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Nate Hagens and the Maximum Power Principle (audio)
Jason Bradford, Reality Report via Global Public Media
Nate Hagens is back on the Reality Report. This program connects diverse topics such as energy supply, economics, ecology and evolution, neuroscience, sociology and thermodynamics. We begin by reviewing the global energy situation, and in that context ask if the Maximum Power Principle (sometimes referred to as the fourth law of thermodynamics) explains our apparent inability to recognize the true nature of the crisis. At the end we discuss what the Maximum Power Principle implies for how societies may chose, and be forced, to adapt to energy decline.
Nate is a former Wall Street investments manager and has an MBA from University of Chicago. He is working on his doctorate at the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. Nate is also an editor for The Oil Drum, an online source for news, analysis and discussions about energy and our future.
(30 June 2008)
Ecology: The Moment of Truth-An Introduction
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York; Monthly Review
It is impossible to exaggerate the environmental problem facing humanity in the twenty-first century. Nearly fifteen years ago one of us observed: “We have only four decades left in which to gain control over our major environmental problems if we are to avoid irreversible ecological decline.”1 Today, with a quarter-century still remaining in this projected time line, it appears to have been too optimistic. Available evidence now strongly suggests that under a regime of business as usual we could be facing an irrevocable “tipping point” with respect to climate change within a mere decade.2 Other crises such as species extinction (percentages of bird, mammal, and fish species “vulnerable or in immediate danger of extinction” are “now measured in double digits”);3 the rapid depletion of the oceans’ bounty; desertification; deforestation; air pollution; water shortages/pollution; soil degradation; the imminent peaking of world oil production (creating new geopolitical tensions); and a chronic world food crisis-all point to the fact that the planet as we know it and its ecosystems are stretched to the breaking point. The moment of truth for the earth and human civilization has arrived.
To be sure, it is unlikely that the effects of ecological degradation in our time, though enormous, will prove “apocalyptic” for human civilization within a single generation, even under conditions of capitalist business as usual. Measured by normal human life spans, there is doubtless considerable time still left before the full effect of the current human degradation of the planet comes into play. Yet, theperiod remaining in which we can avert future environmental catastrophe, before it is essentially out of our hands, is much shorter. Indeed, the growing sense of urgency of environmentalists has to do with the prospect of various tipping points being reached as critical ecological thresholds are crossed, leading to the possibility of a drastic contraction of life on earth.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Brett Clark is assistant professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. Richard York is coeditor of Organization & Environment and associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.
(July-August 2008 issue)
Lead article in a special issue of the Monthly Review (independent Marxist). The Notes from the Editors begins:
This number of Monthly Review is a special issue on “Ecology: The Moment of Truth,” edited by Brett Clark, John Bellamy Foster, and Richard York. In the present issue we concentrate on the planetary environmental emergency. In a later special issue, to appear this fall, the magazine will address the social and economic regime change that is necessary to save the earth as we know it.
Other articles in the print edition (not online):
Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism by John Bellamy Foster
The Political Economy and Ecology of Biofuels by Fred Magdoff
Climate Change, Limits to Growth, and the Imperative for Socialism by Minqi Li
The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystems by Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen
Framing India’s Hydraulic Crisis: The Politics of the Modern Large Dam by Rohan D’Souza
Blue Covenant: The Alternative Water Future by Maude Barlow
Looking at The Big Moral Question (audio)
Peak Moment via Global Public Media
“What’s going to happen to our kids?” When Bruce Anderson read “The Limits to Growth” in the 1970s, he learned that nothing in nature grows forever — including the human economy. As we rapidly use everything up, we’re now reaching those limits and entering a crisis of adaptation. He raises the moral, ethical and emotional aspects of a challenge humans have never faced before. He feels we’re up against limitations of thought, of the heart, almost at a mythic level. He asks: Can we mature from our childish consumerist narcissism to compassionate adulthood? Will our inbuilt caring for our children propel us to quickly take action so they have a future? While facing what’s before us, how can we keep our spirit and heart alive, not succumbing to denial or despair? [www.forthefuture.org]
(26 June 2008)
Talking Points for an Energy Crisis
Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation
… Rationing
The United States rationed energy during World War II and, though there was the inevitable black market, it worked. People will hate it, but the only fair way for rich and poor to have equal access to a dwindling resource is to give each citizen an equal allotment. Does any political leader have the courage to suggest this? Does the American public have the fortitude to participate?
The Manhattan Project
Politicians should stop talking about a Manhattan Project for energy. It took two-and-a-half years to design and build the atomic bomb. It will take a much longer to invent, prefect and deploy solutions to our energy problem.
Instead of a giant, government-financed Manhattan Project, money would be better spent on a number of different research efforts. These should not be decided on by lawmakers from states desirous of selling corn or coal. The projects and priorities should be made by disinterested committees of the National Academy of Science, and not the barons of political pork.
(2 July 2008)
The crisis seems to have energized long-time campaigner von Hoffman. -BA
