LOCAL FOOD NOT FOREIGN OIL

Links for 2006-04-16 [del.icio.us]

2006-04-17T00:00:00-07:00

Robert Newman's History of Oil
streaming: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/history_of_oil.ram
AFS Trinity & Ricardo Push 250MPG Flywheel-Supported Plug-In | Green Car Congress
Ricardo will join AFS Trinity to design, test & develop AFS Trinity’s flywheel-supported Extreme Hybrid drivetrain, promising fuel economy in the 200-250 mpg range, and to build the initial systems for licensing by AFS Trinity to carmakers worldwide
330MPG Aptera Vehicle | $20,000 | Green Car Congress
Accelerated Composites has designed a two-seat, three-wheel parallel hybrid (the Aptera) to achieve up to 330 MPG at 65 MPH, and sell for less than $20,000
PSA Peugeot Citroën Unveils 69MPG Diesel Hybrid Prototypes | Green Car Congress
PSA Peugeot Citroën unveiled two prototypes featuring diesel-electric parallel hybrid powertrains; Peugeot 307 & Citroën C4 Hybride HDi. The hybrids' fuel consumption is 3.4 liters per 100 kilometers (69 mpg US) and emits 90 grams of CO2 per kilometer
157 MPG Lightweight Diesel To Debut At Geneva | Green Car Congress
Loremo AG, a German company, is introducing the Loremo LS, a 157mpg diesel passenger car, at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show
500 MPG With Plug-ins & Biofuels | Green Car Congress
"Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria calls for an immediate US policy focus on plug-ins and biofuels. Some of his data & facts are a bit off, but the sentiment is right. Act now, with conviction and focus, and we can achieve what needs to be done."

Links for 2006-04-09 [del.icio.us]

2006-04-10T00:00:00-07:00

The Future of Food
A free full-length streaming version of the documentary, Future of Food. Trailer here: http://www.thefutureoffood.com/trailer.htm

Links for 2006-04-01 [del.icio.us]

2006-04-02T00:00:00-08:00

Environmental Cost of War | SourceCode
While the death and destruction caused by war is reason enough to examine our current state of militarism, SourceCode investigates longterm costs of war's damage to the environment; WMD's in Washington DC & "depleted" uranium in Iraq

Links for 2006-03-29 [del.icio.us]

2006-03-30T00:00:00-08:00

Fossil Fuel For Breakfast | AlterNet
Thanks to the global industries that produce, package and ship our food, each meal you eat also feeds the nation's oil addiction

Aquatic Tyranny

2006-03-07T13:21:00.000-05:00

"The wars of the next century will be about water." VP of World Bank
Water covers 70% of the planet; of that, 97% is undrinkable salt water, another 2% is locked in polar ice caps, leaving 1% available for human use. Over half of that is polluted...

Evidence 01: commondreams.org/headlines06/0228-05.htm
Evidence 02: infochangeindia.org/littleearth04.jsp
Evidence 03: troubledwater.org
Evidence 04: ewg.org/sites/tapwater/
Evidence 05: saveourgroundwater.org/docs/blue_gold.pdf

The Parched Planet

2006-03-07T09:47:00.000-05:00

Our demand for water has turned us into vampires, draining the world of its lifeblood; what can we do to prevent mass global drought and starvation?

By conventional measures, Jitbhai Chowdhury is a "model" farmer. He uses organic manure and natural pesticides. He grows fruit trees round the edge of his alfalfa fields and tends his dairy cattle with care. Every day he produces 25 litres of milk which he sends to a collection point in the nearby village of Kushkal in Gujarat, India, for delivery to the state dairy. It's because of people like him that India isn't starving.

But for all its virtues, Chowdhury's 2-hectare farm is sowing the seeds of a global disaster. To grow the fodder that he needs to feed his cows, he is entirely dependent on irrigation water pumped from deep underground. Over the course of a year, his small electric pump sucks twice as much water from beneath his fields as falls on the land as rain. No wonder the water table in the village is 150 metres down and falling by 6 metres a year.

Chowdhury is one of millions of farmers doing this across the world. From China to Argentina, and Australia to the US, people are increasingly dependent on "fossil" water extracted unsustainably from deep underground. Collectively, our actions are threatening to revive a spectre that nobody has seriously worried about for the best part of 40 years - mass global starvation.

Back in the 1960s, the world was gripped by a Malthusian nightmare. The planet's population was set to double in a generation, and nobody knew how everyone would be fed. Scare stories abounded. In 1968, for example, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote in his best-selling book The Population Bomb that "the battle to feed all of humanity is over...hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."

The apocalypse didn't happen, thanks largely to a new generation of high-yielding varieties of crops such as rice, wheat and maize. What is less well known is that the success of this "green revolution" was built on a massive investment in irrigation systems. Today the world grows twice as much food as it did a generation ago, but it uses three times as much water to grow it. Two-thirds of all the water abstracted from the environment goes to irrigate crops. This use of water is massively unsustainable, and has led many people to conclude that the apocalypse wasn't averted, only postponed.

In most places, irrigating crops means building dams and emptying rivers into irrigation canals. This is not good for rivers and their ecosystems, though at least the rivers refill when it rains. However, in some places rivers do not have enough water in them to sustain the demands being made on them. So farmers have taken matters into their own hands.

The starkest example is India. Over the past decade, the country has seen an extraordinary "barefoot" hydrological revolution. Farmers have hired drilling rigs and bought electric pumps to mine water that has sat undisturbed beneath their fields for millennia. Today, more than 21 million Indian farmers tap underground reserves to water their fields, and two-thirds of India's crops are irrigated with underground water. This water is running out. Unlike the rivers, it will not be quickly replaced. And where India leads, the rest of the world looks set to follow.

There are no reliable statistics on how much water India's farmers pump from beneath the ground. The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), part of a worldwide network of agricultural research centres funded by the World Bank, recently estimated that about 250 cubic kilometres of water are abstracted for irrigation each year. That is at least 100 cubic kilometres more than the rains put back. It feeds India. But as every year passes, the aquifers get emptier.

"It's a colossal anarchy, a one-way trip to disaster," says Tushaar Shah of the IWMI. Shah has spent more than a decade following India's groundwater revolution from his research station in Anand in the arid Indian state of Gujarat. He says Indian farmers are draining their water reserves with reckless abandon, growing thirsty crops such as rice, sugar cane, alfalfa and cotton. The farmers are certainly destroying their children's future, if not their own.

The government has no idea what to do. "Regulation is virtually impossible," says Shah. "Nobody knows where the pumps are, or who owns them. There is no way anyone can control what happens to them."

"This has all just exploded in the past decade, since the arrival in India of cheap pumps. The juggernaut is still accelerating. There are a million more pumps every year. We are only just beginning to see the consequences." Shah estimates that at least a quarter of Indian farmers are mining underground water that nature will not replace, and that up to 200 million people face a waterless, foodless future.

The groundwater boom is turning to bust and, for some, the green revolution is over. Fifty years ago in northern Gujarat, bullocks driving leather buckets lifted water from open wells dug to about 10 metres. Now tube wells are sunk to 400 metres, and they still run dry. Half the traditional hand-dug wells and millions of tube wells have dried up across western India. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, two-thirds of the hand-dug wells have failed already, and only half as much land is irrigated as a decade ago. Whole districts in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are emptying of people. Suicides among farmers are rife. Many more are joining the millions migrating to urban slums or joining the gangs of construction workers and labourers travelling the roads of India.

The real cost of milk

As the water tables fall, some states find that most of their heavily subsidised electricity is being used by farmers to pump water to the surface. Legislators see no way of stopping the practice. "If the electricity sold to farmers for pumping were charged at its full market price, nothing would grow except what the rains can sustain," Shah says. Sometimes the grids cannot take the strain and there are widespread blackouts - this is the only effective limit on pumping.

