Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Greg Dalton In this Climate One conversation, two of the most influential environmentalists of the past 30 years share the same stage for just the second time in their long careers in public life. Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and author of Eaarth, and Paul Hawken, entrepreneur and author of Blessed Unrest, talk about the ailing economy, the economy we must build to succeed it, and the forces that stand in the way.
You may have heard about the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of our combustion of fossil fuels. If we wanted to sweep the excess CO2 out of the air, what would it take? How much is there? Where would we put it? In this post, we will put the numbers in perspective and briefly examine a few of the possibilities for storage.
The history of energy use in human civilisation is generally summarised as follows: from Antiquity until the start of the Industrial Revolution, people made use of the manual labour of both animals and humans, as well as biomass, sun, water and wind. Next, all these renewable energy sources were replaced by fossil fuels: first coal, and later oil and gas. Uranium completed the picture in the second half of the twentieth century. While this historical summary is basically correct, there were some – rather important – exceptions. Almost all of the Western European economies during the last millenium relied on a large-scale use of fossil fuels such as peat and coal.
While growth remains as our main goal economic and environmental crisis will persist. A green economy requires us to aim at development rather than growth, through the responsible promotion of justice, the common good, and environmental sustainability.
The draining and burning of peat bogs is a major global source of CO2 emissions. Now, a pilot project in Russia — where wildfires burned vast areas of dried-out bogs last summer — is looking to re-flood and restore tens of thousands of acres to their natural state.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
Wes Jackson believes that shifting from fragile annual monocultures to more hearty perennial grains grown in a mixture of plants (polycultures) is the key to a truly sustainable agriculture. Instead of a brittle industrial agriculture dependent on fossil fuels, Jackson’s research team is working to build a resilient agriculture modeled on natural ecosystems.
With the health of our soils and our own bodies at stake, Jackson says, we can’t afford to assume old approaches can cope with coming crises. Because humans like to resolve ambiguity, we reward researchers who appear to do that within existing systems — such research may be right but irrelevant, if the real problem is at the level of the whole system. Solving individual problems within a system that can’t be sustained actually creates problems.
– N. American oil output could top 40-year-old peak
– The End of Cheap Uranium
– Peak Phosphorus (video from ABC Australia’s “Catalyst”)
-What’s behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?
-Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination
-A Spray Like a Punch in the Face
What do Love Potion No. 9, half a dozen centuries of classical thought that get edited out of undergraduate survey courses, and Al Gore’s mansion have in common? Just possibly, a pointer to one of the most challenging aspects of the predicament of contemporary industrial society. The Archdruid explains.
Significant technological advances rarely make eye-catching headlines as they come from many small advances involving numerous scientific disciplines. However, every now and again it becomes clear that progress is being made.
People who care about climate change and peak oil have long despaired of convincing their national governments to take decisive action or even, in some cases, to acknowledge that there’s a problem. Now, the world’s democracies seem to be losing the confidence of their citizens to deal with the economic crisis too.
