Post Carbon Institute Publications

So Much Wasted Energy - Rethinking food waste

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:36:31 GMT

By Philip Ackerman-Leist, posted May 20, 2013:

This is the final part of our serialization of Chapter 4 (Energy) from the latest Resilience guide, "Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems". This installment shows the big problem we have with waste, but also suggests that this is an area where we can all wade in.

Read Part 1, Read Part 2, Read Part 3, Read Part 4, Read Part 5, Read Part 6

Like everything else in the food system, food waste isn’t that simple. Unlike everything else in the food system, waste knows no bounds—that is, it cuts across all components of the food system. Food is lost and wasted in every sector, from production to consumption. However, the pervasiveness of food waste also means that it’s one of the biggest opportunities for rebuilding local food systems. Before making that argument, though, it is important to understand the issue of food waste in more detail.

Technically speaking, the term “food loss” is related to losses of quantity and quality of food in the initial production, processing, and distribution stages. “Food waste,” in contrast, tends to refer to the loss of food in the later stages of the food chain, ranging from storage spoilage to kitchen prep scraps to unconsumed prepared foods. The distinction between these terms can be helpful, but for the sake of simplicity, most discussions opt to avoid misconstrued nuances and simply use “food waste” as an allencompassing term.²⁷

Regardless of terminology, one point is writ clear: the most technologically and economically advanced cultures in the world have the highest rates of food waste on the planet—and that’s even without including the astonishing amount of packaging and carry-out containers associated with our dietary habits. You would think that nations endowed with such economic and technological capacities would lead the way in reducing and recapturing food waste, but we are far from that reality, as evidenced in figure 4-8.

Every time food is lost or wasted, all of the embedded energy that went into producing that food is also wasted. In other words, the dilemma is not just about the loss of the calories and the nutrients in the food itself. Nor is it solely about the squandered opportunity to feed the increasing number of malnourished people in our country and beyond, although that injustice alone should be reason enough to move us to act. Food lost and wasted is energy wasted. It also represents the arguably unnecessary dispersal of pesticides, carbon, airborne particulates, and other pollutants associated with producing foods.

Waste is generally the first element examined and redressed in an audit of any kind of energy system. It may not be the sexiest consideration, but it’s the most important: minimizing waste is the best way to maximize efficiency. Consider a home energy-efficiency analysis. Perhaps the homeowner is particularly excited about installing a renewable energy system (such as solar panels) for her home. The first step is not to size, site, or install the new system; rather, it’s to determine current wasted energy. Until the sources of wasted energy are addressed, it makes little sense to invest in new sources of energy, no matter how “clean” or “renewable” they might be.

Other than being much more complex than a home energy audit—by several orders of magnitude—a farm-to-plate energy audit also should focus on conservation. Only after we determine causes and potential remedies of food loss and waste can we then turn our attention to the energy systems employed in transforming seed and breed into the food on our plates. One strong but typically ignored argument for local food systems is that we can more easily track energy use and food waste in localized food systems than in the highly dispersed and complex food systems at the national and global levels. Furthermore, when we have to contend with waste on a local level, we tend to be more cognizant of the levels and the impacts of that waste. The more distant and dispersed the waste, the less heightened our awareness and concern.

Most of us are likely unaware of how much food is wasted on a global scale: Approximately one-third of the edible foods produced worldwide are never consumed by humans. That amounts to a stunning 1.3 billion tons of food wasted annually. In the United States, the food waste percentage is closer to 40 percent. In wealthier industrialized countries, food is lost and wasted throughout the entire food chain, but a significant amount of perfectly edible food is wasted at the end of the food chain. In poorer countries, food losses tend to occur more at the earlier parts of the food chain, with minimal waste closer to the consumer end.²⁸

Food loss and food waste in the United States are so enormous in terms of squandered nutrients, dollars, and energy that the overall impact is hard to fathom, in part because the results are relatively well hidden in Dumpsters and landfills relatively far removed from our daily orbits. Somehow, we Americans each account for approximately 600 to 650 pounds of lost and wasted food, most of which we barely see or consider.²⁹ And seldom do we connect food waste to energy waste.

Describing such food waste is an exercise in inexplicable contrasts. The immediate image is, of course, a reeking mishmash of spoiled foods compressed into an enormous metal container, oozing liquids that might even repel most vermin. But then there are utterly irrational images: Dumpsters full of perfectly intact packaged items still within their expiration dates, baked goods not even twenty-four hours old, five-star entrées that somehow never made it to the dining room. Or entire truckloads of fruit turned away from their destinations because they were too ripe and therefore had too short a shelf-life for a grocery store to accept. Regardless whether it came from the next town over or from Mexico, the entire shipment was bound for disposal. Composting has its merits, but human consumption should be the first priority. If that isn’t possible, livestock certainly relish such meals.

Many people, myself included, have long congratulated ourselves for feeding our livestock and compost piles with food waste, assuming that we have closed an important ecological loop. In reality, though, we’ve only put lipstick on a pig (I swear that pig winked at me when I did it myself, though), since the food that we compost or feed to our livestock typically has higher energy invested in its entire “life cycle” than the physical energy it delivers to our livestock. The positive aspect is that we are at least utilizing an efficient biological process to dispose of food waste, enhance soil fertility, and perhaps even sequester carbon.

This biological approach is generally more efficient than an approach utilizing mechanization and large-scale infrastructure, but it is not a silver bullet. By incorporating food waste into our livestock systems, we are in some ways progressing toward a less energy-intensive food system. But we also need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we are doing more to address waste disposal than to reduce the energy footprint of wasted foods in any significant way. The energy losses occurred long before our livestock ever smelled a good meal coming.

It’s only natural for a pig or a chicken to be attracted to food waste, but should the same really be the case for a local food systems advocate? Absolutely. Not only can local communities audit their waste streams with more precision and care than a state or federal entity, but municipalities and regional agencies are already heavily involved in the management of solid waste streams. Advocates for local food systems shouldn’t waste any opportunity to further their cause, and with the proper framing of the arguments, unexpected allies will flock to the cause like . . . well, like seagulls to a landfill. Careful and creative management of food waste at the local level significantly energizes the rationale for rebuilding local food systems, as a result of these economic and environmental benefits:

Maximizing the diversion and appropriate consumption of discarded or unused foods that are still edible, particularly for foodinsecure populations
Maximizing the energy recapture of food waste through anaerobic digestion
Minimizing the transport of heavy, water-laden food waste
Minimizing nutrient loss from the food system by transforming food waste into engineered soils, while also reducing the potential for the leaching of these nutrients into waterways
Highlighting local eating establishments that can document their efforts to achieve zero waste of food, eating utensils, and carryout containers

Keeping food waste local—whether in the form of charitable donations or compostable material—is both cost effective and energy efficient. Transporting, processing, distributing, and even storing food waste is energy intensive. Due to its significant water content and its bulk, food waste is heavy and expensive to transport. Landfills are essentially inefficient storage vessels that create unwanted by-products through decomposition and leaching. In fact, food waste comprises an astonishing one-third of all material sent to landfills, and it is estimated that landfills in the United States produce approximately 20 percent of the nation’s methane emissions—energy lost and pollution unleashed.³⁰

In contrast to this absurd use of landfills, good management of compostable materials can reduce leaching, build soil fertility, and capture clean-burning methane. Urban agricultural initiatives are especially well suited to reap the multiple benefits of processing food waste, often in combination with other organic wastes such as leaves and grass clippings. Enormous amounts of food and other organic wastes are exported out of many urban areas on a daily basis, at significant cost to businesses and municipalities. At the same time, urban gardens, lawns, and parks need significant soil amendments not only to rebuild fertility in existing green areas but also to remediate potential garden and park sites constrained by concrete, asphalt, and compromised soils.

Some metropolitan areas, however, are working hard both to capture those valuable natural resources and to reduce costs. The West Coast has been leading the push for diverting organics from the waste stream, in part because of high tipping fees at landfills (“tipping fees” are the charges assessed for dumping different types of waste, normally on a per ton basis). Portland, Oregon, has been demonstrating just how quickly a city can move in capturing organics by instituting a weekly pickup of household food scraps and moving to a biweekly garbage pickup, thereby encouraging good separation practices at the household level and boosting regional compost production.³¹ In addition, Portland is set to activate the country’s first grid-tied municipal biogas generator, a facility powered by recovered food waste.³²

Of particular interest to urban areas is the ability to convert these compostable materials into “engineered soils” that can be designed for the special needs of rooftop gardening and farming. These soils can be engineered to be light, highly absorptive, and crop-specific in their nutrients. Just as is the case on a rural farm or in a suburban garden, optimal soils in a green roof project yield optimal results—for crops and the buildings themselves. Green roofs quickly translate into urban acres, and they hold significant agricultural potential, while also moderating summer temperatures and capturing CO2. Keeping food waste local can significantly enhance the potential for local food security and accessibility, while also reducing the energy and climate impacts of food that is already energy-intensive.

In order to get a sense of just how much energy is contained in food waste, we need only compare it to human excreta (urine and feces, also known as biosolids). The energy from food waste has obviously not been “biologically processed” and utilized by our bodies. As a result, decomposition of an average ton of food generates approximately 376m3 of biogas (primarily methane), more than three times the biogas produced from the same quantity of biosolids in our wastewater systems.³³

Communities and businesses across the globe are constructing anaerobic digesters, airtight vessels that are fed organic wastes such as food, biosolids, and yard waste. As these organic wastes decompose, methane is captured and utilized as fuel for heat, electricity generation, and even clean-burning vehicle fuel. In this way, keeping food waste local expands a community’s energy self-reliance, while also mitigating pollutants in waterways and the atmosphere and reducing disposal costs. Other countries around the world—industrialized and developing—are leading the way in adopting anaerobic digestion technologies, realizing savings and a sense of energy independence. In the meantime, the United States lags far behind—but leads the way in demonstrating how to waste a good opportunity and pay more to do it.

A final takeaway lesson with regard to energy, food systems, and waste stems from carryout containers and other food packaging. Our fast-paced food choices in the United States result in the disposal of approximately two hundred billion disposable cups per year. Yes, you read that correctly: two hundred billion. Starbucks alone sends coffee on its way out the door in three billion cups annually (and, to the company’s credit, it’s worked more diligently on the disposable carryout container issue than just about any grab-and-go company in the United States).³⁴ To be fair, this says more about our consumption habits than about any one corporation. After all, the average American chooses to eat fast food about 150 times per year, and we collectively dispose of approximately 1.8 million tons of fast-food packaging every year.³⁵

Maybe it’s worth going into a café, greeting other locals, sitting still for a few moments, sipping tea out of a real cup, tipping the waitstaff, and then waving good-bye, fully energized and steeped in local tradition.

References
27. For an overview of the terms “food loss” and “food waste,” see Jenny Gustavsson et al., Global Food Losses & Food Waste: Extent, Causes, & Prevention (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2011), http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ags/publications/GFL_web.pdf.
28. Ibid., 2.
296 | Rebuilding the Foodshed
29. Ibid., 5.
30. “Basic Information about Food Waste,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed November 26, 2011, http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/organics/food/fd-basic.htm.
31. William Yardley, “Cities Get So Close to Recycling Ideal, They Can Smell It,” New York Times, June 27, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/us/a-recycling-ideal-so-close-cities-can-smell-it.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all.
32. “First Municipal Food Waste-to-Renewable Energy Facility to Connect to Power Grid in Urban Setting in U.S.,” press release, August 23, 2012, http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/8/prweb9831566.htm.
33. Stephanie Pruegel, “Pioneering Partnership Optimizes Power Production,” BioCycle, July 2010, 51.
34. Anya Kamanetz, “The Starbucks Cup Dilemma,” Fast Company online, October 20, 2010, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/150/a-story-of-starbucks-and-the-limits-of-corporate-sustainability.html.
35. 2008 Fast Food Industry Packaging Report (Asheville, N.C.: Dogwood Alliance, n.d.), http://www.nofreerefills.org/download-report/.

Image credits: Dumpster full of vegetables via shutterstock, Junk food waste: sputnik57/flickr

Why I’m marking passing 400 ppm by getting back on an aeroplane

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:28:18 GMT

By Rob Hopkins, posted May 17, 2013:

In November 2006, I sat at the back of the Barn Cinema, Dartington, and watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘. It had such an impact on me that by the time it ended, I had decided that I couldn’t just leave the cinema without marking the event by making some kind of change in my life. I decided that evening not to fly again, and I haven’t flown since. I have played an active part in supporting the growth of an international movement in 40 countries since then, participating in countless workshops, and discussing Transition internationally through Skype and pre-recorded talks, most of which I begin with how much carbon I have saved by not travelling in person. However, I recently watched the film ‘Chasing Ice’, and it had, if anything, a more visceral impact than ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. My resolution at the end of watching it, re-enforced by the recent passing, for the first time, of 400 ppm of C02 in the atmosphere, was that it was time to get back on a plane, and I want to use this post to tell you why.

When I was born, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere was 325.36 ppm. I was 19 when it passed 350 ppm for the first time, the level which climate scientists such as James Hansen argue is the highest concentration possible if we are to “preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted” When, in 2004, the first seeds of Transition were sown when I sat with my students in a classroom at Kinsale Further Education College to watch The End of Suburbia, we were at 376.15 ppm. On the day this blog first began with its first post, we were at 378.29 ppm.

When I watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, it was 380.18 parts per million (ppm). On the day Transition Network was formally established we had reached 386.40 ppm. On the day I left Venice last September, following the Degrowth conference (which I had travelled to by train), seeing Venice from the sea as this extraordinary jewel just inches above sea level, concentrations had reached 391.06ppm. When I sat down to watch ‘Chasing Ice’ it was 395.55 ppm.

The rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations during my lifetime (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_data).

A couple of weeks ago we passed, for the first time, 400 ppm. It’s just a number, but it had a deep impact on me, a sobering line in the sand, a deeply troubling face. As Joe Romm at Climate Progress puts it:

Certainly as we hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human existence, with not even a plan to avoid 600 ppm, 800 ppm, and then 1000 — not even a national discussion or an outcry by the so-called intelligentsia – it is worth asking, why? Is there something inherent in homo “sapiens” that makes us oblivious to the obvious?

This means that current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are far higher than they have been for the last 4.5 millions years at least. The graph below shows how concentrations have fluctuated over the past 800,000 years. By way of context, 30,000 years ago, Cro-Magnon man was flourishing, hunting and gathering and painting cave walls. The Guardian have created a great infographic that tells the story of 400 ppm and what it means in a very understandable way. As Damien Carrington in The Guardian puts “the last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today”.

In spite of all the efforts of the green movement, Transition initiatives, a slew of international conferences and meaningless agreements, the rise has continued inexorably. It shows little sign of slowing, the International Energy Agency warning last year that the world is on track for at least a 6 degree rise in temperatures by 2100.

Carbon dioxide concentrations for the last 800,000 years (http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/)

I know anecdotally that my giving up flying has inspired quite a few people to do the same, but has it had any impact at all on the rising levels of emissions? Clearly not. But has it been the right thing, thus far, to have done? Absolutely. A fascinating paper by Joakim Sandberg, called My emissions make no difference explored this question. He writes:

My suggestion is that we have a collective obligation to change our ways, and this collective obligation may be partly separate from the obligations of individuals. While my own flying makes no difference, it should be noted, climate change could be averted if we all changed our ways. But then it seems plausible to say that we act wrongly as a collective, even though no individual driver or flyer may be doing anything wrong. This view could be further explained by saying that moral questions can be asked on at least two different levels, with implicit reference to different sorts of agents. It is one thing to ask “What should I do?” but quite a different thing to ask “What should we do?” and the answers may not always converge.

The fact is that at a time in history when we desperately need to cut emissions sharply, we all have a responsibility to re-evaluate behaviour we undertake that normalises, for those around us, ways of acting that generate high levels of emissions. As Sandberg puts it, “while it may not typically be wrong of me to drive or fly, then, it may be wrong of us to do so and we must therefore seek ways of coordinating our environmental efforts more effectively”. I will still not fly for holidays or family reasons, to conferences, for pretty much any reasons. However I have decided, through discussions with those I work with, that passing 400 ppm, the extent of the climate crisis, means that it is time to get back on a plane, in cases where the benefits can be seen as outweighing the impacts.

Around 25% of the world’s emissions come from the US, the world’s greatest emitter of carbon dioxide. I recently had a moving conversation with someone in the US, who works for an organisation who fund groups acting on climate change, and who is very well connected politically in the US. She told me, with strong emotion in her voice, that it was her sense from talking to people she knows in the UN and other organisations, that there seems to be a consensus to give it another 18 months, 2 years at most, and then the funding and political effort will shift from mitigation and into adaptation and defence.

I’ll say that again. The funding and political effort will shift from mitigation and into adaptation and defence. Or to put it another way, that they will give up. The consensus will shift to the assumption being that it is now too late. Officially. The imminent White House briefing about the state of the Arctic ice and its implications probably won’t help either, given the gravity and seeming irreversibility of that situation.

I refuse to accept that the lurch to 500ppm, 600ppm, 800ppm is an inevitability. I refuse to accept, as Nigel Lawson tried to argue in his debate with the remarkably patient Kevin Anderson on Jeremy Vine’s radio show recently, that doing anything about climate change would impact on economic growth so we shouldn’t bother. I refuse to agree with Peter Lilley that the only way to preserve our economy is to allow unfettered gas fracking anywhere the gas industry decides it wants to drill because “there are simply no affordable renewable technologies available to replace fossil fuels”. I refuse to accept that we can’t do any better than what we have now, and that communities have only a passive role to play in doing something about this with the real work being done by governments and business. I refuse to give up while there’s still a chance.

So when an explicitly personal invitation came in to speak to a gathering of the largest philanthropic funders at their gathering in the US, and the opportunity to present them with Transition’s model of bottom-up, community-led action and to explain how Transition is increasingly focusing on the creation of a new economy, owned by the people, for the benefit of the people, the climate and the future, I had to think twice. That’s quite an extraordinary opportunity to try and influence the mindset of people who have the power and capacity to significantly support communities, and other crucial actors, who need to act to make the real and rapid shift so needed. I have thought long and hard about it.

I have come to a place, also through discussions with other people here at Transition Network and in discussion with our friends at Transition US and Post Carbon Institute, of feeling that it is worth having a go and getting on a plane and making the journey, in the (possibly naive) hope that it might sow some seeds of a new direction in the minds of some of the US’s foremost funders, give Transition in the US a boost, raise its profile, do what I can to try and support what’s already happening there. I would expect to return home wrung out like a sponge. This doesn’t open the door to now flying here, there and everywhere. This is a very particular invitation that has been looked at entirely on its own merits.

What do I know? Many of the movements, ideas, people and projects that have inspired me over the last 20 years have come from the US. There are wonderful things happening there, inspirational projects, great movements, incredible networks. But if Transition can bring something energising, some insights from this 7-year global experiment, some kind of renewed optimism that change is possible, something, anything, then it feels worth doing, before the window of possibility closes.

What haunts me every day, and no doubt will for the rest of my days, is what I will reply to my grandchildren when they ask me what I did during the time when climate change could have been brought under some sort of control, when the necessary changes could have been put in place to create a low-carbon, resilient and thriving culture that nurtured healthy human cultures. Was I as effective as I could have been? Did I do everything I could have? Having reflected on this for some time, it feels churlish to decline an opportunity that could potentially have a far greater positive impact than the negative impact of the flight.

So sometime in late September, it looks very much as though I will make that journey. Quite what I’ll do when I’m there has yet to be agreed (although we will of course let you know). Whether it will have any meaningful impact is even less certain. But it needs to be done, so I’m doing it.

The CO2 concentration statistics come from the Earth System Research Laboratory’s website, from measurements taken at the Mauna Loa research station.

Originally published at Transition Culture

The Peak Oil Crisis: Supply Shock

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:15:33 GMT

By Tom Whipple, posted May 17, 2013:

A new phrase, “supply shock,” entered the lexicon of the global oil business this week when the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that unexpectedly rapid growth in tight oil production from North Dakota and Texas is leading to profound changes in the global energy markets.

U.S. oil production, which grew by 800,000 barrels a day (b/d) last year, is now expected to grow by another 2.3 million b/d by 2018. In addition another 1.3 million b/d increase from Canada’s oil sands is expected. This 3.9 million b/d accounts for nearly half of the 8.4 million b/d increase in global production of combustible liquids that the IEA is expecting to be available by the end of the decade.

This rapid increase in North American oil production is expected to outrun the growth in global demand during next few years, which is forecast to grow at about 900,000 b/d annually – at least in the near term. This implies that the demand for OPEC oil exports during the next five years is likely to be weaker than had been expected. The Agency predicts that OPEC will gain an additional 2 million b/d increase in its spare capacity during the next few years. Growth in the domestic oil supply has already resulted in major reductions in U.S. imports from West Africa which are now flowing to China and other Asian nations.

Needless to say, these new forecasts have the U.S. financial press in ecstasy with predictions that the U.S. will soon become the world’s largest oil producer and could be energy independent by 2020 – if you throw in Canadian tar sands production and lots of pipelines to the south. Some even have U.S. output reaching an all-time high of 11.9 million b/d by 2018. There is a growing consensus that we won’t have to worry about all those petty sheiks and dictators controlling our gasoline, and we can all forget about oil shortages and perhaps even high prices – at least for the next five years.

Now all this is probably good news for it gives the world’s oil situation a few years of breathing space; helps the U.S. balance of payments; creates jobs; and unless you live downstream from some of the fracking operations or note the ever increasing buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere you should probably be happy with the news.

Like with most things, however, there is another side to the story — for simply talking about a few years of rapid increases in U.S. oil production does not tell the whole tale. As we should all know by now, oil obtained from hydraulic fracturing and from Canada’s tar sands is very expensive oil. As time goes on it will become still more expensive for the best spots are exploited first and costs of production will continue to increase. The only reason we can afford to exploit tight oil and tar sands oil is that prices have been holding close to $100 a barrel in recent years.

We should also all be aware that tight oil wells dry up much faster than conventional ones. The best forecasts by independent geologists (who are free to talk about their findings), is that America’s tight oil bubble only has another 3-4 years to run and that production will peak at about 2.3 million b/d circa 2017. This says that in four or five years US tight oil production will start to decline, unless somebody can work out the issues involved in exploiting the tight oil that is reported to be under California – a decidedly different place to drill wells than in North Dakota or south Texas.

In addition to production and the cost of oil, there are at least three other factors that could overwhelm the significance of a few million barrels of increased U.S. production. The rapidly deteriorating Middle Eastern situation is number one. Some 20 million b/d of the global oil supply currently comes from the region, and nearly all of the oil region’s oil exporters have a finger in the current turmoil.

The next issue is the condition of the global economy over the next few years. Europe is in bad shape and, except for the occasional flurry of optimism, the U.S. is really not doing much serious "recovering."

Our last major issue is emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels which has two parts – hazardous particulate matter in the air and the continuing atmospheric CO₂ buildup which has now hit an extraordinary 400 parts per million.

While most developed countries have taken steps to ameliorate the dirty air problem in recent decades, the Chinese have largely ignored air quality in their quest for high rates of economic growth. The situation in Chinese cities has become so bad that Beijing now seems on the verge of foregoing some growth in favor of cleaner air. How this will play out in terms of China’s consumption of fossil fuels in the coming decade remains to be seen, but the spectacular annual increases in oil consumption may be slowing soon.

Of even more importance are the CO₂ emissions which many believe are behind the increasing unstable weather besetting the world in recent years. While the simple answer to this is major reductions in the combustion of fossil fuels, for now global sentiment clearly favors increased consumption of fossil fuels as a means of maintaining and improving lifestyles. Just when atmospheric conditions become so bad globally that sentiment changes will be one of the major issues of the next decade.

Don’t break out the champagne just yet. The fundamental premise of peak oil that the world’s supply of affordable oil is limited and will become increasingly scarce is still alive and well. Gas prices are unlikely to go down very much and in a few short years, or less if the Middle East blows up, we will be back to worrying about shortages.