It is not a case of bad people doing bad things. Far from it, as I discovered when I visited Chowdhury on his dairy farm. Shah's researchers reckon he is the most efficient and ecologically minded farmer in the area. However, probe a little deeper and Chowdhury's very efficiency illustrates the madness of the water economics being played out here. His electric pump brings up 12 cubic metres of water an hour. When he needs to irrigate his fields, which he does 24 times a year, it takes 64 hours to pump up all the water he needs. That adds up to 18,000 cubic metres of water a year to grow the fodder to produce just over 9000 litres of milk. That's 2000 litres of water for every litre of milk. According to Shah that is better than the local average.

Some have called the dairy industry here a "white revolution". But, says Shah, it is one of the major reasons for the water crisis in Gujarat. He thinks two districts alone are, in effect, exporting from the state 1.5 cubic kilometres of water a year in the form of milk.

Chowdhury understands all too well the bind that he and his fellow water plunderers are in. "Yes, I'm worried that the water will disappear," he tells me. "But what can I do? I have to live, and if I don't pump it up, my neighbours will." Everyone has unrestricted access, so over-exploitation is almost inevitable; it's a classic case of the tragedy of the commons. As we gave him a lift into the village to deliver his milk, he added: "I don't want my son to do farming. I want him to get a job in the city." At the rate the water table is dropping, he may not have any choice.

The Indian underground water anarchy is already being repeated elsewhere. From China to Iran and Indonesia to Pakistan, rivers are running dry under the impact of increased abstractions and, in some places, climate change. Millions of small farmers have bought pumps and are sucking water from beneath their fields. Shah estimates that India, China and Pakistan together probably pump out around 400 cubic kilometres of underground water a year, around twice as much as is recharged by the rains. These three countries account for more than half the world's total use of underground water for agriculture.

Meanwhile, in the past decade Vietnamese farmers have quadrupled the number of tube wells to more than a million. Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Iran and Bangladesh are not far behind. Outside Asia similar revolutions are under way in heavily populated countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Morocco. Even the US is busy emptying precious groundwater reserves in order to grow grain and beef for export.

These countries are at the heart of what agronomist and environmentalist Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC, calls a "food bubble". Record farm outputs in recent years, he says, have been made possible only by an unsustainable assault on this fast-diminishing resource. The bubble is bound to burst. "The question is not if, but when," he says. The consequences of the eventual, inevitable failure of underground water could be catastrophic. It is a slow-burning drought disaster that will one day affect hundreds of millions of people. Yet so far it has not registered on the radar screens of governments or aid agencies.

It won't happen everywhere at the same time, of course. Each aquifer has its own countdown to destruction. As each bubble bursts, it will undermine the world's ability to feed itself. Nor is this just a crisis for the developing world. By some calculations, as much as a tenth of the world's food is being grown using underground water that is not being replaced by the rains. Without our knowing it, much of the rich world is importing crops grown using over-pumped underground water reserves - cotton from Pakistan, rice from Thailand, tomatoes from Israel, coffee from Ethiopia and even Spanish oranges and Australian sugar.

Many of us, particularly in countries where farming does not rely on artificial irrigation, have little idea how much water it takes to grow our food. Some of the statistics are staggering. It takes between 2000 and 5000 litres of water to grow 1 kilogram of rice, for instance. That is more water than many households use in a week. For just a bag of rice. It takes 1000 litres (of water) to grow a kilo of wheat, 11,000 litres of water to grow the feed for enough cow to make a quarter-pound hamburger and between 2000 and 4000 litres for that cow to fill its udders with a litre of milk.

If you think your shopping basket is getting a trifle bulky at this point, maybe you should leave that kilogram bag of sugar on the shelf. It took up to 3000 litres of water to produce. And the kilo jar of coffee tips the scales at 20,000 litres - 20 (metric) tonnes - of water. Looked at another way, every teaspoonful of sugar in your coffee requires 50 cups of water to grow it. Growing the coffee itself requires 140 litres of water, or 1120 cups. In ways such as this, a typical meat-eating, milk-guzzling westerner consumes as much as a hundred times their own weight in water every day. Clothing only adds to the hydrological pain. You could fill 25 bathtubs with the water that grows the 250 grams of cotton needed to make a single T-shirt.

Economists refer to the water tied up in the growing and manufacture of products traded internationally as "virtual water". The trade is estimated at around a thousand cubic kilometres a year, or 20 river Niles. Approaching one-tenth of all the water used in raising crops goes into the international virtual water trade. "It moves water in volumes and over distances beyond the wildest imaginings of water engineers," says Tony Allan of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, who coined the term virtual water. It is emptying the world's underground water reserves.

What is to be done? The Indian government, like some others, has talked a lot recently about providing more water for farmers by linking existing rivers to create a kind of national water grid (New Scientist, 7 June 2003, p 30). However, the practical benefit seems uncertain when most of India's rivers are already running dry, and the cost of such a scheme - estimated to be as much as $200 billion - seems daunting. There is another approach. One peculiarity of India's water is that a great deal of it neither reaches rivers nor collects underground. The monsoon rains often evaporate in the sun or run away in flash floods. So one solution being widely discussed is to catch the rain.

In the backwoods of Gujarat, I met Haradevsinh Hadeja, a retired Indian police officer who has transformed his home village of Rajsamadhiya by doing just that. He has turned a near-desert landscape of desiccated fields and empty wells into a verdant scene of trees, ponds, full wells and abundant crops. Most of the other villages in the area rely on government water tankers to provide drinking water for much of the year. They have little left to irrigate their crops. That's not the case in Rajsamadhiya. "We haven't had a water tanker come to the village for more than 10 years. We don't need them," Hadeja says.

Rain harvest

Hadeja has redesigned the village's drainage system to slow the passage of the monsoon rain long enough for it to collect in specially dug ponds. The water passes from one pond to the next in a slow cascade. The villagers don't use the water directly from the ponds, but allow it to percolate into the soil to refill underground reserves and replenish their wells. "There is no more rain than before. We just use it better. We don't let it wash away," Hadeja says. As a result, the village has twice as much water as before; and wells find water at only 7 metres down, where once the water had to be hauled up more than 30 metres.

News about this remarkable village has spread round India and beyond. One foreign scientist arrived in Rajsamadhiya with satellite images of the village that showed up hidden cracks in the geology through which water flowed. Hadeja slowed the flow by plugging the cracks with concrete. Behind the concrete and the satellite images, Hadeja has unknowingly tapped into an old tradition. Until the early 19th century, much of India was irrigated from shallow mud-walled reservoirs in valley bottoms that captured the monsoon rains each summer. The Indians called them tanka, a word adopted into English as tanks.

You can still see old ponds and lakes dotted through the countryside and on wasteland in cities. Most are abandoned. But now, as rivers fail and underground reserves dry up, there are efforts to revive them. "Rainwater harvesting" is becoming a social movement, uniting many strands of Indian society. I met Gandhian social reformers and Hindu swamis, teachers and architects all putting theory into practice. "Even cities can do it," says Sunita Narain, director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment and an outspoken advocate. In Bangalore, India's "Silicon Valley", the city authorities are trying to boost the aquifers by rehabilitating the city's 60 ancient lakes. "In parts of Delhi where old tanks and ponds have been cleared of garbage and refilled with water, the water tables are rising," says Narain. If it got organised, the capital could obtain a third of its water from harvesting the rains, she says.

Rainwater harvesting has been pioneered in India, yet it may offer solutions much more widely. In countries as far apart as Mexico, Peru, China and Tanzania, governments and communities are experimenting with similar schemes that avoid the need for large infrastructure, give control over water back to villages, and restore some ecological balance, because they can only tap the rainwater that actually falls.

Shah says that in India at least, a major factor is communal control. Few individual farmers can successfully catch their own rain and store it underground - it would quickly dissipate into the wider aquifer. But when an entire village does it, the effects are often spectacular. Water tables rise, dried-up streams flow again and, with more water for irrigation, the productivity of fields is transformed.

