NY Times Editorial Makes The Climate Case Against Keystone

The March 11 editorial in the New York Times says the overriding reason President Obama should reject the Keystone XL pipeline is climate change.

http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/197221/climate-case-against-

Senators Sanders, Boxer propose legislation to institute GHG price on large stationary sources and remove support for fossil fuel industries

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would set an escalating fee on greenhouse gas emissions from large stationary sources to fund investments in energy efficiency and sustainable energy technologies and also provide rebates to consumers to offset increases in energy prices. The legislation also proposes numerous actions against financing and support for fossil fuel industries.

The proposal was drafted as two measures, the Climate Protection Act-which sets the carbon price and finance programs for sustainable technologies-and the Sustainable Energy Act-which ends federal support for fossil fuel companies and research and extends tax incentives for renewables. Among the financing provisions of the legislation are:

• Price on carbon. The legislation would enact a fee of $20 per ton or carbon or methane equivalent, rising at 5.6% per year over a 10-year period. Applied upstream, the fee would apply to 2,869 of the largest stationary sources, covering about 85% of US greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Congressional Research Service.

  The Congressional Budget Office estimates this would raise $1.2 trillion in revenue over 10 years and reduce GHG emissions by approximately 20% from 2005 levels by 2025.

• Investment in energy efficiency and sustainable energy. A portion of the revenues raised would be used to weatherize 1 million homes per year; triple the budget for ARPA-E; create a sustainable technologies finance program to leverage $500 billion for investments; invest in domestic manufacturing; and fund $1 billion per year in worker training.

• Rebate program. The Family Clean Energy Rebate Program would use 60% of the funds from the carbon fee and use the model developed by Alaska's oil dividend to provide a monthly rebate to every legal US resident to offset potential energy price increases.

• International sources. Imported fuels and products would also be charged the same carbon fee that domestic fuels and products play, unless the exporting nation has similar climate program and already charges a fee on carbon.

• Debt reduction. Approximately $300 billion would go to debt reduction over 10 years.

The Sustainable Energy Act eliminates a number of areas of financial benefit for fossil fuel companies and research, including the elimination of royalty relief. It also repeals sections of existing energy legislation dealing with ultra-deepwater and unconventional natural gas and other petroleum resources; removes limits on liability for offshore operations and pipeline operators; rescinds all unobligated funds to the World Bank and the Ex-Im Bank for financing projects that support coal, oil, or natural gas; terminates the DOE Office of Fossil Energy Research and Development; prohibits the use of DOT funds to award any grant, loan, loan guarantee, or provide any other direct assistance to any rail or port project that transports coal, oil, or natural gas; terminates fossil fuel tax breaks; and institutes numerous other accounting and tax changes on the fossil fuel industries.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/02/sandersboxer-20130215.htm

Re: Why the chicken crossed the ocean -- twice

This is one of those deals which makes you scratch your head ... Why the chicken crossed the ocean -- twice ... the idea is that uncooked chickens will be shipped to China, from the U.S., cooked, packaged, and then shipped back to the U.S.

The article describes this as a politically motivated deal with China.

But I see it as an abysmal move in terms of sustainability. It's bad enough we get food shipped all over the world as it is, because that drives more use of oil and contributes to the baddening of our food. In order for food to remain safe as it's shipped across the world, it has to be buried in various preservative chemicals, or harvested when it's still unripe, etc.

A study on the real cost of food

The real cost of a bag of salad: You pay 99p. Africa pays 50 litres of fresh water goes into the real cost of cheap groceries shipped from halfway around the world. More and more every product, from groceries on upward, is shipped around a global free market. The high lord muckety mucks who make all the decisions seem to think free trade is the solution to all economic problems. But what of other problems it creates?

In this specific case the article discusses the issue of groceries. For example, a bag of lettuce, grown halfway across the world, and shipped to your grocery store, and hopefully you'll remember to eat it before it rots. Maybe that lettuce is grown, as the article suggests, in a farming region where water is a scarce commodity, like Kenya. It may cost you a dollar to buy that bag of lettuce, but it costs the farmer 50 liters of water, and then there's the transportation and preparation costs and resources expenditures.

The article focusses primarily on water resources. One of the growing worldwide problems is maintaining water supplies for everything people are doing. But one should remember as you look at the article, hand in hand with water supply issues is oil and energy supply problems.

For example ... In Egypt, vegetables have become such an important export that the government has threatened military action against any country upstream that dams the Nile or its tributaries. Maintaining water supply threatens world peace.

For example ... Almost everybody in Europe who has eaten Kenyan beans or Kenyan strawberries or gazed at Kenyan roses has bought Naivasha water. It is sucking the lake dry. Naivasha is a lake in Kenya that's beeing overutilized to provide water for a range of uses. Water abuse is causing environmental degradation.

Transport and environment: facing a dilemma

The European Environment Agency (part of the EU) has published a study about transportaion, pollution, and economics titled Transport and environment: facing a dilemma.

Green Car Congress has a summary: European Environment Agency Report on the Transportation Dilemma

It goes into a 23% increase in greenhouse emissions from transportation since 1990, in Europe. Those increases have largely offset decreases in greenhouse emissions from other sectors. Since that puts at risk meeting the Kyoto meeting goals on greenhouse emissions reduction, they're
looking at several angles of transportation and reduction of emissions in that sector.

They give these key messages:

Freight transport volumes grow with no clear signs of decoupling from GDP

More goods are transported farther and more frequently. This results in increased CO2 emissions and slows the decline in air pollutant emissions. Relative decoupling of growth in freight volumes from economic growth has only been achieved in the EU-10, where the growth in GDP exceeds the high growth in transport volume.

Passenger transport volumes have paralleled economic growth

Passenger transport volumes have grown in most Member States. Relative decoupling has been achieved in only five new EU Member States. It is, however, likely that with time development in the EU-10 will parallel the older ones.

Greenhouse gas emissions from transport are growing

Transport's energy consumption (and their emission of greenhouse gases) are increasing steadily because transport volumes are growing faster than the energy efficiency of different means of transport. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions from transport threatens European progress towards its Kyoto targets. Therefore, additional policy initiatives and instruments are needed.

Harmful emissions decline, but air quality problems require continued attention

Transport, especially road transport, is becoming cleaner because of increasingly strict emission standards for the different transport modes. Nevertheless, air quality in cities does not yet meet the limit values set by European regulation and still has a major negative impact on human health.

Road freight continues to gain market share

Road transport has gained a greater and rising share of the freight market. This development constitutes a move farther away from the EU objective of stabilising the share at its 1998 level. At present, there are policy initiatives aimed at a modal shift for long-distance and large-scale transport.

