Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– Alaska’s Peak Oil Realities
– Iraq halves oil output (target) as reality replaces ambition
– Peak oil appears in NPR blog
– EU Plans Measures to Tackle Resource Crunch
– Neue DERA-Kurzstudie zu schweren Seltenen Erden: Entwicklung “Grüner Technologien” durch kritische Versorgungslage gefährdet
As much as I would love to see anti-retroviral drug access expand in Africa, and continued lifespan increases across the globe, I’m not at all sure that I think these presumptions, particularly the assumption of continued economic expansion and access to the trappings of middle class life for more people are realistic. To the extent that population growth has depended on fossil fuel growth and the economic expansion it fuels, we must ask what the future of population is in a world of material limits.
– Act now on peak oil or curtail mobility, says European Commission
– The Mother Of All Price Signals Is Upon Us, Says Investor Jeremy Grantham
– Big oil price swings are here to stay (video)
– Russia halts petrol exports
If I am right, we are now entering a period in which, like it or not, we must finally follow President Carter’s advice to develop a thoughtful energy policy and give up our carefree and careless ways with resources. The quicker we do this, the lower the cost will be. Any improvement at all in lifestyle for our grandchildren will take much more thoughtful behavior from political leaders and more restraint from everyone. Rapid growth is not ours by divine right; it is not even mathematically possible over a sustained period.
“You have to decide what it is you are going to stand for,” Day explains. “Water is essential to life. We live in the water of the womb of our mother before we come into the world. We are birthed from water, our bodies are primarily water and we can’t survive without clean water. At some time in your life you have to take a stand.”
– Canada military report: Oil shortages and environmental decline could create ‘global quagmire’
– ETH Zurich: Unsung bedrock of prosperity (phosphorus)
– Era of ‘tough oil’ won’t deter drillers
– What happens when we run out of water?
Modern agriculture would be inconceivable without phosphate fertilisers – and it needs more and more of them. Experts warn of an imminent phosphorus shortage. But not Roland Scholz from the Institute of Environmental Decisions. For him, the main problems are the open phosphorus cycle and non-sustainable resource management. Scholz considers the ecological and social costs of the unsustainable use of the resource to be more problematic than the peak: ‘The environmental damage caused by the extraction and use of phosphorus is still greatly underestimated.’
-Nitrogen footprint warning from European agency
-Soil Erosion Far Worse Than Reported In American Farmlands, According To New EWG Report (VIDEO)
-Biofuels targets are ‘unethical’, says Nuffield report
– Family farm in Willamette Valley turns to flax (New)
Reviews of three novels set in the wake of the oil age:
– Player One by Douglas Coupland
– Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
– Afterlight by Alex Scarrow.
Die zentrale Aussage dieses Buches ist sowohl einfach als auch alarmierend: Wirtschaftswachstum, wie wir es aus der Vergangenheit kennen, ist aus und vorbei. German translation of the introduction to Richard Heinberg’s new book ‘The End of Growth’.
– In New Food Culture, a Young Generation of Farmers Emerges
– Peak Phosphorus: Is there enough for biofuels at scale?
– The Future is Organic (but it’s more than organic) – report from plant scientist
– (GMO) Alfalfa and Our Future
Africa is being measured for its land profitability potential. So are other regions in the political South. This process is part of the new structural agri-food adjustment programmes that are already in place in the developing South. It includes agri-investor friendly new industrial policies, the disinvestment by and withdrawal of government equity in profitable public sector enterprises, financial sector ‘reform’ that ushers in private banking and asset management.
