World Population Awareness

Resource Depletion is a Bigger Threat Than Climate Change

James Stafford of Oilprice.com interviews energy specialist Dr. Tom Murphy, an associate professor of physics at the University of California, who runs the popular energy blog Do the Math which takes an astrophysicist's-eye view of societal issues relating to energy production, climate change, and economic growth.

Tom Murphy had previously indicated that no renewable energy source can replace fossil fuels on its own. However solar power is still cheap at 2-3 times the cost of fossil fuel energy, abundance is unquestionable, and manufacturing is not inordinately caustic. Murphy himself has panels on his roof which feed batteries. Wind and next-generation nuclear also deserve mention as potential large-scale sources. Yet none of these help directly with the liquid fuels shortage.

While Bill Gates has stated that innovation in energy can take 50-60 years to take effect, Murphy applauds any effort that takes our energy challenge seriously, and generates ideas. If nothing else, it raises awareness about our predicament. But there is the problem with the tendency in our technofix culture to think we have "loads of viable solutions in the hopper. Many of the ideas are just batty."

Murphy is particularly interested in the promising development of an artificial photosynthesis technology which would provide a liquid fuel that can support personal and commercial transportation on land, sea, and air with minimal changes to infrastructure. But these may rely on the appropriate catalysts which just might not be found.

Climate change: Murphy thinks that resource depletion trumps climate change, because he thinks that resource depletion has the potential to effect far more people on a far shorter timescale with far greater certainty. Since our economic model is based on growth, we are on a collision course with nature. When that growth cannot continue, the ramifications can be sudden and severe. "So my focus is more on averting the chaos of economic/resource/agriculture/distribution collapse, which stands to wipe out much of what we have accomplished in the fossil fuel age," he said. "To the extent that climate change and resource limits are both served by a deliberate and aggressive transition away from fossil fuels, I see a natural alliance."

Shale gas: Murphy says that the sentiment that "our problems are solved" is based on a very short history of tapping low-hanging shale-gas fruit. While shale gas will contribute to our net energy demands in an unanticipated way, anticipating large amounts is risky; natural gas is not a direct answer to a liquid fuels shortage; the associated exuberance can stifle the imperative that we have an all-hands-on-deck response to the looming challenges.

Biofuels: Murphy says that the scale of our fossil fuel use prohibits replacement by biofuels at a substantial level. The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is low. Harvests have to depend on increasingly erratic weather. Algae is the most promising because it can be grown and moved about as a liquid medium in sealed tubes, but algae has problems with bio-sludge, the algae contracting disease, and the fact that we have not yet found/created a viable hydrocarbon-excreting algae.

Nuclear: Murphy does not see Fukushima as a reason to abandon nuclear. While it has its problems, it is one of the few things we know how to do that can scale. Conventional nuclear faces limited resources, but thorium is promising. However, nuclear development will take time, which is not much help in a near-term crisis. Also, nuclear is yet another technique to create electricity. We need liquid fuels.

Keystone XL Pipeline: Murphy says that Canada produces about 5% of U.S. demand. Even if this were increased by current ambitious plans, it would only amount to half of our current oil imports. But "how much oil will Canada sell to the U.S.? How much will China pay for it? How much will Canada decide to keep for themselves? It's not a crystal clear win."

Technology will fix it: Murphy says "I worry about the strength and pervasiveness of faith in science and technology to fix our problems." ... We should acknowledge that once our inheritance is spent, we may not live like the kings we want to be." "Most physicists I meet in departments around the country are not aware of peak oil and associated challenges. Hardly anyone I meet is working on the problem. No one (i.e., funding) has told us this is a real problem that deserves our full attention." ... "Most ideas on the table provide electricity, which does not address our most critical need." ... "But let's also prepare a plan B that may be less about techno-fixes and more about behaviors and attitudes."

Batteries: Murphy says "Making large-scale storage more practical resolves the single-biggest technical barrier to widespread solar and wind deployment." He is sceptical about giant grids and more attracted to resilient local solutions. "On a moderately ambitious scale, a continental grid will reduce the need for storage, but it will not eliminate it. We still benefit from super-sized batteries."

Improving efficiency: "Efforts to improve efficiencies of the big stuff like power plants have been continuous. And we have seen improvements at the level of 1% per year." .. " I think incremental efficiency improvement does not have nearly enough bite to 'solve' our problem." ... "I have found behavioural modification to be far more effective, achieving factors of 2, 3, 5, etc. in short order without grossly changing lifestyles."

Space-based solar plants: "Why make solar power even more expensive with exorbitant launch costs (which only increases as energy costs increase), placing the equipment in an unserviceable, hostile space environment (cosmic rays, debris) while only gaining a factor of five in night/weather avoidance?"

Smart grids: "I'd sooner have smart people than a smart grid, deciding that it's in our collective interest to scale back energy use at a personal level." "They may be irked that they lose control over when the laundry decides to start - possibly resulting in clothes smelling of mildew, or that they are not present to fold clothes at 2 AM when the dryer is finished. Loss of control may not play well."

Cold Fusion: "This appears to be outside the domain of known physics."

Rock phospate fertilizer and resulting food shortages: Murphy says: "How about this solution: one billion people on Earth would obviate many of our problems. Any takers? Any acceptable path to this state? The original question does remind us that our problems are numerous. It is no surprise that the phenomenal surge in population and living standards/expectations in the last few hundred years - both a direct consequence of exploiting our fossil fuel inheritance - should be exposing fault lines every which way. Aquifers, soil, forests, fisheries, coral, ice pack, and species counts are in decline. The very simple answer staring us in the face, yet somehow unthinkable, is to consume far fewer resources and aim to reduce population. Hopefully we can do this in a more controlled way than nature may enforce if we ignore the myriad warnings. This 'solution' will no doubt offend many, but just because we want to continue growth does not mean we can. We need to take control of our destiny, and that starts with us as individuals. Decide to reduce; mentally abandon the growth paradigm."

Investment in green technologies: "Plenty of people are waiting to cash in on green energy, and investment begins to flourish when energy prices soar. But as soon as high energy prices trigger recession, demand flags, prices crash, and the volatility wipes out many green efforts. A year or two of high prices is simply not long enough for a transformation, which takes decades to accomplish." "Those high prices hurt large segments of the (conventional) economy and self-generate volatility. In principle, governments could "artificially" keep energy prices high enough to maintain the impetus for developing alternatives, pumping the revenue into a national alternative energy infrastructure." But the public wouldn't like it. We need "education about the challenges we face - including a sober confrontation of the fact that failure is a likely result of our not bucking up to the challenge."

Peak oil: "The simple observation that a peak in global discovery in the 1960's must be followed by a peak in production some decades later is unassailable." "I would not at all be surprised if a decline makes itself clear by the end of this decade." But "volatility, deliberate withholding, recession, unemployment, wars, etc. can stir in enough complexity to hide the physical truth from us for years."

On the Use and Misuse of the Concept of Sustainability

by Ed Barry and William Rees at the 8th International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic, and Social Sustainability.

The current scale of human economic activity on Earth is already excessive; the human enterprise is in a state of unsustainable 'overshoot.' By this we mean that the consumption and dissipation of energy and material resources exceed the regenerative and assimilative capacity of supportive ecosystems.

Overshoot is seen in of the degradation of resource ecosystems such as marine fisheries and tropical rain forests and the depletion of non-renewable resources such as oil and minerals and in the gross pollution of major ecosystems and the global commons such as ocean anoxic zones and the accumulation of atmospheric green-house gases. Other ways of looking at overshoot involves 1. comparing GDP with evaluation of natural capital stocks and pollution damage costs or 2. ecological footprint analysis, which compares human demand for bio-capacity (ecosystem services) with sustainably available supply. The aggregate human eco-footprint is already approximately 50% larger than the available bio-capacity while demand is increasing and supply is in decline.

We must eliminate overshoot as a prerequisite to preserving social justice, creating intergenerational equity and securing a future for global civilization. All nations must integrate assessments of their renewable, replenishable and non-renewable 'resources' into their systems of national accounts for policy and management purposes. Resource Sustainability Evaluation and Reporting (SER) must be adopted by national governments and supported by international institutions. We must maintain sufficient supplies of natural capital per capita to ensure an adequate flow of 'natural income' (consumption) and life-support services indefinitely into the future.

If populations are increasing, either natural capital stocks must also increase or average quality of life will decline. All sustainability assessment and corrective policies must include population numbers and growth, our socially-constructed consumer life-styles, and gross social inequity. For example, empowering women and expanding access to family planning services, essential to preventing unwanted pregnancies and achieving sustainability, must be part of the global sustainable development dialogs and solution.

Technological optimism and techno-fixes do not provide viable solutions to the challenge of global resource overshoot. History has shown us that technological gains stimulate economic growth and enable further exploitation of resources rather than induce conservation. "Technology advancement" fools us into thinking humanity can deploy to continue economic growth, and thus improve overall global prosperity.

"Sustainable economic growth" is an oxymoron. Rising incomes have stimulated rising material consumption despite (or because of) technological advances, which only exacerbates the situation.

"Sustainable development" can be sustainable if development is not equated with growth. 'Development' means 'getting better' whereas growth means 'getting bigger'. You can have development without growth but not growth without development. Indicators of development include improving opportunities for personal development, falling unemployment rates, decreasing poverty, greater income security, a narrowing income gap (greater social equity), falling rates of alcohol and drug addiction, improving mental health indicators, etc. Looking at these indicators, the considerable GDP growth of the past few decades in the US, Canada and other rich countries has been offset by regressive de-development.

The term "Sustainable city;" is meaningless as currently employed. Even an ideal city -with minimal auto use, exemplary public transit, renewable energy supplies and simple life-styles - will eventually succumb to climate change, rising prices, resource scarcity, civil unrest and geopolitical instability.

Unsustainability is a collective problem demanding collective solutions and therefore an unprecedented level of international cooperation in the implementation of difficult policy choices for sustainability.

The mantra "Sustainable growth in businesses, jobs, and the economy;" ignores the reality that resource goods and services are required for all human societal and economic activity, and that the Earth's capacity to supply these resources is finite.

The human enterprise is a growing sub-system of a non-growing finite ecosphere. Any diversion of energy and material resources to maintain and grow more humans and their 'furniture' is irreversibly unavailable to non-human species (what we get, they don't).

"Shifting to a knowledge-based or service-based economy will reduce environmental impacts" is patently untrue. 'Knowledge-based economy' means an economy driven by high-end services such as engineering, information technology, financial services, etc. But high-end service jobs pay much higher incomes than employment in the low-end material economy, enabling participants to have bigger houses, cars, flat-screen TVs and generally consume more, with a much larger per capita ecological footprint than workers in the basic economy.

In addition, shifting to a knowledge/service-based economy is invariably accompanied by the migration of manufacturing to low-wage developing countries that generally have lower environmental standards and which will then sell much of their manufacturing output to wealthier consumer societies, increasing the total volume of consumption.

Food for 9 Billion: Turning the Population Tide in the Philippines

This story also appeared on PBS NEWSHOUR. A related story can be found on American Public Media's Marketplace.

Fishing villages near the Danajon Double Barrier Reef off of Bohol Island in the southern Philippines are embracing birth control for the first time, not just as a means to plan their families but as a path to long-term food security, ensuring that future generations enjoy the same abundance of fish. The area is one of the richest marine biodiversity hot spots in the world. More than a million people depend on these fishing grounds for their main source of protein and livelihoods. As the population of this area has nearly tripled in the last three decades, the effect on the reef has been devastating.

Illegal fishing has become rampant. Many use dynamite or cyanide, indiscriminately killing everything within their reach.

The shift to smaller families in the rural fishing village Humayhumay is already paying dividends. Fishermen have created a marine preserve to help revive fish stocks. With smaller families, thinking about future generations is a luxury fishermen can afford.

Every year the Philippines, now with 100 million people, adds about 2 million more mouths to feed and isn't expected to stabilize its population until 2080, at 200 million. The country is already beyond its carrying capacity.

Jason Bostero: Family planning is helpful because if you control the number of your children, you don't need as many fish to support your family. If you have many children, it's difficult to support them." .. "My income is just right to feed us three times a day. It's really, really different when you have a small family."

Crisna Bostero: "In my case, we were really hard up before. Sometimes, we would only eat once a day because we were so poor. We couldn't go to school. I did not finish my school because there were just so many of us."

A community-based family planning programs has made birth control options like the pill accessible and affordable - at about 70 cents a month. Distributors are able to sell pills and condoms anytime. They are as easy as buying soft drinks or matches.

PATH Foundation Philippines, a group funded mostly through USAID, has made this possible, placing its emphasis on local partners and bringing access to the people. In just six years since the program was first established here, family sizes have dropped from as many as 12 children to a maximum of about four today.

The program shows how closely tied family planning is with environmental conservation and putting food on the table.

Jason and Crisna Bostero, both practicing Catholics, don't see a conflict between their religious beliefs and family planning. For them, it's about something much more immediate, like what kind of future they're going to pass on to their two children. " I don't want them to be like us, just to fish the sea, just to farm the land. This is not an easy way to earn a living."

Outside of Humayhumay, where birth control remains largely out of reach, the struggle to put food on the table from one day to the next dominates life. People have to collect government assistance checks for food.

Countries like Thailand and Indonesia have largely avoided this scene, thanks to state-sponsored family planning programs. But Congressman Walden Bello says in the Philippines, any efforts to do the same have faced stiff resistance.

The country is 80% Catholic and the Catholic church leadership opposes any form of artificial contraception and has rallied for a decade against a reproductive health bill in Congress that would guarantee universal access to birth control. Recently, it even threatened the president with excommunication for supporting the bill.

Filipino Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz says "if you have more mouths to feed, then produce more food to eat! Not the other way around."

But trying to produce more food tests the limits of ecosystems, both on land and sea. Today, the Philippines imports more rice than any other nation on the planet. And according to the World Bank, every major species of fish here shows signs of severe overfishing.

Technological advances to boost the food supply have not kept pace with the Philippine's surging population growth.

More than half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Instititute.

The future of the people in the Philippines could easily be overwhelmed by outside forces, in a world that's projected to have 9 billion mouths to feed by the middle of the century.

September 27, 2011 - Earth Overshoot Day

September 27 is Earth Overshoot Day for 2011. This means humanity is surpassing nature's budget for the year, and is now operating in overdraft, according to Global Footprint Network calculations.

Earth Overshoot Day helps conceptualize the degree to which we are over-budget in our use of nature. In approximately nine months, we are demanding a level of ecological services - from producing food and raw materials to filtering our carbon dioxide emissions—equivalent to what the planet can provide for all of 2011. From an ecological standpoint, we have effectively spent our annual salary, with a quarter of the year still to go.

"From soaring food prices to the crippling effects of climate change, our economies are now confronting the reality of years of spending beyond our means," said Global Footprint Network President Dr. Mathis Wackernagel. "If we are to maintain stable societies and good lives, we can no longer sustain a widening budget gap between what nature is able to provide and how much our infrastructure, economies and lifestyles require."

The UN projects the human population to reach 7 billion in late October. How will we be able to meet the needs of a growing population? How will we support the increased consumption as millions in emerging economies join the swelling ranks of the middle class? How will we provide for the 2 billion alive today that lack access to enough resources to meet basic needs?

We are now using between 1.2 and 1.5 planets worth of resources that can be sustainably supported. Before mid-century we will need the capacity of two Earths to keep up with our level of demand.

We must find new models of progress and prosperity that limit demand on ecological assets. Instead of liquidating the resources we have left for fast cash, we must maintain the resources we have left as an ongoing source of wealth.

Last year Global Footprint Network's ecological footprint and biocapacity calculations placed Earth Overshoot Day a few weeks earlier in the year than this year's estimates do. Does this mean we have reduced global overshoot? Unfortunately, is no. The difference is due to the constantly improvements in the calculations and data sets that are the basis for determining Earth Overshoot Day, cause the Day to shift from year.

Our new assumptions (which we are still testing), will probably show overshoot continuing to grow slightly year over year. Earth Overshoot Day is not 100 percent accurate, but meant as an estimate rather than as an exact date.

The when is less important than the what: a mounting ecological debt, and the interest we are paying on that debt -food shortages, plummeting wildlife populations, disappearing forests, degraded land productivity and the build-up of CO2 in our atmosphere and ocean, with devastating human and monetary costs.

In spite of the global recession, resource trends indicate that since October 2008, humanity's resource demand has been on the rise, although more slowly than in the first eight years of the millennium.

The success of our efforts to improve the economy depends on a reliable resource supply.

"As resource constraints tighten even more, it's going to feel like trying to run upward on a down escalator," Dr. Wackernagel said. ... "Long-term recovery will only succeed, and can only be maintained, if it occurs along with systematic reductions to our dependence on resources."

Resources must now be prudently spend and carefully managed as financial reserves.

"What is Overshoot?" Watch this video http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/

Expanding Deserts, Falling Water Tables, and Toxic Pollutants are Driving People from Their Homes

The Sahara desert is expanding in every direction, squeezing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria against the Mediterranean coast; moving into Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, where farmers and herders are forced southward, squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land. The desert is invading the Sahelian region of Africa -- the vast swath of savannah that separates the southern Sahara desert from the tropical rainforests of central Africa.

A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe.

In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts or a lack of water number in the thousands. In Brazil, some 250,000 square miles of land are affected by desertification, much of it concentrated in the country's northeast. In Mexico, many of the migrants who leave rural communities in arid and semiarid regions of the country each year are doing so because of desertification. Some of these environmental refugees end up in Mexican cities, others cross the northern border into the United States. U.S. analysts estimate that Mexico is forced to abandon 400 square miles of farmland to desertification each year.

In China, desert expansion has accelerated in each successive decade since 1950, with some 24,000 villages in northern and western China have been abandoned either entirely or partly, possibly resulting in tens of millions people migrating.

Since most of the 2.3 billion people that will be added to the world by 2050 will be born in countries where water tables are falling, water refugees are likely to become commonplace. Villages in northwestern India are being abandoned as aquifers are depleted and people can no longer find water. Eventually whole cities might have to be relocated, such as Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, home to 2 million people, and Quetta, in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, with 1 million.

Syria and Iraq have been overpumping their aquifers, and irrigation wells are going dry, forcing the abandonment of 160 villages In Syria, and uprooting more than 100,000 people in northern Iraq.

People who are trying to escape toxic waste or dangerous radiation levels are another category of environmental refugee. In the late 1970s, Love Canal in upstate New York was partially built on top of a toxic waste disposal site, resulting in a total of 950 families having to be permanently relocated. In the 1980s, the federal government arranged for the permanent evacuation and relocation of all 2,000 residents of Times Beach, Missouri, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered dioxin levels well above the public health standards.

China has more than 450 "cancer villages" and China's Ministry of Health statistics show that cancer is now the country's leading cause of death, and with little pollution control, whole communities near chemical factories are suffering from unprecedented rates of cancer. Young people are leaving for the city in droves, for jobs and possibly for better health. Yet many others are too sick or too poor to leave.

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion is another example. It spewed massive amounts of radioactive material were spewed into the atmosphere, showering communities in the region with heavy doses of radiation, requiring the resettlement of 350,400 people. In March 2011 a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan and badly damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.

In general, environmental refugees are migrating from poor countries to rich ones, from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to North America and Europe. Some of the largest flows will be across national borders and they are likely to be illegal. The United States, Europe, and India are taking measures to prevent migration across their borders.

Maybe it is time for governments to consider whether it might not be cheaper and far less painful in human terms to treat the causes of migration rather than merely respond to it. This means working with developing countries to restore their economy's natural support systems -- the soils, the water tables, the grasslands, the forests -- and it means accelerating the shift to smaller families to help people break out of poverty.

Reality Vs. Wishful Thinking

Chris Clugston developed an analytical tool - "Societal Overextension Analysis" - that measured overshoot in a way that ecological footprint analysis did not, rendering it almost obsolete. In his analysis he has inventoried 89 metals and minerals that are critical to the operation of any industrial economy, and found that 69 of them are scarce and are getting scarcer. The Green Apostles of False Hope can imagine that substitutes will be found for one or two or even a dozen of them---but not most of them, and any one shortage can bring the industrial edifice down.

Industrialism is unsustainable; it doesn't matter if it is under capitalism or socialism. Are we going to build factories out of straw? And if they do that, then their next task is to demonstrate that any civilization is sustainable, given that agriculture itself is unsustainable.

Chris is not arguing that we should return to a pre-industrial society, but has found that "it's physically impossible going forward." What "we" want is irrelevant, because Mother Nature could not care less about our wants or needs. The fact is, we will not have affordably accessible natural non renewable resources available to enable that preferred lifestyle.

This civilization is going down. Deal with it. We are hooked to a resource utilization mix that can't indefinitely deliver the goods. Some will promise deliverance by tech fixes, but as Chris points out, you can't replenish an aquifer by fixing the pump - a more technically efficient extraction process will not offset the growing demand for the non-renewable resource that is in short supply.

We are conditioned to demand a happy ending. Even Al Gore needed to tack on a Hollywood ending to his documentary. The belief that "every problem has a solution" is, as he puts it, "part of our cultural DNA". The American "can do" spirit finds a voice even in people like Paul Ehrlich, who recently told Alex Smith that if America could transform its economy from building cars to building tanks and planes in just four years to win the Second World War, a similar transformation to a sustainable economy should also be possible. The problem is, these "solutions" worked during the epoch of "continuously more and more", they will fail in the coming epoch of "continually less and less."

Some of us say "If we live smaller and live simply, we can continue Business As Usual. in fact, we will enjoy more community and more intimacy." Others say, "If we share the wealth, all will be well". Or "If we can design a new banking system and a steady state economy, we can enjoy a new prosperity". Or "If we can secure our borders, we can reclaim American jobs for Americans". But the fact is that whatever we do to reduce, conserve, recycle and share, our current resource utilization behaviour is unsustainable. Ecological Footprint Analysis doesn't give us a comprehensive measure of overshoot because it fails to make the critical distinction between RNR-based (renewable natural resources) and NNR-based (nonrenewable natural resources) societies as Clugston does. The diminution of affordably accessible NNRs are the limiting factor. Environmentalists habitually accuse their critics of denial, but one might ask what kind of denial is it that raises the alarm bell at climate change but is seemingly oblivious to impending resource scarcities which will surely kill billions by privation and conflict long before rising temperatures and sea levels do their worst?

My goal? To promote the least painful transition. Rapid but managed de-growth.

A 'No-Growth' Boom Will Follow 2012 Global Crash

A systemic collapse of the global economy is coming - markets and capitalism - a collapse that may well eliminate billions of people from the planet. Only then, after that, a path to reform, recovery, a new boom. Investors should plan ahead for it.

The facts about the coming catastrophe are so obvious. Our planet's natural resources can reasonably support about 5 billion people but we have 7 billion today - 2 billion too many. We're consuming commodities and natural resources at a rate of 1.5 Earths, according to estimates by the Global Footprint Network of scientists and economists. Around 2050 we'll be 10 billion, according to the UN demographers. That's two times the 5 billion the Earth can reasonably support. Those 10 billion people will demand lifestyle improvements. That increases their consumption of scarce resources by 300% per person. Bottom line: 10 billion people will be consuming the equivalent of six Earths.

Thomas Friedman, author of "Hot, Flat, Crowded," writes: when we look back at "when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all ...: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we'd crossed some growth/climate/natural-resource/population redlines all at once?"

Paul Gilding, the author of a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World," wrote “The only answer can be denial," ... “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required."

Today his message is: “It's time to stop worrying about climate change. Instead we need to brace for impact." “If you grow an economy or any system up against its limits, it then stops growing and either changes form or breaks down … As our system hits its limits, the following pressures will combine, in varied and unpredictable ways, to trigger a system breakdown and a major economic crisis (or series of smaller crises) that will see us slide into a sustained economic downturn and a global emergency lasting decades."

Gilding predicts 1. Shocks. " series of ecological, social and economic shocks driven by climate change, particularly melting polar regions, extreme weather events…changes to agricultural output…severe economic stresses…a sense of global crisis." 2. Food. “Increasing demand and lower agricultural output driven by climate change ...sustained increases in food prices…economic and geopolitical instability and tension…developing countries blaming the West for causing climate change." 3. Water. " deeply degraded global ecosystem will further reduce the capacity of key ecosystem services, water, fisheries and agricultural land … impact food and water supply … political stability … global security."

4. Energy. “Rapid increases in oil prices as peak oil is breached. …enormous, system-wide economic and political pressure…great conflict." 5. Surprises. “For example, a serious global terrorist attack wiping out a major city...or a pandemic shutting down global travel...shocks upon shocks upon shocks." 6. Driven by panic, fear and uncertainty, waking up to long-term implications, perhaps driven by a series of major corporate collapses or national economic crises, resulting in re-price of risk leading to a dramatic drop in global share markets and a tightening of capital supply. Markets and economies will crash.

Gilding believes that mankind will follow this “Great Disruption" with a period of great cooperation where all nations of the world will come together to save the planet. Gilding does not say how this great disruption will stop population from growing to 10 billion or how the crash will scale Earth's existing population of 7 billion back to a sustainable 5 billion. Yet, that must happen to make the “new equation" work. New global wars, pandemics, famines, starvation and other cataclysmic events, may all happen during the crash.

Gilding and Jorgen Randers of Norway developed “One Degree War Plan" to “keep global warming below plus-one degree Centigrade over pre-industrial levels." These policies may not work today but after the coming crash, after a great realignment of the economic, political and environmental systems of the world, these are seen as essential policies for a new sustained global economy.

You can also see these as investment opportunities for entrepreneurs and financiers and forward-thinkers who are planning ahead for when the world community downsizes to create a new, sustainable lifestyle.

1. Cut deforestation and other logging by 50%. 2. Close 1,000 dirty coal power plants within 5 years. 3. Ration electricity, and rapidly drive new efficiency. 4. Retrofit 1,000 coal power plants with Carbon Capture Storage. 5. Erect a wind turbine or solar plant in every town. 6. Create huge wind and solar farms in suitable deserts. 7. Let no waste go to waste; recycle and reuse by-products. 8. Ration use of dirty cars to cut transport emissions by 50%. 9. Prepare for biofuels power stations using CCS technology.

