely effects of peak oil.

Ecologist William Rees believes that

“

To avoid a serious energy crisis in coming decades, citizens in the industrial countries should actually be urging their governments to come to international agreement on a persistent, orderly, predictable, and steepening series of oil and natural gas price hikes over the next two decades.

”

Due to a lack of political viability on the issue, government mandated fuel prices hikes are unlikely and the unresolved dilemma of fossil fuel dependence is becoming a wicked problem. A global soft energy path seems improbable, due to the rebound effect. Conclusions that the world is heading towards an unprecedented large and potentially devastating global energy crisis due to a decline in the availability of cheap oil lead to calls for a decreasing dependency on fossil fuel.

Other ideas concentrate on design and development of improved, energy-efficient urban infrastructure in developing nations. Government funding for alternative energy is more likely to increase during an energy crisis, so too are incentives for oil exploration. For example funding for research into inertial confinement fusion technology increased during 1970s.

Energy economists theorize that declining energy availability will result in a higher price for energy and that this will attract investment to procure new sources of energy that may be substituted. However as Michael Lardelli and others have pointed out, this hypothesis does not include the concept of Energy Returned on Energy Invested, which is important for example, when considering biofuels as an alternative to conventional energy supplies. The theory also assumes that capital investment in the substitution sector will be available even if a financial downturn caused by higher energy prices happens.Nor does the theory account for the fact that the most easily obtainable energy is extracted from reserves first because it provides the most profit leaving the smaller, harder to reach and more expensive to produce reserves.

Future and alternative energy sources

In response to the petroleum crisis, the principles of green energy and sustainable living movements gain popularity. This has led to increasing interest in alternate power/fuel research such as fuel cell technology, liquid nitrogen economy, hydrogen fuel, methanol, biodiesel, Karrick process, solar energy, artificial photosynthesis, geothermal energy, Space-based solar power, tidal energy, wave power, and wind energy, and fusion power. To date, only hydroelectricity and nuclear power have been significant alternatives to fossil fuel.

Hydrogen gas is currently produced at a net energy loss from natural gas, which is also experiencing declining production in North America and elsewhere. When not produced from natural gas, hydrogen still needs another source of energy to create it, also at a loss during the process. This has led to hydrogen being regarded as a 'carrier' of energy, like electricity, rather than a 'source'. The unproven dehydrogenating process has also been suggested for the use water as an energy source.

Efficiency mechanisms such as Negawatt power can encourage significantly more effective use of current generating capacity. It is a term used to describe the trading of increased efficiency, using consumption efficiency to increase available market supply rather than by increasing plant generation capacity. As such, it is a demand-side as opposed to a supply-side measure.

Predictions

Although technology has made oil extraction more efficient, the world is having to struggle to provide oil by using increasingly costly and less productive methods such as deep sea drilling, and developing environmentally sensitive areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The world's population continues to grow at a quarter of a million people per day, increasing the consumption of energy. Although far less from people in developing countries, especially USA, the per capita energy consumption of China, India and other developing nations continues to increase as the people living in these countries adopt more energy intensive lifestyles. At present a small part of the world's population consumes a large part of its resources, with the United States and its population of 300 million people consuming far more oil than China with its population of 1.3 billion people.

William Catton has emphasised the link between population size and energy supply, concluding

“

The faster the present generation draws down the fossil energy legacy upon which persistently exuberant lifestyles now depend, the less opportunity posterity will have to live in anything like the same way or the same numbers. Yet most contemporary political proposals for solving problems of economic stagnation or inequity amount to plans for speeding up the rate of drawdown of non-renewable resources.

”

David Pimentel professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, has called for massive reduction in world populations to avoid a permanent global energy crisis. The implication is that cheap oil has created a human overshoot beyond Earth's carrying capacity, which inevitably led to an energy crisis.
For nearly 60 years the US dependence on imported oil has grown significantly.

Matthew Simmons and Julian Darley amongst others, have examined the economic effects of an energy crisis. Historian, and sociologist Franz Schurmann links an energy crisis with a deflating American dollar. He has stated that

“

If a dollar free-fall should take place, Americans will confront an energy crisis that will make the October 1973 oil shortage seem a mild nuisance.

”

According to Christopher Falvin, geopolitical factors have made the current fossil fuel-based energy system a risk management issue that undermines global security.^{[citation needed]} As the major source of greenhouse gas emissions that accumulate in the atmosphere, fossil fuel energy is increasingly viewed as socially irresponsible. Joseph Tainter, an expert on societal collapse and energy supply, draws attention to the complexity of modern society and our ability to problem solve the wider issue of environmental degradation.

National population suffering from undernourishment as percentage.

Agriculture

According to Kenneth S. Deffeyes, agricultural production depends heavily on hydrocarbons for energy, in the form of:

• Petroleum to power machinery and transport goods to market
• Natural gas to produce fertilizer and sometimes to power irrigation

Between the late 1940s and early 1980s, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. Energy for the Green Revolution was provided almost always by fossil fuels.^{[citation needed]} The 20th century population explosion is strongly correlated with the discovery and extraction of hydrocarbons.

The decision to develop a biofuel industry through subsidies and tariffs in the USA increased food costs globally. Lester R. Brown states that by converting grains into fuel for cars

“

..the world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soyabean prices climb to all-time highs,

”

World power usage, 1965–2005

Catastrophe

Some experts including Howard Odum and David Holmgren have used the term energy descent to describe a post-peak oil period of transition. Ron Swenson has described a looming peak oil crisis as a calamity unparalleled in human history. The peaking of world hydrocarbon production, known as peak oil may test Malthus critics. Michael C. Ruppert has discussed energy crises in relation to the petrodollar, oil imperialism and police states.