Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Bombing raids began on Libya this week as western powers combined to enforce the UN mandated no fly zone. The offensive has succeeded in its initial aim of slowing down Gaddafi’s forces, but the precise remit is unclear and a protracted conflict in the country is still highly likely.
Fukushima is like a cancer eating away at the habitat of the East coast of Japan. Whilst the situation appears to be stable, a number of slow burning processes must inevitably be eating away at the heart of these reactors…It seems possible that the current meta stable condition may persist for many more weeks, and all the while the release and accumulation of radioactive isotopes in the environment will continue. And there is still risk of a catastrophic failure due to heat or corrosion that would result in the status degrading rapidly. It is too early to call this crisis over.
These are despairing times for ever increasing numbers of people around the globe who are fighting for jobs, food and shelter. The fundamental questions of economic justice are violently propelled back on the world’s agenda after a lost decade of ubiquitous security and terrorism concerns.
Instead of waiting for a crisis to force these changes upon us, kicking and screaming, could we use social force multipliers – new attitudes, expectations, and behaviors – to transform these “unthinkable drastic measures” of conservation and efficiency into positive social ideals?
As the nuclear reactor accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues to dominate the world’s attention, Germany has quietly broken more renewable energy records. . . The conservative government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, struggling to stay ahead of public attitudes toward nuclear power in the run-up to regional elections, issued its annual report on the contribution of renewable energy to the German energy market in 2010. . .
Last week’s post here commented on the ways that proponents of nuclear power have tried to put their spin onto a situation that seems to be taking a perverse pleasure in frustrating them. One of their tactics seems to have shifted into overdrive over the last week: the insistence that even though all past and nuclear technologies have turned out to be far less safe and spectacularly more expensive than their promoters claimed at the time, future nuclear technologies not yet off the drawing boards will surely be safe, clean, cheap, and reliable sources of energy. Those of my readers who know their way around the software industry have heard this kind of song and dance before, often enough so that there’s a useful term for it among computer geeks: vaporware.
The local organic farmers with whom we have been spending time in the Philippines and elsewhere are less affected by these price swings precisely because they consume much of what they harvest, and they sell the rest to local markets. These farmers have achieved at the household level what Frances Moore Lappé terms “food democracy,” and what the small farmer coalition, Via Campesina, calls “food sovereignty” at a national level.
All caveats aside, you can see the main point here: biofuels are much much larger than Russian weather fluctuations as a total factor affecting cereal supply for food. This is not to deny any role for the Russian harvest change in the current food price spike. It was an unexpected negative shock, and I’m sure it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. But should we blame the straw, or instead focus on the fact that the camel was already loaded to the breaking point?
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Falklands
While riveted to Fukushima, we should remember that good old fashioned coal kills 4,000 times more people per kWh than nuclear power. As George Monbiot puts it, “While nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong. The only safe coal-fired plant is one which has broken down past the point of repair.”
Talking to people here, it doesn’t seem like people are all that concerned about jobs, about creating jobs out of this. Whereas I think in most parts of the world that’s the first question – how am I going to make a living? Seeing that this could be an opportunity not just for a healthier life with more community connection but that there could be more economic stability than they currently have. That would be a major motivator.
– Science magazine: Peak Oil Production May Already Be Here
– Japan’s nuclear crisis has silver lining (NEW)
– Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: In this nuclear world, what is the meaning of ‘safe’?
– A global energy war looms
– International Crises Boost Russia’s Energy Posture