10. Strand half of the world's aircraft. 11. Capture or burn methane from agriculture and landfills. 12. Move society away from diets of climate-unfriendly protein. 13. New methods of farming to reduce gas emissions, maximize soil carbon. 14. Launch a government- and community-led shop-less-live-more campaign.

Environment and Development Challenges: the Imperative to Act

This paper is a synthesis of the key messages from the individual papers written by the Blue Planet Laureates. It discusses the imperative of action now. The paper does not claim to comprehensively address all environment and development issues, but a sub-set that are deemed to be of particular importance.

We have a dream - a world without poverty - a world that is equitable - a world that respects human rights - a world with increased and improved ethical behavior regarding poverty and natural resources - a world that is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable, where the challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and social inequity have been successfully addressed. This is an achievable dream, but the current system is deeply flawed and our current pathway will not realise it.

Population size and growth and related consumption patterns are critical elements in the many environmental degradation and social problems we currently face. The population issue should be urgently addressed by education and empowerment of women, including in the work-force and in rights, ownership and inheritance; health care of children and the elderly; and making modern contraception accessible to all.

There is an urgent need to break the link between production and consumption on the one hand and environmental destruction on the other. ... Unsustainable growth is promoted by environmentally-damaging subsidies in areas such as energy, transportation and agriculture and should be eliminated; external environmental and social costs should be internalized; and the market and non-market values of ecosystem goods and services should be taken into account in decision-making.

Governments should recognise the serious limitations of GDP as a measure of economic activity and complement it with measures of the five forms of capital, built, financial, natural, human and social capital,

The world's current commitments to reduce emissions are consistent with at least a 3oC rise (50-50 chance) in temperature: a temperature not seen on the planet for around 3 million years, with serious risks of 5oC rise: a temperature not seen on the planet for around 30 million years

Effective change in governance demands action at many levels to establish transparent means for holding those in power to account. Governance failures also occur because decisions are being made in sectoral compartments, with environmental, social and economic dimensions addressed by separate, competing structures.

There is a need to scale-up the grass roots actions by bringing together a complementary top-down and bottom-up approach to addressing these issues.

Unfortunately, humanity's behavior remains utterly inappropriate for dealing with the potentially lethal fallout from a combination of increasingly rapid technological evolution matched with very slow ethical-social evolution. The human ability to do has vastly outstripped the ability to understand. As a result civilization is faced with a perfect storm of problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption by the rich, the use of environmentally malign technologies, and gross inequalities.

Total food production has nearly trebled since 1960, per capita production has increased by 30%, and food prices and the percent of undernourished people have fallen, but the benefits have been uneven and more than one billion people still go to bed hungry each night. Furthermore, intensive and extensive food production has caused significant environmental degradation. Aside from the loss of much biodiversity through outright habitat destruction from land clearing, tillage and irrigation methods can lead to salinisation and erosion of soils; fertilizers, rice production and livestock contribute to greenhouse gas emissions; unwise use of pesticides adds to global toxification; and fertilizer runoff plays havoc with freshwater and nearshore saltwater habitats.

One of the key challenges facing the world is to increase agricultural productivity, while reducing its environmental footprint through sustainable intensification, given that the demand for food will likely double in the next 25-50 years, primarily in developing countries. Unfortunately, climate change is projected to significantly decrease agricultural productivity throughout much of the tropics and sub-tropics where hunger and poverty are endemic today.

.. Click here to download the entire report (pdf).

Growth Has An Expiration Date

(watch the video at http://fora.tv/2011/10/26/Growth_Has_an_Expiration_Date to see a more accurate account and several educational graphs)

Presenter: Tom Murphy, Associate Professor of Physics, University of California San Diego

NPR's Ira Flatow guided a group of some of the world's best thinkers and doers at the Compass Summit situated overlooking the California coastline.

We could not have our marvelous technological society, better quality of life, great medical care if it weren't for surplus energy beyond the subsistence level. It's the surplus energy that's made more food available, that's created a population surge and more industry and economic growth.

Today we use energy at a total worldwide rate equivalent to12 terawatts (TW) of electricity. Historically that's grown 2-3% for year. Looking at the charts comparing, in logarithmic form, financial growth and energy growth history for the United States from 1650 to the present and you see how both energy and economics grew in parallel - the economy at 2.9% and energy at 2.3%. Economic growth went up with the rise of energy use. We can also make use of the fact that the rate of increase is quite constant. Today we use 12 TW and projecting that same growth rate - 2.3% - into 336 years from now we see that we will be using as much power as all the solar energy from the sun that hits all the continents, assuming we had a 100% coverage of all the land with 100% efficient solar panels.

Maybe we think we can make things better and find ways to put more solar panels in the sun, we could get up to 1400 years before we would be forced to level out our worldwide usage. Impossible to see how we would physically do it, but in 2500 years we would be using as much energy that is from all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

This would be the devastation of our financial affairs, so if you're stuck in the mindset of exponential growth you have to realize what the consequences are.

Supposing we were, in 1400 years, using as much energy as the sun through some fantastical device on earth, we still have the problem of dissipating the waste heat that will be generated. It's going get hot due to the laws of thermodynamics - starting with the global average temperature of fifty nine degrees Fahrenheit today, in 430 years it will be hot enough to boil the water on the surface of the planet; and we get the sun surface temperature in less than a thousand years.

The idea of using this much energy is absolutely nuts. The lesson is that we have to abandon growth.

Most economists and everybody we've met and everybody that they've met has experienced this assumption that the world is expected to grow. People think we can still bring up standards of living and we can have efficiency gains and technology innovations to keep marching along but those things cannot become the whole economy.

Let's just look at a snapshot of growth over the last century - the gross world product for this entire world and for the first half of the century grew at about a 2.9% rate, which was the same rate as energy growth - which is striking because that's the same rate at which energy growth occurred. But since 1915 we had economic growth faster than energy which may be taken as an evidence that we can grow without energy and in a way we can. This is considered something of a triumph, but that gap is partly due to increased energy efficiency, partly doing more with less, and any other part is growth in things that are less energy intensive, as in the service sector like clerical work, real estate, and the psychotherapy we have to have to cope with this crazy world.

Improvements in energy efficiency have mostly been made, future improvements will contribute only a tiny percent to savings of energy. We can maybe get a savings by a factor of 2%. If we want to keep the economy growing at 5% the gap between energy and economy will continue to widen, and so some increasing fraction of your economy has to be based on low energy activities such as in the service industry, which will have to grow and grow until it approaches a 100%. Food, manufacturing, transport would have to go.

So we need a model for a steady state economy. If we assume we can solve this problem, we're not working on it. Some argue that we cannot comprehend what will happen 200 years from now. If we do nothing, however, we face the strong possibility of losing so much more.

Let's say that we manage the transition to renewable resource and we can level at our energy - leveling out actually means that we have to live at about fifth of the US energy standard of living because the US has 5% world's population and uses 25% of the energy. But the world also has pollution, degredation, rainforests being chopped down, soil quality, ancient aquifers being pumped out - these are part of the story here. We need about a 10 time increase in throughput , or at least 5.

To give an example of our truly understanding the problem and taking responsibility of it: a child might really want a pony, and you say ok well let's start with a gerbil to see you can manage it - you have feed it, to clean its cage, and if you manage that you get kitten it's more work, clean the litter box. If you can manage that we get a puppy - that's more work - you have to walk it, and if you can manage that we upgrade to goat, now you have a paddock to take care which is more like being a farmer, and if you can do that you get the pony. But we're not even taking care of a gerbil. But we think we deserve a pony, deluding ourselves we continue to talk about pony, pony, pony. Do we deserve to be using the word sustainable because we haven't really understood what it means or what level we can expect to operate sustainably? It's an open question.

The fossil fuel joyride has clouded our judgment. We will start to see the decline in oil soon. We need an upfront energy investment to build a new energy infrastructure to build our way out of this problem. With our smarts and our technology that requires an upfront energy investment to build the infrastructure that's exactly what we're reading short time so we have to intentionally exacerbate to make the problem seem worse in order to start down that path and that's politically very difficult to do, to just put some numbers on.

We have to invest one energy unit per year in renewable energy to get 4 units of output. But there's no energy financing in nature. You can build a windmill on promised energy, but you must have the energy upfront while there is still energy to do it.

When you look at a project and wonder if it is sustainable, ask is this idea really sustainable, or is it based on continued growth, does this help secure merger will or is it just more promise up for a pony?

What to Do About the Upcoming Peak Oil and Food Shortage Crisis?

In 1956, a geologist working for Shell Oil named M. King Hubbert predicted that US petroleum production would peak in 1970, and steadily decline in the years thereafter. His prediction showed that, like many other natural phenomenon, oil production over time forms a bell-shaped curve.

It now appears that peak oil was in 2008 to 2010. Mr. Hubbert can be forgiven for missing the date, as he was a petroleum geologist, and geologists usually think in terms of millions of years.

Oil forms in basins on the edge of oceans that are anoxic (lacking oxygen), which prevents the oxidation of the constant rain of dead algae and animals that settle to the bottom of all oceans. The preserved remains, mixed with sand, clay and other accumulations, are then capped with an impervious layer and buried between 7500-15000 feet (1.5 to 3 miles) beneath the earth. At this depth, the temperature is high enough (about 175 degrees F) to "cook" the organic sediments into petroleum. Below this range, it is cooked so far that it all turns into natural gas. The petroleum, trapped by the impervious layer, will reside there, waiting for an industrious oil company to tap it with a well rig. Early oil companies found the "light, sweet crude" that would just push up to the surface when under pressure. 'Light' because it makes a lot of gasoline, and 'sweet' because it doesn't have much sulfur.

But other oils consist of heavy tar residue, or not have enough natural gas, and need to be pumped from great depths, or have high sulfur that takes a lot of processing to refine. Any of these flaws require energy to overcome so that the cost may rise. The Texas oil wells drilled in the early 1900's got 20+ barrels of oil for each barrel of oil it took to pump and process. Today the ratio is as low as 5 barrels of oil "costing" one barrel. If the ratio approaches one to one, there isn't any point in pumping the oil anymore.

A pound of petroleum contains more energy than most other equivalent energy sources, and some sources are very hard to contain, (think of batteries to store electricity compared to a gas tank in a car or truck). Hydrogen would require 7 tanker trucks to carry the energy equivalent of one tanker of gasoline.

For the last 100+ years or so, the production of oil increased almost every year. Now, there will begin to be a bit less oil every year. Over the long term, the price will increase because we are dependent on it and the cheap, easily refined oil has already been pumped. Using oil to replace human labor with machines became the basis for economic success. Now labor will become cheaper than machinery. But politicians don't mention this because a permanent decline in our economy would assure defeat at the polls.

Employment will initially decline, so it will be a tough economy to live in. Food, and every other commodity that depends on oil to be produced or shipped will cost more.

What can you do? Grow your own food if you can. Learn to enjoy cabbage, potatoes, and carrots in the winter. Try to move close to where you work. Get rid of the gas hog. Walk. Expect to pay lots for exotic fruit. Invest in a solar home, if you have anything to invest. Insulate. Stay healthy, and maybe think about alternative health care. Think of strategies to survive when you are poor.

The answers, most of them, have been part of the human condition for generations.

Many cultures have declined, but most haven't talked about it much. Rome in about 1 AD, the Maya of Central America in 700 AD, are examples. Both took involved a decade or two of decline followed by a decade or two of getting by. N

Expect hunger, disease and war - the 'Three Horsemen' to return. On the bright side, we do know more about causes of disease than in the past, and we know how clean water and sewage handling affect public health. Hunger won't be easy either - our current system of baking all the bread at one point and shipping it around the country is likely to get pretty pricy in a while. There just won't be the funds available to rebuild so quickly after an earthquake, flood or fire. One can already see it in the response to Hurricane Katrina, there are parts of the Gulf Coast that won't return for a very long time, if ever. More locally, living in California has some definite advantages as well as disadvantages. The potential for earthquakes in LA and the Bay Area is kind of scary. On the other hand, the agricultural potential of the Central Valley isn't going to disappear, though the water to irrigate may be a problem.

So, what strategies are likely to help? Learn a trade, grow some of your own food, make friends with your neighbors, you may need their help sooner than you think. A lot of the survival strategies are also just common sense. Look for opportunities to develop your local resources - everyone will still need to eat, drink and be merry, any way they can.

Some of the benefits to living in California - close to food sources, relatively warm climate, many Native Americans present during "Pre-European-American contact", indicating that California had a relatively high "carrying capacity", the ability for land to support people living without petroleum.

Some of the detriments to living in California - too many people, (though most of them are down South), fragile infrastructure supplying everyone, too many earthquakes, droughts, fires and floods.

Some benefits/detriments to living in the Sierra Foothills - lower elevations can support agriculture if water is available, lots of oak trees supplying acorns for people to eat, but, travel is difficult and slow, we need to learn to live with fire, and, this is where everyone from the Bay Area/Southern California will come if times get tough. If we ever have a flood like we did in 1862, the Central Valley will fill with water and many of those people will head for these hills.

From "Up and Down California in 1860-1864" by William H. Brewer: In the Winter of 1861, "The great central valley of the state is under water - a region 250 to 300 miles long and an average of at least twenty miles wide . . . Although much of it is not cultivated, yet a part of it is the garden of the state. Thousands of farms are entirely underwater - cattle starving and drowning.", and "An old acquaintance, came down from a ranch that was overflowed. The floor of their one-story house was six weeks under water before the house went to pieces. This was in the Sacramento Valley. . . . Nearly every house and farm over this immense region is gone. There was such a body of water - 250 to 300 miles long and 20 to 60 miles wide, the water ice cold and muddy - that the winds make high waves which beat the farm homes in pieces."

Any natural disaster during our decline is likely to cause immense personal losses, which will not be compensated by government. Locally, we can rely on natural resources such as timber and firewood which will still retain value. On the other hand, we very much need to learn to manage our forest - in the past we have cut the big trees and sold the wood. Now we have a dense, overgrown forest which desperately needs to be thinned. The people who lived here for thousands of years managed the forest with fire - they were after different products of course, but the cost of fire suppression is something we will not be able to afford in the future. Planned fire prevents wildfire, and learning to control fire will be one of our most important tasks.

Some references for readers: The Long Descent, by John Michael Greer, Beyond Oil, by Kenneth S. Deffeyes: Up and Down California in 1860-1864, by William H. Brewer, edited by Francis P Farquhar.

U.S.: Change ... by Bill Denneen

Change is always difficult but our culture must change if it is to continue.

There is a movement that is coming from the people/citizens. It has been given a title of Green but I prefer Sustainable. Basically it is change from a high consumption rate to living within the capacity of our habitat. Resources are being depleted as corporations push us to buy, buy, buy.

When the price of gasoline went up American moved in the direction of using less gas. This worried the oil corporations so the price came down. In Europe where the price of gas is about $10. per gallon they walk, ride their bicycles, use bus and trains, have tiny vehicles----many not using any gasoline at all. Hummers SUVs & gas-guzzlers don't even exist in Europe----here they are no longer selling.

Hybrids can not be made fast enough as demand is so high.

The monster houses being built locally and priced at $750,000 and up are not selling. People want small, sustainable, affordable homes.

Bush's 700 billion "bailout" with taxpayer money is designed to continue the monster mansion industry.

Our culture must move in the direction of what many are already doing. I have attempted to become independent of outside energy sources. I live on one acre. The sun shines on this one acre on which I grow bushes & trees-------birds love it. These plants capture the sun's energy by photosynthesis. The plants that grow feed my goats or are burned in my insert fireplace to heat my home in winter. It requires a lot of chopping, cutting & hauling but the sun is providing the energy---not nuclear power (Diablo).

The sun shines on my solar-panels which heat my water. Of course, no sun, no hot water. In summer I have plenty of hot water for my hot tub. In winter or rainy days I have to supplement solar heat with natural gas to heat water for my hot-tub.

The sun activates my photo-voltaic (PV) panels which produces my electricity. There are essentially no P.V.'s or solar panels on any of the estimated 5,000 new houses in Nipomo ----why?

A clothesline dries my laundry-----not Diablo. If you don't dry your laundry in our abundant sun you are part of the over-consuming problem. I got rid of my lawn years ago as it requires a lot of water, pesticides and herbicides. I replaced it with native plants and friendly exotics which the birds love and feed my goats.

I attempt to eat from my one acre. My pork comes from homegrown pigs. Visitors often ask "How can you eat an animal you've named & raised?" It is easy & delicious. My pigs have a happy life with a straw bed, talked to daily and gets petted often. I avoid "factory raised meat" as the animals have a terrible life in small pens & crowded conditions. I do not buy factory raised meat.

I have goats which provides me with plenty of delicious fresh milk with no chemicals. My happy chickens live on the ground, scratch a lot & lay more nutritious eggs than caged, factory raised hens which go for soup after a laying cycle. My 40 hens and 3 roosters live a long life and enrich my farm ambiance so very much.

Children enjoy visiting & are welcome. The 3 roosters have names & personalities all their own. My garden & orchard do provide some food but production is variable. For example I get more blackberries than I could possibly eat for about three weeks in early summer & then "none".

Nipomo doesn't get much rain (13 inch average/year). We are depleting our water supply---over-draft. Water from my inside toilets go to a septic system whose leach lines water my plants. Lines from my shower, hot tub, sink and laundry all go to water plants. My outside toilet doesn't even use any water & fertilizes my trees. I enjoy listening to the birds & seeing the sun come up.

The large mansions that Bush's 700 billion bailout is attempting to continue is the wrong direction. Small sustainable homes, bicycles and consuming less is the future. The auto industry learned the hard way when the SUV's, Hummers & Cadillacs stopped selling. If there is to be a future-----sustainable living will have to be the emphasis. The bailout is an attempt of our leaders to keep us buying.

If there is to be a future for America we must change to sustainable living. Our current leadership is headed us in the wrong direction-----democracy CAN work----speak up !! For further reading go to Al Gore's article in the most recent Mother Jones magazine page 38. Some of his comments: "The survival of the United States as we know it is at risk", "...the future of human civilization is at stake", "Were borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet.", "We need to act now."

Bringing Together Nations To Check Earth's Pulse

The NOAA is America's best bet for solving problems of poor air quality and an expanding global population. From assessing climate change to providing transportation-related weather forecasts, NOAA is an information center for U.S. and international officials and is bringing together 51 nations to establish a more sophisticated monitoring system for the land, sea and air. The proposed network of thousands of weather stations, buoys, ships and aircraft will take the globe's pulse and transmit the information 24 hours a day. It could transform the way farmers plant their crops and shippers plot their courses. By mid-February, the project's coalition will announce a 10-year plan to accomplish its mission. Activists are still awaiting more aggressive regulation from NOAA to protect deep-sea corals and reduce the incidental catch of fish and other species. rw

Eco-Economy Indicators: Trends to Track

Population size is the universal denominator being the best single measure of the pressure on the environment. It combines the effects of population growth and individual consumption. ... Economic Growth - with consumption-driven economy, economic growth is the best single measure of the mounting pressure on the earth’s environment. ... World Fish Catch measures the health of the oceanic ecosystem where demand is outrunning sustainable stocks. ... Forest Cover - the shrinkage of forests means that capacity to supply wood products is diminished, also the capacity for flood control, soil protection, and the purification of water. ... Carbon Emissions provide clues about the kind of world for future generations. ... Grain Production reflects population growth and its rise in consumption of grain-fed livestock products. ... Water Scarcity - data shows that aquifers are depleted and the water supply is reduced. ... Ice Melting is one of the visible effects of rising temperature; its melting raises sea level. ... Wind Electric Generating Capacity - the rate at which wind generating capacity is expanding compared with fossil fuels gives us a sense of how fast the eco-economy is unfolding.... Bicycle Production - sales measure our ability to reduce traffic congestion, lower air pollution, increase mobility, and provide exercise. ... Solar Cell Production - solar cells are years behind wind power, but sales in 2001 represent by far the largest annual sales to date. As it continues to fall, the cost will cross a critical threshold where production will begin to jump. rw

UN Secretary General Sees No Easy Solutions, Calls for More Efforts

Marking today's celebration of World Environment Day, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan set four priorities to reverse the "deeply troubling trends" as "humans continue to plunder the global environment." A major public education effort for corporations and consumers is the first priority, with schools and civil society groups having a role to play. Environmental issues should be "better integrated into mainstream economic policy," using "green accounting." Governments must enforce environmental agreements that they create, cutting subsidies that sustain environmentally harmful activities and to devising incentives for markets to be more environment-friendly.

Annan also asked for more "sound" scientific information, to help in better policy-making In an Earth Times commentary, Anan writes that "Never in the history of mankind have we done so much, in so little time, to destroy the wonderful ecosystem that sustains us." Environmental issues, Annan says, are inextricably linked to peaceful coexistence, international cooperation and and economic development.

US Intel: Water a Cause for War in Coming Decades

Drought, floods and a lack of fresh water may cause significant global instability and conflict in the coming decades, as developing countries scramble to meet demand from exploding populations while dealing with the effects of climate change, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report released Thursday.

The study focused on the Nile in Egypt, Sudan and nations further south, the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq and the greater Middle East, the Mekong in China and Southeast Asia, the Jordan that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories, the Indus and the Brahmaputra in India and South Asia as well as the Amu Darya in Central Asia.

Beyond 2022, the report says, as water shortages become more acute, the use of water as a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Floods, scarce and poor quality water, combined with poverty, social tension, poor leadership and weak governments will contribute to instability that could lead the failure of numerous states.

Terrorists and rogue states may target or threaten to target water-related infrastructure like dams and reservoirs more frequently. Even if attacks do not occur or are only partially successful, the report said "the fear of massive floods or loss of water resources would alarm the public and cause governments to take costly measures to protect the water infrastructure."

Persistent Droughts Plaguing Much of the World

The World Water Forum, occurring next week in Marseille, France, will be meeting to discuss the status of water supplies around the world and steps that must be done to protect them. At Rio+20 , EU officials intend to make water conservation a major agenda item. Also the European Commission has named 2012 as the Year of Water.

France, Spain, Portugal, and large sections of England have all been affected by recent droughts. As major agricultural areas, many are concerned with food output. The level of food supply would also then affect food prices.

While in Europe, the issue is mostly a lack of rainfall, typically around the world, officials agree that the biggest source of water shortages is how the water is used. Populations are exploding in the regions that already strained with water supplies, including the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.

Also water is wasted with overwatering crops and gardens, taking long showers, or just general abuse. Or water quality is reduced, due to pollution.

EU officials are urging immediate steps to protect what is left of the world's water supplies to avoid future social and ecological disasters. European nations are doing what they have to do to be prepared, but cannot do it for the rest of the world.

Important dates:

March 12-17: World Water Forum in Marseille

March 22: World Water Day

May 15-16: Water Innovation Europe Conference in Brussels, Belgium

June 20-22: UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

August 26-31: World Water Week, organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute

For more information: http://www.worldwaterforum6.org/en/

U.S.: Drought, Population Force City to Find More Water

The city of League City, in Texas, can pump only about 21.5 million gallons of water a day. The drought - coupled with the city's growing population - has meant the city came close to its limit during the past summer.

The city's population is at roughly 85,000 now, Oller said. That is more than double what it was 10 years ago.

The city is trying to acquire 10 million gallons of water a day from the city of Pasadena. League City buys 16.5 million gallons from the city of Houston. The water travels down a 42-inch diameter pipeline. Another 2 million comes from the Gulf Coast Water Authority, which is piped up from south of the city, and about 3 million gallons come from city wells.

Part of the city's problem is that no more water can be pumped in through existing pipelines, and city wells are not producing as much as they once were. A pipeline between the cities needs to be built - before that water could reach the city.

If population growth continues, by 2035 the city will need about 50 million gallons a day, more than twice its current capacity. To meet that need, the city will have to use ground and surface water, and it will have to promote conservation and the reuse of water. The city may have to look at alternate technologies such as desalinization.

The city has had an existing reuse system since the mid 1980s. Water is treated to a level that is not potable but is safe for human contact and irrigation. A golf course is the city's only customer for the reclaimed water. Hopefully the reuse system can be extended to irrigate green spaces during the summer, and more businesses and large water users, such as homeowner associations, will take advantage of the system.

Water only is going to get harder to come by as cities in the region continue to grow.

U.S.: The Coming Mega Drought

Over the last decade Australia experienced the worst and most consistent dry period in its recorded history. The Murray River failed to reach the sea for the first time ever in 2002. Fires swept much of the country, and dust storms blanketed major cities for days. Australia's sheep population dropped by 50%, and rice and cotton production collapsed in some years. Tens of thousands of farm families gave up their livelihoods. The drought ended in 2010 with torrential rains and flooding.

What happened in Australia could happen in the U.S. Southwest, with devastating consequences to the region and to the nation. However, we can learn from Australia's experience.

There is a resemblence between the southwestern U.S. and parts of Australia before the drought. Both include arid regions where thirsty cities and irrigated agriculture are straining water supplies and damaging ecosystems. The Colorado River no longer flows to the sea in most years. Water levels in major reservoirs have steadily declined over the past decade; some analysts project that the largest may never refill.

In Australia average rainfall has decreased 15% since 1950, while from 1995 to 2006 average temperatures over southeastern Australia were 0.3 to 0.6 degree Celsius higher than the long-term average. The combination of higher evaporation and lower precipitation depletes soil moisture and reduces runoff, making droughts more intense and more frequent. Australian scientists forecast a 35 to 50% decline in water availability in the Murray-Darling river basin and a drop in flows near the mouth of the Murray by up to 70% by 2030.

Australians responded to this Millennium Drought with a wide range of technical, economic, regulatory and educational policies. Urban water managers in Australia have been forced to put in place aggressive strategies to curb water use and to expand sources of new and unconventional supplies. They have subsidized efficient appliances and fixtures such as dual-flush toilets, launched public educational campaigns to save water, and more. Between 2002 and 2008 per capita urban water use declined by 37%.