The rainwater harvesting movement, Shah says, is "mobilising social energy on a scale and intensity that may make it one of the most effective responses to an environmental challenge anywhere in the world". Its emergence has been completely autonomous from government - rather like the groundwater revolution, in fact. By some estimates, 20,000 villages in India are now harvesting their rains. Of course there is no more water than before, but local harvesting does seem to be a key to using it more efficiently and sustainably. It might just rescue the world from hydrological anarchy.

The Great Warming

2006-02-28T11:11:00.000-05:00

( website / trailer / press-kit / ebook / fact-sheet )

Filmed in eight countries on four continents, endorsed by dozens of the world's leading scientists, this three-hour television series is the most factually accurate, visually stunning and wide-ranging production ever mounted about this complex, fascinating subject.

Narrated by Alanis Morissette & Keanu Reeves, this three-part series, from the badlands of Alberta to Peru & around the world, examines the underlying science & evidence of climate change, it's legacy, the consequences of a "business as usual" scenario, and then sweeps around the world to introduce us to the people and communities who are combating The Great Warming.

New RSS Feed

2006-02-08T13:50:00.000-05:00

I've changed my rss/xml feed so it includes my del.icio.us links, since i've been focusing more on posting to del.icio.us than I do here due to time constraints; the updated feeds can be obtained from feedburner.

Plan B 2.0 - Rescuing A Planet Under Stress and A Civilization In Trouble

2006-01-24T20:50:00.000-05:00

He's the founder of the Worldwatch Institute and head of the Earth Policy Institute. The Washington Post has called him "one of the world's most influential thinkers."

He makes all of his chapters available, and the full pdf can be obtained here. There are also a few videos available online for free. This one was recorded back in December 2004, and this one more recently.

More at WorldChanging

"Participating in the construction of this enduring new economy is exhilarating. So is the quality of life it will bring. We will be able to breathe clean air. Our cities will be less congested, less noisy, and less polluted. The prospect of living in a world where population has stabilized, forests are expanding, and carbon emissions are falling is an exciting one." Lester Brown, Plan B 2.0

Lester also formed a "Plan B Team" to distribute thousands of copies to heads of state, cabinet members, Fortune 500 CEOs, U.S. Congress, and others. With this team now in place as this revised, expanded revision comes out, they're hoping that they can expand their membership so that before long there will be thousands of people actively promoting this plan to save our civilization.

Early praise for Planet B 2.0:

"Lester Brown tells us how to build a more just world and save the planet from climate change in a practical, straightforward way. We should all heed his advice." -President Bill Clinton

"A quantum jump forward from the original. And the original was damn good." - Peter Goldmark, former Editor, International Herald Tribune

"A great book which should wake up humankind!" - Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum

"Your visionary activism over decades is greatly appreciated." - Denis Goulet, Professor Emeritus, O'Neill Chair in Education for Justice, University of Notre Dame

"...long overdue." - Gilbert White

"Bravo!" - Herman Daly

Fast Food World

2006-01-12T11:21:00.000-05:00

3 out of every 5 Americans are now overweight. Children who eat fast food every day gain an extra 6 pounds every year. 20% of American babies eat fast food french fries every single day. It now appears likely that, for the first time in American history, our children will actually have a shorter life span than their parents.

This program about fast food is not just about the fact that grease, sugar, and extra calories makes us fat and sick. It is about the giant industries behind fast food that change, not only our bodies, but the body of the earth and the lives of farmers who traditionally grew our foods.

An amazing coincidence, and effort, brought together five eloquent writers and activists: The physicist and seed collector Vandana Shiva from India, the Kentucky farmer and poet Wendell Berry, Eric Schlosser who wrote Fast Food Nation, the founder of the Slow Food movement Carlo Petrini from Italy, and Michael Pollan, teacher and author of The Botany of Desire.

The audio recording was graciously made available through radio4all; click here to stream the 3 part series, or download parts 01, 02, & 03.

PS: A film adaptation of Fast Food Nation, using a fictionalized approach directed and written by Richard Linklater, is planned for a 2006 release. The ensemble cast includes Catalina Sandino Moreno, Luis Guzman, Patricia Arquette, Kris Kristofferson, and Avril Lavigne.

PS2: The Meatrix 2 is due to be released March of this year.

Stolen Childhoods

2006-01-11T10:50:00.000-05:00

A wrenching documentary about the growing plague of exploitive child labor that engulfs over 246 million children around the world. In extraordinary footage of their working conditions these poor and enslaved children tell their own stories about being forced to pick pesticide laden tobacco, coffee and vegetables, about kids chained to looms and boys kidnapped to work on fishing platforms at sea, girls forced into prostitution and children scavenging at dumps; cogs in the global economy and a breading ground for terrorism. All these children tell their stories in their own words. The film gives voice to children still trapped in this kind of life and it also celebrates the resilience of kids whose lives have been saved. - Click here for more dialogue

[ video-clips: trailer | nightline | cnn | more ]

Earth To America!

2005-11-21T18:20:00.000-05:00

Aiming to prove that laughter is the best medicine; some of America's funniest comedians gathered together last night in Las Vegas in a special event called "Earth To America!" (aired on TBS) to raise their concerns about global warming; including Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Larry David, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and more.

They promised it would be an upbeat, non-preachy, gut-splitting TV special about one of the least funny issues on the planet. I've seen it and would have to agree; click here to download last night's TBS coverage of Earth To America!, or read more about it from these places: Alternet / Treehugger / About

If you have trouble figuring out how to download the video, you have to have special bittorent software. Don't worry, it's painless and free to install. You could probably find many different software packages, but I usually use BitComet for the PC, and Tomato Torrent for MAC's.

Also check out the website StopGlobalWarming.org that they were pushing, and make sure to sign-up to add your name to the petition. Last I checked, there were only 216,633 people worldwide that have signed the petition. While that is allot of people, it's only a tiny fraction of earth's population. The more people who sign the petition, the more the politicians will have to listen! Here's my signature

The Big "Moosetake"

2005-11-17T22:54:00.000-05:00

The nation’s largest landowner, Plum Creek, has submitted a massive "development" proposal for the Moosehead region. Find out why the Natural Resource Council of Maine opposes this massive plan, and why you should too. When you're done watching this video, make sure you sign the petition at the end, or research more if you have any second thoughts. Here's what I wrote to Bart Harvey, chairman of the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission:

Don't you know that we are facing the greatest problems humanity has ever encountered? This brainwashed ignorant lack-of-concern fascist development plan that is being crammed down our throats by ensuring ecological instability, impoverishing everyone in the area from real local nature-based economic resources is NOT OK.

What good will McMansions be, with all it's elitist retirement hacks living off the blood sweat and tears of the middle class. And just so you don't get too comforatable even if they do go ahead and build there, we're going to overthrow these bastards once and for all, exposing the fascist ecological impoverishment scheme.

When will people learn the role that nature plays in our economy? When we start having red tides year after year of toxic flatulence and lose millions in the fishing industry when government and non-government groups tell us we can't eat any more than 1 fish per month..............

Not to mention the global ecological catastrophe that is about to ensue! As if anyone wants 10,000 billion tons of methane hydrates to start melting into our atmosphere causing our oceans to boil and ending all complex life-forms on this planet just because of an international trade system based on global warming fuel.... The point being, we should be trying to augment ecologically sound developments, not seeking outside corporate thieveries waiting to pounce on every last bit of natural resources each community has left, masquerading itself in the form of "development."

Not only should you turn down this offer, but you should seek ways to develop, no ...augment the natural beauty and ecological diversity and stability of Maine.... not selling Maine's soul to corporate thieveries ready to pounce on every Wal-Mart induced impoverished community that is trying to cling on to local self-reliance as much as possible as the local business shops get smashed just so wal-mart can lock slave labour chinese workers in stores overnight to take our jobs. In other words, get a real ecologically sound development plan on the table so we can lead the nation as a sustainable ecological economy!