Air passenger transport grows, while the share of road and rail remain constant

Changing the modal split towards rail transport and away from passenger cars is not being achieved. There are still no signs of this common transport policy goal being met. Both modes are growing at the same rate as total passenger transport volume. In addition, the share of aviation is increasing whereas the share of bus and coach is decreasing.

Developments in fuels contribute to emission reductions

All countries where data are currently available have met the 2005 limit value for low sulphur content in road transport fuels. The remaining ones are expected to hit their targets as well. In addition, some countries have already achieved the 2009 target on zero sulphur fuels. Moreover, steps towards sulphur reduction are being taken in other modes. However, much work remains to be done.

The share of biofuels is increasing, although currently reported shares are below the targets of the biofuels directive.

Car occupancy and lorry load factors decline in countries for which data are available

There are few data available on occupancy rates and load factors. Data for those countries show average occupancy rates for passenger cars are lower than a decade ago. Growing car ownership, the decreasing average size of households and disperse spatial patterns are the main causes for low occupancy rates. The limited data available also show a trend towards poorer use of heavy goods vehicle capacity. Apparently, the higher transport costs, resulting from lower utilisation, are exceeded by benefits such as reduced production costs. A reverse of these market trends could reduce environmental impact.

New technology can cut emissions and fuel consumption, but more effort is needed to achieve CO2 targets

New engine and vehicle technologies have entered the market, reducing pollutant emissions and improving fuel efficiency. Although the fuel efficiency of passenger cars has improved in recent years, more effort is required from car manufacturers to meet the goals of the voluntary CO2 commitment. Additional effort will be required by all stakeholders to bring the Community's objective of 120 g of CO2/km within reach.

Price structures are increasingly aligned with and yet well below external costs level

There are a number of initiatives to align price structures better with the external impact of transport. However, transport prices are generally well below the marginal social cost level. This is resulting in over-consumption of transport. Further improvement of transport pricing is an opportunity to better balance the benefits and negative impacts of transport.

Ultra motors display electric vehicles, launch later this year .:. NewKerala - India's Top Online Newspaper

Why is it that India has multiple companies building electric vehicles, and in the U.S. it's so difficult to find any for purchase?

Ultra motors display electric vehicles, launch later this year discusses a new company which has developed both a two-wheeler and three-wheeler electric vehicles. The three-wheeler is for demonstration, runs at 50 km per hour carrying a load of 500kg for 100km on single charge, and shows that the technology is not only affordable, clean and quiet but that it is scalable to heavy-duty applications.

In India the phrase "two-wheeler" means a motorcycle or scooter. The phrase "three-wheeler" is a sort of vehicle which doesn't exist in the U.S. I have a picture in an earlier article about plans by Mahindra (another Indian car company) to produce electric three-wheelers.

Ultra Motors is an English company. It's possible their plans are for offshored production in India and to distribute the vehicles worldwide. At the speeds quoted above, the three-wheeler is suitable only for congested urban areas (of which India has many).

Oooohh... this is more interesting than I thought as they've developed a nice hub motor.

Beluga Shipping to Try “Wind Hybrid” Kite Propulsion Assist for Cargo Vessel

Here's an interesting idea:  Attach a large kite to a cargo vessel, using the kite similarly to a sail.  It will decrease the fuel required to move the ship.  With decreased fuel you have decreased pollution, especially important as ocean ships tend to use the dirtiest of diesel fuel available.

Now, why use a kite?  Why not use a regular sail?  First, this system can be retrofitted onto existing ships very easily.  Second, there's a technical advantage in that a ship using a kite does not "heel" in heavy wind, keeping the ship and crew safer.

See: Beluga Shipping to Try “Wind Hybrid” Kite Propulsion Assist for Cargo Vessel

Company: Skysails

Suzuki to Bring Subcompact Swift to North America

Suzuki to Bring Subcompact Swift to North America: The idea is to capitalize on the interest in high gas mileage vehicles. What with the high gas prices last year, and that this year will continue with high gas prices, the American Public will certainly be primed for a vehicle like this. The specs quited are impressive, such as a 39mpg fuel economy for the gas version, and 51mpg for diesel.

Offset your carbon emissions with carboncounter.org

In modern society, every action we take causes some carbon emissions into the atmosphere. When we turn on a lightbulb, it causes electricity to flow, and more often than not that electricity is derived from burning a fossil fuel, and when the fossil fuel is burned carbon is released to the atmosphere. Similarly while the refridgerator is whirring away in the corner, every kilowatt-hour it consumes means electricity, which means (usually) fossil fuels, etc. When you drive your car down the road, 99.9999% of you are burning fossil fuels to do so. When you fly an airplane, fossil fuels. The delivery of food to your grocery store, fossil fuels. The manufacturer of products you buy, fossil fuels at every step.

There are several programs allowing individuals to buy up carbon credits, and those credits come from other organizations who are investing in some kind of carbon abatement project. For example, planting a forest of trees causes absorption of carbon to create those trees. For example, investment in efficiencies causes a reduction of carbon emissions.

The idea is to bring market forces to the equation. It's market forces that caused the problem, as the search for cheap energy led the world to oil addiction and oil abuse. Perhaps market forces can cause the market to change behavior?

Carbon Counter (http://www.carboncounter.org/) is one such organization.

Carboncounter.org is a collaborative project enabling The Climate Trust, a pioneering non-profit organization that invests in high-quality projects that reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions, and Mercy Corps, an international relief and development agency, to address the threat millions face each year from the effects of global climate change.

Unfortunately the web site doesn't make it terribly clear how it works. They describe investing in projects, but what does that mean, what projects, etc? I wonder what the form of their investments are?

The process is twofold. First you go through a questionaire to determine an estimate of your carbon emissions. You can have either a rough estimate, or an exact one. The second step is to determine a contribution amount, and whether to make it a one-time contribution or monthly.

They couldn't have made it easier, but I wonder at the assumptions made. For example, while I live in a medium size single family house, our household probably uses less energy than their estimate. We use compact flourescent lightbulbs everywhere, we live in California and it doesn't get terribly cold, etc. Also, while I drive a small SUV, it's one with a very high gas mileage (for SUV's) and I attempt to minimize my driving of it, and I have an electric scooter I drive as often as possible. Neither of their questionaires gives me sufficient room to indicate what I already do to reduce energy usage.

Still, this is a very interesting idea and one to research further.

Gearing up to get the ANWR-drilling idea passed

The new "energy bill" is heading towards being signed by GW Bush. I've already complained about that bill, however one thing that's "glaringly missing" is approval for drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). This has been at the top of Bush's energy "agenda", but is widely opposed.

