Jean Laherrère

Comments on BP Statistical Review 2012

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Digest: The BP Statistical Review has the merit of releasing every year free and convenient updated historical data on energy. This data is recopied from what is reported by national agencies, avoiding diplomatic conflicts. Despite the heterogeneity of the data, the report displays a ridiculous high number of digits, in contradiction with the real accuracy of the sources. The report wrongly adds unconventional to conventional reserves. BP ignores backdating, using obsolete reporting rules that lead to artificial reserve growth. Most economists believe this reserve growth to be the real, when in fact known Oil and Gas reserves peaked in 1980.

The Triumph of Fantasy over Science, Part 2

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Right now “economics” means “neoclassical economics,” especially in the halls of government and business boardrooms. At the same time, ecological economics remains an under-appreciated and under-utilized sub-discipline of economics. To reverse this situation, such that when people talk about economics, they’re talking about ecological economics, we need to address the three factors described in Part 1 of The Triumph of Fantasy over Science…

Family Success on the Household Carbon Footprint Front

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We Americans may believe that we are obligated to reduce our household Greenhouse Gas Emissions, but then fall short because of the cost and the inconvenience required to do it. Sizeable household reductions in a household Carbon Equivalent footprint usually cost money and sometimes a lot of money. Our household has succeeded to a considerable extent over the past 5 years, by budgeting carefully and picking projects which have multiple benefits to counter the costs.

Deep roots of community resilience

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Victor Hugo once wrote that “Religion, society, nature: these are the three struggles of man. These three conflicts are, at the same time, his three needs”. The literature and history of countries around the world seem to provide plenty of evidence to back up Hugo’s words. But in Japan, where prevailing Shinto and Buddhist beliefs are inextricably tied to nature, and traditional society was shaped around harmonious human-nature activities in satoyama landscapes, these three factors seem to have grown together and may provide some explanation for the tremendous resilience that communities in Japan’s Tohoku region have shown in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011.

Three French hens

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In response to a European Union directive to divert waste from landfills, local governments across the continent have had to come up with ways to meet the target goals or else face large fines. In France, the microscopic town of Pincé (population: 206) has come up with a particularly creative and logical solution: Backyard chickens for all.

Gender roles and descent

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All of us will need to work cooperatively to become more self-sufficient as we restructure of our culture post fossil fuels, which requires more time at home, making the juggling all the harder if we refuse to give something up. And women are not good at giving things up, as evidenced by our current quandary of too many roles to play.

Can we bear the legacy costs of industrial society’s toxic pollution?

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The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) stunned the nuclear industry last week by putting power plant licensing decisions on hold while it reconsiders rules on nuclear waste storage struck down by a federal appeals court in June.

The issue is part of the much larger and troubling question about the legacy costs–economic, social and environmental–of toxic industrial pollution that are mounting with each day. We’d like to think that we can simply take our industrial wastes and throw them away somewhere. But increasingly, in what economist Herman Daly calls our “full world,” there is no “away.”

Fascination for Death

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We are a peculiar culture. We are extremely reluctant to accept the possibility that our civilization might decline and fall, like all those which have preceded us, yet consider the idea of utterly trashing the biosphere with a fascination which would have made an early twentieth century symbolist uneasy. We have had another example of it with a paper published in the June issue of Nature.