AgriCult-ure

2005-11-16T18:44:00.000-05:00

RAW MEAT, a collective of forward thinking designers, artists, musicians and thinkers for a sustainable lifestyle, recently launched a project called AGRICULT. - ...No, it's not the next foodie trend sweeping the coasts, so you can file that mental image of yuppies with blood dripping from their incisors under "disturbing" and leave it at that. "In this world of mass consumption, we've come to associate survival with "the next new gadget" and have forgotten how to fend for ourselves; reconnecting with the essentials of life, having respect for the materials and makers of our products as well as an awareness of our involvement in cycles of production... RAW MEAT exists for those who are ready to face our current reality. It is a group of people who believe in intelectual and artistic debate, who have questions and want to share answers. It is an attempt to juxtapose collaborative projects in fashion, music, art, and cultural studies in a context that sparks ideas and exposes truths. RAW MEAT is a brand that represents artists who believe in new ways of thinking about sustenance and survival. We can change the quality of modern life through what we wear, how we speak, and what we buy, but mostly through understanding why." - iloverawmeat.com - sustainabletable.org/blog/

Attention Deficite Nation

2005-11-16T18:19:00.000-05:00

From Kunstler's blog, Clusterfuck Nation:

The American public's failure to pay attention reached supernatural levels last week as our mass media gloated over falling gasoline prices -- down 24 cents, average, to pre-hurricane levels. The news media took this to mean that all the end-of-the-summer trouble is over with and things can now get back to normal, including especially an economy based on trade in suburban houses.

What they failed to notice is this: since the hurricanes shredded our Gulf of Mexico oil and gas capacity, Europe has been sending us 2 million barrels of crude oil and "refined product" a day from its collective strategic petroleum reserve. The "refined product" includes 800,000 barrels of gasoline, plus diesel, aviation, and heating fuel. Meanwhile, US domestic production has fallen to around 4 million barrels of conventional crude a day. America uses close to 22 million barrels of oil a day. Bottom line: post-hurricane, total imports have accounted for 80 percent of America's oil consumption.

Now, the important part of all this is that last week the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe's energy security watchdog, declared that it would now end the 2 million barrel a day shipments to the US. Not because they are hateful meanies, but because, after all, it is Europe's strategic reserve and they can't sell it all to us because, well, some strategic emergency might come up for them, too.

It will take a few weeks for the last of Europe's tankers to offload supplies and for the various fuels to work their way through the US fuels retail system. With US production and refining still crippled, we can look forward to watching the price of gasoline, heating oil, diesel and aviation fuel kick back up through Thanksgiving and on into the heart of the Christmas shopping season. At the same time, homeowners will be getting their first substantial heating bills of the season.

This will be very bad news to the guys in charge. The Hooverization of George W. Bush will resume and accelerate.

Meanwhile, the new uprising of Islamic youth in France shows no sign of letting up and, in fact, is growing in both intensity and venues. If it continues along the same upward arc, the authorities may soon start making martyrs out of the young car-bombers. The action could spread to Holland, England, and elsewhere across Europe. The potential for wider scale insurrection and systematic terror operations such as bombings is obviously huge. Anybody can get instruction in bomb-making off the Internet now. People and materials move easily over a united Europe with fewer border controls than in the old days.

Europe knows it can ill-afford antagonizing the Jihadi factions beyond its borders. With the North Sea oil fields depleting at rates as high as 20 percent a year, Europeans have little local production to fall back on if, say, regular tanker shipments of Middle Eastern oil through the Suez canal were to be interrupted for some reason. England's methane gas production is at especially alarming low levels.

Europe -- France and Germany in particular -- have enjoyed the luxury of laying back since 9/11 and allowing the US to rumble with the Islamic world, while the Europeans enjoyed a comfortable sense of moral superiority about their supposed peaceableness. Those pretenses seem to be reaching an end. So now that Europe has gallantly spent down its strategic petroleum reserve for our sake, it will be interesting to see how soon they may need it themselves.

I wouldn't venture to guess whether the young rioters of France are getting help and encouragement from somewhere outside, but there certainly are enough Jihadi professionals and cheerleaders on the sidelines to support this new frontal action in Old Europe. It is going to be an interesting holiday season all around the western world.

Extreme Auto Makeover

2005-11-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

Free Range Graphics (producers of The Meatrix, True Cost of Food, and Store Wars) teemed up with Union of Concerned Scientists to put together the new interactive video campaign Extreme Auto Makover, in which you chose new technologies sitting on the shelf to increase the fuel economy of your cartoon vehicle. However, something "unexpected" happens every time you chose a new technology to increased mpg to try and lower your monthly bills. Try it out to find out, and then when you get angered, fill out the form to voice your concern. :P

EXTREME AUTO MAKOVER

PS: Free Range Graphics is also working on The Meatrix 2; the world premier is scheduled for March 2006.

Food Aid or Food Sovereignty?

2005-11-13T17:20:00.000-05:00

Chronic hunger affects an estimated 852 million people worldwide, killing as many as 30 to 50 million people each year. The victims of starvation include approximately 6.5 million children who die from hunger and its related causes each year... one every five seconds!

Oakland Institute recently produced a report calling for drastic changes in the international food aid system to make it more effective at preventing large-scale hunger emergencies. In a dramatic departure from prevailing thought about international food aid programs, the report advocates that such programs shift their focus from dumping products on developing countries to helping build local agricultural infrastructure and supporting small-scale farmers.

"World hunger is not caused by a shortage of food production in the developing world," says Frederic Mousseau, Oakland Institute’s Senior Fellow. "Most countries that experience the type of famine that we now see in Niger export a large portion of their agricultural produce. This phenomenon in Niger has compounded the food deficit, causing high inflation and widespread hunger. Famine in Niger is a result of poverty among certain sections of the population who are unable to cope with price increases brought on by market deregulation and speculation." Today, food aid is being distributed to those who are too poor to buy food in the open market in Niger.

"It is shameful that foreign policy and trade motives drive current food aid programs at the expense of those in developing countries," said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. "Examples from famine situations around the world show that policies that emphasize helping countries develop their own agriculture actually feed more people and decrease developing countries' dependence on aid programs in the long run."

Food Aid or Food Sovereignty? evaluates current food aid programs, their response to food crisis situations, and the role that international relief agencies play in the fight against hunger. On the basis of this analysis, the report proposes specific steps to drastically change the current food aid system to combat world hunger more effectively. These include:

Support for small farmers through strong agricultural policies including land redistribution.
Support for the production of staple food rather than cash crops.
Protection of prices and markets
Better management of national food stocks

For those that are interested in listening to an interview of the founder of the Oakland Institute can check out WERU's RadioActive. - podcast - mp3

E3 Biofuel "Closed-Loop" Ethanol Plant

2005-10-30T00:39:00.001-04:00

I must say, this proposal actually kind of disturbs me. Not because it will allow a considerably lower price for biofuels, such as ethanol, but because it puts the factory farm template center stage for allowing lower costs of biofuel. Here's E3's comparison chart showing the differences between "normal" biofuel and E3 biofuel... Though they claim to be a "closed-loop" system, I'm still left wondering wether or not their "purchase of local corn" was really sustainably produced... Though considering the ENTIRE earth-destruction happening right now, and the soon-to-occur collapse of the human civilization as we know it, I think that even factory farming would be a good temporary solution just to halt global warming, until we can switch to a more sustainable and humane society... Though, I'd much rather have a slower society running entirely on 20mph solar paneled vehicles running to purchase local goods and services, allong side bicycles! If you want to learn more about factory farming, you can look at one of my previous posts.

From Green Car Congress

E3 Biofuels is building a 20-mgpy (million gallons per year) ethanol plant at a cattle feedlot in Mead, Nebraska, that will be powered by methane from the cattle manure, greatly reducing energy costs while making environmentally sound use of animal waste.