Other efforts include reuse of gray water, cisterns to harvest rooftop runoff, sewage treatment and reuse, and desalinization by the country's five largest cities, which will meet 30% of current urban water needs. The government has continued with plans to restore rivers and wetlands by cutting withdrawals from the Murray-Darling river basin by 22 to 29%.

The southwestern U.S. states would do well to push for these kinds of reforms before a similar disaster strikes.

Satellite Studies Reveal Groundwater Depletion Around the World

Agricultural production will need to increase 70% by 2050, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Since agriculture takes up much of our water use, we will see greater demands and strains on our water resources at a time when climate change is changing temperature and precipitation levels and patterns in unpredictable ways.

Groundwater levels have dropped in key agricultural areas such as southern Argentina, western Australia and the western US in the past nine years, according to a pair of studies of satellite gravity monitoring data. California, India, the Middle East and China show the most pronounced groundwater depletion. Water is being pumped out of underground groundwater aquifers faster than it's being replenished, with farming likely the primary cause.

"Groundwater is being depleted at a rapid clip in virtually of all of the major aquifers in the world's arid and semiarid regions," cautioned UC Center hydrologist Jay Famiglietti, whose team presented the results at a Dec. 6 meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), conducted jointly by NASA and the German Aerospace Center, has been taking monthly snapshots of global groundwater used in the two studies since 2002. GRACE's two satellites - Tom and Jerry - are pulled apart and pushed together by variations in the gravitational pull of the areas of the earth they pass over. Water moves over time and creates small fluctuations that the two satellites sense.

GRACE can detect changes in groundwater levels greater than one centimeter (~0.4 inches) over an area about the size of Illinois.

GRACE data shows that China's been underestimating groundwater use, with levels have been dropping 6 or 7 centimeters per year beneath the country's northeast plains.

Due to droughts, Patagonia and the southeastern US now store less groundwater than they did in 2002. Agriculture in northern India takes enough water to fill 7 million Olympic-size swimming pools, according to Science News.

California's Central Valley, which accounts for nearly 1/6 of irrigated land in the entire country, pumps nearly 4 cubic kilometers of water per year out from underground. The valley has been sinking for decades as more wells have been drilled and water pumped out, land subsidence that's also been occurring and causing increasing concerns, and costly remediation efforts, in Mexico City.

Aquifers in arid areas with fast-growing populations, such as the Middle East, are also being depleted, being pumped out faster than it's being replenished.

GRACE can only show changes in aquifer levels, not their total volume, so it is unknown how much water remains.

Better irrigation systems would help reduce water usage, as could channeling water runoff into aquifers during wet periods.

Managing a Growing World Population with a Shrinking Water Supply

Note: This is a photoblog with many thought-provoking pictures worth seeing. Click in the link in the headline above to see them.

No resource is more precious and vital than water. As world population grows, the amount of water available per person shrinks.

Yet the per-person consumption of resources grows exponentially in industrialized nations. Shifting rainfall patterns exacerbate the problem.

The International Water Management Institute (IMWI) predicts that by 2025 about 1.8 billion people will live in places suffering from severe water scarcity.

While Somalia's population has grown fivefold since 1950, precipitation is down about 25% over the last quarter century, says Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "There's a devastating famine under way right now after two years of complete failure of rains, and [there is] the potential that this is entering a period of long-term climate change."

Conflicts over water shortages will happen as the rich take over the water and other resources of the poor.

IMWI says that nations must find ways to deliver food security across regions facing water scarcity and ensure that poor farmers who underpin global food production are resilient enough to cope with future challenges. Increasing agricultural productivity through effective management of water resources not only helps eliminate hunger, it also leads to long-term increases in rural wealth and lifts poor farmers beyond subsistence-level farming.

"There's quite a bit of land that could produce food if we had the water to go with it," said Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute. "It's water that's becoming the real constraint."

Shrinking Forests: the Many Costs

In 2004, illegal logging in the Philippines was found to have caused rampant deforestation, flash floods and landslides, and killed nearly 340 people. In 1989, the government of Thailand announced a nationwide ban on tree cutting following severe flooding and the heavy loss of life in landslides. In August 1998, the Chinese government banned all tree cutting in the upper reaches of the Yangtze basin after record flooding and $30 billion worth of damage.

Services provided by forests, such as flood control, may be far more valuable to society than the lumber in those forests.

The earth had 5 billion hectares forested area at the beginning of the twentieth century, now it is just under 4 billion hectares. From 1990, 13 million hectares of developing world forest has been lost per year. This is the equivalent of about 3% each decade and covers an area about the size of Greece.

While the industrial world gains an estimated 5.6 million hectares of forestland each year, mainly from a) abandoned cropland returning to forests on its own and b) from the spread of commercial forestry plantations, net forest loss worldwide exceeds 7 million hectares per year.

Tropical forests that are clear cut or burned off rarely recover, becoming wasteland or scrub forest, and are still counted as "forest" in official forestry numbers, as are plantations.

Only 40% of the world's remaining forests can be classified as frontier forest - large, intact, natural forest systems relatively undisturbed and big enough to maintain all of their biodiversity.

Use of firewood, paper, and lumber is expanding. Only half is used for fuel, but in developing countries, it is three fourths of the total.

In the Sahelian zone of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, deforestation to supply fuelwood is extensive.

Evident from satellite photos taken over time is the widening circle of retreating woods around cities, which leads to increased transport costs of firewood increase, triggering the development of an industry for charcoal, a more concentrated form of energy. Dakar and Khartoum now reach out further than 500 kilometers for charcoal, sometimes into neighboring countries.

In Southeast Asia and Africa logging for lumber is mostly done by foreign corporations more interested in maximizing a one-time harvest than in managing for a sustainable yield in perpetuity. Devastation is left behind. Nigeria and the Philippines have both lost their once-thriving tropical hardwood export industries and are now net importers of forest products.

China now supplies the world with furniture, flooring, particle board, and other building materials, reaching into Indonesia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and Siberia, - recently the Amazon and the Congo Basin - to do so.

The natural forests in Indonesia and Myanmar will be gone within a decade or so, if current trends continue. Those in Papua New Guinea will last 16 years. Those in the Russian Far East, vast though they are, may not last much more than 20 years.

In the Brazilian Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Borneo, the clearing of land for farming and ranching are taking its toll. Brazil has lost 93% of its Atlantic and is now destroying the Amazon rainforest roughly the size of Europe. Close to 20% has been lost since 1970.

Africa's Congo Basin, spanning 10 countries, is also under assault from loggers, miners, and farmers. Here, 190-million-hectares are home to 400 species of mammals, including gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and forest elephants.

Malaysian Borneo has palm oil - a leading biodiesel fuel - plantations which have expanded 8% between 1998 to 2003. In the Indonesian part of Borneo, the growth in oil palm plantings is over 11%.

Firewood demand and land clearing in Haiti has left the country with only 4% of its former land. After the trees go, the soil disappears. Haiti is in an ecological/economic downward spiral from which it has not been able to escape. It is a failed state, a country sustained by international life-support systems of food aid and economic assistance.

Madagascar is following in Haiti's footsteps. Madagascar could soon become a landscape of scrub growth and sand.

Deforestation in the Amazon causes more rain to run back into the sea, reducing dramatically the moisture that is recycled inland. The forest begins to dry out and becomes vulnerable to fire. The Amazon is approaching a tipping point beyond which it cannot be saved.

Similarly in Africa, production of firewood, land clearing, and logging have increased rainfall runoff, depriving the land of the water pumped through trees and into the atmosphere. When the forests disappear, this rainfall declines and crop yields follow.

China, New Zealand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Viet Nam now have total bans on logging in primary forest. Unfortunately, a ban in one country simply often shifts the deforestation to others or drives illegal logging.

Brazil Admits Amazon Deforestation on the Rise

Amazon deforestation jumped 69% in the past 12 months as rising demand for soy and cattle pushes farmers and ranchers to raze trees. Some 3,088 square miles of forest were destroyed between August 2007 and August 2008. Brazil's government has increased cash payments to fight illegal Amazon logging, and eliminated government bank loans to farmers who illegally clear forest. The country lost 2.7% of its Amazon rain forest in 2007, or 4,250 square miles. Monthly deforestation rates have slowed since May, but environmental groups say seasonal shifts in tree cutting make the annual number a more accurate gauge.

Most deforestation is in March and April, and routinely tapers off in May, June and July.

Environmentalists argue that INPE's deforestation report was to alert the government to deforestation hot spots in time to save the land.

The Amazon region covers about 1.6 million square miles of Brazil, nearly 60% of the country. About 20% of that land has been deforested. rw

Reaping Cash From Lake Manyara`s Biosphere

Located in the East African Rift Valley, the Lake Manyara Biosphere Reserve is one of the most thrilling tourist attractions of Tanzania. The lake is an important breeding site for residents and migrant birds. Tourists from different parts of the planet earth flock in this Tanzania`s heaven.

Communities living along LMBR are partly within the Lake Manyara National Park. According to Maasai elders` narratives, the indigenous Maasai community that lived close to LMNP used very little firewood for cooking due to their eating habit-mainly unboiled milk.

The town has become cosmopolitan in nature and demands for cooking firewood have increased.

Government initiative on Tse-tse fly eradication encouraged clearing of forests in the villages and paved way for erection of human settlements closer to the park, leading to deforestation, destruction of livestock routes and wildlife corridors.

Maasai elders narrate that, some years ago, people indiscriminately harvested the wildlife. Waters for irrigation drained to Lake Miwaleni and was one of the wildlife`s drinking points. The lake has little water while some animals have moved to other areas.

The cosmopolitan community originated from as far as Kenya and has been living in harmony after settling in the area and attracted by the tourism industry.

The human population in the biosphere reserve is estimated to over 250,000 people.

Most of immigrants in the region depend on tourism though poaching causes a menace to biodiversity. People in the area are now engaged in cultural tourism that relieves them from the jungle of poverty.

Several projects promote activities such as bee keeping or to control the tick infestation in the livestock. Tourists pay for services such as hiring out bicycles, nature trails, food and traditional dances.

There are mutual benefits in the sense that tourists learn from villagers the ways of life, whereas in doing so, they pay for those services thus benefiting villagers and the village government through contributions.

Cultural tourism conserves natural resources as people concentrate on other sources of income.

They have prepared a land use plan which demarcates the land for different purposes and make sure that the type of land use is adhered to. Population pressure has caused blockage of wildlife corridors and creates unnecessary quarrels between the existing communities and wildlife, especially the elephants.

Frequent fires have started jeopardizing the biosphere`s reserve.

Poaching remains one of the critical problems in the area. Plans are underway to annex the buffer zones and establish wildlife management areas that will be managed by the National Park and the surrounding communities. rw

Rain Forests Fall at 'Alarming' Rate

Human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain forests. Africa is a leader in destructiveness. U.N. specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute, up from 50 a generation back. Scientists today worry about Global warming that is expected to dry up and kill off vast tracts of rain forest, and dying forests will feed global warming. The burning or rotting of trees that comes with deforestation sends more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all the world's planes, trains, trucks and automobiles. Forest destruction accounts for about 20% of man made emissions. Healthy forests absorb carbon dioxide and store carbon. If we don't start turning this around in the next 10 years, the crisis will begin to spiral out of control.

The U.N. session in Bali may have been a turning point, endorsing negotiations in which nations may fashion the first global financial plan for compensating developing countries for preserving their forests. Because northern forests remain essentially stable, that means 50,000 square miles of tropical forest are being cleared every 12 months. The lumber and fuel wood removed in the tropics alone would fill more than 1,000 Empire State Buildings. Almost 1% of African forests disappear each year. In 2000-2005, the continent lost 10 million acres a year. South American forests are usually burned for cattle grazing or soybean farming. In Southeast Asia, island forests are being cut or burned to make way for giant plantations of palm, whose oil is used in food processing, cosmetics and other products.

In Africa, it's individuals hacking out plots for small-scale farming. In Nigeria's southeastern state, home to one of the largest remaining tropical forests in Africa, people from surrounding villages go to the forest each day to work their pineapple and cocoa farms. They see no other way of earning money to feed their families. The Cross Rivers government seeks to help would-be farmers learn other trades, such as beekeeping or raising land snails, a regional delicacy. Anyone who wants to cut down one of the forest's valuable mahogany trees must obtain a license and negotiate which tree to fell with the nearby community, which shares in the income. A community benefiting from such small-scale forestry is likely to keep out those engaged in illegal, uncontrolled logging. Environmentalists say such a conservation approach may work for rural, agrarian people in Nigeria, but lessons learned in one place aren't necessarily applicable elsewhere.

A global strategy is needed. A government earning carbon credits for "avoided deforestation" could then sell them to a European power plant, for example, to meet its emission-reduction quota. But in many ways rain forests are still a world of unknowns. How much carbon dioxide are forests absorbing? How much carbon is stored there? How might the death of the Amazon forest affect the climate in, say, the American Midwest? rw

Chinese Farmers Are Losing Their Land

China faces a farming crisis as mass migration into the industrial zones of mushrooming cities eats up fertile land, while patterns of food consumption and land rights change. Historically the Chinese have spent most of their income on food, but to produce grains, vegetables and meat, the country must retain enough arable cropland. From the Ming Dynasty onwards farmers were able to feed a growing, increasingly urbanised population. Population growth was not an issue until the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today China is importing more food and resources. The sustainable Chinese agriculture has been altered in favour of Western methods that harm the existing ecosystems. China's ability to feed its own people and the environmental destruction provokes serious concern.

By 2030 Chinese demographers expect the population to level out nearer to 1.5 billion, but predicted that soaring grain imports would upset global markets. Water, more than grain or meat, might well be the crucial issue. As water becomes scarce, 80% of the grain crop is irrigated, as per-acre yield gains are erased by the loss of cropland to industrialization. Densely populated countries undergoing industrialization become food importers as the population shifts from rural to urban workers.

The world is experiencing rising food prices. The Chinese government is mandating price freezes and subsiding various manufacturing and food industries.

Water scarcity in China will impact the entire world; the country is experiencing a lack of potable water due to the environmental damage from rapid industrialization without any agencies to protect the ecology.

China, with 20% of the world's population and 7% of the world's arable land, is losing even more land to industrialization.

Beijing has mandated that arable land cannot fall below 298 million acres. China's Ministry of Land and Resources noted that the country has lost 6.6% of its arable land in the past decade.

Corruption also contributes to arable land loss. In central China's Hubei Province every day since November 2, over 10,000 tons of rubbish has turned the small farming village into a stinking dumpsite.

No legislation exists to protect farmers against crooked officials. Local governments have become the epicentre of corrupt land deals.

Chinese farmers fall under a village collective system that forbids them to own, buy or sell the land they till. Competition over raw materials has risen dramatically in the last decade; the impact of greater Chinese food demands has affected global markets. Food price inflation is a serious worry for China's leaders.

The long term outlook is grim, because land is being lost to construction in eastern China. This has degraded the overall quality of the country's remaining arable land. Almost 15% of China's total arable lands are polluted by heavy metals, and more than 40% soil erosion and desertification.

Without effective measures to solve this crisis everyone is going to suffer. rw

Oil Plan Casts Shadow on Bolivia Park

Sergio works in ecotourism in Bolivia's most national park, Madidi. This is where he and four of his 11 siblings show visitors the jungle's many treasures.

Overall, the park is sparsely populated and encompasses the Andean peaks and the tropical basins of the Amazon. Some feel that protected areas like Madidi could deliver more for the country's poor.

Farmers have seized a part of the national park near Apolo. They wanted land to cultivate crops, a road and the exploitation of its oil.

But other villagers say the land is not suitable for agriculture and that extracting oil could cause lasting damage.

The farmers have drawn back and the government is promising a military post to defend Madidi. But the Bolivian president, visited Madidi to highlight the existence of natural resources.

"It is impressive how our own mother Earth has natural resources," he said as he watched oil being extracted.

It was Mr Morales's promise to re-nationalise Bolivia's natural resources and deliver prosperity to the indigenous majority that brought him to power.

But locals fear the president does not understand life in the jungle and will not defend their interests.

The government agrees that ecotourism has potential; but it does not see it as a panacea and says people like Sergio need to be more realistic about what is best for Bolivia.

The government is also concerned that what happens in Madidi will have a domino effect on other national parks and protected areas.

Activists want sustainable development in the constitution

The protected areas belong to the people and should provide opportunities for local communities. Conservation makes no sense if it does not generate benefits for society as a whole.

Environmental groups want to see a commitment to biodiversity and conservation. Biodiversity is Bolivia's biggest competitive strength. We need to define its sustainable development. rw

Uganda;: Forests in Danger

Forest loss in Africa stands at 0.6%, in the world at 0.18%. At this pace, Uganda's forests will have gone in 50 years time.

Population pressure and poverty are the underlying causes. With 7.1 births per woman, Uganda has the second highest fertility rate in the world. By 2050, Uganda's population will be 130 million, five times the current number.

Feeding, housing, creating jobs and income for so many people will inevitably eat into the forests. 97% of the population uses charcoal and firewood for cooking. Illegal timber logging has resumed in at times with the support of local politicians.

The number of people building houses, farming and grazing their livestock in the protected forests went up from 180,000 to 220,000 between 2005 and 2006, an increase of 23%. The encroachers resist any attempts by the National Forestry Authority (NFA) to evict them.

Any response leads to mob action and grievous bodily harm to NFA's staff.

Deforestation leads to climate change and drought. Scientists are also linking a rise in infectious diseases to loss of forests and climate change.

By increasing the temperatures under which certain diseases and their carriers flourish, more regions will be affected. South Uganda, which never had malaria in the past, is now hit by the disease.

Climate change may increase the number of refugees who are forced to migrate to other parts of the country or other countries, and will favour the spread of diseases.

Tree planting, timber trade and eco-tourism, if properly managed and controlled, can turn into a major activity. The New Vision will distribute eight million seeds as part of a country-wide effort to promote sustainable development. rw

Rush for Land a Wake-up Call for Poorer Countries, Report Says

More than 200m hectares of land in the global south - over eight times the size of the UK - have been sold or leased between 2000 and 2010, according to a study published by the International Land Coalition.

Population growth, the increasing consumption of a global elite, and an international legal system skewed in favour of large scale investors are fuelling a worldwide rush for land that is unfolding faster than previously thought and is likely to continue.

The food price crisis of 2007-08 may have triggered a boom in international land deals, however "a much broader set of factors - linked to population growth and the rise of emerging economies - is raising the prospect of "a new era in the struggle for, and control over, land in many areas of the global south", the study argues.

The large land acquisitions may marginalise rural communities and jeopardise the future of family farming in favour of big industrial projects. Enthusiasm for industrial-scale agriculture continues to sideline small farmers.

Suprises uncovered by the study: rich national investors play a much larger role than previously thought, food is not the main focus of these deals, and African governments are not the only ones signing away large tracts of land.

Overall, about 40% of land acquired over the last decade is for biofuel production, 25% is for food crops and another 27% for mining, tourism, industry and forestry.

However, in Africa, 66% of land deals are intended for biofuel production, compared with 15% for food crops.

in south-east Asia, 75% of reported land deals have been struck by regional players, while in Africa, South African investors have acquired an estimated 40.7m hectares since 2009.

The IMF, the World Bank and a number of government aid agencies are pressuring developing countries to attract and legally protect foreign investment in agriculture and extractive industries,and to set up sophisticated specialised agencies to promote investment opportunities and offering benefits such as tax breaks and low prices, said the report.

USAID is hosting an international conference to promote foreign investment in South Sudan. Almost 9% of South Sudan's land had already been leased or bought by investors prior to the country's independence in July this year.

There are few effective international mechanisms exist to safeguard the rights of the rural poor. Meanwhile, the common lack of formal, legal titles to land is heightening the vulnerability of rural communities.

Lorenzo Cotula, of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said that " poor communities need to have "stronger rights over the land they have lived on for generations."

The G20 summit in Seoul last year encouraged all countries and companies to uphold a set of principles for responsible agricultural investment, developed by the UN and the World Bank But such agreements are little more than window-dressing.

Residents of Mukaya Payam, in South Sudan's Central Equatoria state, launched a campaign in August against what would have been the country's largest land deal - a 49-year lease of 600,000 hectares by an American company. In Selingue, in southern Mali, hundreds of smallholder farmers and civil society activists came together for the first international farmers' conference to tackle the global rush for land.

"Energy-Smart" Agriculture Needed to Escape Fossil Fuel Trap -- FAO Paper Published During UN Climate Change Conference Highlights How Food Sector Can Tackle Energy Challenges to Safeguard a Food-secure Future

The food sector accounts for approximately 30% of global energy consumption — and produces over 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

"There is justifiable concern that the current dependence of the food sector on fossil fuels may limit the sector's ability to meet global food demands. The challenge is to decouple food prices from fluctuating and rising fossil fuel prices."

The food sector both requires energy and can produce energy — an energy-smart approach to agriculture offers a way to take better advantage of this dual relationship between energy and food, it says.

(Originally published 29 November 2011)

Forget Global Warming and Move Up to Real Climate Change

Deputy Director of the IEA , Ambassador Richard Jones, said at the IEA 'Clean Energy Progress' conference that global temperatures may rise by "6 degrees celsius" by 2050. Many people dispute this claim, including Fritz Vahrenholt, a former leading figure of the German environmental movement who wrote the book: 'Die Kalte Sonne' (The Cold or Cooling Sun).

Vehrenhol, while affirming climate change, is highly critical of current global warming theory. He does supports the idea of 'Energiewende' or Energy Transformation, but says the current German approach is too costly, technologically uncertain. running much too fast and could wind up counterproductive. Germany national biodiversity is being threatened with forests being hacked up to produce biomass and build windfarms.

Global warming proponents consider this rush to renewables imperious because of a) global warming, and b) the high cost of oil and gas imports. Coal seems to be left out of the picture, but they consider other European imports as bad for European trade balances and expensive. Vehrenholt is convinced that CO2 and global warming are being exaggerated: he says we have a lot more time, and more options for developing genuinely sustainable solutions.

He says a lot of climate change depends on the influence of the sun's energy cycles and whether or not we are moving into a longer-term period of low activity sunspot cycles, in which case global temperatures could drop significantly.

In addition, he claims we should not be Ignoring the other and real anthropogenic causes of climate change, especially deforestation and monocrop agriculture over 148 million sq kms of the earth's surface.

Vahrenholt was the CEO of RWE Innogy, which had a renewable energy subsidiary, is a major user of nuclear power, an oil producer, and also the biggest German producer of coal- and lignite-based electricity. Critics conclude from this that Vahrenholt is simply furthering RWE's corporate interests. But Vahrenholt was also CEO of REpower Systems, a wind energy company whose competitors are Vestas and QCells -- QCells, once German and world leader in solar PV production is now in receivership and the Vestas share price is down about 75% in 12 months.Vahrenholt says the basic reason for this was the industry was going too fast, in a casino capitalist market system with no safety nets and where only expansion succeeds.

In his book Vahrenholt tells us that wind power is being affected by deforestation and agriculture development, giving the examples of the the Hadley Cell -- the main driver of all equatorial and lower latitude circulation of air and humidity -- and the Walker-Hadley climate system, both which are weakened by wind speed and frequency reduction due to massive ongoing deforestation and agriculture development, causing radical changes of albedo and average humidity, and directly reducing wind speeds. This concerns Earth-sized chunks of the planet - all the tropical forest areas and is known for at least 25 years. These weakening and more variable wind regimes overturn longstanding cycles of the global climate system, which feature in UN IPCC global warming models, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This is a natural cycle with a period of about 60 years, split into two 30-year subcycles of more wind in winter, for 30 years, and then less - with much colder winters when there is less wind. Tropical forest deforestation has already eliminated 8 million square kilometres of forest on the 16 million total that the Earth had for at least 50 000 years until 100 years ago.

Vehrenholt also claims that the UN IPCC wants to ignore natural climatic variation, such as the 'Medieval Warm Period', around the year 1000 when the Vikings settled in Greenland and were able to live there for a couple of centuries, followed after a 300 year interval by the so-called 'Little Ice Age', starting about 1695. The IPPC claims the Little Ice Age was just a local European phenomena, but many experts claim it was not.

IPCC is a political organization; many of its 31 members are developing countries mostly interested in investment in their energy sector. IPPC should be looking at black carbon emissions, from burning wood and animal dung, which growing evidence shows may contribute at least 50% of the imputed or claimed effect of CO2.

Vahrenholt claims Germany's biomass production -- mainly rapeseed and maize -- could grow to take as much as 20% of all agricultural land. This will be monocrop agribusiness farming, producing almost zero (or even negative) net energy yield. In addition he says that Germany and some other EU states - especially the UK - claim they will or may import wheat and maize, as well as palm oil for biofuel from tropical forest land in Indonesia.

Countries are dropping out of the Kyoto accord. China contributes 25% of global CO2 emissions and its share will grow rapidly. Carbon correct and running a trade surplus is becoming difficult.

Also mentioned in the book are the inadequacies of the smart grid/super grid default solution and no alternative.

More important however -- something that the book skates around -- is that, with the IPCC bending the figures to suit its CO2 theory, we must not overlook that "climate is above all real, is anthropogenic, and is dangerous".

UN: Meat Consumption Must Be Cut to Reduce Greenhouse Gases

A recent study by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that the developed world needs to cut its meat consumption by 50% per person by the year 2050. This is a necessary step in reducing one of the most potent greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide (N2O), currently the third highest contributor to global warming, but the most difficult to control and the most potent of the three big greenhouse gases because it is a better absorber of infrared radiation.

The main sources of N2O are the spreading of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers used in agriculture, the storage of fertilizers, and the use of livestock manure. Microbes break down the fertilizers and manure, and then release N2O into the air.

Reducing meat consumption would decrease both sources of nitrous oxides. Less livestock means less manure as well as less need for synthetic fertilizers due to less agricultural produce required to feed them. N2O emissions can also be controlled by better management of fertilizer and manure.