I suppose that Bush just doesn't understand the words "Wildlife Refuge"?

In any case, the ink of his signature hasn't even been applied to the energy bill, and already the congress-critters are planning how to get ANWR through.

Arctic drilling supporters plot new tactic (Monday, August 8, 2005, CNN.COM)

First, the article points out that if the energy bill had had ANWR in it, that it would never have gotten anywhere:

"If we had put (Arctic drilling) in the bill, we wouldn't be here," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, celebrating passage of the energy bill that Bush plans to sign in a ceremony in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bill never could have mustered the 60 votes needed to overcome a certain Senate filibuster over ANWR, he says.

So, this leaves the plan to cause drilling in ANWR. It's still on the agenda, so how do you get there?

Well, here's their plan:

But drilling advocates have a backup plan that is expected to unfold in mid-September.

Domenici said he will include a provision authorizing ANWR drilling as part of a budget procedure that is immune to filibuster. A similar maneuver is being planned in the House, although the final strategy is still being worked out.

Unlike normal legislation, the budget process is not subject to filibuster, so only 51 votes will be needed in the Senate for it to clear Congress and be signed into law by the president. Just such a tactic was used a decade ago when Congress approved ANWR drilling as part of the budget process, only to see the measure vetoed by then-President Clinton, a drilling opponent.

Yup ... they have 50+ safe Republican votes, so they can force anything through they want. That is, so long as they find a route that avoids filibustering. And that includes causing unnatural marraiges of joining things to a budget bill.

Here we are, our elected representatives scheming to ignore the will of the people. Is this the America we want?

anwr oil bush peak oil

California Adopts Emissions System for Big Trucks

California Adopts Emissions System for Big Trucks: Engine manufacturers must install computer systems on big-rig trucks operating in California to diagnose and warn drivers of emission problems, according to an order issued by state air quality regulators Thursday.

The order by the California Air Resources Board is the first such regulation in the United States for heavy-duty trucks. ...

Renewable Chemicals: Codexis and Cargill Develop Microbial Process to Use Corn, Not Petroleum, as Feedstock

Renewable Chemicals: Codexis and Cargill Develop Microbial Process to Use Corn, Not Petroleum, as Feedstock (June 20, 2005; Green Car Congress) referring to: Biotech Breakthrough Will Favorably Impact the U.S. Chemical Industry (June 20, 2005, bio.org)

PHILADELPHIA, PA. (June 20, 2005) -- Codexis and Cargill, members of the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s (BIO) Industrial and Environmental Section, today announced a breakthrough in developing a novel microbial process that will convert corn sugar to a chemical intermediate. This process is an important milestone in the development of a new renewable chemical platform. When fully commercialized, the industrial biotech process will convert dextrose derived from corn to a chemical intermediate known as 3, hydroxyproprionic acid (3HP).

The new process will utilize very low-cost, clean agricultural feedstocks instead of petroleum to produce 3HP. 3HP is a key intermediate for several commercially important chemicals. The chemicals that can be produced from 3HP include acrylic acid, acrylamide and 1,3 propanediol. Acrylic acid and its derivatives are used to create a wide range of polymer-based consumer and industrial products, such as adhesives, paints, polishes, protective coatings, and sealants. This new process is cheaper and more environmental friendly than the old process that uses petroleum as a feedstock.

“Industrial biotechnology converges seamlessly with other scientific disciplines and is a powerful source of innovation for new products and processes,

Biodiesel pointers

Greasecar vegetable fuel systems - Biodiesel information and conversion kits.

National Biodiesel Board - The National Biodiesel Board (NBB) is the national trade association representing the biodiesel industry as the coordinating body for research and development in the United States.

Biodiesel America - A campaign whose mission is to change 100,000 diesel school busses to biodiesel by 2010.

ANALYSIS: "Can Australia run on Ethanol"

I'm not sure why the guy chose Ethanol .. but he's putting together a strawman proposal, studying with back-of-the-napkin figuring whether Australia could support itself using home-grown Ethanol:

Can Australia Run on Ethanol

The result is that it would take 107,700 GWHrs of energy to grow and produce the ethanol required to supply the 237,400 GWHrs of energy currently consumed by oil each year in Australia.

That's not a good return on investment.

But, perhaps, there would be other fuels derviced from other crops that would be more suitable? e.g. biodiesel derived from bio-engineered algae. The analysis Stephen Gloor provides covers only one plant/fuel combination, while there are several possible plant/fuel combinations that could be employed. It's very possible that one of them will produce a better return on investment than the Ethanol scenario he examines.

Design your own DNA, almost makes one want to turn luddite

Photoshop For DNA (Matthew Herper, 06.01.05, 6:00 AM ET, FORBES.COM)

The new firm, Codon Devices, is aiming to perfect a new technology that would allow scientists to edit sequences of DNA with never-before-seen ease. The leap might be akin to going from having to correct articles with White-Out to editing them onscreen with a word processor. The goal is to move from having to merely tweak the proteins that are used as biotech drugs to being able to design them, even taking material from multiple organisms and using them to create new, functional genes.

"I think if we pull it off, it changes everything to do with our interaction with the living world," says Drew Endy, a young MIT professor who is one of the company's co-founders. "We'll see if it works."

The organic process of evolution is what created the world of flora and fauna around us. And this represents another step forward in terms of scientists sticking bits of DNA together and seeing what happens.

What this raises in my mind is the fear that they'll accidentally create a monster through this. While these scientists know quite a lot about the function of DNA, they don't know it all. Which means they're left to trying lots of combinations, with little ability to predict the results of the combinations. Since they're working to create living organisms, the living organisms may well escape the laboratory, and if it happens to be a deadly organism it could wipe out a tremendous amount of life. Especially as its status as an engineered organism means our bodies and the bodies of other life forms would in now way have a defense against any attack this engineered organism might make. The evolutionary process that created our bodies, and the natural resistance to infecting organisms, takes thousands of years to unfold and create resistance to new organisms.

Of course the only way for the scientists to learn and grow their knowledge is to try out new ideas and see what happens.

Welcome to Codon Devices: Founded by leading scientists at the intersection of engineering and molecular biology, Codon Devices is working to pioneer the emerging field of synthetic biology. The company is currently developing its proprietary BioFAB production platform that is expected to accurately synthesize kilobase- to megabase-length genetic code, orders of magnitude more rapidly and less expensively than currently available technology. In the short term, product opportunities include comprehensive sets of biological parts for large-scale research projects, engineered cells that produce novel pharmaceuticals, engineered protein biotherapeutics, and novel biosensor devices. In the longer term, the company's core technology is expected to enable improved vaccines, agricultural products, and biorefineries for the production of industrial chemicals and energy.

