Peak Oil Review – January 21st, 2008
An executive summary of weekly news from a peak oil perspective, featuring:
– Production and Prices
– Peak Oil — Pro and Con
– Kashagan
– Food versus Fuel Again
– Energy Briefs
Food & Water
The false US economy versus nature’s expansion-contraction cycle
A gracious fall is better than a bitter, ballistic, hostile one. The flexibility of bamboo would be a better model for our fall than rigid, fossilized bones likely to break and shatter. Then we may come back up, though hopefully in a different, more mature way.
Cellulosic ethanol to power fertilizer demand
Australian grain farmer: “Cellulosic ethanol will stretch fertilizer resources and drive farmers even further away from sustainability.”
Food & agriculture – Jan 18
Europe takes Africa’s fish, and boatloads of migrants follow
Roadkill and sustainability
Should we be eating insects?
Farmer Jay Martin on CSAs
Community Solutions: Food, health and survival
Tranforming communities through locally grown food
All the stereotypes of Rutland, Vermont as “backward” and “too conservative” to relocalize its economy through local agriculture are fading into the dustbin of history. (Interview with Greg Cox of Boardman Hill Farms.)
Using it up – Jan 16
Chinese and US demand drives commodities surge
Drain on the Mediterranean: rising water usage
Europe’s appetite for seafood propels illegal trade
Goodbye helium, goodbye brainscans
Middle East – Jan 16
Angry Iran warns Turkmenistan on gas
Iran Oil ministry ready to weather frost
Iraq: fuel crisis freezes life
Saudi Arabia scraps wheat growing to save water
Food, culture, and sustainability in the gardens of ethnic Americans
A new approach to gardening is highlighted in the book The Earth Knows My Name: “Just as you should never have a monocropped field, so you should never have a monocropped people. If we are going to think about diversity as the key to survival and saving the environment, I really think you can’t have biological diversity succeed without cultural diversity.”
Food & agriculture – Jan 16
Soil Association bans nanomaterials
Death rates and food prices
Making more food with less (biointensive)
Mushrooms to the rescue in SF Bay oil spill
Fiber CSA’s: Do you know where your yarn has been?
Can sustainable agriculture feed the world?
Statement on biofuel sustainability
A systems approach is crucial to assess the energy yield, carbon neutrality, and the full impact of biofuel production on downstream and downwind ecosystems.
Solutions & sustainability – Jan 15
Slow Money Revolution: the global growth of local currencies
Grow your own way: How to join the allotment in-crowd
Toward a post-oil community
Ted Trainer and Rob Hopkins interview continued
Peak Moment: What Can One Person Do?
Biofuels – Jan 10
Ecological Society of America on biofuels
Brazil and the human cost of ethanol
Ethanol’s Minnesota roots