IPCC author Dr. Eric A Davidson of the Woods Hole Research Center, outlines four scenarios which represent possible pathways of reductions in greenhouse gases. The most aggressive scenario, where N2O concentrations would stabilize by 2050, would require a 50% cut in meat consumption, 50% cut in industrial emissions, and an equal level of improvement in agricultural practices.

Dr. Davidson said, "If you had asked me 30 years ago if smoking would be banned in bars I would have laughed and said that would be impossible in my lifetime, and yet it has come true. Are similar changes possible for diet? That will depend not only on education about diet, but also upon prices of meat. Some agricultural economists think that the price of meat is going to go way up, so that per capita consumption will go down, but those are highly uncertain projections."

Scientists Warn of Emerging Fungal Peril

Fungal diseases are a major threat not just to wild plants and animals, but to us, according to a paper in Nature. More and more of these killer fungi are appearing, and they're increasingly attacking animals. We're already heading for huge fungal damage to vital crops and ecosystems over the coming decades.

Persistent low-level infection of fungi already destroy at least 125 million tonnes a year of rice, wheat, maize and potatoes and soybeans, worth $60 billion. In 2009-10, this lost food could have fed some 8.5% of the world's people. Simultaneous epidemics in several major crops could mean billions starve.

Emerging fungal epidemics already account for 72% of extinctions from disease - more than bacteria and viruses put together. Amphibians are being wiped out by a deadly chytrid fungus that's been spread by the global animal trade; at least 500 species are thought to be at risk. 40% of amphibian species in some parts of Central America have been wiped out in just a few years.

Likewise, bats are being struck down by so-called White Nose Syndrome, which has spread all over North America since it was first spotted in 2006. Because bats eat insects that would otherwise attack crops, White Nose Syndrome could end up costing farmers some $3.7 billion a year.

In the UK the invading North American signal crayfish is wiping out the native white-clawed crayfish with the help of a fungus-like disease that the invader tolerates but that's deadly to its indigenous rival.

In addition, fungi are adept at swapping genes between themselves, so when we bring different species into contact, dangerously virulent combinations can result.

New fungal diseases keep appearing, affecting organisms from bees and corals to sea otters. If we don't do more to control them, we could see species wiped out all over the planet.

By tightening rules on the transport of plants and animals around the world, we could limit these pathogens' spread into new areas. We need to cut down the amount of living material we transport around the world, quarantining what we do transport far more rigorously, and doing more to stop the illegal trade in plants and animals.

Future UK Food Security Uncertain

Britain's food security will become increasingly uncertain as global demand for food rises and as supplies are constrained by environmental factors and input limitations, claims the organization Population Matters. This uncertainty is exacerbated by Britain's rising population.

Population Matters chief executive, Simon Ross, commented "a continued reliance on other countries to meet our basic needs is dangerously complacent. Britain's growing population is creating significant future problems for this country and it would be wise to address population now rather than wait for the inevitable consequences to emerge."

Britain has little scope for increased production from its own heavily exploited agricultural land and marine fisheries. The countries which currently supply Britain with food are themselves facing significant population growth. They also are experiencing input imitations, particularly water, and potential climate change impacts.

A report from the government sponsored Commission on Climate Change and Sustainable Agriculture, Achieving Food Security in the Face of Climate Change found that rising global demand and environmental and resource constraints posed significant challenges for future food production.

With 7 billion people today, we face intense consumption and depletion of food and other resources as well as 1.2 billion undernourished people. By 2050 the projected world population will reach 9.5 billion, while the UK population is on course to reach 75 million.

Areas of concern which may conceal risks for the future of UK food supply are: population expansion, shortage of productive land, food waste, ecological unsustainability and natural catastrophes for both the UK and its supplier nations. An additional area of concern for the UK lies with the fishing industry, since domestic landings cannot cope with the increased demand.

The maximum sustainable UK population is around 15 million, meaning a UK overpopulation by 60 million in 2050, unless there was a 80% reduction in consumption If this reduction is not made , the shortage will increase by 70% in cropland, 52% in pasture land and 16% in the fishing grounds surplus. If other countries - faced with their own food supply problems - cannot bail out the UK's needs, the consequences could be catastrophic. The ecological sustainability of many UK food suppliers is shown to be precarious. Approximately 63% of the major suppliers will be facing a cropland deficit or pasture land deficit and 37% will experience fishing ground deficit. The UK is already a net fish importer.

The report says the most effective way to mitigate the vulnerabilities is to reduce the UK population size, eventually to its sustainable level. Policy makers should decide how people can adopt sustainable attitudes towards the environment.

Africa: Women Farmers Can Overcome World Hunger

A UN FAO report showed women produce 60% to 80% of the food in developing countries, including those in Africa. But for many of them, owning land, accessing credit and even having a bank account is out of reach. The women shoulder much of the responsibility of growing crops and tending chicken, goats and sheep but men remain in control of much of the marketing and finances. The International Livestock Research Institute's (ILRI) Dr Jemimah Njuki said women were significantly disadvantaged in their access to information, training, farm equipment and financial help which was holding back economic productivity of many countries.

An ILO study shows a 22% jump in productivity in countries where there is equal access by men and women to resources. "In 2010 there were one billion hungry people in the world but if we could increase agricultural productivity even by 20%, we could reduce this by 150 million," Dr Njuki said. "We will not be able to grow agriculture if we do not address the gender imbalance." Women should be able to benefit from what they are putting into agriculture. "Gender inequality in Africa is slowly changing with ILRI and its partners increasing their capacity to train women in farm production and also train more female service providers," she said.

When markets become commercialised, women who participated in localised markets selling eggs and milk lack the capital or necessary skills to move up to formal markets. ILRI has been working with many women on innovative market payment schemes enabling them to use village banks or receive payment through their mobile phones.Projects of the Australian AusAID'S Africa Food Security Initiative have prioritised the importance of women in African agriculture and provided them with education and training into food production, marketing and post harvest production.

One project that really helps women is the Sustainable Intensification of Maize and Legumes in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA). Its goal is to increase maize and legume production by 30% to more than 500,000 small farmers in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. Maize has been grown in previous years with continual tillage and no fertiliser applications, significantly reducing the soil's fertility and leading to erosion. SIMLESA promotes conservation agriculture (or no-till cropping), inorganic fertilisers, spraying weeds prior to planting, improved plant varieties - potentially trebling maize yields from less than a tonne per hectare to 3.5t/ha.

Kenyan Agriculture Resource Institute agronomist and SIMLESA Project Team Leader for western Kenya John Achieng said "There will be more maize for farmers to eat and feed their households and surplus to sell so they can pay school fees for their children, buy clothing and even improve their houses." Consultant Cathy McGowan has been running research and development and extension programs for women in two other developing countries, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and India for well over a decade. She says women in subsistence agriculture work long hours because of their strong connection to food growing for their families. Their work is often invisible and not considered important because it does not contribute to the country's gross domestic product but as an example in PNG, 85% of the food is grown by women in their gardens.

Kenya: How Women Can Boost Food Security

African women contribute 70% of the effort towards food production, yet they are still under-represented in areas of research and policymaking, as well as influential leadership positions in agriculture.

The African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), a programme funded by the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is seeking to strengthen research and leadership skills of female agriculture scientists to enable them contribute to food security in sub-Sahara Africa.

This should enable Africa to revolutionize farming practices and rescue millions of citizens from recurrent hunger crises.

So far, the program has benefited 250 women across eleven countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ending Hunger in Africa

As hunger and drought spread across Africa, there's a focus on increasing yields of staple crops, such as maize, wheat, cassava, and rice. Although these crops are important for improving food security, they cannot cure malnutrition alone.

There is no one-size fits all or single crop solution to solving global hunger, alleviating poverty, or protecting the environment and mitigating climate change. But the good news is that there is a multi-crop solution and it's already being spear-headed by farmers on the ground: vegetables.

Some 1 billion people worldwide are affected by "hidden hunger," or micronutrient deficiencies - lack of Vitamin A, iron, and iodine, none of which are found in staple crops, but rather, in vegetables. Vegetable production is the most sustainable and affordable way of alleviating micronutrient deficiencies among the poor.

It's also the most sustainable and affordable way of improving biodiversity, preserving traditions and cultures, and improving livelihoods. Because vegetables typically have a shorter growing period than staple crops, they are less risk-prone to drought, maximizing scarce water supplies and soil nutrients better than crops such as maize.

Unfortunately, no country in Africa has a big focus on vegetable production. But that's where AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center steps in, working with farmers to build a sustainable seed system in Africa. The Center does this by breeding a variety of vegetables with different traits—including resistance to disease and longer shelf life—and by bringing the farmers to the Regional Center in Arusha and to other offices across Africa to find out what exactly those farmers need in the field and at market.

Babel Isack, a tomato farmer from Tanzania, is just one of many farmers who visit the Center, advising staff about which vegetable varieties would be best suited for his particular needs—including varieties that depend on fewer chemical sprays and have a longer shelf life.

Mel Oluoch, a Liaison Officer with the Center's Vegetable Breeding and Seed System Program (vBSS) trains both urban and rural farmers in seed production. "The sustainability of seed," says Oluoch, "is not yet there in Africa." In other words, farmers don't have access to a reliable source of seed for indigenous vegetables, such as amaranth, spider plant, cowpea, okra, moringa, and other crops. But Oluoch and others at the Center are working closely with farmers to change that.

The hardiness and drought-tolerance of traditional vegetables become increasingly important as climate change becomes more evident. Many indigenous vegetables use less water than hybrid varieties and some are resistant to pests and disease without the use of chemical inputs, which are expensive both financially and environmentally.

Of course, it's not only crucial for farmers to grow indigenous species; people also need to want to eat them. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, local foods are looked down upon by rich and poor shoppers alike. In Senegal, for example, many consumers and cooks consider local rice to be inferior and instead buy imported European brands that can cost four times as much.

At the heart of these issues is a loss of knowledge about agricultural practices and indigenous varieties that create local agricultural, as well as cultural, biodiversity. While what we eat is important, what may be even more essential over the long term is preserving knowledge about how to plant, grow, and cook what we eat.

In Uganda's Mukono District, Edward Mukiibi, 23, and Roger Serunjogi, 22, founded the Developing Innovations in School Cultivation Project, or DISC, with this premise in mind. The project began in 2006 as a way to improve nutrition, generate environmental awareness, and preserve food traditions and culture for local students by establishing school gardens at 15 preschool, day and boarding schools.

By focusing on school gardens, Mukiibi and Serunjogi are helping not only to feed children, but are also revitalizing an interest in - and cultivation of - African indigenous vegetables, cultivating the next generation of farmers and eaters who can preserve Uganda's culinary traditions and increase food security.

Says one 19 year-old student, Mary Naku, who is learning farming skills from DISC, "as youth we have learned to grow fruits and vegetables to support our lives."

Organizations like the AVRDC and DISC, by inspiring our future farmers, working with current farmers and reigniting an interest and appetite for indigenous crop varieties, are helping to improve diets, livelihoods and local ecosystems around the world.

Staple crops can't do it alone. Luckily for us, creating a sustainable agriculture system and fighting hunger takes all kinds of crops, for a more delicious and sustainable, well-nourished future. rw

Aquaculture Holds the Promise of Sustainability

Specialists say aquaculture can help spur the recovery of natural populations of aquatic species - and provide food and income for small-scale farmers in developing countries.

Asia continues to dominate the farming of aquatic species, accounting for approximately 92% of the world harvest.

According to the UNFAO, annual production from commercial fishing has stabilized at about 95 million metric tons, while aquaculture has increased by almost 9% each year since 1970. Aquaculture's probably producing about 50% of the fish that are eaten.

The most problematic problem is the spread of non-native species, when farmed fish escape. The best way to avoid this is to raise only fish that are native to that area.

Other potential problems include pollution from excessive feeding and waste products, and the clearing of environmentally sensitive land to create ponds. Also, when the ponds are filled with salt water the salt can contaminate the soil.

When practiced sustainably, aquaculture can benefit the environment by reducing pressure from commercial fishing and helping to rebuild wild populations.

Disease, poor water quality and decades of overharvest have drastically reduced the Chesapeake Bays natural oyster population and aquaculture is a way to bring the oysters back. Oysters are removed and replaced with disease-free hatchery seed and allowed to grow until 60% are at least 10 centimeters long. Aquaculture contributes to local food security and generates income.

The demand for seafood is expected to increase, and aquaculture will continue to be the most rapidly growing food production system. rw

Terra Preta - An Inexpensive, If Not Profitable, Solution to the Problems of Global Warming and Developing World Hunger

A technology for diminishing the fertility difference was developed about 7000 years ago, by Indian tribes in Amazonia. The technology was never transmitted to European settler. Modern man discovered this ancient technology around 1870, and this attracted widespread interest among soil scientists around 1950. As a result, scientists from many parts of the world are now busy trying to reproduce the technology, including the ability to spread the fertile tropical soils over large areas.

Throughout Amazonia one finds countless patches, roughly 50 acres (0.2 km2) in size, of fertile soil with depths of up to about 2.0 meters (04D1). Patches 350 to 500 km2 in size have also been found (04D1). Modern-day Brazilians extract this fertile "terra preta" (a fine dark loam) and sell it.

Terra preta soil organic matter content is about 50 times greater than that found in typical low fertility tropical soils Terra preta also contains three times as much phosphorous and nitrogen as surrounding soils. Tropical rains don't seem to leach nutrients from fields of terra preta soil.

Terra preta soils are often 1-2 meters deep, far deeper that global average topsoil thicknesses and "self-propagates" (somewhat like sourdough bread), perhaps due to some microorganism.

It now appears that among the first effects will be the elimination of global warming as a result of the improved tropical soils creating a huge carbon sink. The likely side effects include huge economic benefits to developing nations, and probable major reductions in both human hunger and tropical deforestation. This would suggest that elimination of global warming could be accomplished at very low cost. For most tropical soils, fertility resides in the plant life growing on these soils and in the decaying leaves, stems, branches, trunks, roots and fruit of dead plants. This difference in soil fertility, in combination with the higher population growth rates in tropical nations, probably explains why the bulk of the world's hunger is found in tropical nations.

The basic reason for the difference in soil properties is that the organic matter contents (carbon) of most tropical soils are roughly a third of what they are in most temperate soils. The useful forms of key soil nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, magnesium and other elements) are to be found associated with the soil organic matter. So with less soil organic matter these key nutrients tend to leach out into surface waters and ground waters draining the soil.

The formation of organo-mineral complexes makes the soil more fertile as a result of the stable organo-mineral complexes remaining in the soil, effectively increasing the soil organic matter content.

Converting ordinary tropical soils into terra preta can double or triple crop yields. It has been calculated that simply by replacing the "slash-and-burn" agriculture by "slash-and-char," up to 12% of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be eliminated. rw

U.S. Is Creating 3 Centers for Research on Biofuels

The Energy Department is creating three start-up companies with $125 million each in capital, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Madison, Wisconsin; and near Berkeley, Calif. They will involve numerous universities, national laboratories and private companies. The goal is to bring new technologies to market within five years to support Bush's goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20% in 10 years.

The centers will focus on finding naturally occurring microbes that can break down plants and trees, to give access to cellulose that can be converted into liquid fuels. Today, companies trying to commercialize cellulosic ethanol use heat and acids an expensive process. They have focused on cellulose which is made up of six-carbon sugars, found in grains that have been turned into fermented products like beer for thousands of years, and of five-carbon sugars, which cannot be fermented by ordinary means.

The centers will also work on creating new crops that produce lignin that is easier to deal with.

Ethanol is increasingly used as a gasoline substitute, but that has driven up the price of corn. There are other sources of biomass that has nothing to do with corn or any other food, such as switch grass.

In another area, it would help establish laboratories to test designs for wind turbine blades up to 300 feet long. The size has tripled in the last five years and could triple again, but would require blades of lighter materials.

The centers, each to be financed by $25 million a year, are to be fully operational by Sept. 1, 2009. rw

Massive Diversion of U.S. Grain to Fuel Cars

Corn prices have doubled over the last year, wheat futures are at their highest level in 10 years, and rice prices are rising. The use of corn as the feedstock for fuel ethanol is creating consequences throughout the global food chain.

In Mexico, the price of tortillas is up by 60% percent. Angry Mexicans have forced the government to institute price controls on tortillas.

Food prices are also rising in China, India, and the US, 40% of the world's people. Vast quantities of corn are consumed indirectly in meat, milk, and eggs in both China and the US.

In China, pork prices were up 20% above a year earlier, eggs were up 16%. In India, the food price index in 2007 was 10% higher than a year earlier. The price of wheat has jumped 11%.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the wholesale price of chicken in 2007 will be 10% higher than in 2006, the price of eggs will be up 21%, and milk 14%, and this is only the beginning.

As more and more fuel ethanol distilleries are built, world grain prices are starting to move up toward their oil-equivalent value. In this new economy, if the fuel value of grain exceeds its food value, the market will move it into the energy economy. Some 16 of the 2006 U.S. harvest was used to produce ethanol. With 80 or so ethanol distilleries under construction, nearly a third of the 2008 grain harvest will be going to ethanol.

Since the United States is the leading exporter of grain, what happens to the U.S. grain crop affects the entire world. The world's breadbasket is fast becoming the U.S. fuel tank.

The UN lists 34 countries as needing emergency food assistance. Food aid programs have fixed budgets.

Protests in response to rising food prices could lead to political instability that would add to the list of failed and failing states. President Bush set a production goal for 2017 of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels. Given the difficulties in producing cellulosic ethanol at a competitive cost and the mounting public opposition to liquefied coal, most of the fuel to meet this goal might have to come from grain. This could leave little grain to meet U.S. needs, much less those of the countries that import grain.

The risk is that millions of those on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder will start falling off as higher food prices drop their consumption below the survival level.

In 2007, 18,000 children are dying every day from hunger and malnutrition. There are alternatives. A rise in fuel efficiency standards of 20% over the next decade would save as much oil as converting the entire U.S. grain harvest into ethanol.

One option is plug-in hybrids. Adding a second storage battery to a gas-electric hybrid car along with a plug-in capacity allows most short-distance driving to be done with electricity. If this was accompanied by thousands of wind farms that could feed cheap electricity into the grid, then cars could run largely on electricity for the equivalent cost of $1 per gallon gasoline.

Toyota, Nissan, and GM, have announced plans to bring plug-in hybrid cars to market. It is time to decide whether to continue with subsidizing more grain-based distilleries or to encourage a shift to more fuel-efficient cars. The choice is between a future of rising world food prices, spreading hunger, and growing political instability, or one of stable food prices, sharply reduced dependence on oil, and much lower carbon emissions. rw

Shale Natural-Gas Depletion

Note: there are a lot of numbers being thrown around on this topic, depending on who you ask. Please read the article through before you start quoting anything.

Conventional gas production peaked in the 1970's in the United States. New supply from unconventional tight gas (and some coal-bed methane), along with imports, filled the supply/demand gap. The "new" technology (horizontal drilling & hydraulic fracturing) combined with rising price boosts recoverable reserves over time.

If you add up the mean values for Traditional Gas Resources, which includes shale gas, and Coal Bed Methane, you get the 1,836 Tcf (trillions of cubic feet) of potential resources. If you throw in the EIA's proved reserves, the total resources are 2,074 Tcf in the Lower 48 and Alaska. This represents the ‘technically recoverable' gas resource potential of the U.S. At current consumption rates, the new total represents about 100 years of supply. If speculative resources (500 Tcf) are excluded, we would still have about 75 years of supply.

There has been a lot of promotion of the newly-found natural gas:

The (T. Boone) Pickens Plan promotes using natural gas to replace liquid fuels in transportation, especially as a replacement for diesel in long-haul trucking. The PGC (Potential Gas Committee) reports say that "the 2,074 trillion cubic feet of domestic natural gas reserves cited in the study is the equivalent of nearly 350 billion barrels of oil, about the same as Saudi Arabia's oil reserves." But ASPO-USA commentator Tom Standing said it would take decades build out the supply chain (e.g. swap petroleum gas stations for natural gas stations). The Pickens Plan is currently dead in the water.

Dr. Joseph Romm of the influential Center for American Progress proposes to use natural gas to ramp up under-utilized natural gas electrical power generation capacity to replace base-load coal. We now have the makings of a de facto moratorium on coal. We seem to be unwilling to build new nuclear capacity. It is theoretically possible for wind to provide 20% of our electricity by 2030, but there are many practical, economic & political barriers to success. Thus it would behoove us to switch to natural gas at large-scales if we want to maintain a functioning electricity grid 10-15 years from now.

There is little reason to doubt that the potential natural gas resource base in the United States is very large. The hidden problem with such estimates relates to whether the gas is economic to produce.

The Tristone Capital study (October, 2008, described in Oil & Gas Journal, shows increased shale gas production with a risked estimate out to 2018, from analysis of nine US and Canada shale gas plays. These are risked production additions — "the study expects companies ultimately to recover from these resources 261 Tcf of gas, based on various risk factors applied and a long-term average gas price of $8.50/MMbtu. Without the risk factors, Tristone Capital says these shales have a 743-Tcf recovery potential."

Despite the likelihood that we will have low or average gas prices over the next few years due to the recession and oversupply, the market share of shale gas grows and grows. This forecast looks like a high-wire act that defies not only gravity, but also the laws of supply & demand. One wonders what the minimum price is that makes shale gas unprofitable. $4.50/Mcf (millions of cubic feet)? $3.50/Mcf?

Art Berman, a Houston geologist and columnist at World Oil Magazine, does not believe most shale gas wells are economic unless operator costs go down, gas prices rise sharply, and high average prices are sustained. Talking about the Haynesville shale site, he says— "The play is marginally commercial today for operators with favorable hedge positions, but not commercial based on cost and price fundamentals. At current prices, the netback of $3.25/mcf barely covers operating costs, so no Haynesville well is economic and rates and reserves simply do not matter.

Berman's analysis of the Barnett: "Shale gas is not commercial at any 'reasonable' price because the costs are too high. ... The average per-well EUR (estimated ultimate recovery) is about 0.6 Bcf (billions of cubic fee) —pathetic!"

Berman says he has looked at the financial documents filed with the SEC of most of the major shale players (Chesapeake, Petrohawk, Range Resources, etc.) "they're all taking a bath financially but put on a brave face, and have huge debt. As long as their stock price is good, the executives get rich so why do they care? The analyst community is so naive about true costs that they believe the propaganda."

The frac costs keep increasing because operators are now commonly using 10-12-stage fracs that cost millions. The extra cost may only accomplish a rate acceleration and not an increase in reserves. In the Barnett Shale, the average horizontally drilled and fractured wells only have approximately 25% more reserves than vertical wells but 3 times the cost! This talk about lowering operating cost and increasing reserves is more propaganda, and most cost benefit is more than negatively compensated by more interest expense on debt.

From the L. David Roper website http://www.roperld.com/science/minerals/shalegas.htm

Please go to this website to see the charts.

Shale-gas recoverable reserves have been estimated at 264 Tcf. Shale natural gas adds a short large blip to the natural-gas extraction for the United States. It could be reduced in size and stretched out over a larger time interval, but I doubt it will be. The U.S. will probably extract and use it as fast as possible.

I could not find any data for shale-gas extraction for the world. Since the U.S. is way ahead of other nations in this effort, I assume that the extraction-rate data for the world is essentially the same as for the U.S.

I also assume that the extractable reserves for the U.S. is 500 Tcf and that the extracable reserves for the world is the ratio of the Earth land area to the U.S. land area (~16) times 500 Tcf = ~8000 Tcf.

Adding the 8000-Tcf-reserves shale gas to the conventional natural-gas depletion curve for the World adds just a short large blip to the natural-gas extraction for the World. It could be reduced in size and stretched out over a larger time interval, but I doubt it will be. The world will probably extract and use it as fast as possible.

Trade-secret chemicals are inserted into the shale formations to fractionate ("fracking") the formation into cracks for the gas to seep through to the well pipe. There is strong indications that the fracking allows the gas to seep up into the water table, contamination wells for human use.

There is very little information about what the chemicals used might be doing to the environment.

A documentary film, Gasland, has been made about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas. Another documentary, Shale Gas and America's Future, gives great detail about the drilling and fracking process and discusses the environmental problems. The TV program 60 minutes showed a program about fracking.

There is an effort in the Congress to regulate the gas companies such that they have to disclose the chemicals used in fracking.