Their dream is very nice isn't it?

They would be relying on the known purpose for DNA, which is that the DNA contains the instructions for producing proteins in our bodies. Raw chemicals go into the cells, and through other chemical signals floating through the body, those raw chemicals get transformed by the instructions in the DNA to create other chemicals (proteins basically) that our bodies need to live.

Hence, the dream for a long time in science is to engineer organisms whose DNA creates the chemicals used in various medicines. Another dream, Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae, is to have organisms that produce useful industrial chemicals, for example this link is to a plan to engineer a breed of Algae that produces oils that can easily be turned into biodiesel that can be burned in a power plant, and you can partially feed the algae growth from the emissions produced by the power plant.

Nice dream. Let's pray it doesn't turn into a nightmare.

UPDATE: My fiancee is a geneticist and read the above article and couldn't see anything in the article that indicated any breakthrough. The article does mention George Church publishing a paper in Nature describing the technique.

This is probably it: Accurate multiplex gene synthesis from programmable DNA microchips (JINGDONG TIAN, HUI GONG, NIJING SHENG, XIAOCHUAN ZHOU, ERDOGAN GULARI, XIAOLIAN GAO & GEORGE CHURCH)

He also wrote an impassioned letter From systems biology to synthetic biology calling for a model of greater sharing of more details that can lead to synthetic biology.

Living in the style to which we've become accustomed

Our modern lifestyle as exemplified by the United States is very dependant on one thing: Cheap energy.

Cheap energy means an abundance of energy, compared to what our ancestors had. It wasn't so long ago that our ancestors rode horses. I don't think it was a matter of technology so much as it was energy. Without the cheap oil to drive our vehicles they wouldn't be of much use. But it's more than our cars, it's the food, the clothing, the ease of jetsetting around the world, it's having well lit homes at night, and more.

It all will probably be soon coming to an end. The cause? The oil peak, that the world oil production has reached a peak (or soon will do so) and shortly will be unable to meet the rising oil demand. That will change the equation of our society that's dependant on cheap oil.

After the oil is gone Say goodbye to your suburban house, yoke up that horse, and stand by to repel pirates! Author James Howard Kunstler talks about the dire world of his new book, "The Long Emergency." (By Katharine Mieszkowski, May 14, 2005, SALON.COM)

Judging from the interview, his book is a very dark prediction:

In Kunstler's world, a teenager will be better off learning how to yoke up a horse-drawn buggy than how to change the oil in a car. Woodshop will be more important than computer literacy. Among Kunstler's predictions: The South will devolve into agricultural feudalism and the Pacific Northwest will be beset by a plague of pirates from Asia. Forget about sleek hydrogen-powered cars coming to the rescue. For that matter, quit tilting your hopes toward wind power.

Why is this? The core is a prediction known as Hubbert's Oil Peak. Hubbert was an oil company geologist who put together a model of the oil available in the world, predicted the rising demand for oil, and the possible production capacities over time. The model predicts a peak in the production capacity at some point, and in a way the exact point in time isn't so important as is the model and the fact that oil production will peak sometime.

The lifestyle to which we've become accustomed is dependant on oil. Without the cheap oil there's so many things we won't be able to do. But what will actually happen is a decline in oil production, not a stop in oil production. But at the same time the demand for oil has been rising continuously for over 100 years, meaning that the demand and supply will go wildly out of whack.

If you remember your high school economics -- high demand, and low supply, leads to high prices.

In the case of something so fundamental as oil, I'm afraid it will lead to a lot more. Specifically, the scenario described in the Mad Max movies, of a society where the oil has run out, society has fallen apart, and oil-addicted hoodlums are fighting it out on the highways.

Kunstler's prediction is apparently close to the Mad Max scenario.

He describes two major mental disturbances in the mind of America:

One is the Jiminy Cricket syndrome -- the idea that when you wish upon a star your dreams come true. ... There's another mental disturbance that Americans are suffering from. It's the idea that it's possible to get something for nothing -- unearned riches, free energy, perpetual motion -- and it's exemplified by Las Vegas.

He's sure got a point. Just witness the onslaught of Hummers on our highways. Do they understand and grasp the power going on in those vehicles? Are we so accustomed to stopping by the gas station for a fillup, that we're numb to what we are actually doing?

We have evolved a cheese-doodle agriculture system run by large corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, which grow immense amounts of corn by using fossil fuels to produce immense amounts of corn-based junk food. The prospects are poor that we will continue living this way.

And he goes on to describe the economics of Wal-Mart, Costco, and the other big-box retailers. They have razor thin margins, and an extensive transportation system to deliver mass quantities of goods from centralized warehousing. The transportation system is very dependant on fuel cost, and rising fuel costs will kill these companies.

What will be the first signs of the long emergency?

We're already seeing them. The two clearest signs are serious geopolitical friction and the volatility in the oil markets. A third one, which hasn't quite gotten traction, will be disruptions in the financial markets. But that could happen at any moment.

The huge suburban metroplexes like New York and Chicago are not going to function very well. They're products of the oil age. They are oversupplied with skyscrapers and mega-structures that have poor prospects in a society with scarce energy. We will see a painful contraction in these places.

It's a very good and interesting interview, and it's tempting to just quote the whole thing. However, I can't, so let's just close this off with a summary of the rest of what he says.

Basically he's claiming the U.S. economy has outsourced so much of the real economic engine, beginning with all the factory jobs lost to foreign countries, and now with the tech industry outsourcing, that what's left of the American Economy is the buildout of suburbia, and the largely service-oriented jobs found there.

But suburbia is soon to be unviable. Suburbia survives because of the cheap energy allowing us to live far from our jobs and drive the 30+ miles each way to get to them. For our ancestors a 30+ mile trip took all day, and then some, but for us today it's a half hour on the highway and costs a couple dollars for the gasoline.

But if we can't get gasoline, or if gasoline cost $10 per gallon, we'd think twice about the 30+ mile commute wouldn't we? At 15 miles/gallon for the typical SUV, a 60+ mile daily trip would cost 4 gallons of fuel, or $40. Ooofda!

Agriculture will have to become localized again, and the distinction between City and Rural will have to become strong again.

But over the last 50 years all the localized commerce got tossed out the window ground under the wheels of big rigs riding a sea of cheap oil.

Les us all pray, shall we?

Fossil fuel subsidies 'must end'

Fossil fuel subsidies 'must end' (Monday, 21 June, 2004, By Alex Kirby, BBC News Online environment correspondent)

... a year's worth of global fossil fuel subsidies could "comfortably" pay off sub-Saharan Africa's entire international debt burden, leaving billions of dollars to spare.

