Education

3 pillars of a food revolution

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A few years ago, I stumbled on a United Nations study that transformed how I think about the climate crisis. In the report, researchers pegged greenhouse gases from the livestock sector at 18 percent of total global emissions. Combine this with other aspects of our food chain—from agricultural chemical production to agribusiness driven deforestation to food waste rotting in landfills—and food and agriculture sector is responsible for nearly one third of the planet’s manmade emissions. Move over Hummer; it’s time to say hello to the hamburger.

Waste not: Seattle’s road to zero trash

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A key strategy that contributes to Seattle’s carbon neutrality work was approved by the Council in 2007, when my Zero Waste Initiative was adopted as City policy. The things we throw away not only generate carbon as they decompose—they also carry the embedded carbon that was used in creating them. Zero Waste is a strategy that addresses both of those aspects.

Embodied energy: An alternative approach to understanding urban energy use

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Everyone knows that it takes energy to produce anything. The energy used in mining, transport, processing, manufacturing, delivery, and disposal is “embodied” in every product we consume, from food to diapers to televisions and insurance policies. Our traditional way of looking at energy, however, highlights only current consumption, traditionally disaggregated into agricultural, industrial, transportation, commercial, and residential sectors.

Nine challenges of alternative energy

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Unlike conventional fossil fuels, where nature provided energy over millions of years to convert biomass into energy-dense solids, liquids, and gases–requiring only extraction and transportation technolgy for us to mobilize them–alternative energy depends heavily on specially engineered equipment and infrastructure for capture or conversion, essentially making it a high-tech manufacturing process.

Matthew Simmons: a tribute

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Energy Investment banker and leading peak oil proponent Matthew Simmons died suddenly on Sunday [Aug. 8], following an apparent heart attack. While Simmons did not come up with the idea of peak oil – geophysicist M King Hubbert first published the theory in the 1950s — he arguably did more than anyone to publicize it. It was Simmons’ 2005 classic Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, that turned discussion of peak oil from a fringe environmental concern into something with business pages credibility.

Summer reads

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Looking at the news, most current stories have a common thread. Wars over oil; oil spill; catastrophic flooding in Pakistan and record cold waves in the Southern Hemisphere; wheat prices up on drought in Russia; forest and peat fires from the heat; economies cratering from higher energy costs and banking bubbles; states, provinces, and municipalities teetering on bankruptcy; unemployment skyrocketing; right-wing militant groups finding traction; civil rights trampled as authoritarianism hardens; and billions still being spent to keep people in the dark on peak oil and climate change.

New perspectives on the energy return on (energy) investment (EROI) of corn ethanol: part 2 of 2

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In the analysis underlying our paper “New Perspectives on the Energy Return on (Energy) Investment (EROI) of Corn Ethanol,” we performed four major analyses relating to the EROI of corn ethanol. In this part, we will discuss two additional research areas from the paper.