From Wikipedia:

A study by Cornell University professor Robert W. Howarth in 2010 finds that, once methane leak impacts are included, the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of shale gas would be worse than those of coal and fuel oil. Methane is by far the major component of natural gas, and it is a powerful greenhouse gas: 25-times more powerful than is CO2 per molecule in the atmosphere. However, this report has been discredited as being only a preliminary study which has not gone through the peer process. rw

An Interview with Peak-Oil Provocateur Matthew Simmons

Matthew Simmons, a well-connected industry insider has concluded that some of the world's largest oil beds may be on the verge of collapse. Author of the recently published Twilight in the Desert: The Coming, Simmons is founder of an investment bank that handles mergers and acquisitions among energy companies and has predicted that the price of a barrel of oil could hit the high triple digits within a few years. To postpone this he says we should be drilling in the Arctic and other contested spots. At the same time, he's calling for improvements in efficiency, as well as a return to local farming and manufacturing. He said that we are either at or very close to peak oil and have to assume that five or 10 years we'll be producing less oil than today. And yet we expect that oil usage will grow by 30% to 50% over the next 25 years. It's a problem that could end up leading to more geopolitical fights and give way to a very ugly society. The odyssey began in the early 1980s when Simmons realized that his firm was threatened by a collapse in the oil business. So many experts in the energy market, including government analysts, don't base their opinions on actual data, because the relevant data are confidential. No major oil-producer allows audits of the data on their reserves which leaves the experts playing a guessing game. An inventory of the top oil fields showed that nobody had ever listed even the top 20 oil fields by name. There are only about 120 fields in the world that produce half of the world's oil supply. The top 14, which make up 20% of global supply, are over 53 years old. In Saudi Arabia there are only five key fields producing 90% of their oil. During a trip to Saudi Arabia they plied us with data that didn't add up, even vaguely. The major Saudi fields are at risk of reaching their peak, at which point they will see their output decline. Simmons started a year ago saying that we need to prepare for triple-digit oil prices that will be set by demand and supply. Current oil prices are cheap, consider that $65 a barrel translates to 10 cents a cup, cheaper than bottled water. For decades, Saudi Arabia has been injecting water in each key oil field to keep pressure high. The Saudis are injecting between 15 and 18 million barrels a day of water to recover 8 million barrels a day of oil. What they are doing is rapidly depleting the high-quality, high flow-rate oil, so they'll be left with vast amounts of oil that just won't come out of the ground without massive water input or thousands and thousands of wells being drilled. Sadad al-Husseini, a former executive of Saudi Aramco, corroborated this thesis. The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia spoke at Rice University and said, "We're as transparent as anybody." Until we force that same standard of disclosure on Exxon and Shell and BP, there's no reason to expect Saudi Arabia to behave better. Ultimately, we have to create new forms of energy. Solar and wind are not helpful on the transportation front. Biofuels need to be examined, but corn-based ethanol is a scam because it requires such intensive oil inputs. There are some 220 million cars on the road in the U.S. and the problem with hybrids and hydrogen, which many people think is the alternative energy, is it will take 30 years to turn over the entire vehicle fleet. We don't have 15 or 20 years, much less 30. We have to find more energy-efficient methods of transporting products by rail and ship. We have to liberate the workforce and let them work in their village, through emails, faxes and video conferencing. We need to return to local farms and attack globalization. Manufacturing things close to home will begin to make sense again. rw

"Energy-Smart" Agriculture Needed to Escape Fossil Fuel Trap -- FAO Paper Published During UN Climate Change Conference Highlights How Food Sector Can Tackle Energy Challenges to Safeguard a Food-secure Future

The food sector accounts for approximately 30% of global energy consumption — and produces over 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

"There is justifiable concern that the current dependence of the food sector on fossil fuels may limit the sector's ability to meet global food demands. The challenge is to decouple food prices from fluctuating and rising fossil fuel prices."

The food sector both requires energy and can produce energy — an energy-smart approach to agriculture offers a way to take better advantage of this dual relationship between energy and food, it says.

(Originally published 29 November 2011)

Forget Global Warming and Move Up to Real Climate Change

Deputy Director of the IEA , Ambassador Richard Jones, said at the IEA 'Clean Energy Progress' conference that global temperatures may rise by "6 degrees celsius" by 2050. Many people dispute this claim, including Fritz Vahrenholt, a former leading figure of the German environmental movement who wrote the book: 'Die Kalte Sonne' (The Cold or Cooling Sun).

Vehrenhol, while affirming climate change, is highly critical of current global warming theory. He does supports the idea of 'Energiewende' or Energy Transformation, but says the current German approach is too costly, technologically uncertain. running much too fast and could wind up counterproductive. Germany national biodiversity is being threatened with forests being hacked up to produce biomass and build windfarms.

Global warming proponents consider this rush to renewables imperious because of a) global warming, and b) the high cost of oil and gas imports. Coal seems to be left out of the picture, but they consider other European imports as bad for European trade balances and expensive. Vehrenholt is convinced that CO2 and global warming are being exaggerated: he says we have a lot more time, and more options for developing genuinely sustainable solutions.

He says a lot of climate change depends on the influence of the sun's energy cycles and whether or not we are moving into a longer-term period of low activity sunspot cycles, in which case global temperatures could drop significantly.

In addition, he claims we should not be Ignoring the other and real anthropogenic causes of climate change, especially deforestation and monocrop agriculture over 148 million sq kms of the earth's surface.

Vahrenholt was the CEO of RWE Innogy, which had a renewable energy subsidiary, is a major user of nuclear power, an oil producer, and also the biggest German producer of coal- and lignite-based electricity. Critics conclude from this that Vahrenholt is simply furthering RWE's corporate interests. But Vahrenholt was also CEO of REpower Systems, a wind energy company whose competitors are Vestas and QCells -- QCells, once German and world leader in solar PV production is now in receivership and the Vestas share price is down about 75% in 12 months.Vahrenholt says the basic reason for this was the industry was going too fast, in a casino capitalist market system with no safety nets and where only expansion succeeds.

In his book Vahrenholt tells us that wind power is being affected by deforestation and agriculture development, giving the examples of the the Hadley Cell -- the main driver of all equatorial and lower latitude circulation of air and humidity -- and the Walker-Hadley climate system, both which are weakened by wind speed and frequency reduction due to massive ongoing deforestation and agriculture development, causing radical changes of albedo and average humidity, and directly reducing wind speeds. This concerns Earth-sized chunks of the planet - all the tropical forest areas and is known for at least 25 years. These weakening and more variable wind regimes overturn longstanding cycles of the global climate system, which feature in UN IPCC global warming models, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This is a natural cycle with a period of about 60 years, split into two 30-year subcycles of more wind in winter, for 30 years, and then less - with much colder winters when there is less wind. Tropical forest deforestation has already eliminated 8 million square kilometres of forest on the 16 million total that the Earth had for at least 50 000 years until 100 years ago.

Vehrenholt also claims that the UN IPCC wants to ignore natural climatic variation, such as the 'Medieval Warm Period', around the year 1000 when the Vikings settled in Greenland and were able to live there for a couple of centuries, followed after a 300 year interval by the so-called 'Little Ice Age', starting about 1695. The IPPC claims the Little Ice Age was just a local European phenomena, but many experts claim it was not.

IPCC is a political organization; many of its 31 members are developing countries mostly interested in investment in their energy sector. IPPC should be looking at black carbon emissions, from burning wood and animal dung, which growing evidence shows may contribute at least 50% of the imputed or claimed effect of CO2.

Vahrenholt claims Germany's biomass production -- mainly rapeseed and maize -- could grow to take as much as 20% of all agricultural land. This will be monocrop agribusiness farming, producing almost zero (or even negative) net energy yield. In addition he says that Germany and some other EU states - especially the UK - claim they will or may import wheat and maize, as well as palm oil for biofuel from tropical forest land in Indonesia.

Countries are dropping out of the Kyoto accord. China contributes 25% of global CO2 emissions and its share will grow rapidly. Carbon correct and running a trade surplus is becoming difficult.

Also mentioned in the book are the inadequacies of the smart grid/super grid default solution and no alternative.

More important however -- something that the book skates around -- is that, with the IPCC bending the figures to suit its CO2 theory, we must not overlook that "climate is above all real, is anthropogenic, and is dangerous".

Tar Sands Oil: Pros and Cons

Canada has oil reserves of 170 billion barrels, more than Iran and Nigeria combined. However, much of that oil has been considered "not economically recoverable." While development of these tar sands began in the 1960s, it has been conducted at a relatively small scale because of the costs involved. But recently declining supplies and increasing prices have prompted attempts to ramp up production, and PetroChina has acquired a 60% interest in two major wells in Alberta in 2009; then by Sinopec bought a 9% stake in Syncrude Canada Ltd. in 2010.

Projections show that as much as 36% of American oil could be coming from Canadian oil sands by 2030.

However, extracting this oil requires a good deal more energy than conventional drilling, which means more greenhouse gases before the oil even reaches the pump. The net energy return on energy invested (EROI) ratio of tar sands oil by the time it is converted to gasoline is roughly half that of the equivalent process for conventional crude oil.

The Canadian government has invested heavily in the use of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) for the tar sands recovery process, but this technology is yet unproven. The process requires also vast amounts of water and chemicals to wash the sands. Anywhere from 2 to 4.5 times the amount of water is required for each barrel of oil produced.

The discharge that accumulates in highly toxic waste ponds pose a huge threat to wildlife. In one incident, 1,600 ducks died from landing in one of these ponds. Tailing pools now cover 50 square miles adjoining the Athabasca River, in the middle of the world's largest intact forest, a key absorber of CO2 and wildlife habitat. The numerous First Nations people living in the area thought the industry would bring a significant number of jobs and economic activity, but the developers not only pollute the area, but they don't take First Nations' interests into account, destroying hunting and fishing, habitat and bringing a number of health risks to the region.

Recently, a number of environmental groups and 23 First Nations groups have asked for a moratorium on new tar sands development. They are also asking to halt the Keystone XL pipeline which would strongly encourage further development of the Tar Sands, by allowing the oil to be shipped from Texas to China, where most of it will be used.

In summary, tar sands oil has a cost/benefit profile that is similar in many ways to coal, except that coal is used for electricity while oil is used for transportation. At the present, there are probably more alternatives for electricity than there are for transportation. This could begin to shift if we see tractor-trailers trucks being converted to natural gas. Of course, the current historically low natural gas prices, combined with high oil prices has, at least for the moment, rearranged the whole energy picture.

The author opined that, as bad as the environmental impacts of coal are, these tar sands might even be worse, despite what the developers might say. There is no question that the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline will encourage expansion of this resource, while bringing questionable benefits to the US, since most of the oil will be shipped to China. "Mostly though, I think the whole conversation is really about price and Americans' desire to live in a world where gas is cheap and no one bothers them to worry about global warming. That world may have existed in the 1950s and 60s, but it certainly doesn't exist anymore."

Fedex Ceo Fred Smith, Seen Here in 2005, Says He's is Concerned About the Effect Oil Consumption Has on the U.S.

FedEx uses nearly 700 planes and tens of thousands of trucks and vans to deliver packages around the world, burning 1.5 billion gallons a year of petroleum-based fuels.

FedEx CEO Fred Smith said the 1973 Arab oil embargo almost killed the business.

The U.S. spends about $70 to $80 billion a year keeping the oil flowing. That doesn't count "the $1.3 trillion we've spent on Afghanistan and Iraq.." Alan Greenspan said 'Iraq was about oil.'

For delivery vans, FedEx is betting on electric or hybrid vehicles. "An all-electric pickup and delivery van will operate at a 75% less per-mile cost than an internal combustion engine variant," Smith says. Vehicles would be charged in off-peak hours, minimizing the need for additional power plants. Battery life and cost remain a challenge, but Smith is optimistic.

Smith expects in three or four years to see a battery vehicle with double the range they have today and 25-40% cheaper, and in six years from now, electric vehicles will be in wide commercial use.

Smith says biofuel, probably produced with algae, will replace much petroleum-based jet fuel. Breakthroughs are needed to produce the fuel on the scale that's necessary.

Larger trucks will run on liquid or compressed natural gas, with new engines which will save 40% over prices if diesel were used. Refueling stations would a hurdle, but Smith thinks 700 would be adequate and could be quickly installed along the interstate highway system to make long-haul trucking with natural gas viable within a few years.

Smith says the discovery and unlocking of the vast amounts of natural gas in shale formations is a game changer. If natural gas were used instead of coal, harmful emissions could be cut 50%.

"You gotta do all of them. You can't sit on the left or the right of this issue," Smith says. "You've got to be willing to maximize our resources, and you've got to be willing to conserve and transition to nonpetroleum-based transportation."

"To me, the most tragic thing is to think about these families that lost these 5,000 wonderful young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan," he says. "The human cost of this reliance on petroleum from unstable and unfriendly parts of the world has cost this country dearly, and we need to work as hard as we can to solve this problem."

U.S.: Plans Moving Ahead for Drilling Near Underground Atomic Blast

Colorado: Noble Energy Production is moving forward with plans to drill 78 gas wells at a site south of Rifle where in 1969 an underground atomic bomb was set off in an effort to boost natural-gas production.

The experiment, Project Rulison, did increase natural-gas production — but the gas was not marketable because it was radioactive.

The federal Bureau of Land Management and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission have approved parts of Noble's plan.

To view the entire article, follow the link in the headline.

Fracking for Support: Natural Gas Industry Pumps Cash Into Congress; New Report Details 10-year Spending Campaign by Fracking Interests to Avoid Regulation

Natural gas interests have spent more than $747 million during a 10-year campaign - stunningly successful so far - to avoid government regulation of hydraulic "fracking," a fast-growing and environmentally risky method of tapping underground gas reserves, according to a new study by Common Cause.

A faction of the natural gas industry has directed more than $20 million to the campaigns of current members of Congress and put $726 million into lobbying aimed at shielding itself from oversight, according to the report, the third in a series of "Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets" reports produced by the non-profit government watchdog group.

“Players in this industry have pumped cash into Congress in the same way they pump toxic chemicals into underground rock formations to free trapped gas," said Common Cause President Bob Edgar. "nd as fracking for gas releases toxic chemicals into groundwater and streams, the industry's political fracking for support is toxic to efforts for a cleaner environment and relief from our dependence on fossil fuels."

The study - which includes inserts for the fracking-heavy states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan - found that the natural gas industry focuses its political spending on members of the Congressional committees charged with overseeing it. Current members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have received an average of $70,342 from the industry; Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the former committee chairman, has collected a whopping $514,945, more than any other lawmaker.

What's more, the industry's political giving also heavily favors lawmakers who supported the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Current members who voted for the bill received an average of $73,433, while those who voted against the bill received an average of $10,894.

The report comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to publish new, preliminary findings about the potential dangers of fracking in 2012, giving the industry a powerful incentive to increase political spending now in an attempt to shape public opinion and the debate over fracking in Congress, as well as affect the outcome of the 2012 congressional elections.

“Thanks to the Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, the natural gas industry will be free to spend whatever it likes next year to elect a Congress that will do its bidding," Edgar said. “The industry's political investments already have largely freed it from government oversight. Controlling the flow of that money and other corporate spending on our elections is critical to protecting our environment for this and future generations."

The Fracking Industry's War on the New York Times -- and the Truth

Note: this is an excellent article, well worth reading. To see the entire article, follow the link in the headline

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President, Waterkeeper Alliance; Professor, Pace University writes about how the New York Times is being attacked by the natural gas industry (like Exxon and Chesapeake) for its superb investigative journalism into the irresponsible practices involved in the fracturing (fracking) of gas rich shale beds.

This natural gas coalition is using slick PR firms, industry funded front groups and a predictable cabal of right wing industry toadies from cable TV and talk radio to avoid public disclosure and reasonable regulation.

In 2009, before Kennedy found out the truth about fracking, he wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times predicting that newly accessible deposits of natural gas had the potential to rapidly relieve our country of its deadly addiction to Appalachian coal and end forever catastrophically destructive mountaintop removal mining. At that time geologists were predicting that new methods of fracturing gas rich shale beds would provide enough gas to power our country for a century.

These rich reserves would have allowed us to replace 336 gigawatts from antiquated coal fired electric plants with energy from the underutilized capacity of existing gas generation plants, and reduce U.S. mercury emissions by 20%-25%, cutting deadly particulate matter and the pollutants that cause acid rain and slash America's grid based CO2 by an astonishing 20%. Gas could have been a critical bridge fuel to the new energy economy rooted in America's abundant renewables and could have helped free us from our debilitating reliance on foreign oil now costing our country so dearly in blood, national security, energy independence, and two pricey wars that are currently running tabs $2 billion per week.

Kennedy sits on the New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo's High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel. Because this natural gas coalition has successfully battled regulation and stifled public disclosure while bending compliant government regulators to engineer exceptions to existing environmental rules, the Panel has to sort truth from the web of myths spun about fracking by fast talking landsmen, smarmy CEOs, and federal regulators.

Public skepticism toward the industry and its government regulators is at a record high. There are over 40,000 highly motivated anti-fracking activists in New York alone; popular mistrust of the industry is presenting a daunting impediment to its expansion.

Recent studies show that fracking is not all it's promoted to be:

* Releases of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas, may counterbalance virtually all the benefits of CO2 reductions projected to result from substituting gas power for coal.

* The human health impacts (breast cancer) of gas extraction on local communities may rival those associated with coal.

* The USGS just slashed its estimate on the amount of gas in the Marcellus Shale by 80%, raising doubts about all the industry's positive economic projections.

* Only a small percentage of the land in each shale gas field turns out to be highly productive, even at the start. Nevertheless, companies routinely pretend that all of their acreage will be equally promising.

* Contaminated well water, poisoned air, nuisance noise and dust, diminished property values and collapsing quality of life are often the predictable collateral damage of gas shale development in the rural towns of the east.

* The industry says it cannot pay localities the costs of roads damaged from the thousands of truck trips per wellhead, leaving those ruinous costs to local taxpayers, many of whom will see no benefits from the shale boom.

* For the most part, the industry has demonstrated a disturbing fervor for secrecy while advocating regulatory policies that favor the most irresponsible practices and the worst actors.

The Times' reporting has found that sewage treatment plants in the Marcellus region have been accepting millions of gallons of natural gas industry wastewater that carry significant levels of radioactive elements and other pollutants that they are incapable of treating. . For many of us on New York State's fracking panel, the one bright light has been the presence of Southwest Energy's Vice President and General Counsel Mark Boling. Boling is bullish on shale gas but his passion for public disclosure and a rigorous and rational regulatory framework, his candor about the perils of certain practices and his honest assessments of the costs and benefits of gas shale extraction have inspired trust and confidence among his fellow panelists. The panel's confidence in his integrity is the one thing that might allow us to go forward with recommendations regarding a regulatory scheme that could allow certain kinds of fracking to proceed in New York State.

U.S.: Unconventional Natural Gas: Fracking Water Killed Trees, Study Finds

In a study by researchers from the United States Forest Service, two years after hydraulic fracturing fluids were legally spread on a section of the Fernow Experimental Forest, within the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, more than half of the trees in the affected area were dead, demonstrating that more research into the safe disposal of chemical-laced wastewater resulting from natural gas drilling.

The Fernow Experimental Forest is also the site of a drilling operation by Berry Energy. While the government owns the surface rights to the forest, the sub-surface mineral rights are privately owned and available for natural gas exploration there and in other forest lands.

The companies did not disclose the exact composition of the fluids, but the study assumed the main constituents appeared to be sodium and calcium chlorides because of their high concentrations on the surface soil.

Almost immediately after disposal, the researchers said, nearly all ground plants died. After a few days, tree leaves turned brown, wilted and dropped; 56% of about 150 trees eventually died.

Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?

Natural gas has been touted as a "bridge" from high-carbon sources of energy like coal and oil to a renewable energy future. This assumes sufficient quantity of natural gas from previously inaccessible shale gas deposits to be accessed by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Without shale gas, U.S. domestic gas production is projected to fall by 20% through 2035, according to a review of the latest outlook (2011) of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Unfortunately shale gas is characterized by high-cost, rapidly depleting wells that require high energy and water inputs, as well as contamination of surface water and groundwater, and the disposal of toxic drilling fluids produced from the wells. New York State has placed a moratorium on shale gas drilling.

In addition, the marginal cost of shale gas production may be well above current gas prices, and above the EIA's price assumptions for most of the next quarter century, some analyses show. EIA's gas production forecast reveals that record levels of drilling will be required to achieve it, along with incumbent environmental impacts. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from shale gas may also be worse than previously understood - if you consider the full cycle, and possibly worse than coal.

Furthermore replacing coal would require a 64% increase of lower-48 gas production over and above 2009 levels, heavy vehicles a further 24% and light vehicles yet another 76%, as well as a massive build out of new pipelines, gas storage and refueling facilities, and other infrastructure - a logistical, geological, environmental, and financial pipe dream.

There are many other ways to reduce greenhouse emissions and improve energy security. Such as improving the efficiency of our coal- fired electricity generation fleet, much of which is over 40 years old. The EPA is requiring the retirement of as much as 21% of coal-fired capacity under regulations set to take effect in 2015. Best-in-class technologies for both natural-gas- and coal-fired generation can reduce CO2 emissions by 17% and 24%, respectively, and reduce other pollutants. Capturing waste heat from these plants for district and process heating can provide further increases in overall efficiency.

The continued need for natural gas for uses other than electricity generation in the industrial, commercial, and residential sectors, which constitute 70% of current natural gas consumption must also be kept in mind. Natural gas vehicles are likely to increase in a niche role for high- mileage, short-haul applications.

Strategies for energy sustainability must focus on reducing energy demand and optimizing the use of the fuels that must be burnt. At the end of the day, hydrocarbons that aren't burnt produce no emissions.

Capital- and energy-intensive "solutions" such as carbon capture and storage (CSS) are questionable at best and inconsistent with the whole notion of energy sustainability at worst.

There are three widespread assumptions about the role that natural gas can and should play in our energy future:

#1: That, thanks to new techniques for hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling of shale, we have sufficient natural gas resources to supply the needs of our country for the next 100 years.

#2: That the price of natural gas, which has historically been volatile, will remain consistently low for decades to come.

#3: That natural gas is much cleaner and safer than other fossil fuels, from the standpoint of greenhouse gas emissions and public health.

Based on these assumptions, President Obama touted natural gas as a cornerstone of his Administration's “Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future" and endorsed plans for converting a sizable portion of the vehicle fleet to run on natural gas.

What emerges from the data is a very different assessment.

The shale gas industry was motivated to hype production prospects in order to attract large amounts of needed investment capital; it did this by drilling the best sites first and extrapolating initial robust results to apply to more problematic prospective regions. The energy policy establishment, desperate to identify a new energy source to support future economic growth, accepted the industry's hype uncritically. This in turn led Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, 60 Minutes, and many other media outlets to proclaim that shale gas would transform the energy world.

The biggest losers in the shale gas promotion are members of the public, who need sound energy policy based on realistic expectations for future supply, as well as sound assessments of economic and environmental costs.

In the last decade the Post Carbon Institute and other non-profit energy groups warned that depletion of giant oilfields and declining oil discoveries would lead to a situation of higher petroleum prices and tight supplies beginning before 2010. Yet EIA oil forecasts in the early years of the decade contained no hint of this impending and wholly foreseeable supply-price shift. The EIA is now making similar mistakes in its too-rosy projections with regard to shale gas supplies and natural gas prices.

If environmental groups focus their arguments only on the contamination of ground water supplies of shale gas without at the same time questioning the economics of shale gas drilling, they will have helped set up conditions for a political battle that could undermine their own influence and credibility. Oil and gas industries will once again claim that environmentalism is the only thing standing between Americans and energy security.

While enormous amounts of natural gas, oil, and coal remain, the portions of those fuels that were cheapest and easiest to produce are now mostly gone, and producing remaining reserves will entail spiraling investment costs and environmental risks. Moreover, while alternative energy sources exist— including nuclear, wind, and solar—these come with their own problems and trade-offs, and none is capable of replicating the economic benefits that fossil fuels delivered in decades past.

Energy conservation - reducing demand for energy and using energy more efficiently - are the cheapest and most effective ways of cutting carbon emissions, enhancing energy security, and providing a stable basis for economic planning.

Unfortunately, energy supply limits and demand reduction do not support robust economic growth. This is probably the main reason why policy makers and many energy analysts and environmentalists shy away from conveying the real dimensions of our predicament.

There is much we can do to ensure a secure social and natural environment in a lower-energy context, but we are unlikely to take the needed steps if we are laboring under fundamentally mistaken assumptions about the amounts of energy we can realistically access, and the costs of making that energy available.

As recently as 2005, despite near record amounts of drilling, production in North America had fallen from a 2001 peak, and hit a low when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita roared through the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. Gas prices soared in 2005 and in mid-2008 at about the time the price of oil hit an all-time record of $147 per barrel. But gas demand and prices fell when the "Great Recession" in late 2008 struck. Meanwhile, production from unconventional gas plays, most prominently the Barnett Shale of east Texas, was rising rapidly and creating a glut. A new era of cheap, abundant natural gas was declared thanks to the latest hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies, which unlocked previously uneconomic shale gas and tight sand reservoirs.

Texas oil and gas entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens and shale gas driller Aubrey McClendon suggested U.S. gas production could fuel fleets of vehicles and displace oil imports and the EIA suggest it could provide 45% of an expanded supply by 2035.

A good place to start is the EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2011, which looks at existing consumption patterns and provides forecasts through 2035. While there is concern about the accuracy of these projections, which generally assume there will be no physical limits to hydrocarbon (i.e., fossil fuel) supplies through 2035, they serve as a starting point to understand the current energy system, and where we might go in a world without limits.

Hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas and coal) provided 84% of consumption in 2009 and the forecast in this scenario is for hydrocarbons to provide 82% of an expanded energy demand in 2035. Oil was the largest source of energy in 2009 at 39%, followed by natural gas at 24%, coal at 21%, and non-carbon-emitting energy sources—nuclear power, hydropower, biomass (largely wood), and renewables (wind, solar, geothermal)—at 16%. In 2009, renewable energy from wind, solar, and geothermal sources made up less than 1.4% of energy consumption.

We have succeeded—in what amounts to a blink of the eye in all of human history—in becoming nearly completely addicted to the dense, convenient stores of “fossilized sunshine" represented by hydrocarbons. Breaking that addiction, of course, will be no easy task.

The transportation sector is the largest single consumer of energy. Roughly 68% of the energy used to generate electricity is unavailable due to generation and transmission losses.

Moving away from large, remote, centralized sources of electricity generation to local, smaller- scale, distributed sources of generation can serve to increase efficiency and minimize these energy losses, as well as make cogeneration of both heat and power more feasible.

Oil is currently the premier fuel for transportation, although it is also a very important feedstock for the petrochemical industry. The transportation sector consumed 72% of oil demand in 2009 and the industrial sector 22% .

The American predilection for personal vehicles accounts for 62% of oil consumption in the transportation sector and 44% of all U.S. oil consumption. Personal vehicles also account for 19% of all U.S. CO2 emissions.

Natural gas is a very versatile fuel with major uses in all sectors except transportation, where it is mainly used in the pipeline transport of natural gas and to a very limited extent for compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles. Natural gas is a primary feedstock in the petrochemical industry and underpins the production of nitrogen-based fertilizers, which are responsible for the “Green Revolution" that has improved crop yields by nearly 200% over the past 80 years. Industrial use of natural gas accounted for 32% of its consumption in 2009. Distributed use, as in residential and commercial heating applications in 2009 accounted for 21% and 14% of its use, respectively. Electricity generation accounted for a further 30% of U.S. natural gas consumption in 2009, mainly in “peaking" power plants. Peaking plants are used to meet peak electricity demand loads.