Originally published at Falls Church News-Press

Counting the Calories and calories

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:51:17 GMT

By Philip Ackerman-Leist, posted May 16, 2013:

This is part 6 of our serialization of Chapter 4 (Energy) from the latest Resilience guide, "Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems". So how does eating out stack up?

Read Part 1, Read Part 2, Read Part 3, Read Part 4, Read Part 5, Read Part 7

We Americans spend almost 50 percent of our household food budgets on eating outside the confines of our homes, and we derive more than 30 percent of our caloric intake from those meals and snacks.²⁵ It only makes sense that researchers and market analysts would come up with a name for all of that dietary and economic activity.²⁶ “Away-from-home food” is an American passion, second only to our love affair with the car. They are, of course, in cahoots, but that’s another steamy story for later.

Energy consumption in the “away-from-home food” category differs significantly from that of home food storage and preparation. Refrigeration actually becomes the smallest energy concern, with food preparation and HVAC systems becoming much more energy-intensive than in the average home. Sanitation is obviously a central concern and therefore an energy-intensive demand in a food service setting. Lighting is also a high energy demand, as it needs to be sufficient for work, safety, and hygiene. Energy bills in a public eating establishment are an integral element in determining profit margins profit and loss, so some players in the food service industry have been quick to adopt energy-efficiency technologies and practices.

So how does energy in the food service sector relate to local food systems? The simple response is “waste.” However, this simple answer is not lacking in complexity. Remember that food service is essentially a waiting game: food service personnel are trying to predict both the timing and the scope of customer demand. It’s not like cooking in the home kitchen, where you generally know who is coming to dinner and when they will be arriving. Even if you do miscalculate, you can always put the leftovers in the refrigerator for the next day. In contrast, a miscalculation on the part of a restaurant manager or a grocery store deli operator typically results in food—with all of its embedded energy from farm to plate—being tossed into the garbage...yes, garbage. All too seldom does this food go to the charitable food system or a municipal composting operation.

And then there is the issue of disposable utensils, containers, and packaging—materials made of Styrofoam, plastic, and paper, born out of habit and not necessity. Patronizing a local full-service establishment as opposed to a fast-food restaurant or supermarket deli can result in significantly less waste of energy and packaging. Not all local establishments are necessarily conscious about the number or types of containers that they use, but places where customers sit down to eat generally generate less post-consumer waste than fast-food establishments and the increasingly ubiquitous prepared-food sections of supermarkets. Cafés and restaurants also tend to build more rapport and community interaction, as hospitality is an important part of the equation for the success of a local business. And it’s also much simpler to advocate for change in how foods are served in locally owned food service establishments than it is in chain restaurants.

As soon as we step out of our homes in pursuit of food, we cross an energy threshold that is worth considering. In all cases—upper and lower—Calories and calories count.

References
25. “Food and Alcoholic Beverages: Total Expenditures,” table 1 in the USDA Economic Research Service Food Expenditure Series, accessed November 26, 2011, http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/cpifoodandexpenditures/Data/Expenditures_tables/table1.htm.

26. Hayden Stewart, Noel Blisard, and Dean Jollife, Let’s Eat Out: Americans Weigh Taste, Convenience, and Nutrition, Economic Research Service Economic Information Bulletin no. 19 (Washington, D.C.: USDA Economic Research Service, October 2006), 1, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib19/eib19.pdf.

Retro diner image via shutterstock.

Governance in the Long Emergency

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:46:26 GMT

By David Orr, posted May 15, 2013:

This is Chapter 26 of the new WorldWatch State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? report. It is reproduced here with permission.

The first evidence linking climate change and human emissions of carbon dioxide was painstakingly assembled in 1897 by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius. What began as an interesting but seemingly unimportant conjecture about the effect of rising carbon dioxide on temperature has turned into a flood of increasingly urgent and rigorous warnings about the rapid warming of Earth and the dire consequences of inaction. Nonetheless, the global dialogue on climate is floundering while the scientific and anecdotal evidence of rapid climate destabilization grows by the day.¹

We have entered a “long emergency” in which a myriad of worsening ecological, social, and economic problems and dilemmas at different geographic and temporal scales are converging as a crisis of crises. It is a collision of two non-linear systems—the biosphere and biogeochemical cycles on one side and human institutions, organizations, and governments on the other. But the response at the national and international levels has so far been indifferent to inconsistent, and nowhere more flagrantly so than in the United States, which is responsible for about 28 percent of the fossil-fuel carbon that humanity added to the atmosphere between 1850 and 2002.²

The “perfect storm” that lies ahead is caused by the collision of changing climate; spreading ecological disorder (including deforestation, soil loss, water shortages, species loss, ocean acidification); population growth; unfair distribution of the costs, risks, and benefits of economic growth; national, ethnic, and religious tensions; and the proliferation of nuclear weapons—all compounded by systemic failures of foresight and policy. As a consequence, in political theorist Brian Barry’s words, “it is quite possible that by the year 2100 human life will have become extinct or will be confined to a few residential areas that have escaped the devastating effects of nuclear holocaust or global warming.”³

Part of the reason for paralysis is the sheer difficulty of the issue. Climate change is scientifically complex, politically divisive, economically costly, morally contentious, and ever so easy to deny or defer to others at some later time. But the continuing failure to anticipate and forestall the worst effects of climate destabilization in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence is the largest political and moral failure in history. Indeed, it is a crime across generations for which we have, as yet, no name.

Barring a technological miracle, we have condemned ourselves and posterity to live with growing climate instability for hundreds or even thousands of years. No government has yet shown the foresight, will, creativity, or capacity to deal with problems at this scale, complexity, or duration. No government is prepared to make the “tragic choices” ahead humanely and rationally. And no government has yet demonstrated the willingness to rethink its own mission at the intersection of climate instability and conventional economic wisdom. The same is true in the realm of international governance. In the words of historian Mark Mazower: “The real world challenges mount around us in the shape of climate change, financial instability . . . [but there is] no single agency able to coordinate the response to global warming.”⁴

The Problem of Governance

In An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, in 1974, economist Robert Heilbroner wrote: “I not only predict but I prescribe a centralization of power as the only means by which our threatened and dangerous civilization will make way for its successor.” Heilbroner’s description of the human prospect included global warming but also other threats to industrial civilization, including the possibility that finally we would not care enough to do the things necessary to protect posterity. The extent to which power must be centralized, he said, depends on the capacity of populations, accustomed to affluence, for self-discipline. But he did not find “much evidence in history—especially in the history of nations organized under the materialistic and individualistic promptings of an industrial civilization—to encourage expectations of an easy subordination of the private interest to the public weal.”⁵

Heilbroner’s conclusions are broadly similar to those of others, including British sociologist Anthony Giddens, who somewhat less apocalyptically proposes “a return to greater state interventionism”—but as a catalyst, facilitator, and enforcer of guarantees. Giddens believes the climate crisis will motivate governments to create new partnerships with corporations and civil society, which is to say more of the same, only bigger and better. David Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace likewise argues that the role of the state must evolve toward larger, more innovative governments and “stronger international institutions [as] the only possible way to preserve national interests.”⁶

The performance of highly centralized governments, however, is not encouraging—especially relative to the conditions of the long emergency. Governments have been effective at waging war and sometimes in solving—or appearing to solve—economic problems. But even then they are cumbersome, slow, and excessively bureaucratic. They tend to fragment agencies by problem, rather like mailbox pigeonholes, but the long emergency will require managing complex systems over long time periods. Might there be more agile, dependable, and less awkward ways to conduct the public business in the long emergency that do not require authoritarian governments, the compromises and irrational messiness of politics, or even reliance on personal sacrifice? Can these be made to work over the long time spans necessary to stabilize the climate? If not, how else might we conduct the public business? Broadly, there are three other possibilities.⁷

First, champions of markets and advanced technology propose to solve the climate crisis by harnessing the power of markets and technological innovation to avoid what they regard as the quagmire of government. Rational corporate behavior responding to markets and prices, they believe, can stabilize climate faster at lower costs and without hair-shirt sacrifice, moral posturing, and slow, clumsy, overbearing bureaucracies. The reason is said to be the power of informed self-interest plus the ongoing revolution in energy technology that has made efficiency and renewable energy cheaper, faster, less risky, and more profitable than fossil fuels. In their 2011 book, Reinventing Fire, Amory Lovins and his coauthors, for example, ask whether “the United States could realistically stop using oil and coal by 2050? And could such a vast transition toward efficient use and renewable energy be led by business for durable advantage?” The answer, they say, is yes, and the reasoning and data they marshal are formidable.⁸

But why would corporations, particularly those in highly subsidized extractive industries, agree to change as long as they can pass on the costs of climate change to someone else? Who would pay for the “stranded” oil and coal reserves (with an estimated value in excess of $20 trillion) that cannot be burned if we are to stay below a 2 degree Celsius warming—often thought to be the threshold of catastrophe? Would corporations continue to use their financial power to manipulate public opinion, undermine regulations, and oppose an equitable sharing of costs, risks, and benefits? How does corporate responsibility fit with the capitalist drive to expand market share? Economist Robert Reich concludes that given the existing rules of the market, corporations “cannot be socially responsible, at least not to any significant extent. . . . Supercapitalism does not permit acts of corporate virtue that erode the bottom line. No corporation can ‘voluntarily’ take on an extra cost that its competitors don’t also take on.” He further argues that the alleged convergence of social responsibility and profitability is unsupported by any factual evidence.⁹

There are still larger questions about how large corporations fit in democratic societies. One of the most insightful students of politics and economics, Yale political scientist Charles Lindblom, concluded his magisterial Politics and Markets in 1977 with the observation that “the large private corporation fits oddly into democratic theory and vision. Indeed, it does not fit” (emphasis added). Until democratized internally, stripped of legal “personhood,” and rendered publicly accountable, large corporations will remain autocratic fiefdoms, for the most part beyond public control.¹⁰

These issues require us to ask what kind of societies and what kind of global community do we intend to build? It is certainly possible to imagine a corporate-dominated, hyper-efficient, solar-powered, sustainable world that is also grossly unfair, violent, and fascist. To organize society mostly by market transactions would be to create a kind of Ayn Randian hell that would demolish society, as economist Karl Polanyi once said. Some things should never be sold—because the selling undermines human rights; because it would violate the law and procedural requirements for openness and fairness; because it would have a coarsening effect on society; because the sale would steal from the poor and vulnerable, including future generations; because the thing to be sold is part of the common heritage of humankind and so can have no rightful owner; and because the thing to be sold—including government itself—should simply not be for sale.¹¹

A second alternative to authoritarian governments may lie in the emergence of national and global networks abetted by the Internet and advancing communications technology. They are decentralized, self-replicating, and sometimes self-correcting. In time, they might grow into a global system doing what traditional governments and international agencies once did—but better, faster, and cheaper. Some analysts believe that the old model of the nation-state is inadequate to meet many of the challenges of the long emergency and is losing power to a variety of novel organizations. Anne-Marie Slaughter of Princeton University, for one, envisions networks of “disaggregated states in which national government officials interact intensively with one another and adopt codes of best practices and agree on coordinated solutions to common problems,” thereby sidestepping conventional intergovernmental practices and international politics.¹²

Below the level of governments there is, in fact, an explosion of nongovernmental organizations, citizens’ groups, and professional networks that are already assuming many of the functions and responsibilities once left to governments. Writer and entrepreneur Paul Hawken believes that the world is already being reshaped by a global upwelling of grassroots organizations promoting sustainable economies, renewable energy, justice, transparency, and community mobilization. Many of the thousands of groups Hawken describes are linked in “global action networks,” organized around specific issues to provide “communication platforms for sub-groups to organize in ever-more-specialized geographic and sub-issue networks.” Early examples include the International Red Cross and the International Labour Organization.¹³

Recently clusters of nongovernmental groups have organized around issues such as common property resources, global financing for local projects, water, climate, political campaigns, and access to information. They are fast, agile, and participatory. Relative to other citizens’ efforts, they require little funding. But like other grassroots organizations, they have no power to legislate, tax, or enforce rules. In Mark Mazower’s words, “Many are too opaque and unrepresentative to any collective body.” Much of the same, he believes, can be said of foundations and philanthropists. By applying business methods to social problems, Mazower writes, “Philanthrocapitalists exaggerate what technology can do, ignore the complexities of social and institutional constraints, often waste sums that would have been better spent more carefully and wreak havoc with the existing fabric of society in places they know very little about.” Moreover, they are not immune to fashion, delusion, corruption, and arrogance. Nor are they often held accountable to the public.¹⁴

So what is to be done? Robert Heilbroner proposed enlarging the powers of the state. Green economy advocates believe that corporations can lead the transition through the long emergency. Others argue that an effective planetary immune system is already emerging in the form of networks. Each offers a piece in a larger puzzle. But there is a fourth possibility. Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein proposes that we strengthen and deepen the practice of democracy even as we enlarge the power of the state. “Responding to climate change,” she writes: requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency. We will need to rebuild the public sphere, reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut military spending and recognize our debts to the global South. Of course, none of this has a hope in hell of happening unless it is accompanied by a massive, broad-based effort to radically reduce the influence that corporations have over the political process. That means, at a minimum, publicly funded elections and stripping corporations of their status as “people” under the law.¹⁵

Democracy, Winston Churchill once famously said, is the worst form of government except for all the others ever tried. But has it ever been tried? In columnist Harold Myerson’s words, “the problem isn’t that we’re too democratic. It’s that we’re not democratic enough.” The authors of the U.S. Constitution, for example, grounded ultimate power in “we the people” while denying them any such power or even much access to it.¹⁶

Political theorist Benjamin Barber proposes that we take some of the power back by revitalizing society as a “strong democracy,” by which he means a “self-governing community of citizens who are united less by homogeneous interests than by civic education and who are made capable of common purpose and mutual action by virtue of their civic attitudes and participatory institutions rather than their altruism or their good nature.” Strong democracy requires engaged, thoughtful citizens, as once proposed by Thomas Jefferson and John Dewey. The primary obstacle, Barber concedes, is the lack of a “nationwide system of local civic participation.” To fill that void he proposes, among other things, a national system of neighborhood assemblies rebuilding democracy from the bottom up.¹⁷

Political theorists Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson similarly propose the creation of deliberative institutions in which “free and equal citizens (and their representatives), justify decisions in a process in which they give one another reasons that are mutually acceptable and generally accessible, with the aim of reaching conclusions that are binding in the present to all citizens but open to challenge in the future.” Reminiscent of classical Greek democracy, they intend to get people talking about large issues in public settings in order to raise the legitimacy of policy choices, improve public knowledge, and increase civil discourse. (See Box 26–1.) A great deal depends, they concede, on the durability and vitality of practices and institutions that enable deliberation to work well.¹⁸

Box 26–1. A More Sustainable Democracy

Philosophers have argued through the ages that democracy is the best form of government, and some have claimed that the deeper it is, the better. By “deeper” they mean a structure that spreads power widely, engages more people, and invites them to take a more direct role in the shaping of policy.

Most liberal (current) democracies do not meet that definition, being republican in form and thus giving most power and decision making responsibility to elected representatives. In some of these republics, democracy is even further degraded. In the United States, for instance, Supreme Court decisions over the years have established that there is essentially no difference in civic standing between individual citizens and corporations or other private interests that can and do spend billions of dollars on political advertising, lobbying, and propaganda (over $8 billion in the 2010 election cycle).

But it is not simply such distortions of democracy that compel a closer look at the benefits of deepening it. The democracies that most of the industrial world lives in have been derided by political theorist Benjamin Barber as “politics as zookeeping”—systems designed “to keep men safely apart rather than bring them fruitfully together.” In fact there are major potential advantages in bringing people fruitfully together in the political arena, not least with respect to the environmental crises that beset humanity now. Paradoxically, one of the weaknesses of liberal democracy may be not that it asks too much of its citizens but that it asks too little. Having mostly handed off all responsibility for assessing issues and setting policy to elected politicians, voters are free to indulge themselves in narrow and virulently asserted positions rather than having to come together, work to perceive the common good, and plot a course toward it.

One antidote to this is deliberation. Deliberative democracy can take many forms, but its essence, according to social scientist Adolf Gundersen, is “the process by which individuals actively confront challenges to their beliefs.” It can happen when someone reads a book and thinks about what it says, but in the public sphere more generally it means engaging in pairs or larger groups to discuss issues, compare notes, probe (not attack) one another’s assertions, and take the opportunity to evolve a personal position in the interests of forging a collective one. Deliberative democracy, in Gundersen’s words, “challenges citizens to move beyond their present beliefs, develop their ideas, and examine their values. It calls upon them to make connections, to connect more firmly and fully with the people and the world around them.” When arranged to address environmental aims, deliberative democracy “connects the people, first with each other and then with the environment they wish not simply to visit, but also to inhabit.”

Given the uneven record of democracies in educating their people into citizenship, true deliberation might be difficult to learn, especially in countries where the politics are strongly adversarial. Deliberative democracy is a “conversation,” Gundersen says, “not a series of speeches.” Conversations involve respectful listening—not just waiting to talk—as well as speaking. Yet there is an untapped hunger for it that can be released when the circumstances are conducive. And Gundersen has established through 240 hours of interviews with 46 Americans that deliberation about environmental matters “leads citizens to think of our collective pursuit of environmental ends in a more collective, long-term, holistic, and self-reflective way.” Such thinking might be the indispensable foundation for achieving anything like sustainability.

—Tom Prugh

Codirector, State of the World 2013

Source: See endnote 18.

Political scientists Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin propose a new national holiday, Deliberation Day, on which citizens would meet in structured dialogues about issues and candidates. They believe that “ordinary citizens are willing and able to take on the challenge of civic deliberation during ordinary times” in a properly structured setting that “facilitates genuine learning about the choices confronting the political community.”¹⁹ Legal scholar Sanford Levinson believes, however, that reforms will be ineffective without first repairing the structural flaws in the U.S. Constitution, which is less democratic than any of the 50 state constitutions in the United States. He proposes a Constitutional Convention of citizens selected by lottery proportional to state populations to remodel the basic structure of governance. Whether this is feasible or not, the U.S. Constitution has other flaws that will limit effective responses to problems of governance in the long emergency.²⁰

In this regard the U.S. Constitution is typical of others in giving no “clear, unambiguous textual foundation for federal environmental protection law,” notes legal scholar Richard Lazarus. It privileges “decentralized, fragmented, and incremental lawmaking . . . which makes it difficult to address issues in a comprehensive, holistic fashion.” Congressional committee jurisdiction based on the Constitution further fragments responsibility and legislative results. The Constitution gives too much power to private rights as opposed to public goods. It does not mention the environment or the need to protect soils, air, water, wildlife, and climate and so it offers no unambiguous basis for environmental protection. The commerce clause, the source for major environmental statutes, is a cumbersome and awkward legal basis for environmental protection. The result, Lazarus notes, is that “our lawmaking institutions are particularly inapt for the task of considering problems and crafting legal solutions of the spatial and temporal dimensions necessary for environmental law.”²¹

The U.S. Constitution is deficient in other ways as well. Posterity is mentioned only in the Preamble, but not thereafter. The omission, understandable when the Constitution was written, now poses an egregious wrong. In 1787, the framers could have had no premonition that far into the future one generation could deprive all others of life, liberty, and property without due process of law or even good cause. And so, in theologian Thomas Berry’s words: “It is already determined that our children and grandchildren will live amid the ruined infrastructures of the industrial world and amid the ruins of the natural world itself.” The U.S. Constitution gives them no protection whatsoever.²²

Further, with a few notable exceptions—such as in Ecuador—most constitutions pertain only to humans and their affairs and property. We privilege humans, while excluding other members of the biotic community. A more expansive system of governance would extend rights of sorts and in some fashion to species, rivers, landscapes, ecologies, and trees, as legal scholar Christopher Stone once proposed. In Thomas Berry’s words: “We have established our human governance with little regard for the need to integrate it with the functional order of the planet itself.” In fact, from our bodies to our global civilization we are part of a worldwide parliament of beings, systems, and forces far beyond our understanding. We are kin to all that ever was and all that ever will be and must learn what that fact means for governance.²³

Building the Foundations of Robust Democracies

The history of democracy is complex and often troubled. In classical Athens it lasted only 200 years. Political philosopher John Plamenatz once wrote that “democracy is the best form of government only when certain conditions hold.” But those conditions may not hold in established democracies in the long emergency ahead and may be impossible in less stable societies and failed states with no history of it. The reasons are many.²⁴

For one, citizens in most democratic societies have become accustomed to comfort and affluence, but democracy “requires citizens who are willing to sacrifice for the common good and [restrain] their passions,” notes political theorist Wilson Carey McWilliams. How people shaped by consumption will respond politically in what will certainly be more straitened times is unknown. Political analyst Peter Burnell cautions that “democratization does not necessarily make it easier and can make it more difficult for countries to engage with climate mitigation.”²⁵

Even in the best of times, however, representative democracies are vulnerable to neglect, changing circumstances, corruption, the frailties of human judgment, and the political uses of fear—whether of terrorism or subversion. They tend to become ineffective, sclerotic, and easily co-opted by the powerful and wealthy. They are vulnerable to militarization, as James Madison noted long ago. They are susceptible to ideologically driven factions that refuse to play by the rules of compromise, tolerance, and fair play. They work differently at different scales. And they cannot long endure the many economic and social forces that corrode political intelligence and democratic competence.²⁶

Democracies are also vulnerable to what conservative philosopher Richard Weaver once described as the spoiled-child psychology, “a kind of irresponsibility of the mental process . . . because [people] do not have to think to survive . . . typical thinking of such people [exhibits] a sort of contempt for realities.” Psychologists Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell believe that the behavior Weaver noted in the 1940s has now exploded into a full-blown “epidemic of narcissism.” Such failures of personality, judgment, and character could multiply under the stresses likely in the long emergency.²⁷

We are between the proverbial rock and a hard place. There is no good case to be made for smaller governments in the long emergency unless we wish to sharply reduce our security and lower our standards for the public downward to a libertarian, gun-toting, free-for-all—Thomas Hobbes’s nightmare on steroids. On the contrary, it will be necessary to enlarge governments domestically and internationally to deal with the nastier aspects of the long emergency, including relocating people from rising oceans and spreading deserts, restoring order in the wake of large storms, managing conflicts over diminishing water, food, and resources, dealing with the spread of diseases, and managing the difficult transition to a post-growth economy. On the other hand, we have good reason to fear an enlargement of government powers as both ineffective and potentially oppressive.²⁸

Given those choices, there is no good outcome that does not require something like a second democratic revolution in which we must master the art and science of governance for a new era—creating and maintaining governments that are ecologically competent, effective at managing complex systems, agile, capable of foresight, and sturdy over an extraordinary time span. If we intend for such governments to also be democratic, we will have to summon an extraordinary level of political creativity and courage. To meet the challenges of the late eighteenth century, James Madison argued that democracy required a free press that served a well-informed and engaged citizenry, fair and open elections, and reliable ways to counterbalance competing interests. But he feared that even the best government with indifferent and incompetent citizens and leaders would sooner or later come to ruin.