The report says these subsidies amount conservatively to about $235bn a year. It argues that they both distort the global economy and hold back the development of renewables.

This is from a study by the New Economics Foundation.

The recommendations outlined in the BBC article are very sound, and I applaud them for their bravery.

• Implementing the target of the G8 group of industrialised countries to provide at least one billion people with renewable energy by 2010, and increasing the target of access to clean energy by the poorest people to two billion over the next decade
• Reforming international financial institutions to allow a "dramatic" increase in funding for renewable energy sources in developing countries
• Phasing out World Bank group subsidies to fossil fuel projects by 2008, and all government subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

Global Warming Exposes Arctic to Oil, Gas Drilling

er... ah... are we sure we want this?

Global Warming Exposes Arctic to Oil, Gas Drilling

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rising global temperatures will melt areas of the Arctic this century, making them more accessible for oil and natural gas drilling, a report prepared by the United States and seven other nations said on Monday.

It predicts that over the next 100 years, global warming could increase Arctic annual average temperatures 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit over land and by up to 13 degrees over water. Warmer temperatures could raise global sea levels by as much as 3 feet.

Such a change would threaten coastal cities, change growing patterns for vegetation and destroy habitats for some wildlife, but an energy-starved world would have new areas for oil and gas exploration, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report.

The Arctic region, particularly offshore, has huge oil and gas reserves, mostly in Russia, Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Norway.

Review: The Boiling Point by Ross Gelbspan

The Boiling Point by Ross Gelbspan

At this point I haven't (yet) read this book. Instead I am working from this review

The end of the world is here (Aug. 5, 2004; salon.com; Katharine Mieszkowski)

The salon.com review reads as if the book is a dire warning like Silent Spring. For example, we have this quote from the book:

"The continuing indifference by the United States to atmospheric warming -- since this country generates one-fourth of the world's emissions with 5 percent of its people -- will almost guarantee more anti-U.S. attacks from people whose crops are destroyed by weather extremes, whose populations are afflicted by epidemics of infectious disease, and whose borders are overrun by environmental refugees."

This statistic relates to the oft-quoted ratio:

• The U.S. has 5 percent (or so) of the worlds people.
• The U.S. uses 25% of the worlds resource production.

Obviously if the environment is "bad" now, then what will it be like as India and China proceed further with their modernization efforts? Obviously a "modernized" society is one with huge resource needs, from energy to steel to food to cotton and every other raw material. The production, transportation and use of each of these raw materials has significant side effects in the world ecological situation. In the past India and China were having resource use rates typical of third-world countries, but as they modernize their resource use rates certainly will rise, and their huge population's will inundate (so the theory goes) the ecological capacity of the planet.

Much of the world talks of his discussion of the "global warming" problem. Examples given are:

• In Scotland, hundreds of thousands of arctic seabirds are no longer having babies. Their prime food supply, sandeels, have moved north due to changes in sea temperature. (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)
• The residents of Tuvalu (famous for the ".tv" toplevel domain name) are likely to be abandoning their country soon. It is a low-lying island in the southern pacific, and soon to be inundated by rising sea levels. New Zealand has offered the Tuvalans refuge.
• Wildlife around the world are "on the move", with one butterfly species having moved its "range" 60 miles north for cooler climes.
• The spread of diseases like West Nile virus, malaria, Dengue and yellow fever are happening as their insect carriers expand their "range".

Gelbspan also spends some time discussing the news media, political leadership in the U.S. and the environmental organizations who are supposed to be leading the "fight". All are found to be lacking. The news media is obviously failing to inform the public about the real dangers, and instead is cooperating with the disinformation that global warming is still unproven. When a politician says an issue requires "more study" that's double-speak for them saying they want to bury the idea and hope the population will lose interest over time. The Bush Administration (President Enron, Vice President Halliburton, National Security Directory Chevron and the others) are especially egregious, as they have been instituting policies that would roll back decades of "progress" on environmental issues. About the environmental groups, he finds that they spend too much time inside the beltway fighting petty legislative battles.

This is an illustrative point:

"People are made to feel guilty if they own a gas guzzler or live in a poorly insulated home. In fact, people should be outraged that the government does not require automakers to sell them cars that run on clean fuels, that building codes do not reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 70 percent, and that government energy policies do not mandate home-based or regional sources of clean electricity."

Okay, so he's putting "us" in a victim role in which we have no power of choice. The big corporations and governments decide for us the products we are allowed to buy, the policies under which our houses are built, and so forth, that's what he's saying. Is that the truth?

In a way this point is largely true. Who is it that decides what size vehicles to sell, or what fuel they run on? Why, it's the car companies. But how do they make their decisions? Why, it's by what we as individuals purchase. We individuals have a lot of power, the power of our pocketbooks. This is the flaw of Gelbspan's point, namely it is the continued purchase of SUV's which cause them to be the most produced vehicles. The same goes true for all other products from the lack of organic food, to the lack of organically produced cotton, to the relative paucity of recycling and the products of recycled materials. The issue lies as much with us, individuals, and I do mean you, the one reading this article, as much as the governments and corporations that are supposedly in charge of our lives.

We are not at the mercy of those powerful institutions. They exist merely because we individuals have caused them to exist, by buying products from one company or another, by voting for one politician or another, by sending tax money, etc. These signals are taken by those in positions of influence as saying that we, the people, wish to choose a specific style of living that is not sustainable ecologically, economically or politically. If we used our money and our voting power differently, it would send a different signal to those in power, or perhaps put others in power.

Yes, there are positions of power. Yes, the corporations and governments decide a lot of things. Those decisions are made by people, however, people who hold the positions of power. All it would take for the direction to change is for the holders of those positions of power to change their decisions.

An example is Gelbspan's plan for solving the worlds ecological crisis, as described in the salon.com review. Gelbspan would end all subsidies for fossil fuels, put the money instead into subsidising "clean" energy resources, and mandate a sweeping swath of changes worldwide in how we go about producing goods, services, where we get the energy resources, and more. The coal miners would have to be "bought out" and retrained for something else. Otherwise we are doomed to utter catastrophe, with a dead planet as our reward.

Dire warnings indeed.

Again, obviously, he is seeing the government as the only possible decision maker. What, I ask, would lead to take those actions? Government nor Industry are likely to take those actions right now. The salon.com review doesn't tell how he plans to have that scenario come about, but to put a guess on it, a requirement would be "consciousness raising". In other words, making it clear somehow that a problem exists and drastic changes are required to solve the problem. Unfortunately the problem is very complex and hard to see because it is made of little changes happening here and there.