The use of manure as a source for methane is similar in approach to that taken by Panda Energy with its three 100-million gallon ethanol plants in Kansas, Colorado and Texas. (GCC)

But E3 Biofuels is promoting its smaller system as "closed-loop." Methane from the manure will power the ethanol plant, which will make fuel ethanol from corn with distillers grain for cattle feed as a byproduct. The 30,000 cattle at the Mead feedlot will eat the distillers grain right at the site, eliminating the need to dry and ship the product thereby saving more energy and expense.

A key component in the E3 Biofuels system is having a confined livestock facility with a slatted floor that allows the manure to drop onto a concrete surface below. For efficient conversion to methane, the manure should be as clean as possible.

The manure then goes into an anaerobic digester, which breaks the manure down into fertilizer and methane-based gas. The plant will use about 7 million bushels of corn to produce its 20 million gallons of ethanol a year.

The Mead plant is designed to use all the cattle waste from the feedlot, produce enough distillers grain to feed the cattle at the site and draw from local sources of corn, keeping an environmentally and economically sound balance.

E3 Biofuels envisions smaller-scale operations like the Mead plant being set up in rural communities across the country, broadening the economic and environmental benefits. E3 Biofuels hopes to build more than 100 such plants in the next 15 years.

The anaerobic digester tanks are under construction at the feedlot. The rest of the complex will be built this winter, with limited production planned by June 2006 and full-scale production in September.

Participant Productions

2005-10-29T04:01:00.000-04:00

I thought this was definitely worth covering; Micki Krimmel, the director of internet outreach at Participant Productions (that's soon to release the blockbuster Syriana), and member of the WorldChanging community, recently helped set up Participate.net as a showcase for activist projects as well as a satellite for movies about global, social and environmental change. - "The movie is just the beginning."

With the new blockbuster movie Syriana hitting theatres this December, starring George Clooney and Matt Daemon, movie-goers will be urged to participate in one of Participate's newest features; Oil Change - a campaign to reduce our dependence on oil. November 23rd will be the official launch of the campaign website.

The Participate community will also include actors, film-makers, issue-experts, movie-goers and activists from all over the world. They write blogs, share ideas, sign petitions, recruit new members, organize discussion groups, take direct action, and more.

Register for a free Participate account and you can start participating in some of the discussions in many ways. They even set you up wih your own blog once you register!

But let me also re-mention the movie since it's one of the hooks that will draw people in. Syriana will be out in theatres this December. You can click on the movie poster below to load the trailer.

Cranberry & Oregano Are Potent Antibacterial Combination

2005-10-29T02:34:00.000-04:00

From New Scientist Magazine

In culinary terms they are poles apart: one is a staple of Italian cuisine, the other an essential accompaniment to roast turkey. But put oregano and cranberries together and you have a potent antibacterial agent that could cut the risk of food poisoning from infected seafood.

So say Kalidas Shetty and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who have been experimenting with different ratios of cranberry and oregano extract to kill Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a seafood-dwelling bacterium that can cause two-day bouts of stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea.

While both plants are known to contain phenolic compounds with antimicrobial activity, Shetty had a hunch that they might be more effective when used in combination. He found that using a 50:50 mixture to coat cod fillets and shrimps infected with V. parahaemolyticus was far more effective at killing the bugs than either of the compounds on its own - probably because they disrupt different parts of the bacterial cell. Lowering the pH with a dash of lactic acid made the concoction even more effective.

Local Food Not Foreign Oil

2005-10-28T21:46:00.000-04:00

Article and picture from GE Free Maine's quarterly newspaper
Saving Seeds - 2005 - Fall Issue - pdf

Portland, Maine residents draw attention to the need to purchase local foods as the world approaches peak oil. Currently, the average piece of food in the U.S is transported nearly 1,500 miles before it reaches the dinner plate. Bicyclists traveled around town at rush hour distributing local organic vegetables to those who were "veggie powered" traveling on foot or riding bikes.

Activists Offer Bikes, Local Foods as Sustainable Alternative
Fresh local veggies distributed to those on bikes/foot

Portland local residents on bike converged on Monument Square at 4 PM Friday afternoon to using bicycles, local vegetables, and rising gas prices to articulate our need to kick the fossil fuel habit in terms of driving and the distance our food travels before it reaches our plates as we reach Peak Oil. The bikers will then sweep through Portland's streets with colorful signs, banners, costumes and veggies converging on various icons of our oil addiction in attempt to spread the word that there are real alternatives to skyrocketing oil prices. Hurricane Katrina has shown what kind of damage short-term supply disruptions can do; Peak Oil represents long-term and permanent supply disruption.

"The rising gas prices shouldn't surprise anyone. It is very clear that we are at or near peak oil production. Now is the time to implement sustainable solutions." said Logan Perkins, a resident of Portland's East End.

"Bicycles are powered by people and our fuel is food! We need to eat locally grown foods that don't rely on fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides and need to be transported thousands of miles to get to us."

Our entire economy hinges on the availability of cheap oil. Our industrial agricultural system depends on petroleum-based fertilizers and petro-fuel to haul the resulting food over vast distances. And oil powers our transportation system -- not just personal vehicles, but city buses, long-haul trucks, airplanes, and ocean freighters. In the US, the average piece of food is transported almost 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate.

"There's no excuse to drive your SUV, or any car for that matter, from the top of Munjoy Hill downtown. We could be biking, walking or at least carpooling or taking the bus. Especially now, we feel that people should be riding their bikes and eating locally to support the relief efforts from Hurricane Katrina." According Jacob Mentlik.

Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.

"It's really sick that our fossil fuel addiction is only revealed when a hurricane fueled by climate change destroys a great city, kills thousands of people, and results in skyrocketing fuels costs that will force millions of Americans further into poverty. We all can only pray that after the deaths of thousands of US soldiers, an unknown numbers of Iraqis, and now the devastation resulting from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath that we will finally take the necessary steps to kick the fossil fuel addictions and implement sustainable solutions on the personal and structural levels," said Anita DeLoy of the East End.

Most scientists believe that increasing global temperatures are resulting in increasingly intense hurricanes and President Bush said last week we must stay the course in Iraq to prevent terrorists from controlling Iraq's oil.

Local produce will be distributed in small quantities on a first come first serve basis.

Search For Local Food

Future Natural Gas Conflict?

2005-10-24T22:18:00.000-04:00

Wonder where the next natural gas conflict might be... Oh, and just in case you doubt the relevance of this graph, take a look at who has the most Natural Gas Reserves! (Russia, Iran, and Qatar). Also check out what effects it might have for Maine as well as food in the United States

Outsourcing Meat Production

2005-10-23T21:15:00.000-04:00

With a large population of United States omniverous meat-eaters, the last thing we need is one more thing to be shipped overseas, so they can produce there and ship it all the way back over here; destroying relatively local self-reliance, and wasting vast amounts of energy, crude oil, and other resources; factory farmed or not... and believe me, i'm no fan of factory farms and would never vote for it with my economic support.

I'd like to say i'm vegetarian, but I don't feel totally against supporting local free-range farms that persue common sense organic standards; as many of today's large farms that actually do organic feed, are beginning to look more and more like factory farms because their feed has to be certified organic which means they feed more from a trough rather than being more open-range grass-fed... Further, even if I never eat meat again, I still wouldn't follow a free-wheeling vegetarian diet. To live a sustainable life as possible, one must vote as much as they can for local economic systems, preferably made organically & renewable; as James Howard Kunstler once said:

"The age of the 3,000-mile caesar salad is over!"