In our time, strong democracy may be our best hope for governance in the long emergency, but it will not develop, persist, and flourish without significant changes. The most difficult of these will require that we confront the age-old nemesis of democracy: economic oligarchy. Today the majority of concentrated wealth is tied, directly or indirectly, to the extraction, processing, and sale of fossil fuels, which is also the major driver of the long emergency. Decades of rising global inequality have entrenched control in a small group of super-wealthy individuals, financiers, corporations, media tycoons, drug lords, and celebrities in positions of unaccountable authority.²⁹ In the United States, for example, the wealthiest 400 individuals have more net wealth than the bottom 185,000,000 people. Six Walmart heirs alone control as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of the U.S. population. Rising inequality in the United States and elsewhere reflects neither efficiency nor merit. And beyond some threshold it divides society by class, erodes empathy, hardens hearts, undermines public trust, incites violence, saps our collective imagination, and destroys the public spirit that upholds democracy and community alike. Nonetheless, the rich do not give up easily. According to political economist Jeffrey Winters, the redistribution of wealth has always occurred as a result of war, conquest, or revolution, not as a democratic decision or from the benevolence of plutocrats.³⁰

Toward the end of his life, historian Lewis Mumford concluded that the only way out of this conundrum is “a steady withdrawal” from the “megamachine” of technocratic and corporate control. He did not mean community-scale isolation and autarky, but rather more equitable, decentralized, and self-reliant communities that met a significant portion of their needs for food, energy, shelter, waste cycling, and economic support. He did not propose secession from the national and global community but rather withdrawal from dependence on the forces of oligarchy, technological domination, and zombie-like consumption. Half a century later, that remains the most likely strategy for building the foundations of democracies robust enough to see us through the tribulations ahead.³¹

In other words, the alternative to a futile and probably bloody attempt to forcibly redistribute wealth is to spread the ownership of economic assets throughout society. From the pioneering work of progressive economists, scholars, and activists such as Scott Bernstein, Michael Shuman, Gar Alperovitz, Ted Howard, and Jeff Gates we know that revitalization of local economies through worker-owned businesses, local investment, and greater local self-reliance is smart economics, wise social policy, smart environmental management, and a solid foundation for both democracy and national resilience.³²

Simultaneously, and without much public notice, there have been dramatic advances in ecological design, biomimicry, distributed renewable energy, efficiency, ecological engineering, transportation infrastructure, permaculture, and natural systems agriculture. Applied systematically at community, city, and regional scales, ecological design opens genuine possibilities for greater local control over energy, food, shelter, money, water, transportation, and waste cycling. (See Box 26–2.) It is the most likely basis for revitalizing local economies powered by home-grown efficiency and locally accessible renewable energy while eliminating pollution, improving resilience, and spreading wealth. The upshot at a national level is to reduce the need for government regulation, which pleases conservatives, while improving quality of life, which appeals to liberals. Fifty years ago, Mumford’s suggestion seemed unlikely. But in the years since, local self-reliance, Transition Towns, and regional policy initiatives are leading progressive changes throughout Europe and the United States while central governments have been rendered ineffective.³³

Box 26–2. Resilience from the Bottom Up

At the dawn of the modern environmental era, in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act required all federal agencies to “utilize a systematic, interdisciplinary approach which will insure the integrated use of the natural and social sciences and the environmental design arts in planning and in decisionmaking.” Nonetheless, the government and corporations, foundations, and nonprofit organizations still work mostly by breaking issues and problems into their parts and dealing with each in isolation. Separate agencies, departments, and organizations specialize in energy, land, food, air, water, wildlife, economy, finance, building regulations, urban policy, technology, health, and transportation as if each were unrelated to the others.

Reducing wholes to parts is the core of the modern worldview we inherited from Galileo, Bacon, and Descartes. And for a time it worked economic, scientific, and technological miracles. But the price we pay is considerable and growing fast. For one, we seldom anticipate or account for collateral costs of fragmentation or count the benefits of systems integration. We mostly focus on short-term benefits while ignoring long-term risks and vulnerabilities. Imponderables and non-priced benefits are excluded altogether. The results corrupt our politics, economics, and values, and they undermine our prospects.

Nonetheless, we administer, organize, and analyze in parts, not wholes. But in the real world there are tipping points, surprises, step-level changes, time delays, and unpredictable, high-impact events. To fathom such things requires a mind-set capable of seeing connections, systems, and patterns as well as a perspective far longer than next year’s election or an annual balance sheet. Awareness that we live in systems we can never fully comprehend and control and humility in the face of the unknown gives rise to precaution and resilient design.

One example of this approach comes from Oberlin, a small city of about 10,000 people with a poverty level of 25 percent in the center of the U.S. “Rust Belt.” It is situated in a once-prosperous industrial region sacrificed to political expediency and bad economic policy, not too far from Cleveland and Detroit. But things here are beginning to change. In 2009, Oberlin College and the city launched the Oberlin Project. It has five goals: build a sustainable economy, become climate-positive, restore a robust local farm economy supplying up to 70 percent of the city’s food, educate at all levels for sustainability, and help catalyze similar efforts across the United States at larger scales. The community is organized into seven teams, focused on economic development, education, law and policy, energy, community engagement, food and agriculture, and data analysis. The project aims for “full-spectrum sustainability,” in which each of the parts supports the resilience and prosperity of the whole community in a way that is catalytic—shifting the default setting of the city, the community, and the college to a collaborative postcheap-fossil-fuel model of resilient sustainability.

The Oberlin Project is one of a growing number of examples of integrated or full-spectrum sustainability worldwide, including the Mondragón Cooperative in Spain, the Transition Towns movement, and the Evergreen Project in Cleveland. In different ways, each is aiming to transform complex systems called cities and city-regions into sustainable, locally generated centers of prosperity, powered by efficiency and renewable energy. Each is aiming to create opportunities for good work and higher levels of worker ownership of renewably powered enterprises organized around necessities. The upshot is a global movement toward communities with the capacity to withstand outside disturbances while preserving core values and functions. In practical terms, resilience means redundancy of major functions, appropriate scale, firebreaks between critical systems, fairness, and societies that are “robust to error,” technological accidents, malice, and climate destabilization. In short, it is human systems designed in much the way that nature designs ecologies: from the bottom up.

Source: See endnote 33.

A second change is in order. Democracies from classical Athens to the present are only as vibrant as the quality and moral power of the ideas they can muster, mull over, and act upon. Debate, argument, and civil conversation are the lifeblood of the democratic process. In our time, said to be an age of information, one of the most striking characteristics is the triviality, narrowness, and often factual inaccuracy of our political conversations. Much of what passes for public dialogue has to do with jobs and economic growth, but it is based on economic theories that fit neither biophysical reality nor the highest aspirations of humankind. The rules of market economies are said to date from Adam Smith 237 years ago, but those of natural systems are 3.8 billion years old. Allowed to run on much longer, the mismatch will destroy us.

It is time to talk about important things. Why have we come so close to the brink of extinction so carelessly and casually? Why do we still have thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert? How can humankind reclaim the commons of atmosphere, seas, biological diversity, mineral resources, and lands as the heritage of all, not the private possessions of a few? How much can we fairly and sustainably take from Earth, and for what purposes? Why is wealth so concentrated and poverty so pervasive? Are there better ways to earn our livelihoods than by maximizing consumption, a word that once signified a fatal disease? Can we organize governance at all levels around the doctrine of public trust rather than through fear and competition? And, finally, how might Homo sapiens, with a violent and bloody past, be redeemed in the long arc of time?³⁴

Outside of Hollywood movies, stories do not always have happy endings. Human history, to the contrary, is “one damn thing after another” as an undergraduate history major once famously noted. And one of those damn things is the collapse of entire civilizations when leaders do not summon the wit and commitment to solve problems while they can. Whatever the particulars, the downward spiral has a large dose of elite incompetence and irresponsibility, often with the strong aroma of wishful thinking, denial, and groupthink abetted by rules that reward selfishness, not group success.³⁵

In the long emergency ahead, the challenges to be overcome are first and foremost political, not technological or economic. They are in the domain of governance where the operative words are “we” and “us,” not those of markets where the pronouns are “I,” “me,” and “mine.” At issue is whether we have the wherewithal, wisdom, and foresight to preserve and improve the human enterprise in the midst of a profound human crisis. Any chance for us to come through the trials of climate destabilization in a nuclear-armed world with 10 billion people by 2100 will require that we soon reckon with the thorny issues of politics, political theory, and governance with wisdom, boldness, and creativity.

Notes
1. Svante Arrhenius, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground,” The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, April 1896.
2. The phrase is from James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005); Kevin A. Baumert, Timothy Herzog, and Jonathan Pershing, Navigating the Numbers: Greenhouse Gas Data and International Climate Policy (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 2005), p. 113.
3. Brian Barry, Why Social Justice Matters (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2005), p. 251.
4. Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap (New York: Knopf, 2000); Mark Mazower, Governing the World (New York: Penguin, 2012), p. 424.
5. Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980), p. 175; Robert Heilbroner, “Second Thoughts on The Human Prospect,” Challenge, May-June, 1975, p. 27.
6. Anthony Giddens, The Politics of Climate Change (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2009), p. 96; David Rothkopf, Power, Inc: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government and the Reckoning that Lies Ahead (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), p. 360.
7. David W. Orr and Stuart Hill, “Leviathan, the Open Society, and the Crisis of Ecology,” Western Political Quarterly, December 1978, pp. 457–69.
8. Amory B. Lovins et al., Reinventing Fire (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011), p. ix.
9. Value over $20 trillion from Bill McKibben, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” Rolling Stone, 2 August 2012; Robert B. Reich, Supercapitalism (New York: Knopf, 2007), pp. 170–01, 204.
10. Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 356; Charles E. Lindblom, The Market System (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
11. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 73; John Dunn, The Cunning of Unreason (London: Harper-Collins, 2000), p. 332; David Rothkopf, Superclass (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2008), p. 322; Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012).
12. Nicholas A. Christakis and James Fowler, Connected (Boston: Little Brown, 2009), pp. 289–92; Steven Johnson, Emergence (New York: Scribners, 2001), pp. 224–26; Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 263.
13. Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest (New York: Penguin, 2007); Steve Waddell, Global Action Networks (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), p. 23.
14. Mark Mazower, Governing the World (New York: Penguin, 2012), pp. 420, 418; Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, Philanthropocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008).
15. Naomi Klein, “Capitalism vs. the Climate,” The Nation, 21 November 2011.
16. Harold Myerson, “Foundering Fathers,” American Prospect, October 2011, p. 16; to improve at least U.S. democracy, see Steven Hill, 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy (Sausalito, CA: PoliPoint Press, 2006).
17. Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 117, 151; see also Thad Williamson, David Imbroscio, and Gar Alperovitz, Making a Place for Community (New York: Routledge, 2002); Jeffereson and Dewey from Carol Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1970); final quote from Barber, op. cit. this note, p. 269.
18. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 7, 59; see also Susan Clark and Woden Teachout, Slow Democracy (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2012). Box 26–1 from the following: Adam Liptak, “Justices, 5–4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit,” New York Times, 22 January 2010; Robert J. Shapiro and Douglas Dowson, Corporate Political Spending: Why the New Critics Are Wrong, Legal Policy Report No. 15 (New York: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, June 2012); Barber, op. cit. note 17, pp. 3, 4; Adolf G. Gundersen, The Environmental Promise of Democratic Deliberation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), pp. 9, 10, 19, and 22.
19. Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, Deliberation Day (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 171; see also James S. Fishkin, The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).
20. Sanford Levinson, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 389; see also Derek Bok, The Trouble with Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
21. Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 30, 33, 42; Richard J. Lazarus, “Super Wicked Problems and Climate Change: Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future,” Cornell Law Review, vol. 94 (2009), pp. 1,153–234.
22. Thomas Berry, Evening Thoughts (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2006), p. 95.
23. Ecuador from Erik Assadourian, “The Rise and Fall of Consumer Cultures,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2010 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), p. 19; Christopher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing: Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, 1972); Berry, op. cit. note 22, p. 44.
24. John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009); see also Paul Woodruff, First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); John Plamenatz, Democracy and Illusion (London: Longman, 1973), p. 9.
25. Wilson Carey McWilliams, Redeeming Democracy in America (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), p.15; Peter Burnell, Climate Change and Democratization (Berlin: Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 2009), p. 40.
26. See, for example, Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, It’s Even Worse than It Looks (New York: Basic Books, 2012), Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Jill Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Frank Bryan, Real Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 294; see also Robert Dahl and Edward Tufte, Size and Democracy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1973).
27. Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 127; Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic (New York: The Free Press, 2009), p. 276.
28. Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007); see also Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
29. Rothkopf, op. cit. note 11; see also International Forum on Globalization, Outing the Oligarchy: Billionaires Who Benefit from Today’s Climate Crisis (San Francisco: 2011).
30. Josh Bivens, “Inequality, Exhibit A: Walmart and the Wealth of American Families” (blog), Economic Policy Institute, 17 July 2012; Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (London: Penguin Books, 2010); Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 284–85.
31. Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970), pp. 413, 434.
32. Gar Alperovitz, America Beyond Capitalism (Takoma Park, MD: Democracy Collaborative Press, 2011); Gar Alperovitz, “Anchoring Wealth to Sustain Cities and Population Growth, Solutions, July 2012; James Gustave Speth, America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012); Michael H. Shuman, Going Local (New York: Routledge, 2000); Michael H. Shuman, Local Dollars, Local Sense (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2012); Greg Pahl, Power from the People (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2012); Jeff Gates, Democracy at Risk (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2000).
33. William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle (New York: North Point Press, 2002); Janine Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (New York: William Morrow, 1996); John Lyle, Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development (New York: John Wiley, 1994); John R. Ehrenfeld, Sustainability by Design (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook (Totnes, U.K.: Greenbooks, 2008); Rob Hopkins, The Transition Companion (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2011). Box 26–2 based on National Environmental Policy Act, at ceq.hss.doe.gov/laws_and_executive_orders/the_nepa_statute.html, and on David W. Orr, The Oberlin Project: A Clinton Climate Initiative Climate Positive Project (Oberlin, OH: undated).
34. For more on these issues, see Ron Rosenbaum, How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011); Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0 (San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler, 2006); Burns Weston and David Bollier, Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Commons (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth (London: Earthscan, 2009); Peter Victor, Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2008); Peter G. Brown, Restoring the Public Trust (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), pp. 71–91; Peter G. Brown, The Commonwealth of Life, 2nd ed. (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2008); Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nation: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011); Harald Welzer, Climate Wars: Why People Will be Killed in the 21st Century (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2012).
35. Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2005), p. 438.

Stormy road image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org with permission.

South African Anti-Fracking Activist Calls for Global Alliance

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:13:10 GMT

By Sandra Postel, posted May 14, 2013:

Anti-fracking activist Jonathan Deal, winner of a 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize, discusses strategy to save the Karoo region of his native South Africa from gas drilling. Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize

“We’ve got to stop doing this,” said Jonathan Deal, with a sense of urgency tinged with discomfort.

Deal could well have been talking about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the oil and gas drilling practice he has tirelessly fought to stop in his native South Africa.

But at this moment, he was talking about the energy-guzzling extravaganza in full swing all around us at a gathering in Washington, DC. As we eyed hundreds of people in cocktail attire partaking of bounteous food and wine across a chandeliered room, I sensed Deal’s inner discord: this lavish event was in honor of him.

Deal had just been awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize for his successful grassroots effort to win a moratorium on fracking in South Africa. And on this mid-April spring night at the Ronald Reagan Building near the National Mall, a magnificent reception followed a ceremony to honor and applaud Deal’s success, along with that of the five other remarkable 2013 prize winners.

While Deal accepted his award with humility and grace, and was deeply grateful for the spotlight it shined on his work, he was making an important point. Unless we rein in our energy consumption, his fight will have been for naught. And it must start with each of us, here and now, addressing the discord between what we know and what we do.

An Uphill Battle

With no prior experience in grassroots organizing, Deal orchestrated a campaign against fracking in South Africa to protect the Karoo, a semi-desert region of the eastern Cape that he had come to know and love. Famed for its beauty, the Karoo boasts the richest diversity of succulents on the planet, and is home to many unique species of lizards and tortoises, as well as the riverine rabbit, one of the most endangered mammals in all of Africa.

The region also supports a diverse and bountiful array of agricultural products, from wool and meat to fruits, olives, wine and honey.

The Karoo is also underlain by vast deposits of gas-bearing shale. South Africa is estimated to have the fifth largest volume of shale gas in the world – some 7.3 percent of the global total – and most of that gas is in the Karoo.

In early 2011, Deal read of plans by the oil company Royal Dutch Shell to apply for exploratory permits to drill for natural gas in the Karoo. The drilling would be done by fracking, which involves blasting water mixed with sand and chemicals deep underground at high pressure so as to fracture the shale rock and release the oil and gas it holds. Some of the chemicals are known or suspected carcinogens. Each fracking well consumes 1-8 million gallons of water.

Deal, who had written a book on the Karoo, took on the mantle of activist to save his beloved land from the onslaught of drilling rigs and tanker trucks, and the threats of water stress, well failures and toxic pollution.

Deal formed the Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAG) and led a team of scientists, legal experts, and volunteers in preparing a report on the risks of fracking in the Karoo. TKAG delivered the report, which called for a moratorium on fracking, to President Jacob Zuma. Deal also challenged Shell executives to debate the merits of fracking at public meetings and in the media.

Deal’s hard work and personal sacrifices – he poured his family’s savings into the campaign – paid off when, in April 2011, the South African government announced a nationwide moratorium on fracking.

But the moratorium lasted only 17 months: in September 2012, the government lifted it. Still, Deal and TKAG had gotten South African officials to take the dangers of fracking more seriously, and studies are now under way to more carefully examine fracking’s risks to the Karoo environment.

Hands Across the Ocean

Ten days after the ceremony in Washington, DC, Deal was in Elmira, New York, sharing his experience in South Africa with community members concerned about the threats of fracking in their region.

“We’ve kept (the oil companies) at bay for two-and-a-half years,” Deal said, “and we’re going for three.”

He told the group assembled at Trinity Lutheran Church that three companies, including Shell, have applied to the government to drill on 230,000 square kilometers of land in South Africa.

We can’t beat this country by country, Deal said. There needs to be “a global alliance.”

Natural gas was once viewed as the “bridge fuel” to a renewable energy future—a lower-carbon energy source that could help the world transition from dirtier oil and coal to more climate-safe renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

But thanks to fracking’s ability to exploit vast reserves of once-inaccessible shale gas, natural gas has become, in the words of climate blogger Joe Romm, a “bridge to nowhere”: it will merely perpetuate fossil fuel dependence and lead the world into catastrophic climate change.

While in the United States, Deal worked to start building the alliances he feels are necessary to stop the global march of fracking. In addition to visiting communities across the country, he is strengthening ties with Americans Against Fracking, a coalition of some 270 disparate organizations, including 350.org, Breast Cancer Action, Food and Water Watch, and New Yorkers Against Fracking.

Meanwhile, back in his native South Africa, Deal’s own organization will get a significant boost from his Goldman recognition: Deal is giving his $150,000 in prize money to TKAG to strengthen the fight to save the Karoo.

Watch a short video, narrated by Robert Redford, of Jonathan Deal’s story and work by clicking here.

Originally posted at National Geographic Newswatch.

Rethinking hot dinners and cold drinks

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:03:19 GMT

By Philip Ackerman-Leist, posted May 13, 2013:

This is part 5 of our serialization of Chapter 4 (Energy) from the latest Resilience guide, "Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems". In this excerpt we enter the kitchen.

Read Part 1, Read Part 2, Read Part 3, Read Part 4, Read Part 6, Read Part 7

Food Storage and Preparation

Data sometimes hurts, especially when it hits home. Just when it seemed like we could blame the farmer, the processor, and the distributor for our food energy woes, lo and behold, our constant culinary vacillations between hot and cold have conspired to put the American kitchen in the crosshairs of our food energy hunt. But this should be no great surprise, since the kitchen is the heart of household thermodynamic transitions.

Our refrigerators, freezers, ranges, microwaves, and dishwashers make our lives more efficient, but they also expand our energy budgets and our household energy costs. Cooking, refrigeration, and dishwashing consume more than a quarter of our household energy use. Of that energy consumption, refrigeration is responsible for 64 percent of the total, while cooking and dishwashing account for the remaining 26 percent and 10 percent, respectively.¹⁶ Add in lighting, heat, convenient kitchen gadgets, and exhaust fans, and the kitchen becomes the primary hub of household energy use—and when we can’t stand the heat but don’t want to leave the kitchen, we power up the AC.

So what does the household kitchen have to do with energy and relocalizing food systems? Everything. We make key energy decisions in our kitchens through a variety of short-term and long-term choices. Our choices of foods, storage techniques, preparation methods, kitchen design, and appliances all feed into our household energy footprints. And then there is an even bigger decision at hand: whether to stay at home to eat or to go out and grab a meal.

But before we run out of the house for yet more material to digest on the energy front, it’s worth thinking for a moment about thermodynamics and our food system. Once food is harvested, the human concern is to ensure that the food is safe, palatable, and nutritious. That’s where some of our biggest food energy questions come into play. We start to manipulate food temperatures in order to properly store and prepare foods.

Think for a moment about how many times we might alter the temperatures of a simple food product such as sweet corn. After cutting it off the cob, we heat and blanch it, freeze it for an extended period, and then thaw and cook it at some point many months later. Those are significant energy transformations. The embedded energy of the packaging needs to be considered, too, regardless of whether it is disposable or reusable.

The sweet corn example demonstrates the beauty of harvesting and preparing items fresh from the garden and preparing them as simply as possible in the kitchen. If we do it well, we’ve captured both taste and optimal nutritional quality by eating seasonally. As it turns out, the epitome of energy efficiency—home preparation of fresh foods—is married to the pinnacle of nutritional quality! Not only that, but the effort didn’t involve driving anywhere. In fact, the entire effort might have even involved some physical activity and aesthetic enjoyment.

But these direct, fresh experiences with our food are becoming less and less common. Consider a mélange of statistics that start to provide a picture of how we relate to food—and, ultimately, energy. The time spent in preparing and cleaning for a meal at home in the United States declined from an average of 65 minutes per meal in 1965 to 31 minutes in 1995.¹⁷ Between 1977 and 2006, the percentage of calories eaten away from home by children increased from 23.4 percent to 33.9 percent.¹⁸ A typical American consumes about 2,200 pounds of food per year at an estimated rate of 3,747 kcal/day (the FDA recommends an average daily consumption of 2,000 to 2,500 kcal/day).¹⁹ One researcher estimates that we Americans consume about 33 percent of our total calories in junk food.²⁰

As we put the pieces of this puzzle together, we start to move toward a simple but reasonable guiding principle: every step we take away from home, fresh, and seasonal in the harvesting and preparation of our food increases our personal caloric intake and magnifies the energy footprint of that food. That said, we cannot afford to just chill out in a moment of self-congratulation—the heat is still on in the home kitchen.

Refrigeration

We humans have exploited heat in the preparation of our food for millennia, and we got really good at it. But we never had the opportunity to make extensive and controlled use of cold until the past century. Whereas heat drove our culinary adventures for most of human history, refrigeration has, in many ways, surpassed heat in its importance to our contemporary food systems.

The “cold chain” that binds together so many elements of our food system is a marvelous thing. In addition to minimizing food loss and waste, it provides us with enhanced nutrition and food safety as well as delectable staples of the modern diet, like ice cream (a personal favorite, so the energy realities involved are painful for me to describe in full here). The cold chain has offered us convenience and bounty from around the globe. As a result, refrigeration is probably the single most important contributing factor to the gradual melting away of robust local food systems around the world.

The use of refrigeration certainly helped some local economies flourish—we need only think of Florida and citrus as an example (although we might consider whether that growth helped to create a diverse, equitable, and healthy food system).²¹ Many previously robust local food systems withered with the influx of distantly produced refrigerated goods, some exotic and some far too familiar. Perhaps the most inane example of how refrigeration has upset our local, regional, and even national economies is that of apple juice. Apples are the second most consumed fruit in the United States and our third most valuable fruit crop, but freezing technologies and economic policies have allowed China to capture over 60 percent of the U.S. frozen apple juice market.²²

Of course, the United States has also followed similar trade strategies made possible only through the use of refrigeration technologies. As a counterexample to the apple juice dilemma, the United States has glutted the Chinese market with low-priced poultry products, leading to a series of cross-Pacific games of chicken in trade negotiations.²³ The point is not to cast blame on particular countries for various trade practices but to make it clear that refrigeration can be used both to the benefit and to the detriment of local food systems and their associated economies.