It's obvious to me that, if the people truly wanted change in environmental policy, changes in the types of products we have available to purchase, then change would happen. The trick is the phrase "truly wanted", for that has to be followed through by dedicated action and choices.

Obviously there are lots of roadblocks in front of us. In the U.S. the whole shape of everything revolves around individual ownership of automobiles, fueled by fossil fuels. We have roads everywhere, that impede individuals ability to walk and cover the land with asphalt so that water and air are robbed from the plants and creatures that live in the earth. Further there is a massive disinformation campaign misleading the population into thinking everything is okay. These are simply roadblocks, and they are hardly insurmountable.

If we want clean vehicles, various types of electric driven vehicles exist today. Or you can build your own. It simply takes dedication and perseverance to find the vehicles, or to build your own. The same goes for the food you eat, the clothing you wear, the recycling you do or do not do, the presence of recycled materials in the products you buy. All of these are available today, and it is simply your choice. Every choice you make, and again I am speaking to you that is reading this article right now, every choice you make leads in some direction. If you choose to go along with the environmentally unsustainable products and services in the world, then you are voting for the continuation of those products and policies that support the products. If you choose environmentally sustainable products and services, then you are voting for and feeding the companies or other organizations that produce those products and services.

The choice is up to you my friend.

Eating Fossil Fuels (From The Wilderness)

Eating Fossil Fuels 

by Dale Allen Pfeiffer

© Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) -- Human beings (like all other animals) draw their energy from the food they eat. Until the last century, all of the food energy available on this planet was derived from the sun through photosynthesis. Either you ate plants or you ate animals that fed on plants, but the energy in your food was ultimately derived from the sun.

It would have been absurd to think that we would one day run out of sunshine. No, sunshine was an abundant, renewable resource, and the process of photosynthesis fed all life on this planet. It also set a limit on the amount of food that could be generated at any one time, and therefore placed a limit upon population growth. Solar energy has a limited rate of flow into this planet. To increase your food production, you had to increase the acreage under cultivation, and displace your competitors. There was no other way to increase the amount of energy available for food production. Human population grew by displacing everything else and appropriating more and more of the available solar energy.

The need to expand agricultural production was one of the motive causes behind most of the wars in recorded history, along with expansion of the energy base (and agricultural production is truly an essential portion of the energy base). And when Europeans could no longer expand cultivation, they began the task of conquering the world. Explorers were followed by conquistadors and traders and settlers. The declared reasons for expansion may have been trade, avarice, empire or simply curiosity, but at its base, it was all about the expansion of agricultural productivity. Wherever explorers and conquistadors traveled, they may have carried off loot, but they left plantations. And settlers toiled to clear land and establish their own homestead. This conquest and expansion went on until there was no place left for further expansion. Certainly, to this day, landowners and farmers fight to claim still more land for agricultural productivity, but they are fighting over crumbs. Today, virtually all of the productive land on this planet is being exploited by agriculture. What remains unused is too steep, too wet, too dry or lacking in soil nutrients.¹

Just when agricultural output could expand no more by increasing acreage, new innovations made possible a more thorough exploitation of the acreage already available. The process of “pest” displacement and appropriation for agriculture accelerated with the industrial revolution as the mechanization of agriculture hastened the clearing and tilling of land and augmented the amount of farmland which could be tended by one person. With every increase in food production, the human population grew apace.

At present, nearly 40% of all land-based photosynthetic capability has been appropriated by human beings.² In the United States we divert more than half of the energy captured by photosynthesis.³ We have taken over all the prime real estate on this planet. The rest of nature is forced to make due with what is left. Plainly, this is one of the major factors in species extinctions and in ecosystem stress.

The Green Revolution

In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.⁴ That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.

The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture.⁵ In the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.⁶

In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).⁷ Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

• 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
• 19% for the operation of field machinery
• 16% for transportation
• 13% for irrigation
• 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
• 05% for crop drying
• 05% for pesticide production
• 08% miscellaneous⁸

Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not considered in these figures.

To give the reader an idea of the energy intensiveness of modern agriculture, production of one kilogram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not considering the natural gas feedstock.⁹ According to The Fertilizer Institute (http://www.tfi.org), in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30 2002 the United States used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.¹⁰ Using the low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of nitrogen, this equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of diesel fuel, or 96.2 million barrels.

Of course, this is only a rough comparison to aid comprehension of the energy requirements for modern agriculture.

In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.¹¹ Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

Fossil Fuel Costs

Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production.

Total fossil fuel use in the United States has increased 20-fold in the last 4 decades. In the US, we consume 20 to 30 times more fossil fuel energy per capita than people in developing nations. Agriculture directly accounts for 17% of all the energy used in this country.¹² As of 1990, we were using approximately 1,000 liters (6.41 barrels) of oil to produce food of one hectare of land.¹³

In 1994, David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro estimated the output/input ratio of agriculture to be around 1.4.¹⁴ For 0.7 Kilogram-Calories (kcal) of fossil energy consumed, U.S. agriculture produced 1 kcal of food. The input figure for this ratio was based on FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) statistics, which consider only fertilizers (without including fertilizer feedstock), irrigation, pesticides (without including pesticide feedstock), and machinery and fuel for field operations. Other agricultural energy inputs not considered were energy and machinery for drying crops, transportation for inputs and outputs to and from the farm, electricity, and construction and maintenance of farm buildings and infrastructures. Adding in estimates for these energy costs brought the input/output energy ratio down to 1.¹⁵ Yet this does not include the energy expense of packaging, delivery to retail outlets, refrigeration or household cooking.

In a subsequent study completed later that same year (1994), Giampietro and Pimentel managed to derive a more accurate ratio of the net fossil fuel energy ratio of agriculture.¹⁶ In this study, the authors defined two separate forms of energy input: Endosomatic energy and Exosomatic energy. Endosomatic energy is generated through the metabolic transformation of food energy into muscle energy in the human body. Exosomatic energy is generated by transforming energy outside of the human body, such as burning gasoline in a tractor. This assessment allowed the authors to look at fossil fuel input alone and in ratio to other inputs.

Prior to the industrial revolution, virtually 100% of both endosomatic and exosomatic energy was solar driven. Fossil fuels now represent 90% of the exosomatic energy used in the United States and other developed countries.¹⁷ The typical exo/endo ratio of pre-industrial, solar powered societies is about 4 to 1. The ratio has changed tenfold in developed countries, climbing to 40 to 1. And in the United States it is more than 90 to 1.¹⁸ The nature of the way we use endosomatic energy has changed as well.

