Review: Crude Impact

This film examines the way in which the petrochemical industry has manipulated events around the world to its advantage, and the various effects from the over-use of resources.

It starts with an interesting factoid ... that for a zillion or so years human population on this planet remained steady until agriculture was developed. Ever since the development of agriculture approximately 10,000 yrs ago human beings have ever more successfully learned to exploit the resources of this planet. The pattern is to move into an area, extinguish all competition, and extract every last resource. The beginning of the fossil fuel age, which began approx 200 years ago with the adoption of coal and later with the adoption of oil, began an extreme rise in population accompanied by an extreme increase in the rate the human society was able to extract every last resource.

The use of oil has had grave impacts on our environment and our society. And there is a barely recognized threat of the looming shortfall in oil production.

The astonishing thing is we could very well live just as well as we do today while using less resources simply by being smarter about resource use.

Another astonishing factoid is that Americans are no happier now than 50+ years ago despite consuming a zillion times more resources than we did 50+ years ago. This is proof that the over-consumptive habits Americans have do not produce happiness, and raises the question of why we do so. Why not slow down instead?

While most of the movie focuses on the bad effects from using oil and the danger and likely traumatic consequences of the looming shortfall in oil production, the last bit of the movie raises an interesting point. Even if there were some magic technology developed that provided all the energy our society needed and produced no pollution.. would that solve the problems we have and we'd never face another resource crunch? Nope. First, the human society we live in has shown an unceasing appetite for increasing resource use at all cost so if industry had limitless energy they'd simply use it to pave the whole planet into factories and shopping malls. But more important is that the energy consumption is only one part of the pattern. Other resources are also in limited supply and also face a production shortfall at some point in the future.

What's most important to change is the behavioral patterns of our society. Since society behavior patterns are based on the behaviors of individuals the change begins with each of us individually, but the change also has to be made over the whole of society.

AASIN: 

Crude Impact

Principles: 

Minimizing resources required to achieve desired results of our activities

References: 

Books about the Oil Peak

Silent Forest -The Growing Threat Genetically Engineered Trees

Silent Forest is a documentary about proposed deployment of genetically modified trees into forests. The documentary makes a warning that the pollen from these trees will intermingle with the pollen from other trees and dangers will result. Maybe this is fearism speaking but there are principles involved here which are being violated. The forests do provide a vital benefit to all the species of the world, because to a large extent the forests are the lungs of the earth. Without plant life converting carbon dioxide back to oxygen, we'd all be suffocating to death.

The principal at play is the Precautionary Principle. Rather than willy nilly coming up with new technologies and putting them into use without pondering long term consequences, the Precautionary Principle would have us ponder and study for awhile. Time has shown zillions of occasions where a new technology had bad side effects which weren't apparent at the outset.

Our society as a rule doesn't follow the Precautionary Principle. I imagine that Big Business wouldn't be too keen on the Precautionary Principle being routinely used. They're anxious enough over government regulation and meddling and they've built a whole cheering chorus to voice complaints about the supposed interference from government.

Silent Forest .. five parts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5rHZE9H7OA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlId3rji5zw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am5Mc_MPPc0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmYLwSLxCKs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG2kMYbdnEs

Fertilizers, Animal Wastes Both Culprits in Gulf Dead Zone

A new USGS study shows that the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone is caused mainly from corn and soy fertilizers and animal wastes running off of the seven states abutting the Mississippi, and also Indiana and Ohio along the Ohio River, which drains into the Mississippi. Ocean dead zones are caused by extremely low oxygen levels in the water – a condition known as hypoxia. Hypoxic conditions develop where there is an excess of agricultural run-off, because of the high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous in fertilizer and manure.

Article Reference: 

Fertilizers, Animal Wastes Both Culprits in Gulf Dead Zone

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2008/2008-01-30-091.asp

Ocean dead zones

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040605/bob9.asp

extvideo: 

Melting Greenland glacier uncovers island

Melting glacier uncovers island contains a series of pictures showing one effect of melting glaciers in Greenland. There are beginning to be islands freed from the ice who have been buried by ice for millennia.

I've now flown over Greenland four times (on two trips) and from 35,000 feet in the airplane all I can say is there is a massive amount of ice covering that continent.

Retreating glaciers threatening most of Asia

Army blamed for Siachen meltdown ... India's water resources may dwindle ... ‘Today Siachen is weeping, tomorrow the world will cry’ ... Glaciers are dying ... Melting glaciers have become a threat to major rivers

These articles are discussing retreating glaciers, with a focus today on those in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. This area accounts for nearly one quarter of China's landmass, stretches into the Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It is home to the source of many big rivers in Asia, including the Yangtze, Yellow, Bhramaputra and Ganges, giving it the nickname "water tower" of China.

The India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir is having an effect on these glaciers. The Army blamed for article above discusses how one study indicates it is military activity which is causing most of the retreat.

But taken in whole these articles paint a very scary picture for asia in general. Under threat are the river levels in these major river valleys, which are home to a couple billion people. “Siachen is weeping, tomorrow the world will cry,” .. indeed. These river valleys are the homeland to ancient civilizations, to high cultural and spiritual achievements, and to all those people.

Without water, or more accurately with less water, their land will be unable to feed these people.

The Amazon river basin to become grassland?

Researchers: Warming May Change Amazon describes a model put together by scientists saying the temperature will rise 5-10 degrees by 2010 while rainfall in the Amazon area will drop dramatically. With those two changes the rainforest would be unable to continue living. The area would become a grassland instead, and that's ignoring the over-foresting done by the timber and ranching companies.

Gore urges scientists to warn public about global warming

Gore urges scientists to warn public about global warming discusses a speech given by Al Gore to the American Geophysical Union in which he repeats his call for more awareness and urgency to solve the problems of Global Warming. He described television as the cause for the apathy over global warming in this way: "The well-informed citizenry has become the well-entertained audience ... The age of print that began with Gutenberg essentially ended."

An Inconvenient Truth

'Only 50 years left' for sea fish

'Only 50 years left' for sea fish tells that at the current rate of decline for wild fish stocks, that we have 50 years left of enjoying seafood. That means our grandchildren won't understand the joke "I'm a seafood lover, I see food and I eat it". But seriously can we continue with the current management policy? The article describes it as we've been acting as if there's an infinite number of species, that we use up one specie and another one will become available. But clearly there is a fixed volume of ocean, and only so much space to hold fish. Eventually we're going to run out. This has to change.

External Media