Refrigeration creates massive national and international markets, consumer convenience, and a diverse diet. It even provides locavores with the opportunity to eat more local products year-round, and it clearly has the capacity to provide us with products of optimal nutritional value. We should also bear in mind that refrigeration is the vital link in supplying safe and nutritious food from rural areas to peri-urban and urban areas—places that are growing in population at a rapid rate.

Our increasing reliance on refrigeration for convenience has also had a series of unwanted effects. It takes only one cursory circuit of a supermarket to feel the increasing encroachment of refrigerated aisles. The battalion of refrigerated and frozen goods is marching ever inward from at least three walls in most grocery stores, and that sensation is backed by data of all sorts. In the process of equipping our homes with refrigerators, freezers, and microwaves to accommodate an increased number of refrigerated products, we have also disposed of appropriate technologies and cultural traditions that helped minimize the need for refrigeration. Not only have we significantly moderated the internal temperatures of our homes in the past several decades, we’ve also eliminated cold pantries and root cellars from the typical house design. The common “summer kitchen” in the South was one sensible feature that kept the main areas of the house cool, but it is no longer in the contemporary architect’s repertoire. Springhouses and icehouses were once ubiquitous in rural areas, but those concepts have also virtually disappeared. Even food preservation traditions that did not rely upon any type of refrigeration have waned with fading memories and flashing regulatory messages about food safety.²⁴ Salting, drying, and various forms of fermentation got shelved in our rush to the refrigerated aisles.

Revisiting the traditional foodways of your region can provide interesting insights into a world with minimal refrigeration and an era of fewer processed foods. At the same time, it’s important to demand sensible and highly efficient refrigeration technologies. Rest assured that those worlds can come together. I’m reminded of it every time I go down into the basement on a sunny day and pull a tub of homemade ice cream out of our superefficient Sundanzer chest freezer that runs on the equivalent of an eighty-watt solar panel. High in fat, low in calories—with a capital C, that is.

References
16. Alex Wilson, “The Energy Smart Kitchen,” Fine Homebuilding, Fall/Winter 2007.
17. David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, and J. M. Shapiro. “Why Have Americans Become More Obese?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17, no. 3 (2003): 103.
18. Jennifer Poti and Barry Popkin, “Trends in Energy Intake among US Children by Eating Location and Food Source, 1977–2006,” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 111, no. 8 (2011): 1156–64. The researchers indicate in their conclusions that these figures are, in fact, quite conservative, and the numbers are likely higher.
19. Pimentel et al., “Reducing Energy Inputs in the U.S. Food System,” 459.
20. Ibid., 460.
21. The Food Research and Action Center website provides extensive data and publications documenting the disturbing hunger levels of residents living in agriculturally rich regions such as some counties in Florida. For more information, visit the center’s “Data and Publications” page at http://frac.org/reports-and-resources/.
22. For information on apples and other U.S. agricultural commodities, see the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center “Commodity Apple Profile” pulled together by Malinda Geisler of Iowa State University, at http://www.agmrc.org/commodities__products /fruits/apples/commodity_apple_profile.cfm.
23. “WTO and U.S. Chicken Exports: China Puts Its Case,” the Poultry Site, September 22, 2011, http://www.thepoultrysite.com/poultrynews/23599/wto-and-us-chicken-exports-china-puts-its-case.
24. For a superb overview of the impacts of our food system on energy consumption and climate change, see the Food Climate Research Network’s report Cooking Up a Storm, by Tara Garnett (September 2008), available at http://www.fcrn.org.uk/fcrn/publications/cooking-up-a-storm. Tara Garnett also coauthored, with Tim Jackson, one of the best available histories of refrigeration in our food system in her paper “Frost Bitten: An Exploration of Refrigeration Dependence in the U.K. Food Chain and Its Implications for Climate Policy,” presented to the 11th European Round Table on Sustainable Consumption and Production, Basel, Switzerland, June 2007, and available at http://www.fcrn.org.uk/fcrn/publications/frost-bitten.

Fridge grab and Frozen food aisle image via shutterstock.

Food ENERGY: Processing

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:54:59 GMT

By Philip Ackerman-Leist, posted May 10, 2013:

This is part 4 of our serialization of Chapter 4 (Energy) from the latest Resilience guide, "Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems". This excerpt focuses on strategies for reducing the energy footprint of processing food.

Read Part 1, Read Part 2, Read Part 3, Read Part 5, Read Part 6, Read Part 7

It is difficult to say whether our eating habits are driven by changes in the food system or vice versa. While we may follow all of the loss-leader promotions right into the gaping mouth of the supermarket’s aisles of processed food for economic reasons, the way we schedule our lives around eating also impacts our food habits.

As we continually decrease the time that we spend cooking and cleaning in the American home kitchen, the processing of our food occurs increasingly in commercial facilities. Those facilities, in turn, look for labor efficiencies that can increase net profits. In an effort to cut costs and maximize standardization, many of those processors opt for mechanization over human labor. Food processing uses energy in the transformation process and also in the movement of materials and ingredients from facility to facility. The energy impact of those decisions is quite clear, as the gross energy demands for food processing have risen more than in any other sector of the food system, as shown in figure 4-6.

It’s not immediately clear just how local food systems can begin to address this rather astounding growth in energy use in food processing. Upon reflection, however, several responses emerge. The first and best is that we simply need to depend less on processed foods, both because of the high-energy inputs and the packaging with all of its embedded energy and increased waste—not to mention the health implications. Buying fresh, lightly packaged foods directly from farmers and local distributors makes sense for not only calories invested but also calories derived. That is to say, less-processed foods tend to be less energy intensive to produce and not as calorically loaded as their highly processed counterparts. (Remember that food processing also uses energy in the movement of materials and ingredients from one facility to another—often hundreds or even thousands of miles apart.)

State and federal governments can also offer financial incentives for processors willing to invest in energy-efficiency infrastructure and innovations. So another response is to advocate for such policies on behalf of businesses that comprise our own community fabric. The impact of increasing energy prices on net profits will probably be the most significant impetus for energy efficiency in the processing sector, however. At some point, processors will be forced to embrace the renewable resources available in their respective locales. Processors in sun-drenched areas will capitalize upon drying techniques, solar ovens, photovoltaics, and solar hot water systems. Food entrepreneurs in colder climes may finally adopt so-called polar power systems that utilize frigid outdoor temperatures as a common resource for enhancing refrigeration efficiency. If businesses will adopt these kinds of technologies prior to the inevitable spike of energy costs, not only will they be well positioned in the marketplace, but they can help bring more confidence and expertise into the marketplace.

Richard Travers is one Vermont entrepreneur who saw the potential for capitalizing upon climate in this regard. As he describes it,

We were sitting around our dining room where we had an old restaurant refrigerator. The compressor went on, and it made so much noise, you couldn’t hear the other person talking across the table. It was 20° below zero outside, one of the coldest nights of the year. I got to thinking—why not take that cold air from the outside?¹⁵

That winter-evening inspiration turned into a brilliant business opportunity. Travers went on to develop the Freeaire Refrigeration system, which pulls cold outside air into commercial refrigeration units. Perhaps we need to modify the motto a bit: “Think locally; act accordingly.”

Reference
15. “About Us,” a history of FreeAire Refrigeration; http://freeaire.com/about-us/ (accessed October 2, 2012).

Food aisle image via shutterstock.

How anti-coal campaigners are protecting Australia’s economy

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:16:31 GMT

By Paul Gilding, posted May 9, 2013:

Irony doesn’t get any better than this. Environmentalists and farmers fighting the expansion of coal mining and coal seam gas across Australia are protecting the economy. If they are successful in slowing down or reversing these sectors in Australia, future governments will be spared an economic mess, Australian workers will have much improved employment prospects and our big banks will be spared major losses.

That’s because, while not their intention, such campaigns are the only thing likely to moderate the rude economic awakening we face when the global carbon bubble bursts and the fossil fuel industries start their inevitable and terminal decline. While the world economy will be impacted Australia is particularly exposed and with the active support of our governments and financial institutions, coal and gas companies are doing their best to increase this exposure.

Fortunately for Australia’s economics prospects, these campaigns are amongst the most strategic and effective ones we’ve seen from the NGO community for many years. Unlike traditional environmental campaigns that tend to raise an issue and demand government intervene, these campaigns are displaying a more sophisticated approach, taking on the industry with a clear view of how markets work. They recognise that government will not be an ally in this case, with both major parties showing overwhelming support for the expansion of Australia’s fossil fuel dependency. So they are instead going direct to the market, targeting each development with legal and other delay tactics, attacking the reputation of lenders and suggesting investors think again about financial risk.

The campaign in Australia will be given a major boost in coming months when one of the United States most effective climate campaigners, Bill McKibben visit’s Australia. McKibben’s 350.org has been credited with revitalising the grass roots climate efforts in the US with his divestment campaign arguing that fossil fuel investments are immoral as well a poor investment choice.

Pensions funds in Australia, the major owners of fossil fuel assets, are not likely to respond to the moral argument but they will take notice of delays and risks to new projects. And they’re not likely to miss the growing mainstream market interest in the carbon bubble, with the argument starting to land as a material risk. Investors don’t pay much attention to anti-coal campaigners in developing their investment strategy, but they start to listen when analysts like Citi Group and HSBC raise concerns. HSBC argued recently that some of the world’s oil and as majors could lose 40 – 60% of their market cap if the carbon bubble scenario plays out.

I have been arguing that there’s a global financial risk in the carbon bubble for many years, as have many others such as the folks at Carbon Tracker in the UK. A few years ago, these concerns were dismissed as very long term in impact. But with economists like Sir Nicholas Stern and investors like Jeremy Grantham at GMO now coming on board, seeing this as a systemic financial risk, the game is changing.

Why the shift?

Previously these concerns were analysed with the assumption that a global agreement on climate change would be the key driver of market shift on climate. The conclusion was therefore that no government action = no carbon investment risk. But in the last few years the dramatic price drops in solar and the severe disruption to the coal fired utility business model created by the boom in rooftop solar, have put carbon risk into a very different context. The markets now have a very real and live example of how shifts can occur unexpectedly in carbon exposed sectors, with great destruction of value for companies that aren’t prepared. They are also seeing the opportunities in the upside, with companies in the rooftop solar installation space going to very successful IPOs. Investment shifting from coal to solar is no longer a theory but a live trend that will accelerate.

So if this is all so clear, why are Australia’s governments and major banks acting with such disregard for the economic risks involved in increasing Australia’s exposure to the carbon bubble? It’s the same reason bubble’s tend to burst rather than deflate, and is well argued by the legendary investor Jeremy Grantham, whose status comes from not just having $100 billion under management, but also his success in forecasting so many of the major investment bubbles of the past four decades. He says it simply “aversion to bad news”. He continues: “The investment business has taught me – increasingly as the years have passed – that people, especially investors, prefer good news and wishful thinking to bad news; and that there are always vested interests to offer facile, optimistic alternatives to the bad news.”

Politicians and investors who are benefitting from the carbon bubble are not going to be the ones who help it come to calm end. They simply don’t want to see it, for the reasons Grantham explains. This will not change and so we shouldn’t expect it to. That’s why bubbles burst and it’s why this one will.

This brings me back to the importance of the environmental campaigners protecting Australia’s economy. While I believe it is inevitable the bubble will burst, the smaller it is when it does so, the better off the economy will be. The less stranded infrastructure we have built, the fewer mines that have to close and the less miners lose their jobs, the less risky the broader economic impact.

So while I wouldn’t normally recommend taking financial recommendations from an environmental NGO, I think the CEO of The Climate Institute John Connor provides some pretty sound advice to investors: “Investments in Australian coal rest on a speculative bubble of climate denial, indifference or dreaming.”It’s time for investors, particularly our pension funds, to wake up. Maybe the best way they can secure our retirement savings is take some money out of coal investments and send it to climate campaigners!

Originally published at Cockatoo Chronicles

Image credit: lockthegate/flickr

Food Movement: Wheels, Water, Rail, and Air

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:34:23 GMT

By Philip Ackerman-Leist, posted May 6, 2013:

This is part 3 of our serialization of Chapter 4 (Energy) from the latest Resilience guide, "Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems". This excerpt looks at the challenge of moving food from farm to plate.

Read Part 1, Read Part 2, Read Part 4, Read Part 5, Read Part 6, Read Part 7

Distribution drives the food system. It’s currently the fastest-shifting sector in our food system, in part because it’s market-driven and steered by technological development. When we don our energy lenses, we quickly see that a local farmer bringing food to the local market in a pickup truck is efficient only if the distance between the farm and the market is very short. The more a food transportation vehicle is built for moving large amounts of food across significant expanses, the more energy-efficient that vehicle tends to be (see fig. 4-5). Ironically for the local food advocate, transportation efficiency actually peaks with oceangoing ships, declines slightly with rail and more so with diesel trucks, and finally diminishes with the iconic farmers’ market pickup. It’s only in compact cities and small rural towns that energy efficiency can jump back up with the farmer back in the driver’s seat—or rather, the saddle. Bicycle transport wins the efficiency game in linking local farms to consumers right in the neighborhood.

Rebuilding local food systems faces two contrasting challenges with transportation:

Underdeveloped expertise and infrastructure for moving local food from the farm to the local consumer efficiently and cost-effectively.
The daunting influx of inexpensive foods from distant places that overwhelm the nascent local food marketplace.

Inherent in both challenges is, again, the issue of scale: scale of production, scale of processing, scale of distribution, and certainly scale of purchasing, all of which impact product availability and price. When we hit the distribution issue, we see the challenge of taking on the Goliaths of the food world with nothing but a slingshot in the form of a pickup truck.

Local food initiatives have to take the physical movement of food seriously. From both an energy perspective and a consideration of an appropriate economy of scale, distribution is one of the greatest hurdles. Distribution is fraught with complexity, and generalizations about it seldom work. At the risk of oversimplification, much of the early activist work in rebuilding local food systems was based on the premise that we needed to get people to local food by way of farmers’ markets and farm-based CSAs. Now, as the reconstruction efforts mature, we are realizing that we also need to get local food to people; and not surprisingly, it turns out that it’s generally much more efficient to use a delivery vehicle to get food to people rather than having a multitude of cars converging on a farmstand or a CSA operation.

The U.S. food system is increasingly dependent on the use of freight services, that is, ships, trains, and large trucks. The good news is that freight services have, in fact, achieved some important efficiencies over the past few decades, but those advances are somewhat overshadowed by the fact that shipping distances for all food commodity categories continue to grow. Poultry, egg products, fresh fruits, and fresh vegetables are all showing signs of increased energy requirements in the distribution sector.¹¹ Sadly, given their nutritional benefits, the perishable nature of fresh fruits and vegetables means that shipping them requires more than two times the energy necessary for transporting all other types of food.¹²

Nonetheless, local and regional food systems advocates across the country are working passionately and quickly to come up with innovative new approaches to distribution that can overcome some of these barriers. It’s worth briefly exploring several of the newer approaches that seem to hold promise for building energy-efficient local food systems in the distribution sector.

Efficient Vehicles and Cleaner Fuels

Fuel is a vital concern in any distribution system. Distributors are well aware of the benefits of fuel-efficient vehicles, since fuel costs are central to their ability to achieve optimal net profits. Some distributors are also working hard to find cleaner and more ecologically appropriate fuels for their delivery operations; meanwhile, tightening pollution standards in some states and cities are encouraging movement in this direction. Perhaps no other component of the U.S. food system has such a tight link between energy efficiency and profits, nor is any other sector more vulnerable to the volatility of fuel prices. When these factors are combined, more localized distribution makes sense from both a business and a marketing perspective. A few regional food distributors are tackling energy issues head-on. For example, Veritable Vegetable, a distributor in San Francisco that ships throughout the Southwest, is converting its fleet of tractors and trailers to diesel-electric hybrids that save 35 percent in fuel consumption. (Not limiting its energy conservation efforts to the wheeled part of its operation, the company is also committed to a zero-waste policy, diverting a stunning 99 percent of its waste from landfills, and it has honed in on highly efficient refrigerated storage. It has even installed 560 rooftop photovoltaic panels to serve a portion of its warehouse electrical needs.)¹³

Computer Systems for Delivery and Pickup

As the demand for local and regional foods increases, distributors are looking to reduce fuel, labor, and infrastructure costs by maximizing the efficiency of on-the-road movement. Despite the relatively limited radius of local and regional distributors, delivery routes can require sophisticated and costly software. Not only are the deliveries and pickups frequent for local distributors, but the variety of products on board is often much more diverse and perishable than long-distance truckloads of identical or similar products. Think of the difference between shipping a load of watermelons across the country versus a regional distributor picking up fruits, vegetables, and artisanal meats and cheeses from a variety of farms and processors along a much shorter route and dropping them off at multiple stops. The regional distributor has a much greater challenge in maximizing efficiency.

Entrepreneurs and local food system advocates are continually developing improved software that better collects and analyzes data to coordinate pickup and drop-off times and determine efficient routes. This enhanced data analysis helps ensure maximum capacity and efficiency throughout the entire distribution run. After all, empty trucks can drive a distributor to ruin.

Regional Distribution

Volume, supply, and consistency can pose serious challenges to distributors of local products. The sum of needed volume, steady supply, and consistent quality is efficiency—efficiency in human labor and other energy sources. Efficiency translates into cost, and cost and availability drive market potential. Many distributors, therefore, have consciously adopted a regional emphasis rather than a focus on more constrained local markets. The regional scale often offers advantages and a certain confidence to large institutional buyers that are moving toward increased local purchasing. Product shortages, as well as price points that do not work within institutional constraints, quickly stymie efforts to bring local foods into the mainstream. It is interesting to note that some of these regional distributors are run under cooperative and nonprofit models, while others are privately held companies. (For a fascinating comparison of various local and regional distribution models, see the collaborative online map titled “National Distribution Models,” initiated by the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin, accessible at http://bit.ly/NDM-map.)¹⁴

Food Hubs

“Food hub” is a relatively new term gaining credence among local food advocates. Although there’s no single definition, a general point of agreement swirls around another term of interest: “aggregation.” In order to address the problems of volume, supply, and consistency common in many local and regional food systems, advocates and entrepreneurs alike are developing systems for aggregating products. Aggregation simply means that an organization or a business gathers and combines local (or regional) products by sourcing from multiple farms in order to achieve the desired inventory for each product. Since scale is often an issue in creating a stable inventory of local products, aggregation becomes a means of assuring clients of a reliable local food stream. Some food hubs gather and distribute products, while others offer processing facilities. In some cases, food hubs are more about brokering relationships and building regional agricultural capacity and consumption.

Aggregation is a complex goulash. The recipe calls for entrepreneurial zest, a thickened roux of software savvy, and a medley of cooperative farms. Pallets, bins, and cases are filled with aggregated material and marketed to retailers, restaurants, institutions, and even individual consumers. Ordering and delivery are complicated enough, but efficiency often requires a pickup of products for the next cycle of aggregation, too. Regardless, aggregation is a promising avenue for increasing local food production and consumption, and careful management of the distribution system can help maximize energy efficiency.

Workplace CSAs

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) farms offer multiple benefits to farmers and consumers, with consumers generally picking up their produce from the farm or a designated pickup site. From an energy perspective, the most problematic aspect of the CSA model is the need for CSA subscribers to drive from a multitude of places to pick up their produce. Of course, these pickups can also serve as important relationship-building and educational opportunities, but too much driving by too many people has its costs in fossil-fuel consumption. Schedule conflicts, traffic concerns, or the inability to drive can all negatively impact a CSA’s potential consumer base. As a partial solution, the workplace CSA model adds an element of energy efficiency and convenience: A company or institution works with one or more farmers to offer its employees CSA shares delivered to the workplace for a regularly scheduled pickup. In some cases, the employer offers its employees the option of a regular payroll deduction to cover the costs of the CSA share over time. The employer might even contribute a portion of the costs, provide coolers to employees for storing the produce while they’re at work, or allow farmers to set up a booth or tent for additional sales.

Internet Orders for Home Delivery

Putting this concept on paper (or into an e-book) is perhaps unwise, since the velocity of the Internet-driven world far exceeds the capacity of the publishing world to keep up. As you read this chapter, some enterprising local food advocate or businessperson is probably sitting at a computer devising or revising a method for selling local foods online. Sometimes these entrepreneurial models are farm-based, while at other times they are linked to distributors and aggregators in various guises. In many cases, customers enter their orders online in a specific time frame, and deliveries are made to customers’ homes, workplaces, or specified pickup points. Done well, these models can minimize transport distances of food products, as well as eliminate the need for consumers to jump in their car and head to the nearest (or not so near) preferred food retailer. While these home delivery services may help bring new consumers into the local food market, the convenience and flexibility of these models can impact customer bases at CSAs and farmers’ markets.

References
11. Patrick Canning, Ainsley Charles, Sonya Huang, Karen R. Polenske, and Arnold Waters, Energy Use in the U.S. Food System, Economic Research Report no. 94 (Washington, D.C.:USDA Economic Research Service, March 2010), 18.
12. Ibid.
13. For more information about the company and its sustainability efforts, visit the website of Veritable Vegetable at http://veritablevegetable.com/.
14. “Distribution Models for Local Food,” Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, January 2009, http://www.cias.wisc.edu/uncategorized/distribution-models-for-local-food/.
15. “About Us,” a history of FreeAire Refrigeration; http://freeaire.com/about-us/ (accessed October 2, 2012).

Loading lemons image via shutterstock.

As Oil and Gas Drilling Competes for Water, One New Mexico County Says No

Fri, 03 May 2013 16:47:07 GMT

By Sandra Postel, posted May 3, 2013:

The Mora River upstream of Watrous in Mora County, New Mexico. In an effort to protect its water sources, Mora County has banned oil and gas extraction on county land. Photo: J. N. Stuart/Flickr/cc

In drought-plagued New Mexico, water is gold.

And this week, Mora County in the northern part of the state took a firm stand to protect its precious liquid: it banned all oil and gas extraction from county lands. It is believed to be the first county in the nation to take such action.

Big oil companies, notably Shell, had reportedly already leased more than 100,000 acres of land in Mora.

But the county’s new ordinance calls for a state constitutional amendment that puts community rights above corporate property rights.

Of concern in Mora, and increasingly throughout the country, is the potential harm to water sources from oil and gas drilling, including a practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The process entails injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure deep underground so as to break up rocks and release the oil and gas they hold.

Because many wells cut through water-bearing formations called aquifers, fracking risks contaminating drinking water supplies with hazardous chemicals. Yet fracking is exempt from compliance with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

Besides the threat of water contamination, fracking also competes for local water supplies. A single well can require more than 5 million gallons of water.

Across the United States, 47 percent of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells are being developed in highly water-stressed regions, according to a report released this week by Ceres, a Boston-based non-profit organization that educates investors about corporate environmental risks.

Colorado and Texas, two states where fracking operations have expanded rapidly, exhibited the highest degree of water risk, according to the Ceres report. In Colorado, 92 percent of shale gas and oil wells were in “extremely high” water stress regions, defined as areas in which cities, industries and farms are already using 80 percent or more of available water.

In Texas, 51 percent of wells were in “high or extremely high” water stress regions. In some Texas counties, water use for fracking accounted for more than one-fifth of total water use.

The Ceres study used well data available at FracFocus.org and water stress maps developed by the Aqueduct Project at the World Resources Institute.

While the hydraulic fracturing industry has made some progress toward use of recycled and saline water, which could reduce competition for scarce freshwater supplies, these sources are still a minor component of the overall industry’s water demand. And even with use of alternative water sources, the risks of groundwater contamination from the chemicals used in fracking remain.

With hydraulically fractured gas and oil production projected to double in the coming years, the bottom line, according to Ceres, is that “competition and conflicts over water should be a growing concern for companies, policymakers and investors.”

But Mora County’s decision – to keep more climate-altering fossil fuels in the ground so as to preserve and safeguard local water supplies for its people – draws a more precautionary line in the sand. It’s a line other counties may want to draw, too – because without adequate supplies of safe drinking water, no region’s future is bright.