Joel Makower reviews this new WorldWatch report:

"As environmental and labor regulations in the European Union and the United States become stronger and more prohibitive, large agribusinesses are moving their animal production operations overseas, primarily to countries with less stringent enforcement." Danielle Nierenberg - Happier Meals pdf/buy

Industrial systems today generate 74% of the world's poultry products, 50% of all pork, 43% of beef, and 68% of eggs. While industrial countries dominate production, it is in developing nations where livestock producers are rapidly expanding and intensifying their production systems. Among the leading concerns cited in the report:
Crowded, inhumane, and unhygienic conditions on factory farms can sicken farm animals and create the perfect environment for the spread of diseases, including avian flu, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease), and foot-and-mouth disease.
Factory-farmed meat and fish contain an arsenal of unnatural ingredients, among them persistent organic pollutants (POPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), arsenic, hormones, and other chemicals. Overuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobials in livestock and poultry operations, meanwhile, is undermining the toolbox of effective medicines for human use.
Factory farming is resource intensive: producing just one calorie of beef takes 33% more fossil-fuel energy than producing a calorie of potatoes. Eight ounces of beef can require up to 25,000 liters of water, while enough flour for a loaf of bread in developing countries requires only 550 liters.
Despite the fact that fisheries worldwide are being fished out, about a third of the total marine fish catch is utilized for fish meal, two-thirds of which is used to fatten chickens, pigs, and other animals.
Only about half of all livestock waste is effectively fed into the crop cycle; much of the remainder ends up polluting the air, water, and soil.
Global trade and advertising, lower meat prices, and urbanization have helped make diets high in animal protein a near-universal aspiration, writes Nierenberg, noting that the world price of beef per 100 kilograms has fallen to roughly 25% of its value 30 years ago. Meat consumption is rising fastest not in the U.S. or Europe, but in the developing world. From the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, meat consumption in developing countries grew by 70 million tons, nearly triple the rise in industrial countries.

In response to intensifying consumer demands and other factors, several food companies and international policymaking and funding institutions are exploring new approaches to the business of food. In the U.S., McDonald's and Whole Foods Market have introduced more comprehensive animal welfare standards in the past decade. And in 2001, the World Bank reversed its previous commitment to fund large-scale livestock projects in developing nations, acknowledging that there was a significant danger of crowding out smaller farmers, eroding the environment, and threatening food safety and security. Also, in June 2005, the 167 member countries of the World Organization for Animal Health unanimously adopted voluntary standards for the humane transportation and slaughter of animals.

While many in the agribusiness industry have embraced food irradiation and genetic engineering of livestock as solutions to the myriad problems caused by factory farming, technology-based responses are often merely stop-gap measures, says Nierenberg. "These end-of-the-pipe remedies are certainly innovative, but they don't address the real problem. Factory farming is an inefficient, ecologically disruptive, dangerous, and inhumane way of making meat."

PopTech! Conference 2005

2005-10-23T08:49:00.000-04:00

I didn't get a chance to go to this year's PopTech! conference in Camden Maine, but I did get to listen to a few speakers through ITConversations' live stream, which will slowly post downloadable mp3's of everyone each week. Here's a few recaps and photos from various people who were there:

Wired News:

X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis kicked off the PopTech conference here with a lofty goal on Thursday: "Our mission is to bring about radical breakthroughs," he said in his opening-day address. Technology's impact on people across the globe results in some "grand challenges," the theme of this year's PopTech, and those were certainly not in short supply during the first two days of the event.

How do we spur the invention of a 200-mpg car or promote genome sequencing for $1000 or less? How do societies contend with the accumulation of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, the accompanying global warming and the rapid acidification of the world's oceans? How can the media be transformed into a forum where scientific discovery is heralded as it was during the Apollo program's glory days?

Those "radical breakthroughs" Diamandis hopes to incite may come from a new generation of X-Prizes Diamandis' organization is now putting together. "The X-Prize worked, and it worked so well that we have decided to build the X-Prize Foundation beyond space into other prize areas," he said.

There will be X-Prizes, Diamandis said, for education, genomics and energy. The energy prize, in fact, should be off the blocks soon. "We're trying to completely rework the automobile industry. It's a broken industry," he said. "There is no good reason why we don't have cars right now that are getting amazing performance at 200 miles per gallon or greater."

Solar Power: Nanotech & Sun-Tracking

2005-10-23T08:04:00.000-04:00

WorldChanging reported on a nanotechnology breakthrough for solar energy!

Broadly speaking, there are two types of photovoltaic materials: traditional inorganic solar cells, which are stiff (sometimes to the point of being brittle) and often expensive to make, but have decent efficiency of around 25-35% (with the potential for up to 50-60% with current research); and organic polymer solar cells, which are flexible (sometimes to the point of being able to be sprayed or painted on a surface) and relatively inexpensive to produce, but tend to have relatively short lifespans (generally no more than a couple of years, and sometimes far worse) and very low efficiency of around 3-5%. Ilan Gur, working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, may well have found a best-of-both-worlds solution: nanocrystal solar cells.

In the current Science magazine, Gur (a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate) and his research group report on the development of ultra-thin inorganic photovoltaic semiconductors using nano-scale crystals. The material can be cast from solution, like organic photovoltaics, meaning the nanocrystal solar cells are far less costly to make than traditional silicon cells. Unlike the organic pv materials, however, the nanocrystal solar cells respond to a wide range of light frequencies, and can last for years. In fact, aging seems to increase the performance of the nanocrystal cells, rather than degrade it:

In this paper, the researchers describe a technique whereby rod-shaped nanometer-sized crystals of two semiconductors, cadmium-selenide (CdSe) and cadmium-telluride (CdTe), were synthesized separately and then dissolved in solution and spin-cast onto a conductive glass substrate. The resulting films, which were about 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, displayed efficiencies for converting sunlight to electricity of about 3 percent. This is comparable to the conversion efficiencies of the best organic solar cells, but still substantially lower than conventional silicon solar cell thin films.

Ah, yes. The drawback, at least for now, is that the efficiency of the nanocrystal solar is no better than that of polymer organic photovoltaics. While this is disappointing, Gur indicates that increasing the efficiency of the material is a primary future goal. And the value of stable thin-film solar cells shouldn't be discounted; as one of the likely applications for this kind of material is as a coating for building and vehicle surfaces, they'll need to be as weather-resistant as possible, and not require frequent "touch-ups."

For now, the nanocrystal solar material goes on the pile of potentially-transformative breakthroughs: keep an eye on them, but don't expect to see them at Costco any time soon.

Treehugger had a good find; solar panels that track the sun!

A spanish company, called Prosolmed, is currently testing a solar-power generation plant that tracks the sun throughout the day to always keep the panels at a right angle in relation with the light rays. What Prosolmed is doing may not be a first, but it is certainly not common yet. The tracking system helps improve energy production by up to 40% compared to an installation of the same size that doesn't move.

Wal-Mart With A Conscience?

2005-10-23T06:53:00.000-04:00

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott announced a couple days ago that his company, long a target of activists of pretty much every stripe, was going to be paying a lot closer attention to the environmental and labor standards of its overseas supply chain. In a speech on Thursday at a conference on retail trends held by the University of Arkansas' Sam M. Walton College of Business, Scott said:

"The factories in China are going to end up having to be held up to the same standards as the factories in the U.S. There will be a day of reckoning for retailers. If somebody wakes up and finds out that children that are down the river from that factory where you save three cents a foot in the cost of garden hose are developing cancers at significant rates - so that the American public can save three cents a foot - those things won't be tolerated, and they shouldn't be tolerated." - Wal-Mart CEO - Lee Scott

What in Sam's name is going on here?

For several years, a broad, diverse, and growing movement has been targeting Wal-Mart. Pick a social issue and you'll find some group that's painted a target on Wal-Mart; environmentalists, labor groups, women's groups, minority groups - that's just for starters. There are also small business groups who often lose business to their cheaper prices, first amendment groups who object to their censorship of media content, community activists for contributing to sprawl, fair-trade activists for helping lead the pack of sweatshop labour, and so on.

Last year, a group of environmental activists were looking at taking on Wal-Mart as part of a bigger campaign. At the table were environmental groups focusing on mining (Wal-Mart is one of the world's biggest jewelers, so it buys lots of gold, platinum, silver, and diamonds); trout fishers (run-off from Wal-Mart's parking lots foul local creeks, streams, and rivers for outdoors types); and forests (how else to target the world's biggest seller of Pampers and Charmin?).