Coal is primarily suited as a source of heat in the electricity generation sector and as a source of coke in the production of steel in the metallurgical industry. In 2009, 93% of U.S. coal consumption was used for electricity generation, with practically all of the balance used in the industrial sector, primarily in the steel industry. Transforming coal to gas or to liquids involves large capital investments in infrastructure that are roughly equivalent in scale to those required for oil-sands production, and the transformation process entails large energy losses and GHG emissions.

In 2009, 45% of U.S. electricity was generated by coal and 23% by natural gas. Non- GHG-emitting sources including nuclear, large hydro, biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal generated only 31% of U.S. electricity in 2009.

Electricity generation is the primary use for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar; yet these sources, including geothermal energy, generated only 2.7% of U.S. electricity in 2009, with biomass generating a further 1%. Even if these renewable sources more than double through 2035, as projected by the EIA, they will still constitute only 8% of forecast U.S. electricity demand. The scale of the problem of replacing hydrocarbons in electricity generation is simply daunting. Moreover, renewables have well- known issues with intermittency and unpredictability, which compromise their ability to make up a major proportion of electricity supply, especially at current rates of consumption and necessary supply reliability.

Oil is by far the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions at 43%, followed by coal at 34% and natural gas at 23%. While this would seem to lead to a doomsday climate change scenario, there are potential supply constraints on the hydrocarbon inputs to this scenario that make it unlikely to happen. Even so, evidence mounts that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are already altering the climate.

Electricity generation is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the U.S. at 40% Non- electric use in the transportation sector is next at 34% followed by the industrial (16%), residential (6%), and commercial (4%) sectors.

EIA projections assume that U.S. shale gas production will nearly quadruple by 2035, when it is supposed to account for 45% of U.S. gas supply. Other estimates for increases in shale gas production are even higher.

But natural gas production is really a story about a race against depletion. Typically, the production from a new conventional gas well will decline by 25% to 40% in its first year, before tapering off to lower yearly declines as time goes by.

There are now more than half a million producing gas wells in the United States, nearly double the number in 1990 . Yet the gas production per well has declined by nearly 50% over this period.

When gas production peaked in 1973, about 7,000 gas wells were drilled annually. Throughout the 1990s gas drilling averaged about 10,000 wells yearly, which allowed some growth in production. Despite doubling this rate to more than 20,000 wells annually, gas production hit a post-peak summit in 2001 and began to decline. In the run-up to the Great Recession, gas drilling more than tripled from 1990s levels to 33,000 wells per year in the 2006-2008 time frame before falling back below the 20,000 level. This burst of drilling served to grow production modestly to near the 1973 peak, albeit at more than four times the 1973 drilling rate. This “exploration treadmill" indicates the United States will need on the order of 30,000 or more successful gas wells per year to increase production going forward, which is triple the 1990s levels.

It is unlikely that drilling will rebound to 2008 levels in a low-priced gas environment; hence production can be expected to start falling until prices and drilling activity recover. Thus the level of drilling activity that would be required to maintain and grow U.S. gas production in the future would be unprecedented in the history of U.S. gas production.

Economist Jeff Rubin notes that “far from being the game-changer it's supposed to be, North American shale gas production isn't even sustainable at today's natural gas prices." The bottom line with natural gas is that it isn't so much a matter of the resources in the ground that count. What really counts are the flow rates at which these resources can be produced. The flow rate will determine the ability of natural gas to contribute to future energy requirements, as well as to the social and environmental impacts of this production.

Virtually all growth in gas supply in the current EIA reference case is projected to come from shale gas, which constitutes only a third of estimated U.S. gas resources.

The U.S. House of Representatives has recently released a report on the chemicals used for hydraulic fracturing, several of which are carcinogenic and are hazardous air pollutants. Anywhere between 15% and 80% of the injected water is brought back to the surface, along with formation water if it is present (Figure 15). Most of this water is produced in the first few months of production and, as it is toxic, must be disposed of through recycling, through reinjection, or, on the surface, through processing at wastewater treatment facilities.

Analyst Arthur Berman, who has studied the Barnett Shale (the oldest and best-known shale gas play) in depth, suggests that the estimated ultimate recovery from shale gas wells and overall recoverable reserves have been overstated by operators, and that shale gas plays are marginally commercial at best in the current low gas price environment.

As Berman pointed out, quoting Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, in the Barnett Shale all 17 counties were thought to be equally prospective a few years ago, but today just two and a half counties have been proven to be highly productive core areas.

In 2010, the documentary movie Gasland brought many of the issues involved with hydraulic fracturing and shale gas production to the forefront.

Most of us have heard about the high concentration of toxic chemicals involved in fracking, and the contamination of groundwater, but there is also these points to consider: - Very high water consumption, between 2 million and 8 million gallons per well, which is potentially problematic. - Higher full-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Full-cycle GHG emissions from shale gas are far larger than the burner-tip emissions of the gas itself. - Induced earthquakes through fluid injection both during the hydraulic fracturing process and during the disposal of waste fluid through injection wells. To date, seismic activity related to the injection of waste flowback fluids from hydraulic fracturing seems to be the largest source of induced seismic activity.

Howarth et al. of Cornell University in their April 2011 paper states: Natural gas is composed largely of methane, and 3.6% to 7.9% of the methane from shale-gas production escapes to the atmosphere in venting and leaks over the lifetime of a well. These methane emissions are at least 30% more than and perhaps more than twice as great as those from conventional gas. The higher emissions from shale gas occur at the time wells are hydraulically fractured—as methane escapes from flow-back return fluids—and during drill out following the fracturing. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential that is far greater than that of carbon dioxide, particularly over the time horizon of the first few decades following emission. .... Compared to coal, the footprint of shale gas is at least 20% greater and perhaps more than twice as great on the 20-year horizon and is comparable when compared over 100 years."

Should the United States commit to large amounts of new gas- fueled infrastructure that cannot be supplied by domestic gas production, it would consider imported LNG. The life-cycle emissions of CO2 are much higher for LNG than for conventional gas due to the energy required for liquefaction, transportation, and regasification. LNG-transported natural gas adds 20% more CO2 emissions than conventional gas on a full life-cycle basis. LNG increases emissions for the overall delivery process before the burner tip by 137% on average compared to the emissions for conventional gas.

Greenhouse gas impacts over the next 30 to 40 years could be made considerably worse by a wholesale switch to gas for electricity generation. Thus the concept of natural gas as a low-carbon bridge fuel to a future powered largely by renewable energy is cast in considerable doubt as a strategy to reduce global warming. Indeed, it may in fact be a strategy that increases global warming over the next few decades.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are being promoted by politicians as a panacea for expanding the consumption of fossil fuels globally while minimizing carbon emissions. There are four major issues with CCS that make it counterproductive: - The safety and long-term integrity of CO2 storage in deep saline aquifers which has been largely untested and then there is the potential for leakage. - The parasitic energy loss in separating CO2 from flue gas and compressing it to a liquid or supercritical state. These losses range from 18.8% to 26.8% of the power output from a coal plant, depending on the technology. - The capital cost of a CCS-equipped power plant is estimated to be between 32.2% and 74.2% higher than a conventional plant, depending on the technology . - The additional capital and energy costs of building CO2 pipelines, drilling injection wells, and monitoring storage sites for a few hundred years.

CCS has yet to be demonstrated at a commercial scale, its projected costs could instead be invested in alternative energy and infrastructure to radically lower energy footprints.

Regulation Lax as Gas Wells: Tainted Water Hits Rivers

Natural gas is this century's gold rush. Hundreds of thousands of new wells and drilling rigs are popping up over the countryside.

The gas has is trapped deep underground in countless tiny bubbles between thin layers of shale rock. Only in recent years have drilling companies developed techniques to unlock the enormous reserves, thought to be enough to supply the country with gas for up to a hundred years.

Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers see it as a source of jobs and a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.

The new drilling method - known as hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking - involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas. One well can produce over a million gallons of waste water which is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.

Internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the waste water, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

E.P.A. scientists warn that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. A 2009 E.P.A. study concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law. Another hidden study by the drilling industry concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.

But the E.P.A. has not intervened. In Pennsylvania sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste and drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants are not testing for radioactivity.

John H. Quigley, former secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said "We're burning the furniture to heat the house."

In Pennsylvania there are roughly 71,000 active gas wells, up from about 36,000 in 2000. The level of radioactivity in the waste water has sometimes been hundreds or even thousands of times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water. At least half of this waste was trucked to public sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2009.

No Peak Oil Yet? the Limits of the Hubbert Model

The Hubbert model says that, within a reasonably large region, oil production should follow a bell shaped curve. When the model is applied to worldwide oil production, the maximum level of production is called "peak oil." Peak oil has been often predicted to occur within the first decade of the 21st century, however, up to now, we are not seeing a well defined peak but, rather, a plateau that has been going on from 2004.

We may expect the production plateau to keep going as long as the economy can transfer to oil extraction resources from other industrial sectors.

If we consider production of "all liquids," that is if we include such sources of liquid hydrocarbons as natural gas liquids (NGL), biofuels, tar sands and others, it is hard to detect a peak of any kind. Production has been oscillating around an approximately constant - or perhaps slightly increasing - plateau for at least 5 years by now.

A barrel of NGL or of biofuel contains less energy than a barrel of conventional crude oil. So, in terms of energy, production may well be declining even in terms of "all liquids".

We are not seeing a well defined peak, at least for the "all liquids" case.

Natural gas production in the US peaked around 1973, as was predicted, but it did not significantly decline afterwards. Instead, it oscillated around a plateau and, in recent times, it has exceeded the 1973 peak. A completely different case is that of crude oil in the US, where the post-peak decline is compatible with the Hubbert model.

If world oil production will behave like crude oil in the US, it will soon decline. If, instead, it will behave like natural gas in the US, it might keep going at the present levels for a long time, perhaps decades.

If the extractive industry reinvests an approximately constant fraction of the energy it produces into new extraction facilities, it can grow exponentially, at least for a while. However, the industry tends to extract first the, "easy", high EROEI, resources. With time, it must move to progressively more difficult. With less energy available for extraction, the growth of production slows down. Eventually, production peaks and then declines. If these considerations are set in mathematical form, the result is the bell shaped curve.

The economy is more complex than that and the response of demand to price increases depends on a property that economist call "elasticity." Normally, higher prices reduce demand, but a commodity may be so crucially needed that demand remains high even for high prices. Crude oil and other fossil fuels are so vitally necessary to the economy that the vagaries of oil prices during the past few years have had only a small effect on the production curve.

If there were a stable demand coupled with high prices, the industry could maintain its profits and keep investing in new production facilities, even of high cost resources. In practice, the extractive sector takes energy and resources from other sectors of the economy and uses it to extract low EROEI resources. In this case, you can't expect to see a bell shaped production curve any longer.

Oil can be imported from overseas by tanker. Gas, instead, needs to be liquefied at low temperatures and that requires special facilities, it also requires special ships for transporting and more - all that is very expensive. Thus, after the national peak, in 1971, the cheapest route for the US economy to obtain oil was to import it from overseas and, hence, there was no need of an effort to develop high cost resources within the national borders.

The natural gas industry, on the other hand, since 1973 invested into developing new domestic resources, even expensive ones. Recently the industry has resorted to exploiting the expensive so called "fracture gas" because all other sources are declining. The US economy needs gas and is willing to invest as much as needed in order to obtain it.

Natural gas prices have been rising at a rate that might be seen as exponential. If that is what is needed to stimulate production, how long can it last before gas prices become so high that many people can't afford to pay them?

The Hubbert model tells us that progressively lower EROEIs should cause a decline in production. However, we badly need liquid fuels and, since we cannot import fuels from another planet, we can only invest money and energy into extracting it from low EROEI resources. That is what the industry is doing, stimulated by higher prices.

More recently, attention has turned to tar sands, which are starting to play an important role in oil availability.

Energy and resources needed to keep on producing from low EROEI sources must come from somewhere: some other sector of the world's economy must do without them. In other words, the net total energy available to the economy does not increase and may actually go down.

Biofuels are an interesting example of this phenomenon. The EROEI of a biofuel such as corn ethanol is low, around the value of one or little more. But you can use energy from coal to make ethanol from corn and, doing so, you are effectively transforming coal into a liquid fuel. But coal used in this way is not available to the economy for other purposes - the net energy available to society does not increase. This kind of phenomenon occurs also for other resources and the reduced availability of energy is a possible explanation for the world's economic troubles of recent times.

Resources will continue to be removed from other sectors of the economy, from coal for instance, and used for boosting production of liquid fuels. That will go on as long as possible - but not forever: the economy is not infinitely large and the resources available are finite. We cannot say exactly when but, at some point, the production of liquid fuels will have to start declining. We cannot say with certainty which shape the decline will take, but some models such as those of The Limits to Growth that take into account the whole economy indicate that decline might be abrupt.

If you expect a model - any model - to be able to predict the future you are going to be sorely disappointed. The Hubbert model is no exception, but many models can tell you enough about the future that you may prepare for it. It doesn't matter if models are approximate and in some cases don't even work; it is the way one uses them that makes the difference. A feather falling in air does not mean that Newton's law of gravitation is wrong. It only shows that you must use the model understanding its limits. The same is true for Hubbert's model: the case of natural gas in the US doesn't mean that the model is wrong. It only shows that you must understand its limits. If you do, the Hubbert model can tell us a lot about what is happening and about the reasons for the troubles we are having. And that should tell us something about where we are heading to; there is still some time, not much, to get prepared. rw

NUCLEAR

Japan, March 2011
Fukushima nuclear reactor
meltdown and steam venting
resulting from 8.9 earthquake
and tsunami.

Japan crisis: third explosion raises spectre of nuclear nightmare

"The Fukushima crisis now rates as a more serious accident than the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979, and is second only to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, according to the French nuclear safety authority." "The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was "unlikely" that the accident would turn into another Chernobyl, but failed to rule it out completely."

Oil, Population ---- and the Future

Oil is limited and renewables are slow in being developed. We depend on oil in many more ways than one would imagine. What will our future be like without this important resource? Follow the link in the headline to read all about it.

Rush for Land a Wake-up Call for Poorer Countries, Report Says

More than 200m hectares of land in the global south - over eight times the size of the UK - have been sold or leased between 2000 and 2010, according to a study published by the International Land Coalition.

Population growth, the increasing consumption of a global elite, and an international legal system skewed in favour of large scale investors are fuelling a worldwide rush for land that is unfolding faster than previously thought and is likely to continue.

The food price crisis of 2007-08 may have triggered a boom in international land deals, however "a much broader set of factors - linked to population growth and the rise of emerging economies - is raising the prospect of "a new era in the struggle for, and control over, land in many areas of the global south", the study argues.

The large land acquisitions may marginalise rural communities and jeopardise the future of family farming in favour of big industrial projects. Enthusiasm for industrial-scale agriculture continues to sideline small farmers.

Suprises uncovered by the study: rich national investors play a much larger role than previously thought, food is not the main focus of these deals, and African governments are not the only ones signing away large tracts of land.

Overall, about 40% of land acquired over the last decade is for biofuel production, 25% is for food crops and another 27% for mining, tourism, industry and forestry.

However, in Africa, 66% of land deals are intended for biofuel production, compared with 15% for food crops.

in south-east Asia, 75% of reported land deals have been struck by regional players, while in Africa, South African investors have acquired an estimated 40.7m hectares since 2009.

The IMF, the World Bank and a number of government aid agencies are pressuring developing countries to attract and legally protect foreign investment in agriculture and extractive industries,and to set up sophisticated specialised agencies to promote investment opportunities and offering benefits such as tax breaks and low prices, said the report.

USAID is hosting an international conference to promote foreign investment in South Sudan. Almost 9% of South Sudan's land had already been leased or bought by investors prior to the country's independence in July this year.

There are few effective international mechanisms exist to safeguard the rights of the rural poor. Meanwhile, the common lack of formal, legal titles to land is heightening the vulnerability of rural communities.

Lorenzo Cotula, of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said that " poor communities need to have "stronger rights over the land they have lived on for generations."

The G20 summit in Seoul last year encouraged all countries and companies to uphold a set of principles for responsible agricultural investment, developed by the UN and the World Bank But such agreements are little more than window-dressing.

Residents of Mukaya Payam, in South Sudan's Central Equatoria state, launched a campaign in August against what would have been the country's largest land deal - a 49-year lease of 600,000 hectares by an American company. In Selingue, in southern Mali, hundreds of smallholder farmers and civil society activists came together for the first international farmers' conference to tackle the global rush for land.

Dropping Solar Panel Costs and Grid Parity

Even tough Germany and Italy, the world's two largest solar markets, have seen a reduction in subsidies, and manufacturers are struggling from heavy competition, installation costs have been reduced 10% in just in the last 4 months, and global spending on solar installations continues to be high.

For the past two years 27 GW has been produced globally.

Grid parity for solar was expected to occur within 5 years in many parts of the U.S., encompassing about 57 million Americans (including California, Hawaii, and New York). But once solar is less expensive or even costs the same as coal, why would anyone even consider coal, with all its inherent challenges, asks David Crane, CEO of NRG energy, one of America's largest electric utilities, who foresees rooftop solar and electric vehicles being cheaper and easier than their counterparts in as few as 3-5 years for most of America.

Lovelock, James

Paraphrase and take excerpts, avoid plagiarizing long sections of text.

Children of the Corn: the Renewable Fuels Disaster; How government policy can push more than 100 million people below the extreme poverty line

The ethanol tax credit has expired, a reason to celebrate, one might think, considering that the tax credit gave $0.45 ethanol producers for every gallon they produced and cost taxpayers $6 billion in 2011. However, now we have the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which creates government-guaranteed demand that keeps corn prices high and generates massive farm profits. Removing the tax credit but keeping the RFS is like scraping a little frosting from the ethanol-boondoggle cake.

At least 37% of the 2011-12 corn crop must be converted to ethanol and blended with the gasoline that powers our cars, under RFS, causing corn demand to outstrip supply by more and more each year, such that even the slightest production disturbance will have devastating consequences for the world's poor.

It is time for the federal government to stop requiring cars to burn food. The RFS mandate requires a massive quantity of corn to be converted to ethanol each year regardless of available supply or what the market price would be without it.

Starting in 2005, ethanol mandates prompted the construction of ethanol plants across the country. By the end of 2005, 4.3 billion gallons of ethanol-producing capacity existed and one year later, capacity under construction had tripled and represented more production than existed at the time. A record number of corn acres were planted in 2007 but production has been unable to keep up with demand, driving prices up to almost triple the pre-mandate level. Ethanol consumes about 16% of the total U.S. supply of corn.

Returning 16% of the supply to the food system would reduce corn prices by about 32%. (See the entire article for details). A decline in corn prices would also stimulate declines in prices of other food commodities such as wheat, rice, and soybeans, which are substitutes for corn on both the supply and demand side. Michael Roberts of North Carolina State University and Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University estimate that reducing corn ethanol production to zero would lower the price of calories from corn, soybeans, wheat, or rice by 20%.

Corn price increases have relatively small effects on grocery prices in the United States, which are dominated by processing and marketing costs. However, consumers in the poorest parts of the world spend a high proportion of their budget on food commodities such as corn. World Bank researchers estimated that the ethanol-induced price spike between June and December 2010 forced 44 million people below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 per day and that price increases from 2005-08 forced 105 million people below the extreme poverty line.

The difference in corn price between the tax credit spurred corn production and the mandate spurred production would drop prices by only 3.4%. If the 2012 crop is even slightly smaller than expected, then prices will rise even further and plunge millions more people into extreme poverty. If they were unconstrained by mandates, ethanol producers would reduce their use of corn in response to high prices.

Legislation has been introduced that would allow the mandate to be reduced when corn stockpiles are low. This is not enough. Mandates should be remove completely, letting the ethanol industry stand on its own feet.

Energy: Eventually Economic Reality Will Impact the U.S.

By Bruce Parks, former nuclear plant senior engineer

Renewables like wind and solar just are not reliable enough to provide 24/7 power. - Technology for storage is just not getting there. Pumped storage sites are limited in number and capacity. Compressed gas is very inefficient and limited. Perhaps huge battery capacity which is very expensive. - "Smart grid" with long distance very high voltage DC will help alleviate regional storage requirements. - Electrical cars would have to be charged in the day, not at night, if the solar option is taken or a significant part of the mix.

With the environmental groups in opposition to nuclear, oil, coal and hydro the only* base load power option will become gas. But wait, the gas-in-the-feature scenario needs fracking. Environmentalists also oppose fracking. (*I do not have much hope for fusion electric power in the near or mid term - perhaps in 100 years?)

Our trade competition in Asia is going coal big time. Highly polluting coal at that. In terms of fuel, coal-fired plants account for 55% of India's installed electricity capacity, South Africa's 92%; China's 77%; and Australia's 76%. With "free trade" we will not be competitive on energy alone. Yes India and China are going towards renewable's, BUT are also expanding fossil capacity.

The going green model in Europe will eventually make them non-competitive with Asia and South America. China and India are already making serious inroads. Countries like Norway and Sweden are blessed with lots of hydro - solar is not a great option here. Denmark has great steady winds. But, the heavy industry countries like UK, Germany, France and Italy just will not remain industrial powers by rapidly going green.

My primary point is that going green for an industrial power is not an option in the near or mid term. To try to rapidly change will sap the very economic capacity to go green in the future.

The environmental people need to understand that one reason we have some grace on electrical power growth is the movement of industry, and jobs, OUT of the USA.

* The clothes they wear come from Central America and South Asia and are made with fossil fuel power - a lot of coal in Asia.

* The iPad they play with takes power from 77% coal power in China and nuclear in Korea (The chips are made in South Korea.)

* Many of the gadgets they buy at Wal Mart and the tools they buy at Home Depot are made with China's 77% coal electricity.

* The rare earth battery they have in their Prius was mined, purified and partially fabricated in China using petroleum products and electricity that is 77% coal.

The clear skies they see here are, in part, due to filthy skies in Asia.

All economists, whether Keynesian or Austrian school, all agree that this massive trade deficit cannot go on. We will be forced to bring the jobs, and some pollution home, or live like an old "colony". With a lower standard of living providing food and raw material to the manufacturing facilities in the "mother country." Which do they want?

Stop the Pebble Mine! Tell Foreign Mining Corporations that "No Means No"

Despite overwhelming local opposition, foreign mining giants Anglo American and Rio Tinto are pressing forward with plans to build a gargantuan, open-pit gold and copper mine above Alaska's Bristol Bay -- threatening the world's greatest sockeye salmon runs and the very last 284 beluga whales of Cook Inlet.

Sign the petition today and tell these two corporations not to build a mega-mine against the will of local citizens.

Pandora's Box: Digging the Earth, Killing the Future; Landgrabbing and mineral extraction spell disaster for Earth

Across Latin America, Asia and Africa, more and more community lands, rivers and ecosystems are being despoiled, displaced and devoured by mining activities. Over the last 10 years, iron ore production is up by 180%; cobalt by 165%; lithium by 125%, and coal by 44%.

The rights of farming and indigenous communities are increasingly ignored in the race to grab land and water. Each wave of new extractive technologies requires ever more water to wrench the material from its source. The hunger for these materials is a growing threat to the necessities for life: water, fertile soil and food. The implications are obvious, if not widely ignored by the industrial and economic powers that profit from such activities.

The Opening Pandora's Box report was spearheaded by the Gaia foundation and supported by Friends of the Earth International, Grain, Oilwatch, Navdanya in India and other groups.

The increase in prospecting has also grown exponentially, which means this massive acceleration in extraction will continue if concessions are granted as freely as they are now.

The executive summary to the report says: "if we continue in our current direction, our children will be left to clean up an increasingly barren and unstable planet, littered with toxic wastelands and a huge scarcity of water, which we would have left in our wake."

Environment editor at The Guardian, Jon Vidal added: Of the 10 biggest mining deals to be completed last year, seven were in Africa, with Anglo American earmarking $8bn (£5bn) for new platinum, diamond, iron ore and coal projects on the continent, and Brazil's Vale planning to invest more than $12bn over the next five years in Africa.

China now extracts much of the world's mineral resources: 53% of the world's cement, 47% of its iron ore, 46% of its coal and more than 40% of the world's steel, lead, zinc and aluminium and re-exports much of this in the form of finished products for world markets.

The loss of enormous quantities of soil, and the eviction of people to make way for large-scale extraction now threaten to make millions of people landless and hungry, a recipe for social problems.

Water could be the limiting factor in the extraction of minerals in future. If demand continues to grow at the same rate that it has in the last decade, industry demands for fresh water are expected to grow from 4,500bn cubic metres today to 6,900bn cubic metres in 2030. Most mining companies have said they are already experiencing shortages.

"Large-scale mining is now targeting all parts of the planet," said Gathuri Mburu, co-ordinator of the African Biodiversity Network.

Dwindling Resources Trigger Global Land Rush

The Gaia Foundation's report, "Opening Pandora's Box" tells us of the scramble for the world's land and mineral resources, threatening the last remaining wilderness and critical ecosystems, destroying communities and contaminating huge volumes of fresh water.

The more accessible resources have been consumed. Now the extractive industries, funded by pension funds and commodities speculators, are using new technologies like fracking for natural gas to get at previously unprofitable resources. These industries use far more raw material and have a much larger destructive footprint than in the past.

Canada's tar sands require that two to four tonnes of earth be dug up and a similar amount of fresh water is needed to produce one barrel of oil. Copper requires 10 times the ore it once did to get the same volume. In the last 10 years, mining for iron ore has increased 180%, cobalt by 165% and lithium by 125%. China's mining sector grew 30% in just five years. Peru's mining exports increased by one-third in 2011 alone. Coal mining has increased by 44% in the past 10 years.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recently warned of the threats to World Heritage Sites from planned mining and oil and gas projects. One in four iconic natural areas in Africa is negatively affected.

Hobbelink of GRAIN, a small NGO working with small farmers, first told the world about the millions of hectares of land in Africa, Asia and South America that were being leased or purchased by foreign investors for food and biofuel production. More than 400 large land deals totalling nearly 35 million hectares, roughly the size of The Netherlands are involved.