Originally published at National Geographic Newswatch

Faster Drilling, Diminishing Returns in Shale Plays Nationwide?

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:26:07 GMT

By Sharon Kelly, posted Apr 30, 2013:

Faster Drilling, Diminishing Returns in Shale Plays Nationwide? (via Desmogblog)

Today's shale gas boom has brought a surge of drilling across the US, driving natural gas prices to historic lows over the past couple of years. But, according to David Hughes, geoscientist and fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, in the future, we can expect at least the same frenzied rate of drilling…

Can Rebulding Local Food Systems Help Promote Renewable Energy?

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:05:39 GMT

By Philip Ackerman-Leist, posted Apr 29, 2013:

This is part 2 of our serialization of Chapter 4 (Energy) from the latest Resilience guide, "Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems". This excerpt looks at some areas where small to mid scale farming might have the edge.

Read Part 1, Read Part 3, Read Part 4, Read Part 5, Read Part 6, Read Part 7

Farming is about energy flows. “Food production” is about a terminal point in the act of agriculture.

As soon as we begin using the word “farming” again, all of the implicit associations with farming begin to reemerge in our shared thoughts and language—planting and harvesting seasons, the cumulative wealth of generations, the farmscape, the role of farms within the community. Suddenly, place, time, and the stewardship of inherited traditions all start to become important again. We can quantify production, but we can qualify farming. That is to say, we can instill it with values, not just interpret it through metrics.

These days, when we attribute values that we think define good ecological farming practices, we generally tend to speak of “sustainable farming.” Sustainable farming is the careful management of energy flows, not just to get to one final product at the end of a season but to ensure that those energy flows allow for a regenerative use of the land far into the future. What better way to think about food and farming than through a pie chart? Figure 4-4 clearly depicts the sticky fingers in the energy pie at this point in time. It’s obvious: we are overly dependent upon photosynthesis that occurred millions of years ago to fuel the growth of our modern farms through fossil fuels. It’s also worth noting that fertilizer and pesticide production is heavily dependent upon fossil fuels, not just for powering the manufacturing process but as primary components for many of those products.

These on-farm energy consumption figures are staggering in their enormity. Sadly, renewable energy sources do not even appear in the data, although there is a small renewable energy component in the electricity sector. Trying to envision how little ol’ local can begin to confront the farming sector’s entrenched dependence on fossil fuels is challenging even for the best of optimists.

It’s worth considering the growing vulnerabilities in the current system (although this is more an exploration of potential opportunity than an exercise in optimism). Most farmers in the United States are “price takers.” In other words, these farmers cannot quickly change their asking price for their products when energy prices surge. Rather, they are all too often in the position of taking the going market price, perhaps with consternation but ultimately little recourse. This is particularly true in national and international wholesale and commodity markets in which individual farmers have almost no leverage; the smooth and invisible hands of supply and demand almost always trump the calloused hands of any farmers in those expansive markets. Farmers selling in direct local markets still have some control in aligning asking price with energy costs (sometimes by way of face-to-face dialogue with buyers). Local markets, therefore, can give farmers an economic edge amid volatile energy prices. Nonetheless, the energy consumption problem remains largely unaddressed. The burning question lingers: Can the rebuilding of local food systems help minimize on-farm energy usage as well as promote renewable energy sources?

In this case, “perhaps” may be a better answer than a definitive “yes.” Typically, local food systems can better nurture smaller-scale agriculture than can national and global systems. And much of the energy use on farms is a direct result of scale and farming methods. Small-scale agriculture tends to require fewer fossil-fuel inputs than large-scale agriculture. When biointensive methods are utilized, small-scale agriculture also tends to be more productive on a per-acre basis.⁸ Of course, any such change in shifting toward human-powered systems means that we need a dramatic increase in the number of farmers, as well as supporting infrastructure in each sector of the food system—appropriately scaled infrastructure that is economically viable.

However, before we risk becoming utterly small-minded and completely lose focus on the bigger picture, we have to think bigger about ways to maintain and rebuild what sustainable agriculture expert Fred Kirschenmann and colleagues call the “agriculture of the middle.” Without it, local supply and demand for most agricultural products in virtually all regions of the country will remain out of balance. For Kirschenmann and his colleagues, agriculture of the middle “encompasses a spectrum of farms and ranches that are declining because they are too small to be served well by commodity markets and too large to be served well by direct markets.

Most Agriculture of the Middle farms are characterized by: (1) their size; (2) their business organization; and (3) the production and marketing strategies they adopt to remain viable.”⁹ In other words, these midscale farms are concentrating on producing significant amounts of food—too much to direct-market but too little to sell as commodities—utilizing farming methods that demonstrate a sensitivity to ecological concerns, animal welfare, and community well-being. Imagine a grass-fed beef farm with several hundred cattle, an organic grain operation of several hundred acres, or a farm raising three hundred heritage-breed pigs. Each of these operations is not only midscale but also focused on certain explicit values related to its farming practices—values that have traction in the marketplace.

But can midscale agriculture help mitigate energy demands in the on-farm sector? Perhaps. Kirschenmann and his colleagues feel the primary economic solution for midsize farms is to participate in “values-based food supply chains.” In other words, their marketing should be based in large part on the methods they use to produce their goods, organically and otherwise. Organic farming methods are almost always more energy efficient than conventional methods, regardless of scale, simply due to reduced fertilizer and pesticide use. The elimination of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides would shave off about one-third of American farming’s energy inputs.

There can be energy trade-offs in going organic, however. Vegetable, grain, and fruit operations may eliminate many or all of their off-farm fertilizer and pesticide inputs, but a portion of those energy savings is sometimes partially compromised by the necessity of replacing these field applications of inputs with increased fieldwork. Not using herbicides often means that a farmer must cultivate the soil frequently in order to keep aggressive weeds at bay. Giving up the spraying of particularly potent fungicides and pesticides in an orchard can require the farmer to spray organically approved substances such as copper and sulfur-based sprays with increased frequency, since the protective effects from these less harmful substances often don’t last as long as their conventional counterparts. Using a tractor for additional cultivation, mowing, or spraying can diminish the anticipated energy savings, but there are also obvious resilience-building benefits with shifting to organic management strategies.¹⁰

What a farmer does to decrease his or her energy consumption is often quite hidden from the ordinary consumer. However, within a local market, energy-conservation efforts and investments on behalf of the farmer can be highlighted. The hallmark of the current local food push in the United States is undeniably awareness: awareness of the food we eat, the farms we support, the communities we inhabit, the investments we make. A farmer focused on energy conservation has some serious bragging rights. While the farmer may not have a bully pulpit in the national marketplace to convey his or her energy-conscious advances, local marketing does allow the farmer the opportunity to demonstrate forward-thinking commitments by means of farmers’ market displays, farm tours, school presentations, and other such venues.

It can be a challenge to inform consumers just what measures a farm is taking to reduce its own energy consumption. Sound bites, labels, and certifications simply don’t tell the tale. Part of the farmer’s task is to convince consumers to invest not just in the farm but in its decision making. If consumers are willing to patronize a farm based in part on its approach to energy use, they can help support the farmer’s transition to less energy-intensive farming methods. In most cases, energy-conservation efforts on the farm represent cost savings over the long term. As one farmer makes the change and can demonstrate the benefits, that decision will reverberate throughout the local farming community, encouraging other farmers to take similar measures.

The other approach to this energy and agriculture question is perhaps the simplest: the YIMBY (yes, in my backyard!) approach. There’s little wasted fossil-fuel energy in home gardens, balcony vegetables, backyard livestock, community gardens, and tightly designed homesteads. While it may require some energy investment on an individual basis, it’s a good reminder: the more balanced our lives, the more balanced our diets.

References

8. John C. Jeavons, “Biointensive Mini-Farming,” Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 19, no. 2 (2001): 81–83.

9. “Characterizing Ag of the Middle and Values-Based Food Supply Chains,” Agriculture of the Middle website, January 2012, http://www.agofthemiddle.org.

10. It is not commonly understood that organic vegetable production can require increased field cultivation to reduce weed pressures and that organic fruit production often utilizes more frequent sprayings of less potent materials than in conventional fruit production. These energy tradeoffs can be mitigated to some degree with other management practices that do not require fossil fuels, but it is important to bear in mind that virtually every agricultural practice has its tradeoffs. Having a clear end goal can help a farmer determine which practices to adopt and reject.

'Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems' is book three from Post Carbon Institute's ongoing series of Resilience Guides.

Vegetables image via shutterstock.

Rebuilding the Foodshed: Fields of ENERGY

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 08:49:42 GMT

By Philip Ackerman-Leist, posted Apr 25, 2013:

Over the coming days, we'll be sharing material from Chapter 4 (Energy) of the latest Resilience guide, "Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems". This is a heck of a chapter, one that takes a look at the complex relationships between food systems, energy and waste. If you eat food, grow food, use energy, create energy, or make waste, you'll find yourself fascinated.

Read Part 2, Read Part 3, Read Part 4, Read Part 5, Read Part 6, Read Part 7

Food is energy. Food provides energy. Food requires energy. Food and energy are virtually synonymous. They even share a common unit of measure. But that doesn’t mean that they are in balance. To the contrary. And nowhere is that imbalance more evident than in the United States.

As soon as one opens wide and espouses the need for a food system that’s balanced in terms of health, equity, and ecology, it becomes apparent that much of the discussion is about how to extract one’s ecological footprint from one’s mouth. The problem is that, in terms of energy, our ecological footprints are estimated to be somewhere between seven and ten times the size of our mouths. In other words, it takes seven to ten calories to produce and deliver the equivalent of a single calorie of food in the United States.¹ These food system calories eventually add up to an estimated 19 percent of America’s total energy consumption.² (It is important to note here that we typically measure calories in our diet as a “small calorie,” the amount of energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius. When we measure energy on a larger scale, we call it a “kilocalorie” or a “large calorie” and denote it with a capital C, as in “Calorie,” since it is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise one kilogram of water one degree Celsius.)

Do we simply go retro? Techno? Heck, no. A total historical reversal to preindustrial conditions is just as unlikely as a technological absolution for our modern-day petroleum-based gluttony.

The energy behind human civilizations was once a product of the food supply. But we are at a point in human history in which food is predominately a result of nonhuman energy inputs. The prospect of bringing food and energy closer to a one-to-one ratio of calories invested to calories derived is extraordinarily complex, and it has direct links to the call for creating more sustainable and resilient food systems. Today in the United States, these food and energy questions comprise a quandary that most of us can ponder in relative comfort, without the imminent threat of being unable to feed ourselves due to costs, energy constraints, or shortages. And yet, even as we relish the extraordinarily low cost of food in the United States, certain threats do lurk in the background. The energy supply that feeds our food system is at short-term risk of disruption by natural disasters, international conflict, and economic turmoil. The long-term impacts of worsening climate change, dwindling petroleum supplies, and increasing global population pressures are looming realities that we may try to ignore but ultimately cannot avoid. We have already seen how spikes in food prices can create social unrest with the seeming velocity of the flick of a match.

Such inquiries into food security should not be viewed as mere intellectual exercises or myopic self-preservation interests. Perhaps the most compelling reasons to grapple with our precarious food/energy imbalance are sheer justice and altruism.³ People who are “food insecure”⁴ are generally far too busy trying to convert their own personal energy into food dollars to spend much time researching and thinking about the national food and energy dilemma. The onus is upon those who are concerned enough to care and are able to do something about it. As actor Alan Alda once said during a graduation speech to a group of medical students, “The head bone is connected to the heart bone—don’t let them come apart.”⁵

Energy Fields

I am an optimist and a good-natured (I hope) skeptic. But from my vantage point as a farmer and an academic, few things worry me more about the human condition than the intertwined fragilities of our food and energy supplies—and our habits that exacerbate the amount of energy consumed between farm and fork.

I struggle to make sense of the food/energy dilemma most every day, although I would by no means characterize those days as gloomy or my attitude as morose. Rather, my days tend to be filled with sunshine, pastoral landscapes, solar panels, healthy livestock, laughing children, and inquisitive students. But the energy-to-food ratio is a constant theme, starting with the morning milking on our off-the-grid farm. Our grass-fed herd of American Milking Devon cattle get either fresh pasture or good-quality hay every morning—no grain, but plenty of gain. The milk pails are washed with solar-heated hot water while the early morning lights in the house are powered by yesterday’s sunshine. (We are almost entirely solar-powered, with fossil-fuel backups providing about 20 percent of the additional energy we need.) We’ll use one of our two Kubota tractors to do the morning’s heavy lifting or towing, but the goal is to use them as little as possible and, when feasible, not at all.

When the chores are completed, by me or often by one of our apprentices, I admittedly leave home in a gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive vehicle and head out sixteen miles to my job at Green Mountain College, where I oversee the college’s Farm & Food Project. As I pull up, students are usually walking to and from the farmhouse and the various outbuildings that comprise the college farm complex, often toting milk pails or vegetable bins as they wrap up morning chores there. Their farm—and it is theirs in many ways—is much like mine at home, an experiment in trying to minimize energy inputs and maximize food output. However, their work is more rigorous in its analytical aspects, thanks to the research oversight headed by my colleague Kenneth Mulder, one of the few PhDs in the United States who is also an expert at using oxen in agriculture.

The farm’s focus is to probe ways toward a food system that eschews fossil fuels as much as possible—and indeed, all of the activities on the farm seem to orbit the question of our overblown American diet. Draft animal equipment, photovoltaic panels, a solar hot water system, greenhouses, ergonomic hand tools, and bike tractors dot the farm. Students’ experiences with these techniques and technologies contrast sharply with the predominant realities of our current food system, which has us guzzling kilocalories of diesel energy in our tractors and gorging on excessive calories of food energy from our kitchens.

My favorite view from my office window in the second floor of a restored farmhouse is the summer scene of the oxen cutting and bringing in the hay for their winter ruminations. Other days, I gaze out the window and watch Kenneth and the students work in the vegetable fields that are his research plots. He has divided the vegetable production into three plots, each powered by a different system (see fig. 4-1). The easternmost section is cultivated, planted, maintained, and harvested exclusively by human power and the use of highly efficient hand tools. The middle section relies upon a combination of human power and a BCS walking tractor, essentially a highly versatile tiller with a variety of implements ranging from a sickle bar mower to a potato harvester. The western plot catches the most attention, as it is the market garden section powered primarily by the oxen and their accoutrement of fancy new (yes, generally new, and also quite efficient) tillage equipment.

This research project, dubbed LEAFS (Long-Term Ecological Assessment of Farming Systems), is Kenneth’s brainchild, a means of evaluating all of the energy inputs and outputs within each system. The goal is to develop a database of ten years of experimentation in order to discover the energy requirements of each system and to assess its efficiencies and challenges.

One of the more amusing aspects of it all is watching students work with stopwatches and scales in order to monitor their own energy inputs and each plot’s productivity. Even the energy expended by the oxen in pulling different pieces of equipment is measured by means of a dynamometer, a device placed between draft animals and any load that they pull as part of a task on the farm. The dynamometer sends a signal to a computer in the oxen-driver’s backpack, indicating precisely how much energy the oxen are exerting every second. This information is then transferred to a Google Earth map so that the oxen energy can be recorded both in joules (a unit of energy) and on a map that details the different levels of energy expended on certain tasks and in specific locations.

Efficiencies can also be measured in a variety of ways. For this long-term ecological study, Kenneth has opted to analyze efficiency in terms of labor, land, and energy, and his figures are based on wholesale organic vegetable prices (see table 4-1). It is interesting to note that the energy efficiency (measured as energy return on energy invested, or EROEI) of all four calculations ranges from 2.3 to 7.0, which is significantly higher than the range of 0.26 to 1.6 that is typical for conventional vegetable production in the United States.⁶

Trade-offs are inevitable in farm management systems, but seldom do aspiring farmers get to test out the practicalities of different systems, much less measure them with the sophistication provided by Kenneth’s expertise. The most elusive variable is energy, but it is arguably the one that currently warrants the most scrutiny.

The farm is the natural starting point for rectifying the imbalance between inputs and outputs, but if we are truly seeking balance in our food system, we must also assess the basic energy parameters that frame our daily decisions as consumers. In doing so, most of us gravitate immediately to the production and distribution aspects of our food system. Granted, those are critical components to tackle. However, food production and distribution often seem a bit beyond the scope of control for the average person, and—somewhat contrary to our recent intense focus on food miles—the transportation portion of our energy diet is actually relatively small in comparison to other parts of the food system that are based upon and driven by consumer choices and household habits.

As it turns out, the elements of the food system most within our control often tend to be those parts of the system that are closest to home, and they are also among the most energy-consumptive components found between farm and fork. The food and energy decisions we make in and near the home have the greatest impact on our personal energy-to-food ratios (see fig. 4-3).⁷ Household storage and preparation represent the largest single sector of energy use in the entire food system. When it comes to energy issues and food systems, “local” starts to become quite personal.

In order for the food and energy dilemma to really hit home, so to speak, it helps to remember that every step in the farm-to-plate process increases total energy inputs, making food waste an issue that we can ill afford to toss casually aside. As we work our way through the food chain, it will become increasingly obvious why reducing waste is such a critical link in creating resilient local food systems.

References
1. Martin C. Heller and Gregory A. Keoleian, Life Cycle-Based Sustainability Indicators for Assessment of the U.S. Food System, report no. CSS00-04 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems, December 6, 2000), 42.
2. David Pimentel et al., “Reducing Energy Inputs in the U.S. Food System,” Human Ecology 36 (July 15, 2008): 459.
3. It is important to note here that I also think it imperative that we consider the plights of those persons well beyond our local and national borders. The point here is that it is often easier to begin the caring process when there are direct and proximate relationships. "Local," in my view, is a starting point for caring—not an endpoint of any sort.
4. “Food-insecure” populations include persons who have limited or uncertain access to nutritionally appropriate foods.
5. Alan Alda, Things I Overheard while Talking to Myself (New York: Random House, 2008), 47.
6. David Pimentel and Marcia H. Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society (New York: CRC Press, 2008).
7. For more information on the number of calories expended in producing a single calorie of food in the U.S. food system, see Heller and Keoleian, Life Cycle-Based Sustainability Indicators. More information on this topic can also be found in Richard Heinberg and Michael Bomford, The Food & Farming Transition (Sebastopol, Calif.: Post Carbon Institute, Spring 2009), http://www.postcarbon.org/report/41306-the-food-and-farming-transition-toward.

'Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable & Secure Food Systems' is book three from Post Carbon Institute's ongoing series of Resilience Guides.

Tar Sands Is Worse Than You Can Imagine: Incredible Images You Have to See

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:43:02 GMT

By Leslie Moyer, posted Apr 19, 2013:

: The Suncor Energy upgrading refinery, on the banks of the Athabasca River.
Photo Credit: Copyrighted image; photographer not disclosed.

Post Carbon Institute and Alternet have partnered to shed a powerful light on the true costs of our addiction to fossil fuels, starting with the Alberta tar sands .

Every powerful photo is linked to three meaningful actions that you can take right now to fight back against tar sands mining. We need your help getting the word out; please take a look at the images, take a stand , and share far and wide with your friends, colleagues and neighbors.

The mining of the Alberta tar sands is the biggest industrial project on earth and quite possibly the world's most environmentally destructive. The visuals are hard to stomach, but the story is an important one to tell.

click the thumbnails to see the slideshow

As conventional oil and gas deplete, the energy industry must resort to unconventional resources that are more expensive, more technically challenging to access, and pose far greater risks to ecosystems and communities than ever before. The result is destruction on an unprecedented level.

The tar sands tale is told frame by frame in the image deck, guiding us from the clear-cutting of pristine Boreal forest and creation of vast open-pit mines all the way to the pipelines that transport diluted bitumen across the continent.

The connection between the astounding environmental destruction taking place in Canada and the debate over approval of the Keystone XL pipeline here in the USis clear. As the recent rupture of the Pegasus Pipeline in Arkansas makes abundantly clear, the transport of diluted bitumen from Alberta via pipelines to oil refineries thousands of miles away poses unacceptable environmental risks.

As important, the Keystone XL Pipeline is a key litmus test for the Obama Administration and the country as a whole. And the rest of the world is watching.

Although the Canadian tar sands contribute a small percentage of total global oil production and the Keystone XL Pipeline is just one of many contested fossil fuel projects in the world (in fact, First Nations and thousands of other Canadians are fighting an equally dangerous tar sands pipeline, the Northern Gateway Pipeline), this decision by President Obama is a keystone of a different kind - representing the kind of energy future we want for ourselves and our loved ones.

For that reason, it's not mere hyperbole to say that this is a life and death decision.

We're reaching out to you to speak up against the Keystone XL Pipeline by sharing these images with your friends, family, and neighbors, and by clicking on one of the calls to action associated with each image.

Six resilience “aha!” moments

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:05:47 GMT

By Rob Hopkins, posted Apr 18, 2013:

Usually when I go to events I tend to be the ‘resilience guy’, or one of a handful of people who work with and think about resilience who tend to gather at the back of other events and bemoan the fact that no-one has talked about resilience yet. So I was fascinated when I saw that the British Red Cross was hosting a one-day conference on resilience, the first that I’ve been aware of. They had stated that the objectives of the day were to:

share and generate learning on how resilience building works in practice in various settings and from a variety of perspectives – in other words, what works well and why?
understand how humanitarian agencies can effectively contribute to building resilience within communities.

About 200 people attended, including researchers and policy-makers, community activists, people involved in refugee services, emergency/humanitarian response, health and social care and age-related resilience. It was a fascinating day, and one that I’d like to share five of my lightbulb moments from the day.

Even in spite of getting the early early train from Totnes (a real test of my own personal resilience), I still arrived after it had been going for about 20 minutes already. I arrived as Ian Whitehouse from the Civil Contingencies Secretariat was speaking about how the UK government approaches resilience. A couple of things he said stuck with me. The first was that he saw part of his work as being to “make resilience relevant”, and how important partnership was in that.

But then he talked about how he wanted to “enable the public to receive key communications resilience messages”, which, given the theme that ran through the day of a key aspect of resilience being about learning and the ability to innovate and learn, felt alarmingly top-down. He also talked about how resilience needed to be looked at “in the world of increasingly scarce resources”, where it was clear that what he meant by building resilience to scarce resources (i.e. funding) and what Transition means (fossil fuels) were somewhat divergent (you can read attendee Julian Dobson’s blog on this session here).

I did later catch up with Ian during the coffee break and ask him about this, and he said that energy shortages are factored into their thinking, but my impression was only in the sense of a sudden disruption to supply, not the ongoing economic impacts of ongoing high and volatile prices, and their impact on community resilience.

There was then a panel discussion looking at ‘Ingredients of Resilience’. This was Lightbulb Moment 1, getting a strong sense of how very differently the term resilience is used by people from a range of backgrounds. I knew it already, but this panel discussion really reinforced, as the Chair later put it, “the wide range of stuff being funnelled into one word”. From my notes it is hard to attribute what was said to who said it, so I will list a few of the key points that came out of the session:

It is vital that we think about widening inequality when we talk about resilience. The National Risk Register doesn’t even feature inequality, whereas the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report shows it as the third greatest risk
Community-led action is a great generator of resilience
Resilience has a ‘desirability deficiency’, as in it needs to be able to be presented as something desirable
In very difficult times (the speaker had lived in Bosnia during the war there) taking care of yourself is key to resilience. Resilience also comes from having friends and neighbours who give you the agency to survive, and having something that makes you get out of bed every day to do something about it
The secret ingredient of resilience is asking “why not?”
Is resilience really about bouncing back, and if so to what? Young people who have experienced trauma can end up very armoured, fundamentally altered by the experience
One of the speakers very confidently announced that we are “halfway through a Great Depression”, which I thought showed either remarkable clairvoyance or remarkable optimism!
One comment was that resilience needed to become a more political idea and needed to explicitly speak up for poverty
The Big Society as an idea failed because it didn’t address issues of poverty and inequality. It assumed that you can have a society without asking why there are pockets of inequality and disadvantage. The people hurt most by the absence of community resilience are those who have least

One member of the audience who commented was an academic from Northern Ireland who had done research into the Troubles there. She challenged the very concept of resilience. ”If you cut us we bleed” she said, arguing that wounds are very real and do exist. She said it was important to look at the history of words, the politics of words, what burdens they brings and what, and whose, political purposes they serve, who suffers the most and why, and “resilience” really needs to be explored in that context. Her point was that if all people have known is hardship and trauma, what is it that they are supposed to “bounce back” to? Where exactly is that resilience going to come from? It was a fascinating opening session, giving a great insight into the wide range of views on resilience, on what it means to different people and different disciplines.