Labor has another whole batch of activists under the name Wal-Mart Watch, a mult-imillion dollar campaign funded in large part by the service employees union. Earlier this year, the union launched PurpleOcean.org, "the world's first internet-based union membership program." as well as set up a Wal-Mart Fact Checker.

But much like Nike before it, Wal-Mart's overseas supply-chain challenges have raised the most heat among activists. The issue is both labor and the environment -- the low wages and poor working conditions of workers in Asian factories, and the environmental legacy that comes from practices to cut costs such as clear-cutting of forests and industrial factory farming of seafood.

In recent weeks, the heat has been turned up, as activists have prepared for release on November 13, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, a documentary by Robert Greenwald. The week of November 13-19 has been dubbed "Wal-Mart Week," in which "3000+ screenings in 19 countries and all 50 states are already in the works for the largest grassroots mobilization in movie history," according to the movie's official Web site.

So, Lee Scott's recent pronouncement is significant; but is it real? That's the $285.2 billion (fiscal 2005 sales PDF) question.

There's evidence to suggest that this isn't just window-dressing - that Wal-Mart is serious about making changes. Consider the comments of one strategist who's been watching Wal-Mart and is not prone to fawning over multinationals.

"This is definitely not greenwashing, and that's going to become clear to the public over the next few months. When they set their minds to do it, they like to become a leader, and that's what they've done with sustainability. When they decided they wanted to be the best supply-chain management, they not only became the best but they revolutionized the business... Wal-Mart has always perceived themselves as highly ethical and in the business of providing good service to customers and enhancing quality of life. So some of the pushback they've been getting is troubling to them because it's not their intention to cause problems out there. Lee Scott is very sincere. They're going to do some amazing things. This has the potential to be the fastest turnaround ever on sustainability and the most comprehensive."

The question, of course, is whether a few good deeds here and there (liberally infused, of course, with sprinklings of the company's $10 billion or so annual profits) will make a significant difference. The answer is likely "no." The company will need to do much more. For starters, it will need to produce a comprehensive sustainability report detailing its environmental and social impacts around the globe, demonstrating that the company fully understands its impacts, has a plan to continually measure, track, and improve them, and to report annually the results. That's the minimum standard these days for a socially responsible company, and once-reviled companies like Nike and Gap have made huge strides in turning around their negative social images through such means.

Beyond that is an even more formidable challenge; transforming the Chinese manufacturing economy, the source of much of Wal-Mart's goods, to embrace environmental and social responsibility, including strong labor practices. But even wiith all that, it still wouldn't even put a drop in the bucket when it comes to American-made goods being sold in Wal-Mart stores.... - WorldChanging

Here's what sustainablog has to say:

"I must admit that I was pretty surprised when Wal-Mart announced it was experimenting with renewable energy at stores in Texas and Colorado, and was quick to assume greenwashing. Now, Joel Makower responds to a new announcement by Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott that the company "...was going to be paying a lot closer attention to the environmental and labor standards of its overseas supply chain." Joel remains skeptical (as well he should), but also notes at least one case of a Wal-Mart watcher claiming this is a sincere move by the company. Quite frankly, I can't see how Wal-Mart could adopt policies for sustainable sourcing without completely revamping its business plan, as their "falling prices" mantra depends on cheap overseas labor, primarily from China, and lax environmental regulation. But if they were to only make adjustments similar to those by Nike (another company that's faced similar pressure from activists), the repercussions would be enormous. I still don't plan to shop at Wal-Mart anytime soon, but I may have to consider moving from a position of total dismissal to one of slightly hopeful skepticism..."

Senate Approved ANWR Drilling

2005-10-23T06:17:00.000-04:00

ANWR drilling is being touted as a way to become more "energy independent," by not relying on crude oil from overseas as much as we are now. Since Katrina rammed through what was left of our relative oil stability, polititians rammed this energy plan down our throats rather than take a real serious thorough look into conservation economies.

"The time is ripe for ANWR. Global and national conditions mandate the environmentally-sound development of oil and gas in the Arctic. The Senate first passed ANWR legislation in 1996. If that hadn't been vetoed, I don't think we would be paying $3 a gallon for gasoline today. The hurricanes in the Gulf underscored what Congress has known for along time: We must produce more of our own oil and we must diversify the places where we produce it. We must do it for our economy and our energy security." - Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), Chair, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee

In March of 2004, the Energy Information Administration, at the request of Representative Richard W. Pombo, Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Resources, published a report using government figures and analyzing (to the extent that anyone can without sinking a well shaft down through the coastal plain) the effect of drilling in ANWR.

Given the uncertainty over the exact amount of oil in place, the report lays out three scenarios: one for low-oil resources, one the mean case, the other for high oil resources.

Some of the report's findings:

The mean-case estimate is that there are 10.4 billion technically recoverable barrels of oil in ANWR, divided into many discrete fields. This estimate includes oil resources in Native lands and State waters out to a 3-mile boundary within the coastal plain area. The mean estimated size of oil resources in the Federal portion of the ANWR coastal plain is 7.7 billion barrels.

It will take approximately 10 years to bring the first field on-line (comparable to other Arctic drilling).

Assuming sequential development of the fields, rank ordered by size, ANWR production would peak, in the mean case scenario, in 2024 at 870,000 barrels of oil per day.

Today the US imports some 10.5 million barrels per day. In 2025, the EIA estimates that almost to double to some 20 million barrels imported per day.

Using the EIA's projections of declines in domestic oil production and increases in oil consumption (mostly from the transportation sector), by 2025 ANWR would reduce US reliance on imported oil by four percentage pointsâ€”from 70% to 66%.

In other words, ANWR oil would make a small difference, but not a substantive, strategic difference. It doesn't come close to solving the problem or providing "energy security." Even if peak ANWR oil were available today, the US would still be importing more than 9 million barrels per day, and climbing. - Green Car Congress

Aside from that, check out Clean The Air's
new animated flash video; Climate Mash

Hunger For Natural Gas

2005-10-19T10:24:00.000-04:00

Two Gulf hurricanes and the approaching winter in the Northern Hemisphere have kept natural gas futures hovering near all-time highs. But with the accelerating depletion of reserves in North America, the intermittent gas crises we've been seeing since 2001 will start coming thicker and faster, finally merging into an era of permanent scarcity.

A chronic gap between supply and demand would mean plenty of hardship in the United States and Europe, which have come to rely on natural gas not only for heat, but increasingly for electricity generation and manufacturing. But the future looks even more grim, for the maintenance of human life itself has come to depend on the steady and reliable supply of natural gas that's needed to synthesize nitrogen fertilizer for food production. Turn off the gas, and a lot of American families would have a hard time cooking dinner, while many would have nothing to cook at all...

A world of 6.4 billion people, on the way to 9 billion or more, needs more protein than the planet's croplands can generate from biologically provided nitrogen. Our species has become as physically dependent on industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer as it is on soil, sunshine and water. And that means we're hooked on natural gas.

Vaclav Smil, distinguished professor at the University of Manitoba and author of the 2004 book Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production, has demonstrated the global food system's startling degree of dependence on nitrogen fertilization. Using simple math - the kind you can do in your head if there's no calculator handy - Smil showed that 40 percent of the protein in human bodies, planet-wide, would not exist without the application of synthetic nitrogen to crops during most of the 20th century. Without the use of industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer, about 2.5 billion people out of today's world population of 6.2 billion simply could never have existed.

Crop plants assemble carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen into proteins that are essential both to plant growth and to the diets of humans and other animals. Of those four elements, nitrogen is the one that's too often in short supply. If you see yellowish, stunted crops, whether they're in an Indiana cornfield or an Indonesian rice paddy, it's likely that you can blame it on a lack of nitrogen.