This movement is turning communities into refugees on their own land. Polly Higgins, author of "Eradicating Ecocide" said "This new wave of land grabbing is putting profit above people and planet."

Major investments are going into the search for fossil fuels in remote regions like the Arctic and into "extreme energy sources" like shale gas and tar sands that have big environmental impacts.

Canada's tar sands have 130,000 hectares of tailings ponds full of toxic wastes behind some of the largest earthen dams ever constructed. Mining companies dump more than 180 million tonnes of hazardous mine waste into rivers, lakes and oceans worldwide every year. Mining enough gold for just a single wedding band generates, on average, 20 tonnes of contaminated mine waste.

Rising prices, increasing material consumption and a huge flood of investment have triggered this global boom, the report found. Following the 2008 collapse of financial markets, hedge and pension fund investors dramatically increased investments in metal, mineral, oil and gas commodities.

The average U.S. citizen using an astonishing 22,000 times their weight in minerals, metals and fuels in their lifetime.

US Alaska: Save Bristol Bay From Destructive Mining!

Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed is one of America's last and most important wild places -- an unspoiled Eden of vast tundra, crystal clear streams and pristine lakes.

Sockeye salmon runs there support an abundance of bears, whales, seals and eagles as well as Native communities that have thrived here for thousands of years. Endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales live there - there are only 340 - truly are the last of their kind.

A consortium of foreign mining companies is planning to dig a mega open-pit mine in the heart of this extraordinary ecosystem. This 2,000-foot-deep, two-mile-long gold and copper mine would have colossal earthen dams that are supposed to hold back some 10 billion tons of toxin-laced mining waste - despite being built in a known earthquake zone.

The mine would be dug on state land, right next to 1.1 million acres of our federal public lands.

Click on the link in the headline to help by telling BLM Director Bob Abbey NOT to open our public lands in Bristol Bay to hard rock mining at the Pebble Mine.

Australia's Mining Future is Limited

Dr Gavin Mudd of Monash University says that while demand for Australia's minerals is going up, the quality of ore is going down. The mining industry is not sustainable in the long-term, and the problem is international.

At the standard of living in Australia, the amount of steel that is consumed, per person - or the amount of copper -and if we extrapolate those same standards across the whole of the global population, that's a challenge for sustainability of the world's mineral resources. Fifty years into the future, with everyone in the world at the same standard of living, there won't be any mineral resources left.

We know that ore grades will decline, and that has important implications in terms of the amount of rock to dig up, and to dig up more rock means more energy, more CO2 emissions and so on.

The mining industry has moved to improve its environmental management. The nature of rehabilitation bonding can be improved, and that way the liability and the risks and so on are not just borne by government if the company goes bankrupt.

If we extrapolate 100 years into the future it's hard to believe that we'd actually have anywhere near the same scale of the iron ore industry that we do now. rw

Jakarta Says to Sue If Freeport Snubs Complaints

Indonesia will sue U.S. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold if it fails to follow recommendations to stop pollution from its Papua operations. Critics say the mine creates environmental damage by polluting streams and killing wildlife. The report said tailings, had flowed through the nearby Ajkwa river and recommended the firm better manage its tailings, for example by using them for building construction. The firm might have up to three years to follow the recommendations. Freeport said it had implemented some of the recommendations and would follow through on the rest. The Grasberg mine is believed to hold the world's third-largest copper reserves and one of the biggest gold deposits. Indonesia needs foreign investment to speed up the recovery of an economy that verged on collapse in late 1990s. "If they look at it in a reasonable way they will know that it is for the long run," said a key member of President Yudhoyono's campaign team. He also said that haze from Indonesian forest fires could cloud skies again this year. That is bad news for neighbours Malaysia and Singapore where the smoke has caused health problems and shut down airports, close schools, and businesses. The haze, much of it caused by slash-and-burn at palm oil plantations, tends to be an annual problem but its intensity varies with the severity of the dry season. The problem has persisted and interest in resolving the issue tends to fade when rain comes. The government has been trying to litigate against plantation firms, many owned by Malaysians, whose practices cause haze, but could do nothing if courts fail to severely punish them. The government plans to open palm oil plantations near the Indonesian border on Borneo island. They will start by making use of the areas ready for planting and strongly oppose cutting down forest for the replanting of palm oil plantations. rw

Yale Study: Not Enough Metals in Earth to Meet Global Demand

According to a study, even the full extraction of metals from the Earth's crust and extensive recycling programs may not meet future demand if all nations begin to use the same services enjoyed in developed nations. The environmental and social consequences of metals depletion became clear from studies of metal stocks, in the Earth, in use by people and lost in landfills. Using copper stocks in North America, the researchers tracked the evolution of copper mining, use and loss during the 20th century. Then they applied their findings to an estimate of global demand for metals if all nations were fully developed and used modern technologies. All of the copper would be required to bring the world to the level of the developed nations for services and products that depend on copper. Researchers estimate that 26% of extractable copper in the Earth's crust is now lost in non-recycled wastes; for zinc, 19%. The study suggests these metals are not at risk of depletion in the immediate future but scarce metals, such as platinum, there will be risk depletion in this century because there is no substitute for use in devices such as catalytic converters and hydrogen fuel cells. For many metals, the average rate of use continues to rise. Even the more plentiful metals may face depletion risks in the future. rw

Solar Energy: Alternative to Combat Energy Insecurity in India

With an increasing population, India's energy demands is mounting. The household sector is the largest consumer, accounting for 40%-50%. In rural areas, the domestic sector accounts for 80%. With the current rate of consumption, India would require 450 million tones of coal, 94 million tones of oil and 220 million units of electricity by 2006. Most of these are non-renewable resources. India realized that the key to sustainable consumption is to divert the energy load onto the renewable sources. More than 3165 MW of power based on renewable sources have been installed, including the world's largest deployment of solar PV (Photovoltaic) aggregating 50 MW. India ranks 3rd in annual production capacity of solar PV. With 3.23 million biogas plants, India ranks 2nd after China. There is a potential of about 3500 MW of biogas-based power from 453 sugar mills. With wind power India ranks 5th in the world with 18710 MW.

Solar energy is especially valuable as there is sunshine available for most parts of the year and most of the time. The amount of solar energy impacting India is about 32.8 million MW every second on the Indian land mass. Solar energy is inexhaustible, widely distributed, environment friendly and cost free in raw form. Offsetting these benefits are its low intensity and its unpredictability. Solar energy can supply from 40% to 75% of a building's energy needs.

Harnessing the sun is a clean way to provide hot water or space heating. Another way is through photovoltaic cells.

The Indian government has taken the initiative in promoting the use solar energy. Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) provides revolving fund offering credit for the purchase of PV systems, which service lower volume customers. Soft loans are provided at low interest rates for solar water heaters for the period of 6 years. To provide low-cost energy to every rural household has been the top priority of the successive Indian governments. Only the political and practical will is necessary for the encouragement of solar energy in India. rw

Protest Shuts Down Thai Hearing on Nuclear Power

Thailand canceled a public hearing on a new power production plan to include the country's first nuclear plant. 200 villagers traveled 300 km (190 miles) from the west coast province of Prachuab Khirikhan to attend.

They didn't have a big enough room the senior ministry official Norkhun Sitthipong told reporters.

The villagers, whose protests in 2002 forced the government to cancel plans for two coal-powered plants, said they wanted no power plant in the province.

Thailand's latest plan calls for 11 700-megawatt power plants, three coal powered, to be built in Prachuab Khirikhan.

It also seeks to use more coal, biofuels and nuclear power and buy electricity from Laos, Myanmar and China. rw

Hubris on the Yangtze

The new Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze River is an environmental and human-rights disaster of monumental proportions, critics say. Up to 1.9 million people will be forced to leave their homes. It was built with more than six times as much concrete as the Panama Canal and already has cracks, some up to 8 feet in length. Experts in China have urged their country's government to rethink its plans. rw

China Trying to Cope with Burgeoning Car Culture

The number of motor vehicles in Beijing passed 2 million, seven years ahead of projections. One in five households in the Chinese capital now owns a car, a huge shift from 10 years ago. But with this has come congested roads, high pollution, rising accidents and worries about the policy to encourage car ownership. Concerns - whether Beijing, with 14 million people, will become another crammed Asian mega-city or an enlightened model of planning - are important as leaders remake the city for the 2008 Olympic Games. Beijing pledged to invest $12 billion to clean the air and water and $7.7 billion to add 90 miles of rail and subway, doubling the current network. It will spend $6.8 billion on road construction and repair, adding 900 miles by 2008, when vehicles are expected to number 3.5 million. Beijing and other Chinese cities have the highest air pollution levels in the world. Cities all over China are building roads and highways, in response to burgeoning commerce and as a way to attract investment. Few have the vision for proper urban and traffic planning. Beijing urban sprawl makes car ownership almost a necessity as developments spring up farther from the city center. As market reforms accelerated, Chinese leaders viewed freeways and private cars as signs of a modernized country and enticed the likes of Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors. For every car sold, two people are employed, either directly or indirectly. The media may criticize road designs or poor planning, but no one dares call for limiting the number of cars. Shanghai limits license plates for new cars to 2,000 to 3,000 a month, Beijing issues nearly 2,000 every day. rw

The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge

The Olduvai theory is based on world energy and population data and is defined by the ratio of world energy use and world population. It states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to 100 years: 1930-2030.

World energy production per capita from 1945 to 1973 grew at 3.45 %/year. From 1973 to the peak in 1979, it slowed to 0.64 %/year then took a long-term decline of 0.33 %/year from 1979 to 1999. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. It says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years.

Should this occur, any number of factors could be cited as the 'causes' of collapse. I believe, however, that it will be correlated with an 'epidemic' of permanent blackouts of high-voltage electric power networks. Briefly explained: When the electricity goes out, you are back in the Dark Age.

The Olduvai theory, of course, may be proved wrong. But it cannot be rejected by the world energy production and population data. rw

Developing Nations' Energy Consumption Declines

Joanne Disan, director of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Division for Sustainable Development, told the the United Nations Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that energy consumption in the world's
developing countries has declined 2.3% over the last year, "seriously" hampering economic and social development performance in these nations. In
contrast, increased consumption was among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, where energy demand stuck to a 10-year growth trend. OECD countries currently represent almost 60% of total world commercial energy demand.

Transpacific Pollution Leaves Thicker and Thicker Trail

Rising industrialization in Asia is discharging millions of tons of
previously undetected contaminants annually into the winds that travel across the Pacific Ocean. Every spring there are massive dust storms in Asia
that transport soil across the Pacific to the US, previous research has shown. Now Thomas Cahill, a researcher and professor emeritus of physics
and atmospheric science at the University of California at Davis and an international authority on the atmospheric transport of pollutants has found
that "sulfate and organic aerosols are also present, and in roughly the same amounts." These aerosols are killing crops, spreading illness in Asia,
appear to be adding toxic materials to waters in America, and they could dramatically alter global climate. Every year, Asia burns millions of tons of
coal in coal-burning power plants and coal-fired locomotives. Aerosols are also generated from metals production, vehicle exhaust, home heating,
and overtilling of dry-area farmland. The U.S. has slowed it's annual releases of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere from about 20 million tons to 13
million tons between 1990 and 2000, while Asia's has climbed to about 45 million tons. Pollution of the air above the Pacific ocean, will change the
heating/cooling effect of the ocean and produce changes in the weather. The research project is called the University of California Pacific Rim
Aerosol Network and it works by determining the origins of these aerosols by finding the unique signature of their origins in their composition of
trace elements, such as nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic and lead. Aerosols with these unique signatures from Asia have been detected all the way to
the Rocky Mountains in the United States.

Visualizing the Value of Nature

Visualizing.org illustrates the value of nature and our use of nature's services.The group joined up with TEEB (the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), a UN-sponsored effort to put a dollar figure on nature's services such as providing fuel, food, water and habitat, by assessing both their economic benefits and the costs associated with their depletion. Uses Global Footprint Network data to graphically show the relationship between countries' ecological demand, their biocapacity and the size of their deficit or reserve.

Population Or Affluence?

Refering to the IPAT equation (Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology), there seems to be a never-ending squabble over which is heavier in making Impact: Population or Affluence. It's both. We need to freeze and cut both population and consumption.

However, without lowering population, cutting back on the high consumption can't do the job. Looking at the Ecological Footprint we see that the production and consumption of goods and services depends entirely on arable soils, forests, croplands, pasture lands, fishing grounds, clean waters and air, the atmosphere, ozone layer, climate, fossil fuels, and minerals - to perform the ecological services and provide the materials and energy and waste sinks that sustain civilization.

Those who see Affluence or consumption as the key use the Ecological Footprint as a yardstick for lowering their Impact, such as: * Drive less/Get a higher mileage car/Take the bus/Bicycle/Walk; or Buy food grown nearby/Eat organic/Grow your own/Eat lower on the food chain; or Make your house more energy efficient/Have a smaller house/Live with others.

Americans can lower their footprints by trimming fat - but they aren't going to give up too much. They may be willing to go to the leaner Japanese and Western Europeans lifestyles, but cutting back to how Mexicans or Nigerians or Bangladeshis live, is not an option that Americans will consider.

We can bring our per person footprint down, but not nearly enough for generous sustainability, which includes creating societies that leave sufficient natural resources for future human generations to live good lives; and sharing the landscape generously with nonhuman beings.

This leaves us with no choice but to freeze how many we are and begin to become fewer.

Environmentalists who think we can double or triple U.S. population without wiping out wildlife and scalping our last wildernesses, are living in a fool's paradise.

Research from Murtaugh and Schlax at Oregon State University shows that a hypothetical American woman who switches to a more fuel-efficient car, drives less, recycles, installs more efficient light bulbs, and replaces her refrigerator and windows with energy-saving models, would increase her carbon legacy by 40 times if she has two children.

Murtaugh and Schlax have shown well how overweight P is in I*PAT, not only for carbon emissions, but for the consumption of fresh water, for example. We can't lower Impact only by lowering Affluence.

And Americans have the biggest Affluence footprint per person of any people in the world. Any population growth in the United States, then, is growth of these big Affluence footprints, making U.S. population growth more harmful to the world than population growth anywhere else. The world cannot afford more Americans.

The author has more on this in his book, Man Swarm.

Human Demand Outstrips Nature's Supply - Living Planet Report, 2010 - WWF

In 2007, humanity's footprint exceeded the Earth's biocapacity by 50%.

This is called "ecological overshoot", and has continued since then.

It will take 1.5 years for the Earth to regenerate the renewable resources that people used in 2007 and absorb CO2 waste.

Put another way, people used the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support their activities.

The Ecological Footprint is an indicator of human pressure on nature.It measures how much land and water people need to produce the resources they consume (like food and timber), provide land for infrastructure, and absorb the CO2 they generate - and then compares this to biocapacity, nature's ability to meet this demand.

What Limits Carrying Capacity - Oil orTopsoil?

Bruce Sundquist I once believed that energy was the key issue, but now I am totally convinced that soil resources are the crucial issue. The reasoning behind that conclusion is given below.

Those concerned about energy resources invariably point to the exponential growth in energy consumption, but they rarely ponder the reason why the growth is exponential, and therefore never foresee an end to exponential growth until energy supplies are totally depleted. The reason why energy consumption grows exponentially is because both population and technological advances are growing exponentially.

In recent years, the rate of discovery of energy resources has outpaced energy consumption, due largely to major technological advances in the science of finding new energy resources. Both the quality of new reserves and the amount of total reserves have thus not been falling.

Thus energy prices have fluctuated but have shown no clear trend. In an environment such as this, energy consumption is bound to grow exponentially. Such a process cannot continue, and eventually reserves and reserve-quality must decline. Then prices must rise. People with large cars will then buy small cars. People with small cars will ride the bus, bus riders will walk or bicycle, and countless other conservation measures will occur quite naturally--without any help from Audubon Society.

Growth will stop being exponential and later turn negative. Rising prices will make thin seams of coal profitable to mine and to convert to gas and liquid. Supply and demand will always remain in balance; the total system will probably always show a high degree of stability, though inequities in distribution will always be with us.

Exponential growth of energy consumption will be relegated to the history books where it will join countless other phenomena that have defined the course of human history, and that have shown exponential growth in their early stages. New processes such as information generation and flow will have their turn at exponential growth before they plateau and seek a steady state.

There is one exception to the picture outlined above--soil-based systems.

If one examines the global data on various soil related issues (croplands, forest lands, grazing lands, irrigated lands, fisheries) one is struck by the huge number of positive feedback phenomena (instabilities) that have historically never allowed a steady state to be reached, but instead have produced an endless series of collapses of soil-based systems. A few examples:

When irrigation production falls short of desire, people attempt to get along with less water per unit of output. The result is salination and less--not more--crop production. When timber production falls short of desire, people harvest trees at younger ages. The result is less productivity--not more. When livestock production falls short of desire, more grazing animals are put on the same pasture. The result is overgrazing, soil erosion, less grass and less--not more--cattle. When cropland production falls below demand, fallow periods are decreased, the result is massive wind erosion, chemical degradation of the soil, and less--not more--crop production. All of this idiocy has always been defended by the economists of the day using a process called discount economics.

Take the extra profits from not conserving soil and soil quality and put these profits in a bank. Then, by the time the earth is converted to a barren wasteland, you simply live off the interest-income from your bank account. Is this imbecilic? Before you decide, ask any forester whether he uses present-net-value analyses, and ask any agricultural expert whether soil-conservation makes economic sense.

Soil-based systems are clearly not stable, equilibrium-seeking systems. They have always been subject to massive positive-feedback processes.

The worse things get, the faster they get worse. This is why all those ancient civilizations (all agriculture-based) have collapsed rather than seeking a more soil-conservative mode of operation. I have seen nothing that would make me believe that discount economics will ever fall out of favor. Take a look at all the economic analyses of soil conservation that have appeared in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation over the past few decades. Virtually every such analysis will assure us that soil conservation is simply not worth the effort, and anyone expressing doubts about the discount economics involved is seen as a dunce, or worse.

Food Production Increase 1960-1990 Not Sustainable

The huge increase in food production that occurred during the period around 1960-1990 resulted from huge increases in chemical fertilizers, the Green Revolution, the expansion of large-scale irrigation, and the increase in cropland area. All of these have serious limits. You need to understand these limits and learn how close to these limits we are at this time. To do this, please examine my document on sustainability in my website for a detailed analysis. Click on the headline to see this document. rw

Population Explosion Scrutinised as Scientists Urge Politicians to Act

The Royal Society in Britain has launched a two-year study into global population, establishing a group of leading experts to draw up a comprehensive set of recommendations on human population.

Sir John Sulston, who took a leading role in decoding the human genome, will lead the study. A failure to be open about the problems caused by the global population explosion would set back human development, he warned.

Naturalist Sir David Attenborough, the environmentalist Sir Jonathon Porritt, who co-founded Forum for the Future, the Cambridge economist Sir Partha Dasgupta and the president of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, Professor Demissie Habte are also in the group.

The announcement of the study comes on World Population Day, which will be marked by a meeting of science experts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

They include Sir John Beddington, the Government's chief scientist, who has warned that population is one of several environmental issues that could produce a "perfect storm" of global events in the coming decades.

Today the planet's population is 6.8 billion. Although fertility rates in most countries are falling, the number of young people alive now who are destined to become parents in the future suggests that this figure could rise to 8.3 billion by 2030 and 9.2 billion by 2050 - equivalent to adding nearly two more Chinas or eight more Americas.

In 1800, there were only about a billion people. By 1900 the number had risen to 1.7 billion. Due to advances in medicine and public health, cheap fossil fuels and a technical revolution in food production, world population mushroomed to six billion by 2000.

Much of the coming increase in human numbers will be in the poorest developing countries. In sub- Saharan Africa the population is expected to rise by about 50% over the coming decades. Some of the poorest nations in Africa could see their populations triple.

Food and energy production will have to increase by 50% and water availability by 30% to meet the demand caused by the extra 1.5 billion people living on Earth in the next two decades.

Many countries have already significantly exceeded their capacity to be self-sustainable in providing their people with food, water and land without having to import resources. 77 out of the 130 countries studied are consuming more natural resources than they are producing and depend on other countries for the difference.

Britain is 17th in the league table of overpopulated nations, which are dominated by the high-consuming countries of the Middle East and Europe.

Britain would have to shrink to 15 million from 60 million to be sustainable.

Overpopulation is a much used and abuse word, but we believe the index helps to anchor it firmly in the realm of sustainability; of people living within the limits of the place they inhabit.

"Ecological footprint" is a measure of the demand placed on the biosphere by human activity, calculating the amount of biologically productive land and water area required to produce all the resources that an individual, population or activity consumes, and also to absorb the waste they generate, given prevailing technology and resource management. The "footprint" is measured in global hectares, or average world productivity, allowing one area or population to be compared with another. rw

US California: Slumburbia

By TIMOTHY EGAN

In Lathrop, Manteca and Tracy, California, among some of the world's most productive farmland, you can find streets of foreclosed home, looking like a 21st century ghost town, with rock-bottom discounts on empty starter mansions.

Here population nearly doubled in 10 years, and home prices tripled and urban planning circles hailed the boom as the new America at the far exurban fringe. But others saw it as the residential embodiment of the Edward Abbey line that "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Now median home prices have fallen from $500,000 to $150,000, one in eight houses are in some stage of foreclosure and the crime rate has spiked well above the national average, and unemployment hovers around 1%.

Nationwide, foreclosure increase 119% from two years ago. Owners of 1 in 10 mortgages owe more than their houses are worth, and many just walk away. Without vested owners, vandalism runs rampant and the place becomes a slum. Only 11% of the people in this valley could afford the median home price.

Through immigration and high birth rates, the United States is expected to add another 100 million people by 2050. We've already added 105 million people since 1970; we have a net gain of one person every 13 seconds.

This housing boom was spurred by the state's broken tax system where cities were hampered by by property tax limitations and increased revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. Developers plowed up walnut groves and vineyards to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.

A lesson can be learned from cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego, which have stable and recovering home markets, have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers said these cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty, but this hasn't happened. Instead, the free-for-all cities like Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley - are the most troubled, the suburban slums.

Grain vs. Meat

Meat consumption is going up worldwide, and that demands correspondingly higher per capita production of grain. It takes about 7 pounds of grain to yield 1 pound of beef. Poultry takes 2.7 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat, while swine eat 6 pounds of grain for every pound of pork. In the U.S. and Canada, each person eats about a ton of grain annually, mostly as meat.

People in Developing countries consume about 200 pounds of grain per capita each year. Between now and 2030, grain consumption, primarily as animal feed, is expected to grow by about 2.5% annually in the developing countries. Those millions of tons of grain represent, in turn, great quantities of expended natural resources -- from water for irrigation to the natural gas used to produce fertilizers.

Then there is the associated environmental impact: rivers polluted with pesticides and nitrates, exhausted aquifers, and eroded soil. Unfortunately, the quantity of arable land is all too finite.

The Most Harmful Consumer Activities

Cars and Light Trucks
The manufacture and, more important, the use of consumers' vehicles cause more environmental damage--especially air pollution and global warming --than any other single consumer spending category.

Meat and Poultry Meat and poulter production requires large amounts of water and causes 20 percent of the common (as opposed to toxic) water pollution related to consumer expenditure. It also uses a significant share of the nation's land--800 million acres for grazing livestock and an additional 60 million acres to grow animal feed. Red meat causes especially hight amounts of environmental damage for the nutrition it delivers.

Fruit, Vegetables, and Grains Irrigated crops grown to meet consumer demand use an enormous quantity of water (30 percent of consumer-related water use). pesticides and fertilizers cause 5 percent of consumer-related toxic water pollution. Food crops also use substantial amounts of land.

Household Appliances and Lighting Electricity seems clean and nonpolluting when it's used in the home, but most of it is generated by burning polluting fossil fuels, especially coal. Appliances and lighting are responsible for 15 percent of the greenhouse-gas emissions related to consumer expenditures and 13 percent of consumer-related common air pollution.

Home Heating, Hot water, and Air Conditioning Cooling and heating homes and water has an impact on global warming and air pollution similar to that of appliances and lighting. Systems that rely on electricity or oil contribute heavily to both problems. Most fireplaces and wood stoves are especially high air polluters.

Home Construction The land and wood used for new home s are responsible for about a quarter of consumers' impact on wildlife and natural ecosystems. Six percent of consumer-related water pollution comes from manufacturing the materials for new homes and disturbing the soil during construction.

Household Water and Sewage Despite advances in sewage treatment, municipal sewage remains a major source (around 11 percent) of water pollution, especially affecting coastal areas and estuaries. Interestingly, households' home water use is only 5 percent of the total compared with nearly 74 percent for food production and distribution.

Out of Reach: How Sprawl Jacks Up the Cost of ‘Affordable' Housing

Affordable housing for low-income Americans is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars. This social safety net helps keep families and the elderly from falling through the cracks. But the problem is that housing has been built far away from public transit, schools, and jobs. Residents have to drive long distances and spend lots of money on gas in doing so. Transportation and housing costs can eat up over half of their income, leaving healthy food, higher education, and health care unobtainable.

However interest has been shown on the state and federal levels to alleviate transportation costs for low-income families. Tax breaks and funding for projects are awarded more to to housing that is close to public transit. In the Chicago region 85% of the housing funded by the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) is now located within walking distance of bus or train stations.

Often the transit systems are not up to snuff. Living near a train station is great, but you're less apt to ride the train if it only passes through a couple times a day. Ditto with buses that don't get you where you need to go when you need to get there. From 2001-2008, transit service to neighborhoods with IHDA-financed housing dropped 24 %.

More important than access to mass transit, are densely developed, compact neighborhoods with lots of amenities like grocery stores, schools, and jobs - in other words, communities where residents don't have to travel long distances to meet their basic needs.

One idea being floated is a labeling system where you would find information about the transportation costs associated with a house. Families receiving rental assistance could then compare different residences to find a location that fits within their budget.