After a break I went to a workshop by Sarah Longlands of University of Glasgow called “Growing resilient local communities”. Her research looked at how the concept of resilience could be understood in the context of local places, in relation to the PhD work she is currently doing. She looked at how resilience is about how people work together, as well as the commercial economy of a place and the public and social economies.

What was especially interesting was how she was looking at the overlap between resilience and economic growth, an issue that has been explored here at Transition Culture on a few occasions in the past. This was Lightbulb Moment 2, that there are actually other people also looking at the overlap between these two issues, and further exploring the debate that has been often had here before at Transition Culture about the degree to which community resilience and economic growth as we know it are incompatible.

She described how government thinking is that we can create resilient places by encouraging economic growth, but is that actually the case? Everyone assumes that growth will bring everything we want in its wake: jobs, income, wealth and welfare provision. She used the term “growth privileging” to describe how growth as a concept tends to take priority over most other concepts when the future of communities is discussed.

Her work looked at two very different settlements and their relationship to the idea of growth. Her talk led to a very interesting conversation, and concluded with her saying that she felt that resilience will come from small organisations on the ground with the courage to challenge how things are being done. It will be interesting to see the outcomes of her work when it is complete.

The second workshop I went to (there were loads of fascinating choices) was run by Gayle Whelan of Liverpool John Moores University. She talked about how she had been part of a project to map the community assets of the Wirral on Merseyside. An asset was defined as being “any resource, skill or knowledge which enhances the ability of individuals, families and neighbours to sustain their health and wellbeing”. They looked at a wide range of initiatives, 54 in total, and in what ways they contribute to community resilience.

Their findings were that these groups/organisations/projects empower individuals and have a positive impact on individuals and their communities. Lightbulb Moment 3 was how community resilience is often, as Gayle put it, “driven by committed people”, rather than needing some kind of ‘mass conversion’ before anything meaningful can start to take place. That behind each of the projects on her asset map were a small number of passionate, driven people who made it happen. One of her closing thoughts was “you can throw money at things but if you don’t have people with passion and commitment you can’t do anything”, a fascinating counterpoint to Ian Whitehouse’s more top-down approach earlier. It reminded me of this passage from Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy’s excellent recent book ‘Resilience‘:

“When we found a resilient community or organisation, we almost always found a very particular species of leader at or near its core. Whether old of young, male or female, these translational leaders play a critical role, frequently behind the scenes, connecting constituencies, and weaving various networks, perspectives, knowledge systems, and agendas into a coherent whole. In the process, these leaders promote adaptive governance – the ability of a constellation of formal institutions and informal networks to collaborate in response to a crisis”.

The ‘graveyard shift’, the slot straight after lunch was fantastic, a great way to stave off the droopy eyelids. Members of the cast performed songs and scenes from the musical ‘The Glasgow Girls’, currently being performed by the National Theatre of Scotland. It tells the story of how young asylum seekers in Glasgow came together to try and stop the Immigration Department from doing dawn raids to deport people, including families with small children. It was a powerful story of the power of the human spirit and of personal and community resilience. Very moving too. Lightbulb Moment 4 was that sessions first thing after lunch can be high energy, moving and inspiring. No-one nodded off.

In the next session, I co-presented a workshop with Jenna Collins of the New Local Government Network and Ann Griffiths of the London Borough of Ealing. I spoke about Transition and how it approaches resilience. They talked about work they had done on ‘dependency’ and on how the Council could reduce levels of dependency while at the same time building resilience and improving quality of life.

Although at first glance there wasn’t a lot of overlap between both presentations, it soon led into a very interesting discussion about the balance between communities coming together and self-organising to make things happen, a la Transition, and governments, local and national, using the cloak of Austerity to divest themselves of their responsibilities. This was Lightbulb Moment 5, reinforcing the importance of this discussion. Should communities fill holes and services left by budget cuts, or does doing so somehow legitimise and lessen the impact of those cuts? There was a sense that this was a real tension at the heart of the community resilience debate, and increasingly so as Austerity continues to bite.

It echoed something I had read in a recent interview with Noam Chomsky, where he had said, in a discussion about how Occupy had stepped in to help communities following Hurricane Sandy:

“The wealthy and the corporate sector are delighted to have government back off, because then they get more power. Suppose you were to develop a voluntary system, a community type, a mutual support system that takes care of social security – the wealthy sectors would be delighted”.

I have to say that I don’t really agree with him, but that’s a subject for a different post. It’s a fascinating discussion though, whether a community stepping in to fill in gaps left by austerity cuts is actually, in the bigger picture, undermining its own resilience, and the need to think it through in more detail was certainly a lightbulb moment for me.

Also discussed was the relationship between resilience and social enterprise and the more traditional economy. In my talk I had mentioned the NE Seattle Tool Library, and was asked whether there was already a tool hire business in the area, and if so, was such a project a good idea, and whether it actually contributed to the resilience of the area. I mentioned examples such as Bristol, where the engagement with Transition and other groups had led to the Council’s Peak Oil Report for the city which had led to the ‘Who Feeds Bristol’ report looking at food resilience, which had led to Bristol Pound, a process of building trust and relationships.

The final closing session included a go-round for comments. One person said “now I believe in community!”, although then added that she wasn’t exactly sure where to find it. Another stated that for him the key thing is how we cultivate the ability to learn. Someone stated that an emphasis on resilience could lead to blame “why didn’t you cope, why didn’t you bounce back?”, putting the onus on victims to sort themselves out. One of my favourite comments was from the person who said that they now felt “confused at a higher level”. What the role of the public sector is in terms resilience was also discussed.

My final Lightbulb Moment from the day was when someone from the British Red Cross had spoken about research that showed how the majority of people turning up at Accident and Emergency units who could have had some basic first aid treatment before coming in to the hospital hadn’t had it, and about separate research that showed that people with first aid training had more self-confidence and were more likely to get back into work. They were starting to see that delivering first aid training in disadvantaged communities would be a great way of building resilience across the board. The step of applying that thinking to a wider range of the aspects of community resilience, as Transition does, has yet to arise as an option, but it felt like bringing so many people from different spheres of the resilience debate, can only have been a good thing in terms of deepening thinking.

So, a day well spent, some useful ideas and thinking, although I couldn’t help thinking that that rare opportunity to spend a day in the same room as 200 resilience practitioners but to only meet a couple of them was a missed opportunity. Some kind of ‘speed dating event’ at the beginning would have been good to enable more cross-pollenation. Thanks to the British Red Cross for organising the day.

Images above are from the rather fine graphic facilitation that went on during the event. A great way to document the points and debates emerging from an event like this. You can follow people’s tweets from the day @resilienceconf.

Originally published at Transition Culture

Colorado River, Meet the Sea

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:16:39 GMT

By , posted Apr 18, 2013:

A withered tree speaks of an earlier time in this expanse of the once fertile delta. Photo by Erik Rochner/National Geographic

Walking the mudflats of the Colorado River Delta in northwestern Mexico, my feet touch silt and sediment that originated in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, hitchhiked with floodwaters through the Grand Canyon, and then, over the millennia, settled out here as the river slowed and meandered its way to the Gulf of California.

The delta defies all political borders and human constructs. Left to flow naturally, the Colorado River system is a connected and unified whole.

If a river is born with a destiny, it is to reach the sea. It carries sweet water, sediment, and nutrients to the coastal zone, where fisheries and marine life depend on it for sustenance and habitat. To disconnect a river from the sea is as consequential to the health of the ecosystem as it is to block the flow of blood to a vital organ in the human body: the whole suffers, and may die.

These thoughts roam my mind as the shoreline of El Golfo de Santa Clara, a small fishing town on the northeastern coast of the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), recedes from view. In a small, motorized boat, we are heading northwest into the Colorado River estuary.

There, before the big dams and diversions upstream, the river’s nutrient-rich freshwater mixed with the Gulf’s salty tides to form the perfect water chemistry and nursery grounds for Gulf corvina, totoaba, brown and blue shrimp, and other fisheries of commercial importance to the region’s economy and of cultural significance to the indigenous Cucapá.

But today no one is fishing in the estuary. It is illegal. The dozens of fishing boats that left El Golfo at dawn all headed south. The estuary is now part of a protected biosphere reserve and no-fishing zone, an attempt to give the fish – as well as the highly endangered vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise – a chance to revive their numbers.

A Rich Estuary

The Gulf corvina, totoaba, and vaquita are found only in the Gulf of California; all three are extremely vulnerable to extinction. Historically each winter, adult totoaba, which can weigh up to 200 pounds (91 kilograms), migrated northward along the eastern coast of the Gulf to the estuary and delta, where they remained until spawning in spring.

I keep my eyes peeled for a surprise spotting, but no totoaba appear.

We stop the boat and climb up a bank. We are calf-deep in a beautiful grass that gives a green hue to the mudflats along this portion of the Sonoran coast. It is nipa, the ancient grain of the Cucapá – and what biologists now call Distichlis palmeri, or Palmer’s saltgrass.

It, too, has suffered along with the fisheries from the absence of the Colorado’s flow. The saltgrass needs an inflow of freshwater to reproduce. It used to grow waist-high and yield a tastier and more nutritious seed. But without the pulses of freshwater, the native grass is stunted, less dense and lacking in flavor.

Back in El Golfo, we meet up with a fisherman, José Armando Sánchez Olivares, who has fished in the Gulf for more than a quarter century. A strong man, who has seen many hard-working days on the sea, he speaks of concern for his community and the livelihoods that sustain it. Fish catches and incomes have declined, he explains, and people are going elsewhere to find jobs.

Sanchez Olivares is aware of the new bi-national commitment to give some water back to the delta, and of the possibility it creates for the Colorado River to once again reach the sea.

“If we see the Colorado River flow again,” he says, “we are going to feel stronger; our town will have the will to carry on.”

The Gift of El Niño

More research is needed to determine the quantity, quality, and timing of freshwater flows needed to rejuvenate habitat for the fisheries of the upper Gulf. But after the flood pulses that occurred several times during the 1990s, when El Niño weather patterns delivered high precipitation to the Colorado Basin, scientists documented an increase in the Gulf corvina population. Shrimp harvests, too, got a boost after river flows reached the estuary.

Ecologist and nature writer Gary Paul Nabhan describes vividly what he saw when flying over the delta after the El Niño-driven flood pulse of 1993. His words speak of the resilience of life in the upper Gulf (the Alto Golfo) when freshwater flows return:

I did not recognize how important such nutrients and freshwater flows were to the productivity of the marine community until I flew over it during the winter of 1993, when nearly 5 billion cubic meters of water entered the Alto Golfo due to unusually high winter rainfall regimes triggered by El Niño…. I saw the most remarkable biological phenomenon I had witnessed over my entire life. Huge algal blooms and huge eelgrass yields had stimulated invertebrate reproduction and a resurgence of corvina to the degree that we could see massive green patches out in the sea, streaming with enormous schools of fish.

Thousands of dolphins and even whales had congregated around each of these patches of productivity. A feeding frenzy was going full tilt, the likes of which the Alto Golfo had experienced perhaps only five times over the previous thirty-five years.

The magnificent display Nabhan witnessed occurred just twenty years ago, long after the dams and diversions had begun siphoning off the yearly influx of water and nutrients so crucial to the Gulf’s fisheries. In this instance, El Niño was the benevolent provider. But it is unreliable: fifteen years have passed since a pulse of freshwater has reached the estuary and Upper Gulf.

The future of the fisheries, the town of El Golfo de Santa Clara, and the native saltgrass that sustained the Cucapá – as well as the rich diversity of birds and wildlife that thrive in the delta’s remnants wetlands – depend on whether the Colorado River is allowed to fulfill its destiny and once again reach the sea.

The answer is now largely in our hands.

This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta.

Help restore water to the Colorado River by joining Change the Course. Sign up online or text ‘River’ to 77177.

Originally published at National Geographic Newswatch

There's Only One Real Option for Averting Economic and Ecological Ruin -- So Why Aren't We Talking About It?

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:26:27 GMT

By Richard Heinberg, posted Apr 16, 2013:

The following excerpt is reprinted from the new book Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth, edited by Tom Butler and George Wuerthner, published by Post Carbon Institute and Watershed Media, in collaboration with the Foundation for Deep Ecology.

Energy conservation is our best strategy for pre-adapting to an inevitably energy-constrained future. And it may be our only real option for averting economic, social, and ecological ruin. The world will face limits to energy production in the decades ahead regardless of the energy pathway chosen by policy makers. Consider the two extreme options—carbon minimum and carbon maximum.

If we rebuild our global energy infrastructure to minimize carbon emissions, with the aim of combating climate change, this will mean removing incentives and subsidies from oil, coal, and gas and transferring them to renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal. Where fossil fuels are still used, we will need to capture and bury the carbon dioxide emissions.

We might look to nuclear power for a bit of help along the way, but it likely wouldn’t provide much. The Fukushima catastrophe in Japan in 2011 highlighted a host of unresolved safety issues, including spent fuel storage and vulnerability to extended grid power outages. Even ignoring those issues, atomic power is expensive, and supplies of high-grade uranium ore are problematic.

The low-carbon path is littered with other obstacles as well. Solar and wind power are plagued by intermittency, a problem that can be solved only with substantial investment in energy storage or long-distance transmission. Renewables currently account for only a tiny portion of global energy, so the low-carbon path requires a high rate of growth in that expensive sector, and therefore high rates of investment. Governments would have to jump-start the transition with regulations and subsidies—a tough order in a world where most governments are financially overstretched and investment capital is scarce.

For transport, the low-carbon option is even thornier. Biofuels suffer from problems of high cost and the diversion of agricultural land, the transition to electric cars will be expensive and take decades, and electric airliners are not feasible.

Carbon capture and storage will also be costly and will likewise take decades to implement on a meaningful scale. Moreover, the energy costs of building and operating an enormous new infrastructure of carbon dioxide pumps, pipelines, and compressors will be substantial, meaning we will be extracting more and more fossil fuels just to produce the same amount of energy useful to society—a big problem if fossil fuels are getting more expensive anyway. So, in the final analysis, a low-carbon future is also very likely to be a lower-energy future.

What if we forget about the climate? This might seem to be the path of least resistance. After all, fossil fuels have a history of being cheap and abundant, and we already have the infrastructure to burn them. If climate mitigation would be expensive and politically contentious, why not just double down on the high-carbon path we’re already on, in the pursuit of maximized economic growth? Perhaps, with enough growth, we could afford to overcome whatever problems a changing climate throws in our path.

Not a good option. The quandary we face with a high-carbon energy path can be summed up in the metaphor of the low-hanging fruit. We have extracted the highest quality, cheapest-to-produce, most accessible hydrocarbon resources first, and we have left the lower quality, expensive-to-produce, less accessible resources for later. Well, now it’s later. Enormous amounts of coal, oil, gas, and other fossil fuels still remain underground, but each new increment will cost significantly more to extract (in terms of both money and energy) than was the case only a decade ago.

After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 and the Middle East–North Africa uprisings of 2011, almost no one still believes that oil will be as cheap and plentiful in the future as it was decades ago. For coal, the wake-up call is coming from China—which now burns almost half the world’s coal and is starting to import enormous quantities, driving up coal prices worldwide. Meanwhile, recent studies suggest that global coal production will max out in the next few years and start to decline.

New extraction techniques for natural gas (horizontal drilling and “fracking”) have temporarily increased supplies of this fuel in the United States, but the companies that specialize in this “unconventional” gas appear to be subsisting on investment capital: Prices are currently too low to enable them to turn much of a profit on production. Costs of production and per-well depletion rates are high, and energy returns on the energy invested in production are low. Recent low prices resulted from a glut of production produced by rampant drilling in 2005–2007, which only made economic sense when gas prices were much higher than they are now. All of this suggests that rosy expectations for what “fracking” can produce over the long term are overblown.

Exotic hydrocarbons like gas hydrates, bitumen (“tar sands”), and kerogen (“oil shale”) will require extraordinary effort and investment for their development and will entail environmental risks even higher than those for conventional fossil fuels. That means more expensive energy. Even though the resource base is large, with current technology the nature of these materials means they can be produced only at relatively slow rates.

But if the hydrocarbon molecules are there and society needs the energy, won’t we just bite the bullet and come up with whatever levels of investment are required to keep energy flows growing at whatever rate we need them? Not necessarily. As we move toward lower-quality resources (conventional or unconventional), we have to use more energy to acquire energy. As net energy yields decline, both energy and investment capital have to be cannibalized from other sectors of society in order to keep extraction processes expanding. After a certain point, even if gross energy production is still climbing, the amount of energy yielded that is actually useful to society starts to decline anyway. From then on, it will be impossible to increase the amount of economically meaningful energy produced annually no matter what sacrifices we make. And the signs suggest we’re not far from that point.

In one sense it matters a great deal whether we choose the low-carbon or the high-carbon path: One way, we lay the groundwork for a sustainable (if modest) energy future; the other, we destabilize Earth’s climate, shackle ourselves ever more tightly to energy sources that can only become dirtier and more expensive as time goes on, and condemn myriad other species to extinction.

However, in another sense, it doesn’t matter which path we choose: With human population numbers growing and energy constraints looming, we will have less energy to burn per capita in the future. Plot any scenario between the low-carbon and high-carbon extremes and that conclusion still holds, which means less energy for transport, for agriculture, and for heating and cooling homes. Less energy for making and using electronic gadgets. Less energy for building and maintaining cities.

Efficiency can help us obtain greater services for each unit of energy expended. Research has been proceeding for decades on how to reduce energy inputs for all sorts of processes and activities. Just one example: The electricity needed for illumination has declined by up to 90 percent due to the introduction first of compact fluorescent light bulbs, and now LED lights. However, efficiency efforts are subject to the law of diminishing returns: We can’t make and transport goods with no energy, and each step toward greater efficiency typically costs more. Achieving 100 percent efficiency would, in theory, require infinite effort. So while we can increase efficiency and reduce total energy consumption, we can’t do those things and produce continual economic growth at the same time.

Humanity is at a crossroads. Since the Industrial Revolution, cheap and abundant energy has fueled constant economic growth. The only real discussion among the managerial elite was how to grow the economy—whether in planned or unplanned ways, whether with sensitivity to the natural world or without.

Now the discussion must center on how to contract. So far, that discussion is radioactive—no one wants to touch it. It’s hard to imagine a more suicidal strategy for a politician than to base his or her election campaign on the promise of economic contraction. Denial runs deep, but sooner or later reality will expose the delusion that endless growth is possible on a finite planet.

Sooner or later we must make conservation the centerpiece of economic and energy policy. The term “conservation” implies efficiency—building cars and appliances that use less energy while delivering the same services. But it also means cutting out nonessential uses of energy. Rather than continuing to increase economic demand by stimulating human wants, we must begin to think about how to meet basic human needs with minimum consumption of resources, while discouraging extravagance.

If we move toward renewable and intermittent energy sources, a larger portion of society’s effort will have to be spent on processes of energy capture. Energy production will require more land and a greater proportion of society’s total labor and investment. We will need more food producers, but fewer managers and salespeople. We will be less mobile, and each of us will own fewer manufactured products—though of higher quality—which we will reuse and repair as long as possible before replacing them.

The transition to a more durable and resilient but lower-energy economy will go much better if we plan it. Wherever it is possible for households and communities to pre-adapt, and wherever clever people are able to show innovative ways of meeting human needs with a minimum of consumption, there will be advantages to be enjoyed and shared.

Much of the current public discussion about our energy future tends to turn on the questions of which alternative energy sources to pursue and how to scale them up. But it is even more important to broadly reconsider how we use energy. We must strategize to meet basic human needs while using much less energy in all forms. Since this will require major societal effort sustained over decades, it is important to start implementation of conservation strategies well before actual energy shortages appear.

With regard to our food system, it is essential to understand that lower energy inputs will result in the need for increased labor. Thus the energy transition could represent economic opportunity for millions of young farmers. Agricultural production must be adapted to substantially reduced applications of nitrogen fertilizer and chemical pesticides and herbicides since these will grow increasingly expensive as their fossil fuel feedstocks rise in price. And higher transport energy costs mean that food systems must be substantially relocalized.

Transport systems must be adapted to a regime of generally lowered mobility and increased energy efficiency. This would most likely require widespread reliance on walking and bicycling, with remaining motorized transport facilitated by car-share and ride-share programs. Electric vehicles and rail-based public transport systems should be favored, and new highway construction halted.

Reduced overall mobility will require substantial changes in urban design practice and land use policies. Neighborhoods within cities must become more self-contained, and cities must be reintegrated with adjacent productive rural areas. Buildings—including tens of millions of homes in the United States alone—must be retrofitted with insulation to minimize the need for heating and cooling energy. New buildings must require net zero energy input. Incentives for installing residential solar hot water systems, and using solar cookers and clotheslines, should be effective and widespread.

Most new sources of energy will produce electricity—and in the cases of solar and wind, electricity will be produced only intermittently. Electricity storage systems (such as pumped water or compressed air) must be built to overcome at least some of the problems of intermittency. Reconfiguration of electricity grids, distributed generation, and alignment of household and industrial energy usage patterns to fit intermittent power availability are other strategies for adaptation.

The historically close relationship between increasing energy use and economic growth suggests that the global economy probably cannot continue to expand as world energy production falters. Therefore, adaptive measures must include efforts to restructure the economy to meet basic human needs and support improvements in quality of life while reducing debt and reliance on interest and investment income. Family planning must be encouraged, as adding more people to a stagnant or shrinking economy simply means there will be less for everyone.

The costs to ecological integrity and to human health of the ever-increasing scale of society’s production and transport systems have become the subject of broadening concern in recent decades. Air and water pollution, resource depletion, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss are just some of those costs. With reduced energy use must come the realization that the scale of our human presence on the planet must be appropriate to the Earth’s limited budgets of water, energy, and biological productivity.

Altogether, this will constitute a historic shift away from continual societal growth and toward conservation. It will not be undertaken except by necessity, but necessity is inevitably approaching. Barring some technological miracle, we will have less energy, like it or not. And with less energy, we will no longer be able to operate a consumer society. The kind of society we will be able to operate will almost certainly be as different from the industrial society of recent decades as that was from the agrarian society of the nineteenth century.

But suppose this analysis is wrong, or that a new miracle technology appears, and energy proves to be abundant rather than scarce. Even then, conservation makes sense: Increasing energy use leads to greater consumption of natural resources of all kinds, and the degradation of wild natural systems. Sooner or later we must rein in consumption—and since signs of ecological decline are already frighteningly prevalent, sooner is clearly better than later.

The shift to a conserver society could hold benefits for people as well as for nature. As we begin to measure success not by the amount of our consumption, but by the quality of our culture, the beauty of the built environment, and the health of ecosystems, we could end up being significantly happier than we are today, even as we leave a far smaller footprint upon our finite planet. But those benefits will be delayed and diluted for as long as we deny the conservation imperative.

Is the Keystone XL Pipeline the “Stonewall” of the Climate Movement?