Ironically, in the vast volume between the earth's surface and the atmosphere's upper limits, nitrogen is the most abundant element. We're continuously bathed in nitrogen gas, which makes up 78 percent of the air we breathe. But in the air, nitrogen atoms are paired up, each atom linked to another by an extremely tight molecular bond. Those molecules can't be used by living organisms unless that bond is broken, and only a small number of single-celled species have developed a means to do that biologically.

To pry nitrogen atoms apart chemically requires intense energy; it happens, for example, around a bolt of lightning. So it was not until 1909 that humans developed an industrial-scale method, called the Haber-Bosch process after its German inventors, to reassemble nitrogen atoms into another molecule, ammonia, that is usable by crop plants.

The two essential inputs to the Haber-Bosch process are air, which is free, and natural gas, which is expensive and becoming more so. Therefore, to extend Vaclav Smil's reasoning, 40 percent (soon to be 60 percent) of the Earth's inhabitants owe their survival to natural gas, a non-renewable fossil fuel. And if Julian Darley is right, a species that can't survive without natural gas is a species in big trouble.

The nation that ranks as the world's third biggest nitrogen fertilizer consumer could, conceivably, get by without the stuff. If that country, the United States, were to moderate its meat consumption, raise all livestock on pasture and rangeland instead of nitrogen-wasting grains, rely more on legume crops (plants like beans and alfalfa that obtain nitrogen from the air with the help of bacteria), curb waste and cut food exports, it could maintain its food supply without using any synthetic nitrogen at all, according to Smil's calculations.

The timetable for peak gas or plateauing natural gas production and an eventual decline is much harder to forecast than it is for oil. But a perfect storm of long-term forces appears to be blowing demand in only one direction - up - and the greatest access to such a hard-to-transport, hard-to-store resource will likely go to those players with the most money and the strongest armies.

Why armies? Because the world's remaining natural gas reserves lie mostly in the Mideast, Central Asia and Russia, almost guaranteeing that a century of conflict and chaos lies ahead.

Fertilizer production currently uses only about 5 percent of the world's natural gas production, and nonagricultural uses are already asserting greater dominance over tightening gas supplies on this continent. The escalation of gas prices in recent years has made fertilizer production far less profitable; as a result, the U.S. has lost 30 percent of its nitrogen fertilizer production capacity. American farmers now obtain more than half of their nitrogen fertilizer from abroad, making them the world's biggest importers of the product.

Mainstream economists, as always, predict an easy resolution: as the price of natural gas goes up, they say, people and nations will get more serious about conservation. But natural gas, latched onto increasingly as a somewhat more benign substitute for other fossil fuels, is playing the role of methadone in humanity's vain attempt to ease its withdrawal from coal and oil. And market forces tend to go haywire when dealing with addictive substances.

Without a right to food, people have no rights at all. So when there's a worldwide rush on a mineral resource essential to the production of adequate food - when the market is the problem, not the solution - non-market measures are needed to ensure that farmers are free to raise essential food crops.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has nonbinding "Right to Food" guidelines stating in part that,

"States should consider specific national policies, legal instruments, and supporting mechanisms to protect ecological stability and the carrying capacity of ecosystems, to insure the possibility for sustained, increased food production in present and future generations, prevent water pollution, protect the fertility of the soil, and promote the sustainable management of fisheries and forestry."

A firm legal basis for ensuring that all people have access to the means of food production is the UN's 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which recognizes "the right of everyone to be free from hunger." The treaty has been ratified by more than 150 nations. The United States is not among them.

Americans cannot expect to support a universal right to food by the roundabout and inadequate practice of importing natural gas and fertilizer, using them to produce surplus grain, and then exporting the grain to countries with food deficits. Every nation must have the means to grow its own food sustainably, with efficient recycling of crop, livestock and human wastes. And when those nutrients aren't sufficient, farmers need guaranteed access to fossil fuels and fertilizers as well.

Nitrogen fertilizer made it possible for us to overpopulate the Earth, and now we're hooked. Someday, as reserves of fossil fuels dwindle, our descendents will come to inhabit a less crowded planet, on crops fed entirely by sunlight and natural fertility. Whether that future population decline happens humanely through planning and restraint or cruelly through catastrophe depends largely on how we manage nonrenewable resources, especially natural gas. - AlterNet

New England Faces Shortage of Natural Gas

2005-10-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

Bangor Daily News - With New England facing a severe shortage of natural gas this winter, Gov. John Baldacci is asking all of New England's governors to commit to a goal of reducing natural gas consumption... "Natural gas has been hit hard by the hurricanes," said Maine Public Utilities Commission Chairman Kurt Adams. "We expect that it will be in very short supply this winter, and we are very concerned about what will happen if it is a very cold winter..." In addition to the Mainers who use natural gas for heating their homes, 40 percent of the electricity in the state is generated by natural gas facilities... Adams said the region needs to plan for the worst-case scenario of very cold weather and realize that energy supplies could be disrupted. He said that while unlikely, there is the possibility of voltage reductions or even rolling blackouts if demand for energy gets too high this winter... "The colder the weather, the more we need conservation," says Adams... Baldacci says Maine will have a number of public service announcements and will work with other New England states to get the message to everyone about the need to conserve. He said there will be a major push in Maine to recruit organizations, from churches to local service organizations, to help get the message to everyone... "By conserving electricity we can help ease the heating oil demand," he said. "We will be making a major effort, not only in Maine, but across New England to encourage people to conserve." - Volunteer Maine

However, let me add a few of my comments on these issues at hand:

Insulate your home - It's called
weatherization and could actually save you money in the long run, as well as save home-heating fuel so that more people in need can have access to what's available. Have any drafty windows? Patch them up with insulation held against the window with plastic or similar wind-breaking material. You can pick up a cheap expanding foam gun to seal around the window frame(s). If you don't want to actually purchase anything, look around the house for material and experiment, something's liable to work. Though I'd highly reccommend fully insulating the house as much as possible.

Encourage get-togethers of family & friends. - Coupled with weatherization, body heat can do wonders for heating the home, while keeping it warm, sometimes even hot. Get a group of 10-20 people that you are willing to share your house space with for a day/week; especially if there are rolling blackouts and/or heating-fuel shortages.

Use energy efficient appliances - For the past two years the north-eastern United States has already come close to full capacity of electricity-use. With 40% of electricity in Maine coming from natural gas plants, it is very important to conserve as much electrical energy as you possibly can. Purchase energy-efficient lightbulbs, while turning them off while not in use. I ask you, what good is light at night when there is no heat to keep you and your home warm? Find/build an outside enclosed "refrigeration" box to store food to keep things cold... For the rest of the perishables that can't survive a freeze outside, clear a large space in your refrigerator and grab some ice and/or snow from outside to put in a medium-sized bucket to keep in your fridge; while keeping the refrigerator door closed as much as possible, and refilling with fresh ice/snow as it begins to melt.

Drive less, walk/bike more often - if at all possible
Driving less not only conserves oil, but
walking/biking is great excercise and can often keep your spirits up and the winter blues down. Many people get what is called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) - usually brought on by less access to sunlight and therefore a less-healthy and less-balanced level of happy neurotransmitters in the brain. Getting outside each day to get enough sunlight can help keep you from sinking down into a rut of SADness. But while you're at it, why not consolidate and conserve your outdoor activities to local errands that you normally drive, but could easily walk/bike.

Buy local food - Pool resources together to start buying local food, preferably local organic food. Any food that is not organic uses natural gas fertilizers, thereby wasting what could be used as heating-fuel. Local food requires much less oil than food shipped around the country and the world, thereby freeing up nationwide availability. Couple that with get-togethers and people can pool their resources together (money/supplies/equipment/food/etc) to have harvest suppers every night! The more people who pool money together for shared food, the more body heat under one house, the more festive life would become everyday! Who said winter conservation couldn't be fun!? As a matter of fact, ill make it easy for you! Enter your zip code below and you'll see what places offer local food as well as how close it is grown/distributed; enjoy!