When they began ranking different areas of San Francisco on how many amenities were within walking distance, within about a year, for sale signs in front of houses were listing their walk scores.

Ditching the long car commute (via car, train, or otherwise) and creating walkable, tight-knit communities is the ultimate goal.

Response to "Why Population Hysteria is More Damaging Than it Seems" and other annoying repetitions of "Its Not Population but Consumption"

To blame the mess we are in mainly on consumption rates is misplaced. If all humans could consume at higher rates they would, because we are all greedy and needy in various ways. Those of us accustomed to cars are not suddenly going to walk everywhere instead of driving or take mass transit because of past patterns that established far flung housing distribution based on cheap fuel. In China, they are abandoning the bicycle for cars. The population is the driver of most if not all of our problems from intra-specfic competition for jobs and resources to environmental damage to ecosystems on a wholesale basis.

One has to understand that the population/environmental problem has its roots in the agricultural revolution and it began to overshoot planetary carrying capacity with the industrial revolution. We are far along into overshoot of carrying capacity and if you don't know what that means, I suggest you consult an ecology textbook. Homo sapiens is an evolutionary fluke that was altogether too successful and has pretty much destroyed the planet that we knew as hunter-gatherers.

The bumper sticker that states: "Its the population, stupid," pretty much tells the whole story. I don't mean to imply that we should not reduce consumption to save resources, though many an economist is currently complaining about the lack of sufficient consumption to create jobs for the many jobless. I am afraid many more will be jobless before the unfolding scenarios of collapse are over.

We may well be at peak oil and peak food as well. Population is going up and food production will not keep up which means more hungry people just as Mr. Malthus elucidated 200+ years ago. Stopping and reversing population growth is the most relevant and important thing that humanity needs to do. If we can cut consumption too and keep a viable economy going as well; that would be a welcome bonus.

Consume Less: Costa Rica Offers a Model for Living More Simply

by Richard Grossman MD, 2011

A child born in a developing country will have only a fraction of the impact that a child would have in the United States. And worldwide our numbers are increasing by 1 % per year while consumption is skyrocketing at 2 to 4 %.

Costa Rica is a good example of a nation that approaches sustainability. The income of an average Costa Rican (or "Tico", to use their nickname) is significantly less than that of an American. Our buying power is about $47,000 per person each year, but in Costa Rica it is less than a quarter of that, at $11,000. Obviously Ticos consume less than do norteamericanos.

Yet on the Satisfaction with Life Index, rates Ticos higher (13th in the world) than Americans (just 23rd).

Most Ticos do not own cars, but use their feet or public transportation to travel. On average, Ticos live a year or two longer than Americans. Tico people are physically active and fast food is uncommon.

Costa Rica is unique in the world in that it emphasizes education and health. It has no military—that's right, none! Instead it provides free health care to all citizens and free education through high school. In contrast, the USA spends a huge fraction of our finances on the military. Part of our expenditure is to support our extravagant use of petroleum, which largely comes from far away. A large portion of our military might is used to gain and protect sources of petroleum. Furthermore, our military consumes huge amounts of oil.

Contraception is free and available to all Ticos as part of their health care. Funding for family planning in the USA, however, has been shrinking when measured in real dollars, and its very existence has been jeopardized with recent political changes.

The Tico lifestyle uses much less of the planet's resources and adds less pollution to the environment. Costa Rica has also preserved a greater proportion of its land as parks than any other country in the world. Its rain and cloud forests have become a major tourist destination, and a major source of income. Almost all electricity in Costa Rica comes from renewable sources—hydro and wind—but it is affordable for all.

We cannot all move to Costa Rica. We here in the USA can, however, endeavor to reduce our consumption. People who choose "simple living" (or a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity) work less, spend less, and enjoy life more. Most important is that they are happier and have less impact on the planet.

Nigeria: Resource Utilisation and the 7-Point Agenda (3)

In Nigeria there is a lack of understanding of the rights, responsibilities and limits of communities, companies, State and Federal Government.

In the 1960s, mining drove the infrastructure. The current administration has recognised the need to focus on coal, barytes, bitumen, gold, iron ore, lead/ zinc and limestone, as they are available in sufficient quantities and will contribute 5% to the GDP by 2015.

Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the natural environment, it is in the most common form of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the future. Enviromental sustainability is the ability of the environment to continue to function properly indefinitely. The goal of environmental sustainability is to halt environmental degradation.

It is possible to consume less and have economic growth as is found in European economies. Between 2005 and 2006, the quantity of natural resources used by the UK economy, fell by 6 million tonnes 0.9%. Over the last decade, resource use remained unchanged, despite rising economic activity.

Th Malthus doctrine of resource scarcity and economic growth says that humanity is endowed with finite amount of material resources. If uncontrolled, the tendency of human population is to grow exponentially.

Technology should not be perceived as the ultimate escape from the problem of resource scarcity.

Economic activity cannot be expected to grow indefinitely unless the rates of population growth and resource utilisation are effectively controlled. Population + Resources = Scarcity.

In 1968, Paul R Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb (1968) that predicted disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the "population explosion".

Population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled. The failure on a global scale has not happened because of the flow of ideas, knowledge and capital, but there are failures where inequalities have accelerated the breaching of the limits of growth. The dependence on natural resources has to be understood within the conditions arising when the actions of some individuals have direct effects on the welfare of others who have direct control over that actions. rw

In Search of Common Sense

During the past century, globalization grew exponentially, paced by population, technological and economic hyper-growth. However, we find ourselves without mechanisms to create solutions for the whole. New problems do not recognize national boundaries, every nation has sovereign power over its own territory. The Tällberg Foundation proposes new frameworks for international negotiations, and changed institutions for global governance.

The initial objective is to develop recommendations for humanity's relationship with nature. We will use well-tested methods to develop global operations. Planning is missing in the international negotiations that should guarantee welfare and security for all. Responses today are based upon the spontaneous crises that erupt from changes in the balance of power.

Environmental issues are systems problems. No one nation can solve the climate problem or control water problem.

The world now relies on economic growth. To question the idea of growth is taboo. That growth should have limits is not politically or economically acceptable, but environmental crises say otherwise. Current trends of growth destabilize our future.

The political rhetoric is that continued high global economic growth is compatible with avoiding the effects of climate change. All serious research demonstrates that our planet does not meet the growth ambitions of everyone in the current technological infrastructure.

The American invasion of Iraq demonstrated that the institution does not have the authority to limit a superpower's ambition to maximize its own interests.

But all parties must be part of the process toward political agreement. Yet today we lack political debate about how to organize our global society.

Distrust among nations has grown for many years within multilateral organizations, with conflicts between poor and rich nations, between various religions, ethnic and cultural spheres.

There is mistrust over the ever-increasing gap between promises, agreements and results delivered. In the meantime, the sustainability of Earth's ecosystems continues to be undermined.

The technological infrastructure is not compatible with the growth that 6.6 billion people see as their vision of the future. Too many in too short a time strive after too high a material standard of living. We are caught between our ambitions and the Earth's capacity.

Within 30 years the world's population will grow to 9 billion and will place the ecosystem under an enormous stress.

Water is one example of a resource with imbalances throughout the world. In large areas of Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, India, China and western and southwestern US, water is approaching critical levels.

The shortages are greatest in the most densely populated areas. In many regions of the world groundwater levels are sinking and global warming will hasten this process.

The struggle for natural resources will harden geopolitical tensions, with resulting military conflicts and terror. There are no longer new worlds to which millions could emigrate. A fight for survival awaits us, as the international systems of economy, finances and logistics erode.

Management of global issues needs new principles and models to meet the fast-growing mutual dependencies.

The Tällberg Foundation will organize a series of workshops in seven national capitals in cooperation with diverse partners with a goal to develop global public opinion that does not stem from individual political, national or economic interests.

One Swedish tradition is a centuries-old practice protected by the Swedish Constitution: Everyone shall have the right of access to nature. You may go anywhere as long as you heed the common sense of freedom and responsibility concisely expressed in the phrase, "Do not disturb, do not destroy." rw

If We Want to Save the Planet, We Need a Five-year Freeze on Biofuels

The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. From next year, all suppliers in the UK will have to ensure that 2.5% of the fuel they sell is made from plants. By 2050, the government hopes that 33% of our fuel will come from crops. By 2017 the USA should be supplying 24% of the nation's transport fuel.

Biofuels are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. Those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation and it will lead to the destruction of important habitats.

The price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. There have been food riots in Mexico and the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. According to the UN the main reason is the demand for ethanol. Farmers will plant more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the booming demand. Biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. A UN report suggests that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be gone by 2022 with the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel.

Biodiesel from palm oil eventually causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel.

Indigenous people in South America, Asia and Africa are starting to complain about incursions onto their land by fuel planters. The environment secretary noted that palm oil plantations "are destroying 0.7% of the Malaysian rainforest each year, reducing a vital natural resource (and in the process, destroying the natural habitat of the orang-utan). It is all connected."

The European commission was faced with a choice between fuel efficiency and biofuels. After heavy lobbying on behalf of car manufacturers, it caved in and raised the limit to 130 grams. It announced that it would make up the shortfall by increasing the contribution from biofuel.

The British government says it "will require transport fuel suppliers to report on the carbon saving and sustainability of the biofuels they supply". But it will not require them to do anything. Biofuels occupy the space that other crops now fill, displacing them into new habitats. It promises that one day there will be biofuels made from straw or grass or wood. But there are still major technical obstacles. The author suggests a five-year freeze.

Encouraged by government policy, vast investments are now being made by farmers and chemical companies. rw

U.S.: Remake a Living: Sustainable Development in Today's Job Market

"Sustainable development" has the most commonly used definition : "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Suggesting the possibility of a "sustainable" economy has changed the primary goal of environmentalism away from "protecting the environment" and toward the creation of a society that will simultaneously provide economic and social well-being for over 6 billion human beings and guarantee healthy habitats for millions of species that share the Earth with us.

Transportation, agriculture, energy, forestry, architecture, construction, mining, urban planning, financial institutions, and manufacturing are a few industries that are toying with new approaches aimed at "sustainability."

Environmental professionals have taken to heart the idea that it is our responsibility to take the lead in defining what a sustainable society and economy might look like.

Before the idea of sustainability caught hold, it seemed fair for environmental professionals to protect Nature against the destructiveness of the human economy.

The idea that we could be seen as a privileged elite who "care more about birds and bears than about people" was hard to grasp.

And yet, years of environmental and conservation work had taught us that most of the exclusively "environmental" approaches were pushing the boundaries of political support. Putting environmental regulatory, technical, and managerial fingers in the dike would not ultimately hold back the rising waters of population growth, economic desires, and social injustice.

The ideal of a "sustainable economy," then, was a new statement of goals, a political strategy for winning over economic development champions and social justice advocates, and a practical recognition that the existing tools for improving the planet's ecological health were ultimately no match for the forces arrayed against it.

We must all be honestly engaged in the work of inventing a truly new synthesis that seeks to accommodate the economic and social justice desires of people with the habitat requirements of the widest possible spectrum of species on the planet.

It's not outlandish to ask if we are all willing to "care about birds and bears as well as about people." As we struggle to become environmental professionals who understand the legitimate human requirement for economic security and social justice, we are within our rights to require other professions to take on the quest for global ecological health and habitat protection.

If we do, then the vision of a sustainable economy suggested may become Our Common Future. If we don't, we may be engaging in unilateral disarmament, brilliantly disguised as an attempt at social innovation. rw

One Last Thing - Would a Drop in Population Be a Positive Or a Negative?

Fertility rates are dropping while population continues to increase. By 2080, world population will peak at approximately nine billion. There is a school of thought that argues that smaller populations are good. Decreased population will lead to higher wages and a better quality of life as supplies exceed demands.

These arguments do not withstand scrutiny.

Ehrlich wrote that, in the face of expanding populations, "the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."

Instead, the availability of food has increased, even with growing population. Famine, has become a matter of fair distribution, not of inadequate supply.

Population increase fosters agricultural innovation, which, spurs leaps in production. Everywhere you go today, you find traffic jams and sprawl, but this is a problem of density, not population. There's plenty of land available out there.

Markets and human innovation stepped in to provide greater efficiency.

For instance, in 1850, you needed an average of 4.6 tons of petroleum equivalent to produce $1,000 of goods and services. By 1950, you needed only 1.8 tons, and, by 1978, 1.5 tons. More population means more creators and producers, both of goods along established production patterns and of new knowledge and inventions."

All things being equal, population increase leads to increased per capita production.

Between A.D. 200 and 600, population shrank from 257 million to 208 million. It took 400 more years for the population to recover. There is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital.

There is good reason to believe population decline will be bad for us. Innovation will suffer and economies contract. The supposed benefits of population decline are a mirage. The real question is whether falling populations will lead Western civilization to something like the fall of Rome. rw

US California;: Organic Farmers Hit by Worker Shortage

Increased patrolling along the border with Mexico, and easier, higher-paying jobs in the city have made farmworkers scarce. Farms are feeling the pinch, but organic farms that grow labor-intensive, hand-picked crops are especially suffering.

More than half the 1.8 million farmworkers are here illegally, though in California the percentage is probably much higher.

One farmer has been forced to tear out nearly 30 acres of vegetables, and estimated his loss so far to be about $200,000. Growers check documents of prospective workers, knowing that fakes are easy to find and the industry couldn't make it without the labor of undocumented workers.

This has turned farmers into strong advocates of immigration reform. They're pushing hard for a program for guest worker. One farmer hired 320 workers for the harvest at his raspberry and blackberry farm. He could have used an extra 30 to 50 workers, but made do by paying workers to put in 12- or 14-hour days and postponing trellising, weeding and covering the plants.

The labor shortage is a serious problem, and getting worse as the government adds more law enforcement to the border. Some growers are moving parts of their operations to Mexico; others, are having to tough it out, he said.

"We need the workers; they need the work," one farmer said. "We just need to figure out some way to make this happen". rw

Lessons of the Ancients - Ephesians Provide a Cautionary Tale About Sustainability

The residents of the ancient metropolis of Ephesus never considered the impermanence of their home.

They were part of the Roman Empire, the most powerful empire on earth, one of the most desirable cities in the civilized world, with a population of at least 250,000.

Ephesus today is an amazing testament to the engineering and of its Greek and Roman former residents.

And yet, for the past 1,500 years, after river silt destroyed its harbor, Ephesus has remained a dead city. The lessons of the Ephesians, are very practical.

Two thousand years ago, its residents assumed that Ephesus would be teeming with children, merchants and politicians as long as there was a sunrise.

We have to wonder whether in 2,000 years, Venice, Italy, or New Orleans will be like Ephesus today.

Just as the colonists of Ephesus never imagined that their access to the Aegean would go the way of the Hittites, New Orleans' founders never conceived that their descendants would permit the destruction of thousands of acres of wetlands that provided a buffer against nature's wrath.

In many cases, we allow things to happen because of our reluctance to alter course. We could be doing a lot of things to save us from ourselves.

We can't assume, that we can continue to do things as we've always done and still go on forever. That nature won't eventually have her way.

We must consider not only how a product is made but how it is to be used. If we don't start to think more sustainably future generations will see us the way we moderns see Ephesus. rw

Dwindling Resources Trigger Global Land Rush

The Gaia Foundation's report, "Opening Pandora's Box" tells us of the scramble for the world's land and mineral resources, threatening the last remaining wilderness and critical ecosystems, destroying communities and contaminating huge volumes of fresh water.

The more accessible resources have been consumed. Now the extractive industries, funded by pension funds and commodities speculators, are using new technologies like fracking for natural gas to get at previously unprofitable resources. These industries use far more raw material and have a much larger destructive footprint than in the past.

Canada's tar sands require that two to four tonnes of earth be dug up and a similar amount of fresh water is needed to produce one barrel of oil. Copper requires 10 times the ore it once did to get the same volume. In the last 10 years, mining for iron ore has increased 180%, cobalt by 165% and lithium by 125%. China's mining sector grew 30% in just five years. Peru's mining exports increased by one-third in 2011 alone. Coal mining has increased by 44% in the past 10 years.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recently warned of the threats to World Heritage Sites from planned mining and oil and gas projects. One in four iconic natural areas in Africa is negatively affected.

Hobbelink of GRAIN, a small NGO working with small farmers, first told the world about the millions of hectares of land in Africa, Asia and South America that were being leased or purchased by foreign investors for food and biofuel production. More than 400 large land deals totalling nearly 35 million hectares, roughly the size of The Netherlands are involved.

This movement is turning communities into refugees on their own land. Polly Higgins, author of "Eradicating Ecocide" said "This new wave of land grabbing is putting profit above people and planet."

Major investments are going into the search for fossil fuels in remote regions like the Arctic and into "extreme energy sources" like shale gas and tar sands that have big environmental impacts.

Canada's tar sands have 130,000 hectares of tailings ponds full of toxic wastes behind some of the largest earthen dams ever constructed. Mining companies dump more than 180 million tonnes of hazardous mine waste into rivers, lakes and oceans worldwide every year. Mining enough gold for just a single wedding band generates, on average, 20 tonnes of contaminated mine waste.

Rising prices, increasing material consumption and a huge flood of investment have triggered this global boom, the report found. Following the 2008 collapse of financial markets, hedge and pension fund investors dramatically increased investments in metal, mineral, oil and gas commodities.

The average U.S. citizen using an astonishing 22,000 times their weight in minerals, metals and fuels in their lifetime.

Activists Detail Allegations of Illegal Indonesia Logging; Groups Track Shipments to China Over Recent Years

Environmental activists said they had uncovered the biggest smuggling racket with huge shipments of logs shipped from Papua New Guinea to China. They said the illegal trade was threatening the last intact tropical forests in the Asia-Pacific region. International criminal syndicates were behind looting merbau trees - a hardwood used mainly for flooring, that was being taken from Papua at a rate of 300,000 cubic meters of logs each month to feed China's timber industry. This trade is controlled by a few people, so it's the biggest smuggling racket. More than 70% of Indonesia's forests have been lost. The government banned the export of logs in 2001, but that has not stopped the trade. Collusion with Indonesia's military was apparent, activists said. The armed forces has denied the institution was engaged in the trade, but conceded rogue elements could take part. Indonesia's new president has pledged to crack down on illegal logging. Local communities receive around $10 for each cubic meter felled on their land, they fetch $270 per cubic meter in China and up to $2,700 in North America. With forest cover at around 70% , New Guinea contains the last tracts of undisturbed forest in the Asia-Pacific region. A network of middlemen and Aokers arrange shipment of the logs to China. The syndicates paid $200,000 per shipment in bribes to ensure the logs were not intercepted. The majority of logs were destined for the Chinese port of Zhangjiagang. Indonesia and China signed an agreement over two years ago to cooperate in tackling the trade in illegal timber, but the words have not been matched by actions. rw

Nigerian Govt Moves to Settle Oil Delta Protest

In Nigeria, Kula residents seized three oil platforms operated by Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron Texaco, cutting off oil flows and trapping more than 100 workers. They left the installations after assurances that they would not be restarted until their grievances were addressed. The protesters threatened to extend the closures to another 100,000 barrels unless the government and oil companies responded to their demands for talks on jobs and development. Disputes are common in the region that pumps all of Nigeria's 2.3 million barrels a day and have caused armed conflict, occupations, hostage-taking, extortion and sabotage. Kula people feel they have little to show for the wealth being pumped from their tribal lands. State and local governments receive a larger share of oil revenues than other regions in recognition of their large contribution to the nation's economy, but civil society groups accuse the region's leaders of looting the money instead of channelling it into services and infrastructure. In September an ethnic militia threatened to blow up oil facilities in Rivers state, helping drive prices above $50 per barrel, but the leader of that group, said he was not involved in the Kula occupation. rw

Afghan Poppy Farmers Say Mystery Spraying Killed Crops

Recently, planes have been spraying Afghan poppy fields orchards, and perhaps even families -- with toxic chemicals intended to kill poppy crops. Afghan President said his government has vowed never to support this, and called on U.S. and U.K. ambassadors to explain the abrogation of Afghan sovereignty. The U.S. announced that it will provide $780 million to battle illegal drug production in Afghanistan, and has control over Afghan airspace. Both the U.S. and the U.K. denied involvement and didn't know who was responsible. rw

473,500 Gallons of Oil Missing in River Spill; If it All Leaked, the Amount Could Be a Record for the Delaware

An estimated 473,500 gallons of crude is missing from a damaged oil tanker in the Delaware River; the spill could be worse than thought and 15 times greater than the 30,000 gallons that ship's engineers said had spewed from the Greek tanker. It is unclear whether all of the missing oil had spilled into the Delaware River. Some may have collected in an empty ballast tank. A leak of 473,500 gallons would be a worst-case scenario. The spill had spread, affecting patches of shoreline in a 44-mile stretch from the Salem nuclear power station to the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. The hardest-hit sections remained along the 10 miles between the southern end of Little Tinicum Island and the Schuylkill. The oil reached within three miles of drinking-water intakes for South Jersey and Philadelphia and precautions are being taken. Investigators had yet to determine what ripped the hull open, but some speculated that the hull struck a propeller that fell off a dredge owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. The spill was discovered about 90 minutes after low tide in that section of the river. The number of cleanup workers has swelled from 557 to 730 who have recovered about 6,300 gallons of oil. Between 500 and 1,000 birds are have been "oiled," most are common birds, but two pairs of bald eagles are partly covered with oil. Rescue workers were trying to capture and clean them. Environmentalists feared that heavy rain could slow the cleanup, and strong wind from the north push the spill farther south. The company that manages the ship has agreed to pay for the multimillion-dollar cleanup, which is expected to take months. Nearly 100 claims have been filed including 75 owners of pleasure boats, four private owners with dock damage, and 10 commercial vessels that were delayed when the Coast Guard shut down marine traffic. A report said the tanker was detained in Korea in March after black oil that had filled the bottom of its engine room was pumped overboard. On this trip, the Athos I was loaded with 14 million gallons of heavy crude from Venezuela. Tugboat operators spotted the leak as they guided the 750-foot ship toward the Citgo dock. Divers found a six-foot-long gash and a nearly two-foot-wide puncture in the hull and the two holes jut inward, indicating the damage was caused by an object in the water. Citgo is responsible for keeping the waterway clear and deep enough for ships. Citgo said it had dredged the terminal area in 1992. But the Army Corps of Engineers said records indicate Citgo had not dredged the port since 1982. rw

When Ecotourism Kills; Watching Whales, Bears, and Turtles Can Harm Them, Sometimes Fatally

Well-meaning tourists are putting increasing pressure on animals worldwide. In some cases, ecotourism appears to be killing the wildlife it seeks to protect. So far ecotourism has done more good than harm, but there are signs that this can become more about profit than penguins. With more than 60 "green certification" programs, the World Tourism Organization and the International Ecotourism Society announced a new program to harmonize standards. Tourism generates so much cash that is needed by preservation groups, even good companies face a dilemma in trying to balance to help a community without destroying the goose that laid the golden egg. Tourism, profit-driven, and ecotourism geared to helping nature, make up 20% of international tourist travel and has worked well in many cases. Each year, the Galápagos Islands receive tens of thousands of human visitors yet have managed to preserve animals and habitat with little damage. Indirectly, money may help marine tourism. A 2001 study found that whale-watching took place in 87 countries, generating $1 billion. But human visits to whales can be a serious threat. Nineteen of 292 reported whale-ship strikes between 1975 and 2002 involved whale-watching vessels. Some operators try to maximize revenue by taking as many people as possible and that means zooming in at maximum speed. In Puget Sound, the industry organization of about 30 US and Canadian whale-watch operators has set up guidelines, including reducing speeds to limit underwater sound pollution that might interfere with orca feeding. Researchers report that meerkats and mongoose have caught tourist-borne diseases in Africa. On the south shore of Hudson Bay entrepreneurs in the 1980s built school-bus-size vehicles on top of monster-truck tires to take people to view 12-foot-tall polar bears but the bears go "on alert" every time a tundra vehicle goes by, when they should be sleeping which diminishes the fat they will carry into the winter and need for hunting or defending themselves. Bottlenose dolphins in northeastern New Zealand are getting less rest because of tourists, who arrive in droves to try to swim with them. New Zealand announced restrictions that limit dolphin visits to certain areas and times of day. rw

Ghana: New study links low fish supply to increased bushmeat hunting

The declining fish supply in Ghana has led to increased illegal hunting of wild game. Dwindling marine resources have led to the extinction of almost half the species in some reserves. If people aren't able to get their protein from fish, they'll turn elsewhere for food and economic survival.

African leaders have blamed subsidized foreign fleets for helping to accelerate the downturn in the fish supply. EU subsidies artificially increase the profitability for EU ships to fish in African waters. Data was recorded by park rangers from 1970 to 1998 for 41 species of larger mammals at six savanna nature reserves in Ghana. The information was compared with the supply of fish in the region during the same time period. There was a 76% drop in the 41 species studied. At the same time, the supply of fish ranged from 230,000 to 480,000 tons in a year. Years with a lower-than-average supply of fish had higher-than-average declines in land-based wildlife.

Over the next four years they found that the monthly supply of fish was negatively linked to the price of fish and the volume of bushmeat sold. Estimates put the bushmeat trade at 400,000 tons per year but that the figure is almost certainly an underestimate.

Some of Ghana's problems date back to 1982, when the UN established Exclusion Zones that entitled countries to exclusive use of all marine resources 200 miles off their shorelines and Ghanaian fishing boats would have to pay other countries for access to fishing grounds while it is difficult to assess the level of illegal fishing by foreign fleets. Agreements are unusually generous to the foreign fleets. Ghana's fishing sector employs about 20% of the country's labor force, but is rapidly declining.

Ghanaian fishers are generally poorly educated and with few other options for income. Many unemployed fishers have been unable to improve their economic conditions.

Part of the decline could be attributed to overfishing to feed a growing population from 6 million in 1957 to nearly 18 million in 1996. Reforming EU policy will not resolve the problems of diminishing resources in West African nations, but is a solution that can be enacted quickly.

Without intervention, the collapse of resources would result in widespread human poverty and food insecurity. rw