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:13:41 GMT

By Bill McKibben, posted Apr 8, 2013:

It was certainly joyful to see marriage equality being considered by our top judicial body. In some ways, however, the most depressing spectacle of the week was watching Democratic leaders decide that, in 2013, it was finally safe to proclaim gay people actual human beings. In one weekend, Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia figured out that they had “evolved” on the issue. And Bill Clinton, the greatest weathervane who ever lived, finally decided that the Defense of Marriage Act he had signed into law, boasted about in ads on Christian radio, and urged candidate John Kerry to defend as constitutional in 2004, was, you know, wrong. He, too, had “evolved,” once the polls made it clear that such an evolution was a safe bet.

Why recite all this history? Because for me, the hardest part of the Keystone pipeline fight has been figuring out what in the world to do about the Democrats.

Fiddling While the Planet Burns

Let’s begin by stipulating that, taken as a whole, they’re better than the Republicans. About a year ago, in his initial campaign ad of the general election, Mitt Romney declared that his first act in office would be to approve Keystone and that, if necessary, he would “build it myself.” (A charming image, it must be said). Every Republican in the Senate voted on a nonbinding resolution to approve the pipeline -- every single one. In other words, their unity in subservience to the fossil fuel industry is complete, and almost compelling. At the least, you know exactly what you’re getting from them.

With the Democrats, not so much. Seventeen of their Senate caucus -- about a third -- joined the GOP in voting to approve Keystone XL. As the Washington insider website Politico proclaimed in a headline the next day, “Obama’s Achilles Heel on Climate: Senate Democrats.”

Which actually may have been generous to the president. It’s not at all clear that he wants to stop the Keystone pipeline (though he has the power to do so himself, no matter what the Senate may want), or for that matter do anything else very difficult when it comes to climate change. His new secretary of state, John Kerry, issued a preliminary environmental impact statement on the pipeline so fraught with errors that it took scientists and policy wonks about 20 minutes to shred its math.

Administration insiders keep insisting, ominously enough, that the president doesn’t think Keystone is a very big deal. Indeed, despite his amped-up post-election rhetoric on climate change, he continues to insist on an “all-of-the-above” energy policy which, as renowned climate scientist James Hansen pointed out in his valedictory shortly before retiring from NASA last week, simply can’t be squared with basic climate-change math.

All these men and women have excuses for their climate conservatism. To name just two: the oil industry has endless resources and they’re scared about reelection losses. Such excuses are perfectly realistic and pragmatic, as far as they go: if you can’t get re-elected, you can’t do even marginal good and you certainly can’t block right-wing craziness. But they also hide a deep affection for oil industry money, which turns out to be an even better predictor of voting records than party affiliation.

Anyway, aren’t all those apologias wearing thin as Arctic sea ice melts with startling, planet-changing speed? It was bad enough to take four decades simply to warm up to the idea of gay rights. Innumerable lives were blighted in those in-between years, and given long-lasting official unconcern about AIDS, innumerable lives were lost. At least, however, inaction didn’t make the problem harder to solve: if the Supreme Court decides gay people should be able to marry, then they’ll be able to marry.

Unlike gay rights or similar issues of basic human justice and fairness, climate change comes with a time limit. Go past a certain point, and we may no longer be able to affect the outcome in ways that will prevent long-term global catastrophe. We’re clearly nearing that limit and so the essential cowardice of too many Democrats is becoming an ever more fundamental problem that needs to be faced. We lack the decades needed for their positions to “evolve” along with the polling numbers. What we need, desperately, is for them to pitch in and help lead the transition in public opinion and public policy.

Instead, at best they insist on fiddling around the edges, while the planet prepares to burn. The newly formed Organizing for Action, for instance -- an effort to turn Barack Obama’s fundraising list into a kind of quasi-official MoveOn.org -- has taken up climate change as one of its goals. Instead of joining with the actual movement around the Keystone pipeline or turning to other central organizing issues, however, it evidently plans to devote more energy to house parties to put solar panels on people’s roofs. That’s great, but there’s no way such a “movement” will profoundly alter the trajectory of climate math, a task that instead requires deep structural reform of exactly the kind that makes the administration and Congressional “moderates” nervous.

Energy Independence: Last Century’s Worry

So far, the Democrats are showing some willingness to face the issues that matter only when it comes to coal. After a decade of concentrated assault by activists led by the Sierra Club, the coal industry is now badly weakened: plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants have disappeared from anyone’s drawing board. So, post-election, the White House finally seems willing to take on the industry at least in modest ways, including possibly with new Environmental Protection Agency regulations that could start closing down existing coal-fired plants (though even that approach now seems delayed).

Recently, I had a long talk with an administration insider who kept telling me that, for the next decade, we should focus all our energies on “killing coal.” Why? Because it was politically feasible.

And indeed we should, but climate-change science makes it clear that we need to put the same sort of thought and creative energy into killing oil and natural gas, too. I mean, the Arctic -- from Greenland to its seas -- essentially melted last summer in a way never before seen. The frozen Arctic is like a large physical feature. It’s as if you woke up one morning and your left arm was missing. You’d panic.

There is, however, no panic in Washington. Instead, the administration and Democratic moderates are reveling in new oil finds in North Dakota and in the shale gas now flowing out of Appalachia, even though exploiting both of these energy supplies is likely to lock us into more decades of fossil fuel use. They’re pleased as punch that we’re getting nearer to “energy independence.” Unfortunately, energy independence was last century’s worry. It dates back to the crises set off by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in the early 1970s, not long after… Stonewall.

So what to do? The narrow window of opportunity that physics provides us makes me doubt that a third party will offer a fast enough answer to come to terms with our changing planet. The Green Party certainly offered the soundest platform in our last elections, and in Germany and Australia the Greens have been decisive in nudging coalition governments towards carbon commitments. But those are parliamentary systems. Here, so far, national third parties have been more likely to serve as spoilers than as wedges (though it’s been an enlightening pleasure to engage with New York’s Working Families Party, or the Progressives in Vermont). It’s not clear to me how that will effectively lead to changes during the few years we’ve got left to deal with carbon. Climate science enforces a certain brute realism. It makes it harder to follow one’s heart.

Along with some way to make a third party truly viable, we need a genuine movement for fundamental governmental reform -- not just a change in the Senate’s filibuster rules, but publicly funded elections, an end to the idea that corporations are citizens, and genuine constraints on revolving-door lobbyists. These are crucial matters, and it is wonderful to see broad new campaigns underway around them. It’s entirely possible that there’s no way to do what needs doing about climate change in this country without them. But even their most optimistic proponents talk in terms of several election cycles, when the scientists tell us that we have no hope of holding the rise in the planetary temperature below two degrees unless global emissions peak by 2015.

Of course, climate-change activists can and should continue to work to make the Democrats better. At the moment, for instance, the 350.org action fund is organizing college students for the Massachusetts primary later this month. One senatorial candidate, Steven Lynch, voted to build the Keystone pipeline, and that’s not okay. Maybe electing his opponent, Ed Markey, will send at least a small signal. In fact, this strategy got considerably more promising in the last few days when California hedge fund manager and big-time Democratic donor Tom Steyer announced that he was not only going to go after Lynch, but any politician of any party who didn’t take climate change seriously. “The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people,” he said, demonstrating precisely the level of rhetoric (and spending) that might actually start to shake things up.

It will take a while, though. According to press reports, Obama explained to the environmentalists at a fundraiser Steyer hosted that “the politics of this are tough,” because “if your house is still underwater,” then global warming is “probably not rising to your number one concern.”

By underwater, he meant: worth less than the mortgage. At this rate, however, it won’t be long before presidents who use that phrase actually mean “underwater.” Obama closed his remarks by saying something that perfectly summed up the problem of our moment. Dealing with climate change, he said, is “going to take people in Washington who are willing to speak truth to power, are willing to take some risks politically, are willing to get a little bit out ahead of the curve -- not two miles ahead of the curve, but just a little bit ahead of it.”

That pretty much defines the Democrats: just a little bit ahead, not as bad as Bush, doing what we can.

And so, as I turn this problem over and over in my head, I keep coming to the same conclusion: we probably need to think, most of the time, about how to change the country, not the Democrats. If we build a movement strong enough to transform the national mood, then perhaps the trembling leaders of the Democrats will eventually follow. I mean, “evolve.” At which point we’ll get an end to things like the Keystone pipeline, and maybe even a price on carbon. That seems to be the lesson of Stonewall and of Selma. The movement is what matters; the Democrats are, at best, the eventual vehicle for closing the deal.

The closest thing I’ve got to a guru on American politics is my senator, Bernie Sanders. He deals with the Democrat problem all the time. He’s an independent, but he caucuses with them, which means he’s locked in the same weird dance as the rest of us working for real change.

A few weeks ago, I gave the keynote address at a global warming summit he convened in Vermont’s state capital, and afterwards I confessed to him my perplexity. “I can’t think of anything we can do except keep trying to build a big movement,” I said. “A movement vast enough to scare or hearten the weak-kneed.”

“There’s nothing else that’s ever going to do it,” he replied.

And so, down to work.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, founder of the global climate campaign 350.org, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

Image credit: Climate demo-350.org/flickr

The Accidental Wetland in the Colorado Delta

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:26:00 GMT

By Simone, posted Apr 4, 2013:

Wellton-Mohawk Canal Seen here at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Wellton-Mohawk Canal carries drainage water from an Arizona irrigation district sixty miles into the Colorado River Delta in Mexico. There it gives life to an accidental wetland called La Ciénega de Santa Clara, one of the most ecologically significant wetlands in North America. Photo by Erik Rochner/National Geographic

Traveling south from the Mexican border town of San Luis Rio Colorado, we stop about 20 miles (32.2 km) from the Upper Gulf of California. It feels like the middle of nowhere.

We’re surrounded by vast stretches of cracked, dried-out mudflats layered with salt. Although we’re in the historical floodplain of the mighty Colorado River, there is no water, no vegetation, and no sign of life at all.

“Thousands of acres look just like this,” says Osvel Hinojosa Huerta, an ecologist with the Mexican conservation organization, Pronatura Noroeste, and a National Geographic Explorer.

As we travel on through the barrenness, I take in what the delta has become from eighty years of damming and diverting this iconic river.

Then suddenly – like a mirage in the desert – an oasis appears. Marshes of cattails and bulrushes and a maze of lagoons open up before us. As if out of nowhere, birds come into view. Fishing boats sit hitched to a wooden dock.

We have arrived at La Ciénega de Santa Clara, one of the largest and most significant wetlands in the entire Colorado River Basin. It would be no exaggeration to say it is one of the most important desert wetlands in all of North America. Its 40,000 acres (16,000 hectares) of marshes and mudflats support 280 species of birds, including the elusive and endangered Yuma clapper rail. Some 300,000 migratory birds spend their winters here.

It is a magnificent, almost magical marshland – and it was created completely by accident.

A Wetland’s Humble Beginnings

On an ordinary day in 1977, Juan Butrón, who resides in the nearby community of Ejido Luis Encinas Johnson, stumbled upon a large canal transporting water into the delta not far from his home. He followed it to its terminus. There, he was astonished to find a shallow lake spread out before him. It had formed where the canal discharged salty drainage water into the barren delta.

Soon, fish arrived. Butrón, his family and others from the local community began to picnic, boat and catch fish there.

Before long, cattails and bulrushes sprung up, turning the lake into a maze of marshes and lagoons. By 1988, the cattail marsh spanned about 7,000 acres. A dozen years later, when I first visited the Ciénega, the marshes had nearly doubled in size. Today, they still cover about 14,000 acres of what had previously been desiccated earth.

“I saw her growing,” Butrón said of the Ciénega. “I brought my sons here when they were young. The Ciénega is part of my family.”

The canal Butrón discovered originates in the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District, a farming region in southern Arizona. In the sixties, Mexican officials complained to their northern neighbor that the salty drainage from the district, which was being mixed with Colorado River water and delivered to Mexico as part of its river allocation, was killing farmers’ crops.

U. S. officials responded by building a 60-mile long canal and discharging 108,000 acre-feet (equal to 0.7 percent of the Colorado’s historic annual flow) of agricultural wastewater from the irrigation district into the delta each year.

Little did they know that they would inadvertently create one of the most amazing and ecologically significant wetlands in all of North America.

“It is so resilient,” says Hinojosa Huerta, who has been studying the delta for more than fifteen years. “Life just wants to return here.”

Rich Diversity of Life

We climb into boats and ply the marshes. American coots glide along the water’s surface. A small riot of bird sounds erupts from the cattails. Out on the sandbars, black-neck stilts do their circus walks and long-billed dowitchers poke deep into the mud for snacks.

Then, from some distant corner of cattails comes a “keck, keck, keck, keck.” Osvel turns to me, and whispers, “a clapper rail.”

Hinojosa Huerta is an expert on the Yuma clapper rail, now an endangered bird due to the loss of its habitat along the Colorado River and Delta. Every year since 1998, he has organized surveys to assess Mexico’s clapper rail population. He estimates that some 6,000-7,000 individuals live here in the Ciénega, about three-quarters of the global population.

As the setting sun turns the desert sky into a quilt of brilliant reds and oranges, a pair of northern shovelers flies by. Huge flocks of swallows loop and swoop through the air, as if crowd-sourcing their fun.

For just a moment I am carried back to 1922, the year the great conservationist Aldo Leopold canoed through this portion of the delta with his brother Carl. I savor a taste of the “milk and honey wilderness” and “land of a hundred green lagoons” that Leopold described years later in a moving essay in his masterwork, A Sand County Almanac.

The river that for Leopold was “nowhere and everywhere” as it meandered its way toward the sea is long gone. But here in La Ciénega de Santa Clara— sustained by salty farm drainage that could be cut off in a flash–- is a precious reminder of the delta’s former glory, and honest hope for its resurrection.

This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta.

Originally posted at National Geographic Newswatch

The Coming Crash: Our Addiction to Endless Growth on a Finite Planet

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:30:02 GMT

By Tara Lohan, posted Apr 1, 2013:

Tara Lohan author of Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource interviews Richard Heinberg about ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth.

If you want to understand how much energy costs, don't look at your electric bill; instead get a copy of the new book Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth. This massive coffee table book contains hundreds of arresting images showing the effects of our energy choices, including oil spills, nuclear accidents, massive solar arrays, tar sands mines, fracking operations, transmission lines, and more. The photos are complemented by essays from leading writers like Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, Sandra Steingraber, Douglas Tompkins, Bill McKibben, Lester Brown and many others, which put into context our growing energy problems and what we can do about them.

The book is a collaboration of great minds, including editors Tom Butler and George Wuerthner and contributing author Richard Heinberg. It's also a partnership between the Post Carbon Institute and the Foundation for Deep Ecology, co-published by PCI and Watershed Media.

While the book delves greatly into different energy sources and their limitations, the heart of the book is really not so much about what kinds of energy we use but how much. To get a clearer understanding of this AlterNet spoke with contributing writer Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at PCI and the author of numerous books including The End of Growth: Adapting to our New Economic Reality (June 2011),Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (2009) and Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines(2007).

Tara Lohan: How did this book project come about? I know it started out as a book about tar sands, but then it evolved into so much more.

Richard Heinberg: The economy is all about energy. Almost all of our environmental issues relate to energy in one way or another. Certainly, climate change does. War and peace, it's all about energy. Upping the energy literacy of the American people and thought leaders is a pretty high priority.

TL: Explain a little bit more what you mean by energy literacy, because I know you talk about that in the book as well.

RH: Well, surprisingly few people have really looked at or thought about or studied what energy is. It's in all of our lives. We all depend on it for everything we do, but energy is pretty allusive. You can't hold a jar of pure energy in your hands. Useful energy comes to us in various forms. All of these different forms of energy, whether it's coal, oil, natural gas, wind, hydropower, nuclear, each has its own characteristics. Environmental characteristics. Economic characteristics. It takes a while to sort of wrap your head around all of that, and there are some basic concepts like the laws of thermodynamics. The ideas of energy density and return on energy investment that are absolutely fundamental to evaluating different forms and sources of energy.

Again, not too many people have really studied or given much thought to these. Well, over the course of the next few years, we're going to be making absolutely critical decisions about our energy future, our environmental future and our economic future. Unless we have these basic elements of energy literacy, unless more of us understand the criteria by which to evaluate these different sources of energy, we're going to get a lot of things wrong. We think energy literacy is really important.

TL: Right, it's not as easy as just replacing all the coal and oil with solar and wind, because they differ in terms of the energy returned on energy invested.

RH: There's actually a good article on that in the current issue of Scientific American that has some neat infographics. This becomes a real issue in energy sources that have very low returns like biofuels and also unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands and shale gas and tight oil. These sources of energy can be profitable in certain situations, especially if there are government subsidies or if Wall Street gets interested and attracts a lot of investment capital, but these are energy sources that are not going to be able to support an industrial society absent other sources of energy that have a higher return on investment.

If all we had to power society were tar sands, biofuels, shale gas and tight oil, society would basically come apart at the seams because we'd be having to put so much of our effort into producing energy that we wouldn't have much energy left over at the end of the day to do all the things we need energy for like education, healthcare, transportation, trade. All of those things use energy. They don't produce energy. We need a very substantial energy surplus from the energy that we do invest in getting more energy. These sources just aren't up to the job.

TL: It seems like there's an increasing industrialization in order to get there, too. I'm thinking about what the footprint looks like for a conventional natural gas well as opposed to a well that's being fracked.

RH: Right. It's a lower quality resource. The shale gas is produced from rocks with very low porosity. The gas just doesn't want to migrate to the wellbore. That's why they have to apply technologies like hydrofracturing and horizontal drilling. That increases the contact between the wellbore and the resource, but at the end of the day, we may have changed technology, but we haven't changed the rocks themselves. What we get are very high decline rates. If you drill a shale gas well on January 1st, by December 31st of the same year, the rate of production of that well may already have fallen by 70 percent or 80 percent.

That means we have to drill and drill and drill in order to keep overall production rates flat or increasing. That means thousands, tens of thousands, even ultimately perhaps hundreds of thousands of wells. This is costly, of course, but it's also extremely environmentally risky. If we were only drilling a few wells, there would only be a few water tables to put at risk of pollution and probably only a few accidents. But if, let's say, 6 percent or 7 percent of well casings end up being faulty, which is according to research, a pretty fair estimate, we're talking about thousands of wells that are going to be leaking methane and other chemicals and toxics into water and air.

Unless this is understood, people really don't have a basis for making good decisions.

TL: Unfortunately, most of the conversation seems to revolve around the economic benefits and the amount of job creation.

RH: Right and highly misleading information is being spread to the media and the American people. The companies that are engaged in fracking have a lot at stake. The price of their shares, the availability of investment capital and so they tend to overestimate future production fairly dramatically. We've done some independent research based on crunching numbers from about 65,000 oil and gas wells in the U.S. The result of that research is we see a peak and decline in shale gas production in the U.S. well before 2020. On one hand, you have the industry saying we have 100 years and in some cases they even say we have 200 years of cheap natural gas in front of us. The reality is production is probably going to start declining within the next very few years.

Again, when policy makers only listen to the voice of the industry, they get highly skewed information and make bad decisions.

TL: Is that looking at the production of what we're doing right now? Or does that include projections for areas we haven't hit yet, like parts of the Marcellus shale?

RH: The Marcellus, yes, has yet to be drilled out fully, but there are other shale gas plays that are already pretty much fully drilled out and already in decline, such as the Barnett in Texas.

TL: You wrote that our population is seven times larger now than it was before the Industrial Revolution, but even more troubling is that we use 30 times more energy. To me, that gets to the heart of what the problem is. It's not just the kinds of energy we're using, but how much we're using.

RH: Exactly. Using more energy gives us a lot of power as a species. We've developed the ability to extract and transform all sorts of other resources, including minerals and metals. We've increased our speed and scope of transport and trade, all because we've had cheap, concentrated, portable energy sources, primarily fossil fuels. We just have to figure out how to get more and more energy all the time and progress can go on indefinitely. The reality is we live on a finite planet.

Energy production has costs and trade-offs. We won't be able to continue increasing the rate of extraction of fossil fuels much longer. Other sources of energy are in some ways seemingly, if not infinite, at least very, very large -- like the amount of sunlight striking the earth on an average day is virtually infinite in comparison with the amount of energy that we use. Our means of capturing sunlight and wind and other renewable sources of energy are themselves dependent upon other finite resources. You have to build wind turbines out of something. You would have to use minerals and metals to make solar panels.

At the end of the day, we have to somehow make peace with the fact that the earth is not just a giant cookie jar that is going to give us everything we want. We have to moderate our demand for energy and everything else so that it's commensurate with Earth's ability to supply our wants and needs. Now, currently our energy consumption is vast in comparison with our energy consumption at any previous time in history. Also, it's extremely uneven. Americans use twice as much energy as people in Europe per capita, and 10 or 100 times as much as people in less industrialized countries.

First of all we're going to have to find ways of bringing energy consumption up somewhat in those countries where people are poorest, but in the wealthiest countries, it's extremely unlikely that we'll be able to grow energy production and it's in fact very likely that available energy is going to decline. We need to learn how to live with less energy, and that doesn't require so much inventing a lot of new gadgets as getting back to reality, getting back to normal. Accepting a lifestyle of less mobility and finding ways to use the energy that we do use in the most efficient way as possible.

TL: We talk about using less energy, having less economic growth -- what does that look like on a long-term scale? I mean, most people would associate less economic growth with recessions and depressions, which usually aren't very popular. How do we get people to move in that direction, not just individually, but as a society?

RH: Well, less economic growth translates to recession and depression in highly financialized economies, such as we have today where the economy booms and busts on a regular basis due to fads and manias in the financial industry. It wasn't always quite this way. Prior to the last 100 years or so, we really didn't anticipate constant economic growth. It just wasn't a feature of anyone's thinking. It's really only the last few decades when we've had such cheap energy that economists have gotten the idea that somehow economic growth is normal, and if it's not happening, there's something terribly wrong. We need to essentially get back to normal, and normal is a non-growing economy. A steady-state economy in which we pursue goals of human well-being, rather than goals of pure financial speculative enrichment.

There are a number of economists who have been talking about this for some time. The idea of a steady-state economy and a getting off of GDP -- of using alternative indicators, like gross national happiness or a genuine progress indicator. If we did that, I think we could have a way of life that is not only satisfying, but also secure and stable over the long term. Unfortunately, I think we sort of boxed ourselves into a corner in the last while by growing the financial industry to such a scale that it's just cutting it down to size. It's going to be a shock to the system.

TL: It makes so much sense to think, of course, we have to conserve more and we have to use less energy, but then I'm picturing what that actually looks like. I'm seeing a growing movement against climate change and forces coming out against the Keystone pipeline. I'm wondering how you translate that kind of public support for something like conservation.

RH: Right. Well, there are people all over the place who already understand the benefits of downsizing, cutting back, becoming more self-sufficient. Those benefits are both economic and also psychological. If we're sharing more with our neighbors, that means we're consuming less. Now, that's bad for the economy because it reduces overall consumption and it shows up as a hit in GDP.

If you're sharing more with your neighbors, you're actually happier. We've gotten ourselves into this bizarre situation where if we do what's actually good for us, which is to become more self-sufficient, to consume less and to share more, we hurt the economy. We have to make a fundamental choice here as to what the economy is for. Is it for growth at all costs? Is it all about consuming more and more until the day we die? Or is it about health and happiness and a sense of community?

TL: I remember a few years ago everyone talking about, "Oh, we're running out of fossil fuels, and this is going to be catastrophic unless we make a change." But now it seems like, "Well, yeah maybe we're hitting a peak at some point, but we have more than enough to do ourselves in."

How do we get companies to start leaving these fossil fuels in the ground?

RH: Well, I think what's going on with the Keystone XL pipeline is indicative of the pushback that is coming increasingly from citizens. There's a rapidly growing awareness that climate change is not a theoretical problem that we may have to deal with in a generation or two. It's a profound challenge to the very existence of civilization. If we don't do something about climate change, then future generations, if they even exist, will look back upon us with little kindness.

