Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Cecile Andrews Gross Domestic Product (GDP) goes up not only when good things happen, but when bad things happen as well. Things like mining disasters or oil spills can put a lot of money into the economy. Consequently the little country of Bhutan decided to measure Gross National Happiness instead of GDP. And now, cities around the world are starting to get involved.
The news was dominated this week by the race against time to stem the flow of oil from the Transocean Deepwater rig disaster, and the potentially devastating ecological impact of the spill. BP’s mitigation effort has been painfully slow to watch, and once again placed a spotlight on the high risk world of deepwater oil extraction.
A quick roundup of ongoing oil spill news.
There is a horrible paper in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which looks at how the limits of human physiology interact with upper-range global warming scenarios. The bottom line conclusion is that there is a small – of order 5% – risk of global warming creating a situation in which a large fraction of the planet was uninhabitable (in the sense that if you were outside for an extended period during the hottest days of the year, even in the shade with wet clothing, you would die).
-The Ecology of Socialism
-Slouching towards neofeudalism
-Debt: The first five thousand years
-Principles of human needs placemaking
-Thoughts on Teaching Wendell Berry
-Consequences of Government Debt Default
-Many possible triggers for wider euro debt crisis
-Angry Greeks ‘carrying the can’ for politicians
-Greece Takes Its Bailout, but Doubts for the Region Persist
In the UK and globally the future direction of food and farming is being driven almost entirely by two frequently quoted statistics. Experts such as the UN Secretary General, the UK Government’s Chief Scientist, the current Secretary of State for the Environment, Hilary Benn MP, the Conservative Party, the National Farmers’ Union and Monsanto, are all saying that we need to increase food production 50% by 2030 or that it needs to double by 2050.
-Organic farms ‘produce less than HALF as much food as conventional ones’
-Study shows low carbon credentials of local food
-Can U.S. farms produce food without relying heavily on fossil fuels?
-Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds
-Fears That a Lush Land May Lose a Foul Fertilizer
-Domestic blitz
-Pollan and Hurst Debate the Future of Agriculture
The explosion and destruction of the Horizon deepwater rig and the subsequent oil spill disaster are only the latest in a series of wake-up calls you’ve received. Are you listening now? Your first warning came in 1956, with the publication of M. King Hubbert’s model of US oil production, which correctly predicted its peak in 1970. When Hubbert updated his model on camera in 1976, he also nailed the peak of worldwide conventional oil production in 2005.
A month ago I visited my friend Sadie in Cincinnati. During a chat in her apartment, I confessed to a morbid fascination with the possible collapse of society. She laughed and, in a tone of gentle sarcasm, said she’d noticed my enchantment with that subject.
The map of the area threatened by the BP blowout, comprising nearly half of the US’s coastal wetlands, looks like tattered lace. It’s a realm of islands, shoals, estuaries, marshes, swamps, bayous, and creeks, land speckled across water, water twining across land, all of it in flux…
Electric motors and batteries have improved substantially over the past one hundred years, but today’s much hyped electric cars have a range that is – at best – comparable to that of their predecessors at the beginning of the 20th century. Weight, comfort, speed and performance have eaten up any real progress. We don’t need better batteries, we need better cars.