The vast majority of endosomatic energy is no longer expended to deliver power for direct economic processes. Now the majority of endosomatic energy is utilized to generate the flow of information directing the flow of exosomatic energy driving machines. Considering the 90/1 exo/endo ratio in the United States, each endosomatic kcal of energy expended in the US induces the circulation of 90 kcal of exosomatic energy. As an example, a small gasoline engine can convert the 38,000 kcal in one gallon of gasoline into 8.8 KWh (Kilowatt hours), which equates to about 3 weeks of work for one human being.¹⁹

In their refined study, Giampietro and Pimentel found that 10 kcal of exosomatic energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the consumer in the U.S. food system. This includes packaging and all delivery expenses, but excludes household cooking).²⁰ The U.S. food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces in food energy. This disparity is made possible by nonrenewable fossil fuel stocks.

Assuming a figure of 2,500 kcal per capita for the daily diet in the United States, the 10/1 ratio translates into a cost of 35,000 kcal of exosomatic energy per capita each day. However, considering that the average return on one hour of endosomatic labor in the U.S. is about 100,000 kcal of exosomatic energy, the flow of exosomatic energy required to supply the daily diet is achieved in only 20 minutes of labor in our current system. Unfortunately, if you remove fossil fuels from the equation, the daily diet will require 111 hours of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the current U.S. daily diet would require nearly three weeks of labor per capita to produce.

Quite plainly, as fossil fuel production begins to decline within the next decade, there will be less energy available for the production of food.

Soil, Cropland and Water

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water.

It takes 500 years to replace 1 inch of topsoil.²¹ In a natural environment, topsoil is built up by decaying plant matter and weathering rock, and it is protected from erosion by growing plants. In soil made susceptible by agriculture, erosion is reducing productivity up to 65% each year.²² Former prairie lands, which constitute the bread basket of the United States, have lost one half of their topsoil after farming for about 100 years. This soil is eroding 30 times faster than the natural formation rate.²³ Food crops are much hungrier than the natural grasses that once covered the Great Plains. As a result, the remaining topsoil is increasingly depleted of nutrients. Soil erosion and mineral depletion removes about $20 billion worth of plant nutrients from U.S. agricultural soils every year.²⁴ Much of the soil in the Great Plains is little more than a sponge into which we must pour hydrocarbon-based fertilizers in order to produce crops.

Every year in the U.S., more than 2 million acres of cropland are lost to erosion, salinization and water logging. On top of this, urbanization, road building, and industry claim another 1 million acres annually from farmland.²⁴ Approximately three-quarters of the land area in the United States is devoted to agriculture and commercial forestry.²⁵ The expanding human population is putting increasing pressure on land availability. Incidentally, only a small portion of U.S. land area remains available for the solar energy technologies necessary to support a solar energy-based economy. The land area for harvesting biomass is likewise limited. For this reason, the development of solar energy or biomass must be at the expense of agriculture.

Modern agriculture also places a strain on our water resources. Agriculture consumes fully 85% of all U.S. freshwater resources.²⁶ Overdraft is occurring from many surface water resources, especially in the west and south. The typical example is the Colorado River, which is diverted to a trickle by the time it reaches the Pacific. Yet surface water only supplies 60% of the water used in irrigation. The remainder, and in some places the majority of water for irrigation, comes from ground water aquifers. Ground water is recharged slowly by the percolation of rainwater through the earth's crust. Less than 0.1% of the stored ground water mined annually is replaced by rainfall.²⁷ The great Ogallala aquifer that supplies agriculture, industry and home use in much of the southern and central plains states has an annual overdraft up to 160% above its recharge rate. The Ogallala aquifer will become unproductive in a matter of decades.²⁸

We can illustrate the demand that modern agriculture places on water resources by looking at a farmland producing corn. A corn crop that produces 118 bushels/acre/year requires more than 500,000 gallons/acre of water during the growing season. The production of 1 pound of maize requires 1,400 pounds (or 175 gallons) of water.²⁹ Unless something is done to lower these consumption rates, modern agriculture will help to propel the United States into a water crisis.

In the last two decades, the use of hydrocarbon-based pesticides in the U.S. has increased 33-fold, yet each year we lose more crops to pests.³⁰ This is the result of the abandonment of traditional crop rotation practices. Nearly 50% of U.S. corn land is grown continuously as a monoculture.³¹ This results in an increase in corn pests, which in turn requires the use of more pesticides. Pesticide use on corn crops had increased 1,000-fold even before the introduction of genetically engineered, pesticide resistant corn. However, corn losses have still risen 4-fold.³²

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.

US Consumption

In the United States, each person consumes an average of 2,175 pounds of food per person per year. This provides the U.S. consumer with an average daily energy intake of 3,600 Calories. The world average is 2,700 Calories per day.³³ Fully 19% of the U.S. caloric intake comes from fast food. Fast food accounts for 34% of the total food consumption for the average U.S. citizen. The average citizen dines out for one meal out of four.³⁴

One third of the caloric intake of the average American comes from animal sources (including dairy products), totaling 800 pounds per person per year. This diet means that U.S. citizens derive 40% of their calories from fat-nearly half of their diet. ³⁵

Americans are also grand consumers of water. As of one decade ago, Americans were consuming 1,450 gallons/day/capita (g/d/c), with the largest amount expended on agriculture. Allowing for projected population increase, consumption by 2050 is projected at 700 g/d/c, which hydrologists consider to be minimal for human needs.³⁶ This is without taking into consideration declining fossil fuel production.

To provide all of this food requires the application of 0.6 million metric tons of pesticides in North America per year. This is over one fifth of the total annual world pesticide use, estimated at 2.5 million tons.³⁷ Worldwide, more nitrogen fertilizer is used per year than can be supplied through natural sources. Likewise, water is pumped out of underground aquifers at a much higher rate than it is recharged. And stocks of important minerals, such as phosphorus and potassium, are quickly approaching exhaustion.³⁸

Total U.S. energy consumption is more than three times the amount of solar energy harvested as crop and forest products. The United States consumes 40% more energy annually than the total amount of solar energy captured yearly by all U.S. plant biomass. Per capita use of fossil energy in North America is five times the world average.³⁹

Our prosperity is built on the principal of exhausting the world's resources as quickly as possible, without any thought to our neighbors, all the other life on this planet, or our children.

Population & Sustainability

Considering a growth rate of 1.1% per year, the U.S. population is projected to double by 2050. As the population expands, an estimated one acre of land will be lost for every person added to the U.S. population. Currently, there are 1.8 acres of farmland available to grow food for each U.S. citizen. By 2050, this will decrease to 0.6 acres. 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current dietary standards.⁴⁰

Presently, only two nations on the planet are major exporters of grain: the United States and Canada.⁴¹ By 2025, it is expected that the U.S. will cease to be a food exporter due to domestic demand. The impact on the U.S. economy could be devastating, as food exports earn $40 billion for the U.S. annually. More importantly, millions of people around the world could starve to death without U.S. food exports.⁴²

Domestically, 34.6 million people are living in poverty as of 2002 census data.⁴³ And this number is continuing to grow at an alarming rate. Too many of these people do not have a sufficient diet. As the situation worsens, this number will increase and the United States will witness growing numbers of starvation fatalities.