With that growing awareness, there's this pervasive sense that this is the issue of our times. Either we get off of fossil fuels as rapidly as we can or we may not have a future. The fossil fuel industry is made up of human beings, and they're engaged in work that seems to benefit society in so many tangible ways. It supports the economy. It provides the fuel for our cars and trucks. These aren't evil people, but it's an industry that has outlived its real usefulness to society. As a society, we have to find a polite way to say thank you, but no more.

TL: It's hard considering the strength of the lobby that they seem to have.

RH: Right. I know. There are some I know in the environmental movement who believe that it's necessary to demonize the industry. Frankly, it's an entirely understandable stance because the industry has invested large amounts of money in astroturf organizations and front groups to deny the existence of climate change or to fight off the idea of peak oil. There's a natural adversarial situation there, but in the end we are all in this together, and the CEO of Exxon's grandchildren are going to suffer just as much under climate change as anyone else.

TL: You guys do a fantastic job of pointing at how destructive so many different kinds of fossil fuels are, including things that probably a lot of people don't know about, like oil sands and tar sands and gas hydrates. You also don't give a free pass to renewables either or a lot of the things many of us consider clean energy sources. In that category of things, which do you think look like places that we should be focusing our attention and our resources?

RH: There are certain renewables like biofuels that just haven't made the cut because of the low energy return, because it really doesn't make sense to turn food into fuel for cars. Biofuels are essentially a failure. That's not so much true with wind and solar. The energy return is relatively low compared to fossil fuels, especially in the past, but it's good enough to enable us to maintain an industrial society of some sort into the future. As technology advances, we may be able to get better energy returns. I don't know. We'll see. But these are certainly worth pursuing.

Now the question is, on what scale and in what way? If we develop renewables with the same kind of centralized industrial model that we have with coal and other fossil fuels, then we end up with unacceptable trade-offs. We end up paving over deserts with solar arrays. We end up destroying natural scenery with wind farms. When what we could do is deploy renewables in a decentralized and distributed way that would preserve environments and maintain more citizen control of the power system.

Now if we do that, of course, we are going to have to accept a future of less energy, but we argue that that's a trade-off that's worth making. We will have less energy in either case, but if we choose voluntarily to go down that path and opt for a distributed energy future, we have both more control and a cleaner environment.

TL: In all the research you've done for this book and the many previous books that you've written, what is it that scares you the most?

RH: First of all, just the speed with which climate change is happening, I think, has got to be the scariest thing. I mean, even just a few years ago we weren't anticipating the total loss of the polar ice cap in summer months so soon. It may be ice-free by 2015. The implications of that are so vast. I don't think anybody has really been able to process them.

The environmental impacts of producing lower-grade fossil fuels. As we deplete the higher-grade fossil fuels, the conventional oil and gas and the high concentrations of coal, energy prices go up. As the price of oil goes up, for example, then it becomes cost-effective to mine tar sands or to frack North Dakota.

The environmental consequences and risks are staggeringly high. It's turning neighbor against neighbor, community against community. As some win big by selling the drilling rights to their property and others lose by having their water and air contaminated, it's a pretty grim situation. We've seen boom towns before all through history and particularly in the early 20th century. There were lots of oil boom towns in the American South and Southwest, and those are ghost towns today. I think we're going to see the same process work its way out in very short order and some places that seem to be benefitting so much from drilling and mining right now are going to be pretty sad places in just a few years.

TL: What is it that gives you hope?

RH: What gives me hope is things like the transition town movement where people are coming together and finding ways to cooperate, to reduce their energy consumption, whether it's with local food or car share programs. Not waiting for government to tell them what to do or to pass legislation to make it easier to do what we need to do which is useless. There are small organizations all over the country that have risen up in response to fracking and pipeline issues. These are very often people who would never have thought of themselves as being environmentalists.

They're maybe responding to problems with their drinking water or air quality or hundreds of trucks rumbling past on their way to the drill pads, and they suddenly find themselves in harm's way and they decided to fight. I think that's a very positive thing.

People are waking up and rising up and doing hard things because they realize that everything is at stake. It's really the most important moment in all of human history; if we consciously and deliberately move away from our dependence on fossil fuels, we have the opportunity of reinventing civilization. If we don't, civilization probably won't survive.

Originally published at Alternet, in parternship with Global Possibilities.

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Beijing Syndrome

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:20:21 GMT

By Tom Whipple, posted Mar 25, 2013:

As the term “China syndrome” has already been taken, I am terming what is happening in the country these days the “Beijing syndrome,” for China’s capital seems to be shaping up as the epicenter of a great upheaval to come. A “syndrome” is a group of symptoms that, when taken together, point to a more serious underlying disease; which, of course, is what we see emerging in the contention between China’s rapid growth and its environment.

Thirty-five years ago, after China got over its bout of “cultural revolutions” and “great leaps forward” to become serious about economic growth, numerous reforms were undertaken. China’s leaders obviously got something right, for their economy grew in the vicinity of 10 percent or better for most of the intervening years and became the envy of the world – at least until recently.

We all know that economic growth requires the consumption of energy at roughly the same pace as GDP increases, and indeed this is what has happened in China. Although the Chinese built lots of dams for hydropower, drilled lots of oil and gas wells, and in recent years imported lots of oil, some 70 percent of the primary energy that powers its rapidly growing economy comes from extremely dirty coal. Indeed since 2000, China’s coal consumption has increased threefold and is now over 4 billion short tons a year, nearly half the world’s coal consumption. Beijing plans to increase this consumption to 4.4 billion short tons in 2015. They are going to need it because they apparently plan to build another 360 coal-fired power plants in the foreseeable future.

China is also on track to consume about 10 million b/d of oil this year, slightly more that half that of the US. The Chinese, however, currently are selling themselves 20 million new cars and trucks a year (and there are not many trade-ins) so unless there is a major turn of events they will be up with the US’s oil consumption in another decade or so.

All this, of course, ignores the dark side. Like many other industrially developing countries in the last 200 years, China largely ignored the ever-accumulating environmental problems brought about by its policy of growth-at-any-cost. Five years ago during the Beijing Olympics, China’s government was forced to take draconian measures to insure that the air was at least minimally acceptable for athletes and visitors, but after the event restrictions were relaxed and growth of coal-fired boilers and motor vehicles continued unchecked.

China now has a number of very serious environmental problems that, when projected ahead for a few decades, likely add up to a country that will be partially uninhabitable for its 1.3 billion + citizens. These problems can be summed up as air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, desertification, and climate change. The litanies of woes in each of these areas are too long to recount here but they add up to a growing numbers of premature deaths from cancer, respiratory and other illnesses, and the forced movements of peoples from their traditional homes.

Someday historians might tell us that the trigger for a major change in China’s environmental policies was the great smog of January 2013, when for 19 days the air was too unsafe to venture outdoors. The interesting thing about air pollution is that it affects all living things that breathe – from the most elite to the most humble, with only a handful able to enjoy the luxury of filtered air. When the troubles become this widespread, and without an immediate solution in sight, a paradigm change has occurred.

In the last two months, numerous top Chinese officials have stated that there must be a change in policy. At the recent National Peoples Congress fully a third of the delegates refused to rubber stamp meaningless environmental reports – a unprecedented development showing how seriously China’s elite is taking this matter.

For now, Beijing has responded to its pollution crisis with the obvious steps. It is closing down coal-fired boilers in the capital. It is nearly impossible to license a new car in the city (electric ones are OK, however). Cleaner diesel is to be produced. The share of hydro, wind, and solar power is to be stepped up. Energy efficiency is to be increased. The question is whether these are Band-Aids for a country that still seeks to grow its GDP at 8 percent a year into the indefinite future.

Much of what is being proposed will only clean up the dirt in the air and will do little about carbon emissions, which threaten to eventually result in flooding of China’s coastal cities. Polluted water is still a bigger problem. About 40 percent of China’s farmland is irrigated from underground aquifers, about 90 percent of which are believed to be polluted. While recent surveys of water and soil pollution are treated by the government as “state secrets,” Beijing recently admitted that there are “cancer villages” with extremely high rates of the disease due to nearby industrial pollution.

In the US and Europe, the most egregious forms of air and water pollution as seen in China today were largely dealt with through regulation 40 or 50 years ago. The carbon emission question, which is more subtle as the effects are latent, continues to be a matter of debate in the US. In China, however, there are obviously serious problems staring everyone in the face, especially the growing middle class.

Currently we have vows from the new leaders that something will be done. The problem will come when reducing pollution to safe levels clashes with the cherished 8+ percent growth rate. Given new and different technologies, it might be possible to have both someday; for the immediate future it seems unlikely that the measures announced so far will reverse the numerous problems. Beijing has a syndrome that could engulf us all.

Originally published at Falls Church News Press

Beijing smog image: BBC

Victory at Hand for the Climate Movement?

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:52:40 GMT

By Paul Gilding, posted Mar 20, 2013:

There are signs the climate movement could be on the verge of a remarkable and surprising victory. If we read the current context correctly, and if the movement can adjust its strategy to capture the opportunity presented, it could usher in the fastest and most dramatic economic transformation in history. This would include the removal of the oil, coal and gas industries from the economy in just a few decades and their replacement with new industries and, for the most part, entirely new companies. It would be the greatest transfer of wealth and power between industries and countries the world has ever seen.

To understand this incredible potential we first have to step back and understand the unique structure of this social change movement, which may rank among the most influential in history. It is simplistic to characterise it as an alliance of grass roots organisations and activists pitched against a rich and well connected adversary. While that is part of the story, it is more accurately understood as an idea whose tentacles reach into every tier of government, the world’s largest companies and financial institutions, and throughout the academic and science communities.

Because of this, it is winning the battle from within: Its core arguments and ideas are clearly right; being endorsed by the world’s top science bodies and any significant organisation that has examined them.

Far from being at society’s margins it has the support, to various degrees, of virtually all governments, and many of the world’s most powerful political leaders, including the heads of state of the USA, China and other leading economies. It counts the CEO’s of many global companies and many of the world’s wealthiest people as active supporters – who between them direct hundreds of billions of dollars of capital every year towards practical climate action. And of course, this comes on top of one of the most global, best funded, broadly based and bottom up community campaigns we have ever seen.

That is the reality of the climate movement – it is massive, global, powerful, and on the right side of history.

So why, many ask, has it so far not succeeded in its objective of reducing CO2 emissions? Much has been written on this topic but most of it is wrong. It is simply an incredibly big job to turn on its head the global economy’s underpinning energy system. And so it has taken a while. Considering how long other great social movements took to have an impact – such as equality for women or the end of slavery and civil rights movements – then what’s surprising is not that the climate movement hasn’t yet succeeded. What’s surprising is how far its come and how deeply it has become embedded in such a short time.

And now is the moment when it’s greatest success might be about to be realised – and just in time.

We are at the most important moment in this movement’s history – in the midst of two simultaneous tipping points that create the opportunity, if we respond correctly, to win – eliminating net CO₂ emissions from the economy and securing a stable climate, though still a changed one.

I have come to this conclusion after reflecting on a year when an avalanche of new knowledge and indicators made both tipping points clear. The first and perhaps the best understood is the rapid acceleration in climate impacts, reinforcing the view many hold that the scientific consensus on climate has badly underestimated the timing and scale of climate impacts. The melting of the Arctic Sea Ice, decades before expected, was the poster child of this but extreme weather and temperature records across the world, notably in the USA, suggested this Arctic melting is a symptom of accelerating system change.

It also became clear that this was literally just the “warm up” act – that we are currently heading for a global temperature increase of 4°C or more, double the agreed target.

In response came a series of increasingly dire warnings from conservative bodies like the International Energy Agency, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Perhaps most colourfully, the IMF chief and former conservative French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, said that without strong action “future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled”. The World Bank was similarly blunt about the economic consequences of our current path: “there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible.”

These and other reports laid out the evidence that the only option was transformational economic change because the alternative was simply unmanageable. Action was no longer a preferred outcome but an essential one. As the World Bank said “the projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur”. Even the IEA, historically a kind of advocate in chief for the fossil fuel industry, came on board, pointing out that a stable climate and economy requires the majority of the global reserves of fossil fuels to never be burnt.

It is an extraordinary turn around when key mainstream economic institutions lay out the case for dismantling what is arguably the world’s most powerful business sector.

Of particular note in all this, observing both the message and the messengers, is that what was predominantly an ecological question is now primarily an economic one. This is a profoundly important shift, as economic risk is something society’s elites take very seriously. It also unleashes another major potential tipping point which we have seen signs of, but is not yet in full flight. When non-fossil fuel companies understand the broad economic risk posed by the lack of climate action, they will become genuine and strong advocates demanding climate action – in their own self-interest. This is one to watch carefully as it will see a major shift in the politics when it comes.

The second tipping point in 2012 was the clear evidence that a disruptive economic shift is already underway in the global energy market. There are two indicators of this, with the first being the much noted acceleration in the size of the renewable energy market with dramatic price reductions and the arrival of cost competitive solar and wind. It is hard to overstate the significance of this as it changes the game completely, as various recent reports have shown.

Rooftop solar for example has grown so fast it is now eroding the profitability of major utilities by taking away their high margin income – peak pricing – and reducing demand. This is already seeing major economic disruption to companies and national economic infrastructure as this report from UBS on developments in Europe shows, with major shutdowns of coal plants now inevitable.

Of equal importance, and partly triggered by these market shifts, is the awakening of the sleeping giant of carbon risk, with open discussion in mainstream financial circles of the increasing dangers in financial exposure to fossil fuels. This has been coming for several years because of the financial risk inherent in the carbon bubble. As Phil Preston and I argued in a paper in 2010 and I further elaborated in The Great Disruption, the contradiction between what the science says is essential and the growth assumptions made by the fossil fuel industry is so large it represents a systemic global financial risk. This has been well articulated and more deeply explored by groups like Carbon Tracker who have been taking the argument to the mainstream finance sector.

In 2012 this hit home, with significant economic and financial players like the IEA, HSBC and S&P talking about the concept of unburnable carbon and the financial risks in both investing in fossil fuels and in lending to coal, oil and gas projects. HSBC forecast a market value loss of 40 – 60% for oil and gas majors if the world acted to keep below 2 degrees. The IEA forecast the revenue loss in that scenario for the global coal industry would be $1 trillion every year by 2035.

Combined, these two tipping points present the opportunity for the broad climate movement to achieve success, if they are understood and responded to appropriately by the activist, policy and business communities. But first they must be seen for what they are – indications we are poised on the edge of a truly historic economic transformation – the end of fossil fuels and the building of a huge new industry sector.

To summarise:

The science shows how we are not just failing to slow down climate change, but are in fact accelerating towards the cliff.
In response, mainstream organisations focused on the global economy are becoming increasingly desperate in their calls for action, fearing the economic consequences if we don’t. They are arguing that the only way the world can avoid the risk of breakdown is to transform the economy urgently and dramatically.
Our capacity to do so is now real and practical, with the technologies required already being deployed at very large scale and at competitive cost. The size of the business opportunity now on offer is truly breathtaking.
In response, the financial markets are waking up to the transformation logic – if the future is based in renewables and these are price competitive without subsidy, or soon will be, the transformation could sweep the economy relatively suddenly, even without further government leadership.
This then puts in place an enormous and systemic financial risk – in particular investments in, or debt exposure to, the multi-trillion $ fossil fuel industry.
This risk is steadily being increased by activist campaigns against fossil fuel projects (worsening each projects’ financial risk) and arguing for fossil fuel divestment (putting investors reputation in play as well).
In response investors and lenders will reduce their exposure to fossil fuels and hedge their risk by shifting their money to high growth renewables.
This will then reinforce and manifest the very trend they are hedging against.
Thus it’s game on.

Is that it? Can we now sit back and expect the market deal with this?

Most definitely not. It is probably true that the market would sort this out by itself if we had 60 years for it to do so. But we don’t. The science is clear that we have less than 20 – and this is where the opportunity for the climate movement emerges and why the choice of focus and strategy is now is so important. The task at hand is clear for policy makers, for business and investors as well as for the activist community. It’s acceleration of existing momentum – to slow down fossil fuels and speed up clean energy. To make the 60 year process, a 20 year one.

It is now realistic to imagine removing the coal, oil and gas industries from the economy in less than 20 years. Doing so is required if we are to have an 80% or greater likelihood of preventing the climate warming past 2 degrees C, a point past where the system could spin out of control.

What we are now hearing from major international economic institutions is that this is a binary choice. Either this happens or we head for social and economic breakdown. As the World Bank argues, the latter “must not be allowed to occur”.

Timing is the key shift the world needs to make in its thinking – this is no longer about the future, it’s about now. We don’t have 20 years to decide to act; we have 20 years to complete the task. If we follow the science, then in 20 years we must have removed the coal, oil and gas industries from the economy and replaced them. It’s simple, it’s urgent and perhaps most importantly, it’s now achievable.

History gives us many examples of dramatic economic shifts – like the arrival of the computer chip and with it, the internet, the emergence of communications technologies and other facilitators of globalisation. We also have many examples of “whoops” moments – points when we realise after the event something was a very bad idea. Like tobacco, asbestos, lead in fuels and paint, ozone depleting CFCs and various other chemicals. Collectively, this tells us something very important. While each case is different, we are capable of transformational economic change and while it’s often disruptive and always fiercely resisted, we regularly do it. This is much larger in scale but the same processes apply.

We need to keep reminding ourselves that this kind of economic transition is OK. That’s how markets works and while it will be challenging and require huge effort, it will work out. Yes, huge amounts of wealth will be lost and gained in the process, industries, countries and cities will face massive economic and practical restructuring challenges and many people will suffer in the process. But that’s how market shifts happen.

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase “creative destruction” to describe this process and to explain why it’s the underpinning strength of capitalism, calling it: ”A process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”

But while we can be comfortable that this process will deliver the required outcome, it’s not going to be smooth or pleasant for many participants. It will rather be messy, highly controversial and see huge amounts of value and employment both destroyed and created as the economy restructures around the necessary reality of a post fossil fuel economy. I’m neither relaxed about this nor naïve about the scale of the challenge. I just accept that it’s now inevitable. I also know we can do it and that we simply have no choice.

Of course, the losers will fight all the way to the end, using every argument, manoeuvre and delay they can think of. We should expect nothing else of them and, realistically, most of us would do likewise faced with similar circumstances. But they will still lose.

I do not however think we should demonise the fossil fuel industry or the people involved in it. The job to remove this industry has to be done – the future of civilisation literally depends on it – but we can do this firmly and clearly without making it personal. As I’ve said in recent speeches on this topic – with some humour but a serious message – “we have to remove the coal, oil and gas industries from the economy with love and compassion.” This is the tough love of responsible parenting – the kids don’t like it but it’s still the right thing to do.

So with some surprise, this is where we find ourselves. It still won’t happen without focused and determined effort, but for the first time, we can envisage victory in the decades long fight on climate change. The science is clear, the technology is ready, significant sections of the elite are on side and the financial momentum is with us.

And this time, the economics is playing on the same side as the environment. Just in time.

Originally posted at the Cockatoo Chronicles

Earth on cliff edge image via shutterstock

Richard Heinberg Launches Community Engagement Model of Publishing, Fights Big Oil

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:11:23 GMT

By Richard Heinberg, posted Mar 18, 2013:

HELP US EXPOSE BIG OIL'S LIES & QUITE POSSIBLY SAVE THE WORLD.

The oil & gas industry is lying to you. And the consequences of these lies affect you and everyone you know. These consequences aren't esoteric, or limited to prices at the gas pump. They shape the very face of the planet and impact the quality of life of every living creature. Help us fight back against Big Oil's billion-dollar spin machine.

The Story
We’re being told that – thanks to technological advances like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling – the US is undergoing an energy revolution, leading us in a few short years to become once again the world’s biggest oil producer and an exporter of natural gas. According to the Oil & Gas Industry and their proponents, “fracking” will provide the US with energy security, low energy prices for the foreseeable future, more than a million jobs, and economic growth. And they tell us that we can frack our way to independence without hurting the environment.

The Reality
Pardon our French, but this is complete bullshit. The energy abundance of the so-called "Shale Revolution" will be short-lived, while the environmental, economic and societal costs of this drilling frenzy will last for generations.

Help us expose these lies and turn the tide in the ultimate fight against greed by pre-ordering and participating in the writing and editing of Richard Heinberg's next book, SNAKE OIL! How Big Energy's Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future.

Want to find out more and take part? Click here

Telling the Real Fracking Story

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:31:37 GMT

By Asher Miller, posted Mar 14, 2013:

I can’t imagine it’s easy being a journalist these days, tasked with covering the explosive growth of US shale gas and oil (tight oil) drilling, and the even more explosive and ubiquitous claims that these unconventional resources are going to entirely transform the world energy picture and provide the US with energy independence and cheap prices for decades to come.

For one thing, the spread of fracking (the colloquial term for the process of multi-stage hydraulic fracturing in horizontal wells which makes it possible to tap these previously inaccessible resources) is a relatively new phenomenon, which means that until just recently there hasn’t been a lot of historical performance data to review against claims of future production.

For another, taking a critical look at the claims of industry and their boosters almost requires a degree in petroleum and natural gas geology in order to grok things like EURs (estimated ultimate recovery) and IPs (initial productivity), proven and unproven technically recoverable resources, individual well and field decline rates, and so on.

And so it’s somewhat understandable that media coverage (with a few notable exceptions) of the fracking debate has largely parroted industry claims about the long-term boon shale gas and oil will provide, focusing instead on the very real – but incomplete – controversy over environmental and human health impacts.

But while it may be understandable, that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable, considering what’s at stake here.

Case in point: Harper’s Magazine recently published “Bakken Business” – a lengthy and thought-provoking piece by award-winning environmental author and journalist Richard Manning on “the price of North Dakota’s fracking boom.” While the article does a good job of examining the impacts of the fracking frenzy on people and the environment, it badly misrepresents the potential of the Bakken Formation. A few examples:

"It no longer matters where an oil man drills a well." This is patently untrue. The Bakken, as in all other shale plays, has “sweet spots” which are much more productive than most of the acreage – these are targeted first.

"Every single well drilled in the area has a 99 percent chance of producing oil for about thirty years in predictable and tapering amounts." This is unsubstantiated, given that very few wells are older than 4 or 5 years. Moreover – as documented in great detail in our recent report, “Drill, Baby, Drill?” – wells decline by 85% after 3 years on average, and 40% of production has to be replaced each year by more drilling to maintain field output.

The Bakken is a “25,000-square-mile slab.” Even Continental Resources, the largest corporate promoter of the Bakken, says it covers 14,700 square miles. Sweet spots cover much smaller areas.

“The Bakken will support 35,000 and 45,000 profitable oil wells.” The EIA estimates 11,725 locations including those already drilled. Manning then states one well can be drilled per 2 or 3 square miles, which, if you do the math, is even fewer locations than the EIA estimates.

"Current extraction methods have put as much as 24 billion barrels within reach." This is directly from the Continental Resources website, with no substantiation. The US Geological Survey has estimated 3-4.3 billion barrels as technically recoverable. The EIA estimate is 5.4 billion barrels.

“The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates there are 220 billion barrels of shale oil now technically recoverable in the United States, nearly ten times current proved reserves.” This is incorrect – the EIA’s estimate of unproved technically recoverable shale oil is 33.226 billion barrels, 15% of what Manning claims here.

It may seem like quibbling over numbers, but numbers matter. In this case they are deadly serious.

It is true that the oil and gas industry has accomplished a remarkable feat in reversing declines in US oil production (though production is still nearly 40% below the all time high in 1970) and growing domestic gas production to record high levels. But because of high depletion rates of shale wells and diminishing returns as the best locations are drilled off first, these gains will be short lived and come with increasingly high financial, environmental, and social costs.

And yet, few people have pulled back the curtain on the claims of long-term abundance. In fact, policymakers, business leaders, utilities, and investors are banking on shale oil and shale gas being both plentiful and cheap for the foreseeable future – meaning that precious time and resources are going to be wasted fracking every last well we can until the whole shale bubble goes bust.

That is, unless we can see past the hype. Which is where we need you, Fourth Estate. Please step it up.