Year: 2011

Critical comments on The Energy Report by WWF and Ecofys – TEMPORARY

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The Energy Report does not provide a satisfactory analysis of the issue. It fails to defend assumptions adequately and it omits discussion of crucial issues. To put it mildly, its general conclusion is not established at all persuasively. More importantly, the Report appears to provide yet more proof that renewables can save energy-intensive and growth obsessed societies. It therefore helps to ensure that thought will not be given to the possibility that sustainability cannot be achieved unless there is dramatic reduction in levels of production, consumption, affluence and GDP, and therefore unless there is extremely radical social change, including the abandonment of growth economies.

How to kill a plant

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So let’s talk about how to kill plants, which is way easier, especially when you don’t intend to. I offer this information up for several reasons. First, I’m an expert. You might think this wouldn’t be true, since raising plants is a large portion of my profession, but in fact, that simply makes me better at it than you. Fortunately, the vast majority of my plants survive, but I have probably tested out just about every creative way to kill a plant not requiring the importation of elephants. I am a professional plant assassin, dammit.

Renewing agriculture in Iraq

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Agriculture’s role in a country like Iraq goes beyond food production: it’s the second-largest sector in the Iraqi economy, a major source of rural employment, and a vital cultural signifier. As the rest of Iraq joins the Kurdish region in enjoying greater stability, the inevitable expansion of industrial agriculture paradoxically threatens to undermine the local communities that depend on agriculture for their way of life.

China as Number One? Don’t bet your bottom dollar

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What confidence should we now have in projections about China that assume more of the same? The ruling Communist Party threw the dice definitively for state capitalism and untrammeled growth decades ago and now sits atop a potential volcano. Only one thing may keep the present system safely in place: ever more growth. The minute China’s economy falters, the minute some bubble bursts, whether through an overheating economy or for other reasons, the country’s rulers have a problem on their hands that could potentially make the Arab Spring look mild by comparison.

Editor’s picks: April 2011

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Articles from last month that we found fresh or significant.

Articles on economic contraction, the ghost of ASPO-9 (climate change), the PUBLIC Library.

Plus: peak oil on Australian TV, Bathtubs: A theory of community relations, UK’s happiness movement, building a mass climate movement, sustainable ideas from religion, Octogenarian recalls the First Great Depression.

Way leads on to way

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All this gives credence to the popular story among many sustainability activists that in the 70s we were heading down the right path, a path that may not have been diverging far enough from the main-stream consciousness in its first steps, but that was nevertheless a good start, a missed opportunity nonetheless. According to this view, we were at a sort of fork in the road, and that a good part of the nation, if given the proper leadership or if bolstered by enough committed activism, could have put us on a sustainable path.

Bolivia: Nature cannot be submitted to the laboratory or the market

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The answer for the future lies not in scientific inventions but in our capacity to listen to nature. … Humanity finds itself at a crossroads: Why should we only respect the laws of human beings and not those of nature? Why do we call the person who kills his neighbor a criminal, but not he who extinguishes a species or contaminates a river? Why do we judge the life of human beings with parameters different from those that the guide the life of the system as a whole if all of us, absolutely all of us, rely on the life of the Earth System?

There goes the data: major cuts at EIA Washington

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The lower FY 2011 funding level will require significant cuts in EIA’s data, analysis, and forecasting activities,” said EIA Administrator Richard Newell. “EIA had already taken a number of decisive steps in recent years to streamline operations and enhance overall efficiency, and we will continue to do so in order to minimize the impact of these cuts at a time when both policymaker and public interest in energy issues is high,” he said. Additional actions are being evaluated and may result in further adjustments to EIA’s data and analysis activities in the near future.