There are some things that we can do to at least alleviate this tragedy. It is suggested that streamlining agriculture to get rid of losses, waste and mismanagement might cut the energy inputs for food production by up to one-half.³⁵ In place of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, we could utilize livestock manures that are now wasted. It is estimated that livestock manures contain 5 times the amount of fertilizer currently used each year.³⁶ Perhaps most effective would be to eliminate meat from our diet altogether.³⁷

Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel postulate that a sustainable food system is possible only if four conditions are met:

1. Environmentally sound agricultural technologies must be implemented.
2. Renewable energy technologies must be put into place.
3. Major increases in energy efficiency must reduce exosomatic energy consumption per capita.
4. Population size and consumption must be compatible with maintaining the stability of environmental processes.³⁸

Providing that the first three conditions are met, with a reduction to less than half of the exosomatic energy consumption per capita, the authors place the maximum population for a sustainable economy at 200 million.³⁹ Several other studies have produced figures within this ballpark (Energy and Population, Werbos, Paul J. http://www.dieoff.com/page63.htm; Impact of Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment, Pimentel, David, et al. http://www.dieoff.com/page57.htm).

Given that the current U.S. population is in excess of 292 million, ⁴⁰ that would mean a reduction of 92 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third. The black plague during the 14th Century claimed approximately one-third of the European population (and more than half of the Asian and Indian populations), plunging the continent into a darkness from which it took them nearly two centuries to emerge.⁴¹

None of this research considers the impact of declining fossil fuel production. The authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production (and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S. population reduction of one-third will not be effective for sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half. And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current 6.32 billion people⁴² to 2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds. The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without relief. And the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before by the human race.

Three Choices

Considering the utter necessity of population reduction, there are three obvious choices awaiting us.

We can-as a society-become aware of our dilemma and consciously make the choice not to add more people to our population. This would be the most welcome of our three options, to choose consciously and with free will to responsibly lower our population. However, this flies in the face of our biological imperative to procreate. It is further complicated by the ability of modern medicine to extend our longevity, and by the refusal of the Religious Right to consider issues of population management. And then, there is a strong business lobby to maintain a high immigration rate in order to hold down the cost of labor. Though this is probably our best choice, it is the option least likely to be chosen.

Failing to responsibly lower our population, we can force population cuts through government regulations. Is there any need to mention how distasteful this option would be? How many of us would choose to live in a world of forced sterilization and population quotas enforced under penalty of law? How easily might this lead to a culling of the population utilizing principles of eugenics?

This leaves the third choice, which itself presents an unspeakable picture of suffering and death. Should we fail to acknowledge this coming crisis and determine to deal with it, we will be faced with a die-off from which civilization may very possibly never revive. We will very likely lose more than the numbers necessary for sustainability. Under a die-off scenario, conditions will deteriorate so badly that the surviving human population would be a negligible fraction of the present population. And those survivors would suffer from the trauma of living through the death of their civilization, their neighbors, their friends and their families. Those survivors will have seen their world crushed into nothing.

The questions we must ask ourselves now are, how can we allow this to happen, and what can we do to prevent it? Does our present lifestyle mean so much to us that we would subject ourselves and our children to this fast approaching tragedy simply for a few more years of conspicuous consumption?

Author's Note

This is possibly the most important article I have written to date. It is certainly the most frightening, and the conclusion is the bleakest I have ever penned. This article is likely to greatly disturb the reader; it has certainly disturbed me. However, it is important for our future that this paper should be read, acknowledged and discussed.

I am by nature positive and optimistic. In spite of this article, I continue to believe that we can find a positive solution to the multiple crises bearing down upon us. Though this article may provoke a flood of hate mail, it is simply a factual report of data and the obvious conclusions that follow from it.

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ENDNOTES

¹ Availability of agricultural land for crop and livestock production, Buringh, P. Food and Natural Resources, Pimentel. D. and Hall. C.W. (eds), Academic Press, 1989.

² Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis, Vitousek, P.M. et al. Bioscience 36, 1986. http://www.science.duq.edu/esm/unit2-3

³ Land, Energy and Water: the constraints governing Ideal US Population Size, Pimental, David and Pimentel, Marcia. Focus, Spring 1991. NPG Forum, 1990. http://www.dieoff.com/page136.htm

⁴ Constraints on the Expansion of Global Food Supply, Kindell, Henry H. and Pimentel, David. Ambio Vol. 23 No. 3, May 1994. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.dieoff.com/page36htm

⁵ The Tightening Conflict: Population, Energy Use, and the Ecology of Agriculture, Giampietro, Mario and Pimentel, David, 1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page69.htm

⁶ Op. Cit. See note 4.

⁷ Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page55.htm

⁸ Comparison of energy inputs for inorganic fertilizer and manure based corn production, McLaughlin, N.B., et al. Canadian Agricultural Engineering, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2000.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ US Fertilizer Use Statistics. http://www.tfi.org/Statistics/USfertuse2.asp

¹¹ Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Executive Summary, Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page40.htm

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Op. Cit.  See note 3.

¹⁴ Op. Cit.  See note 7.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Op. Cit. See note 5.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Op. Cit. See note 11.

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Op Cit. See note 3.

²⁶ Op Cit. See note 11.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Op. Cit. See note 3.

³¹ Op. Cit. See note 5.

³² Op. Cit. See note 3.

³³ Op. Cit. See note 11.

³⁴ Food Consumption and Access, Lynn Brantley, et al. Capital Area Food Bank, 6/1/2001.  http://www.clagettfarm.org/purchasing.html

³⁵ Op. Cit. See note 11.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Op. Cit. See note 5.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Op. Cit. See note 11.

⁴¹ Op. Cit. See note 4

⁴² Op. Cit. See note 11.

⁴³ Poverty 2002. The U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/poverty02/pov02hi.html

³⁵ Op. Cit. See note 3.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Diet for a Small Planet, Lappé, Frances Moore. Ballantine Books, 1971-revised 1991. http://www.dietforasmallplanet.com/

³⁸ Op. Cit. See note 5.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ U.S. and World Population Clocks.  U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

⁴¹ A Distant Mirror, Tuckman Barbara. Ballantine Books, 1978.

⁴² Op. Cit. See note 40.