Ted Talks - Naomi Klein: Addicted to risk

A sad day

It's a sad day, one can only hope that we will find ourselves in a situation of gridlock, anything to prevent the wholesale give away of this country to corporations. I am constantly amazed by how fickle the American public can be. We seem to expect instant results to problems that took decades to create. Our culture has become one of instant gratification, and when we don't get it we look for someone to blame. Well someday soon we will only have ourselves to blame because change IS coming. Have no doubt, a tidal wave of change is sweeping our way. Nature bats last!

Go to sleep all you TV people, SUV drivers, fast food eaters, race baiters, and tea partiers.  Go to sleep and deny all, the wave approaches.

I'm drowsy, time for a nap, what's that noise I hear?

A catchy tune, World Peak Oil Song

"World Peak Oil Song - Original parody by faffytunes
Here is my attempt at funny but sad at the same time.
In the style of West End theatre, Broadway, Cabaret , musical parody on the subject that is going to affect us all in the not too distant future - world peak oil.
When there is not enough oil left for world demand even though they keep finding new resources - eventually that will run out. Once we have taken from the highest mountains, the deepest oceans and polluted the north and south poles, then what? We all need fuel and things covered in plastic, goods and food imported from far off places. We need to wake up to the biggest forthcoming problem of the 21st century.
Please pass on this song as a small part of further awareness on this subject. Many thanks faffytunes World Peak Oil Song Original parody by faffytunes© www.faffytunes.co.uk"

Growth? We need it but not the kind you think.

I love this idea for growth that is of true benefit, rather than the destructive kind fostered by dinosaur thinking.

"Later, when there is continual growth - of ideas, of community, of fun, of friendship, of compassion and of understanding - we will wonder how we ever bought into the myth of perpetual material growth on a planet of finite material resources."

I found it in a post by Corrina Gordon-Barnes over at Ooffoo called "When all flights are grounded"

Here is another excerpt;

"Dear Prime Minister,

When all flights are grounded, we will not understand. We will feel that the world as we know it is tumbling down. We will protest about the restriction of freedom and demand our right to travel where we choose. ... we will not know how to contain our anger. You must be ready for this.

When the great giant chain stores clear out, we will holler for their return. ... You must expect our fear.

When the cash machines spit out our cards, we will look at each other in panic. We have forgotten, you see, that shelter and food and warmth are our birthright. We have imagined that we must buy such things.

When pineapples and coffee disappear from the shelves and when animal protein becomes rare, know that there will be outrage. When the private car is no more, we will hurl abuse and accuse you of dragging us back to the dark ages.

Oh yes, we will fight and hold on, we will kick and scream. When the whole fabrication comes crashing down around us, we will ask: Why did you not see this coming? ... We have so few models, you see, for anything other than our current reality and our safety lies with the known. So at first, we won’t like it, not one bit. Of all this you can be guaranteed.

Later, as we are forced to adapt and as we notice ourselves becoming stronger, more interesting, more skilled human beings, we will sorrow at how much we wasted - not just of our precious natural world that can never be refurbished, but how much we wasted of ourselves. How we contorted ourselves out of all proportion to fit a system which made no sense when actually it was our authentic selves and our passion that were needed.

Later, when we study health not medicine, when our holidays are full of peace, quiet and exploration, when the grind is replaced by time with our loved ones, when we enjoy fresh air and no traffic jams, when eye contact with strangers feels comforting and when our elders our honoured, we will marvel at how we used to believe ourselves to be islands.

Later, when we equitably share our skills, our products and our time, when our material needs are met and when that deep feeling of safety and sufficiency is our core, we will shake our heads and smile as we remember how we once thought plastic could buy our happiness.

Later, when the hedgerows are buzzing with life, when we are reminded of what carrots are meant to taste like and when our farmers are revered, we will catch ourselves needing so much less than we ever believed was necessary."

Thanks to Dave Hampton for the heads up on this.

IEA has been intentionally misleading us about peak oil

While the IEA has been seen to admit Peak Oil in recent years they have been intentionally overinflating figures to suit US foreign policy aims, this according to a story in the Guardian.

Not much to say about this, read the article over at the Guardian, it is not surprising, and doesn't change the facts. It is beyond time to get over our addiction to oil!

video - Earthships 1/3 Michael Reynolds The Garbage Warrior talk at the Little Yarra Steiner School

Half measures won't cut it! Business as Usual is out.

At the 2009 Gaining Ground Summit in Vancouver, speaking on the topic "Planning Down; What if Can Do... Can't? " Bill Rees the co-creater of the Ecological Footprint had much to say about the challenges we face. I paraphrase his main takeaway points below;

Perception is everything - we still see human civilization as separate from nature.

The past 8 generations of humans have lived in a completely anomalous phase, that of growth without bounds - as an ecologist he would see this happen in any other species and call it a plague phase and it would inevitably result in implosion. We see it as normal even though it is completely abnormal.

We have an intellectual understanding of the dilemma we face but our response to it is to make it worse by assuming we can green grow our way out of it. Assuming we can maintain growth through technological improvements, essentially "technology will save us". This is delusional.

The science, which is ignored in the above, says we need an absolute reduction of throughput of material resources in our economy of 80% by mid century. Any effort, whether personal or governmental that does not take that into account by bringing about an absolute reduction in use of resources is making matters worse, this includes green consumerism, recycling, etc... For example, the 2008 Green Car of the Year, the Tahoe hybrid, gets the lowest gas mileage of any hybrid on earth and weighs 3.3 metric tonnes. Clearly rushing out and buying one of these behemoths is not saving the planet. This perpetuates the illusion that cities should be built around automobiles. Additionally, from 1950 to 2004 the average American house increased in size by 135%. This was the time that the environmental movement was born, green rhetoric increased and family size decreased. A tiny fraction of these houses are about 25% more efficient than the previous houses. The point, it is completely delusional to think we are improving the situation.

Modern cities, if sealed off in a giant dome, would suffocate and starve simultaneously. No matter how green, they are in no way sustainable. We are not producers, we are parasitic consumers according to Mr. Rees. Every act of human production consumes vast quantities of resources. In contrast, balanced ecosytems are exactly that, balanced.

This abnormal period of growth has been enabled by a period of stable climate and an inheritance of millions of years of eco capital. The climate is no longer stable and the capital (including oil and soil) is no longer there for us to use in anything like the quantities we have come to expect.

Real data indicates that CO2 concentration is increasing 35% faster than expected in the worst case scenarios predicted in the year 2000. The rate of increase is doubling. One of the most respected climate research centers, The Hadley Center in the UK recently predicted we are unlikely to keep concentrations below 650 ppm without herculean efforts. That means at least a 50% chance of a 4ºC increase over the pre-industrial levels, this is catastrophic climate change. No country on earth is even coming close to addressing the levels of change required.

And now I quote Mr. Rees.

"There is no particular virtue in becoming more efficiently unsustainable"

Or put another way;

"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all." -- Peter Drucker

To hear the full lecture from Mr. Rees go to Radio Ecoshock or go directly to the mp3 file at Smart Decline.

Similarly over at WorldChanging article "The Revolution Will Not Be Hand-Made: A Quick Sunday-Morning Rant", Alex Stefen says;

"We have inherited a whole set of solutions by conventional wisdom, many of them surrounding lifestyle choices. Almost all of us believe that someone who buys local food, who drives a hybrid, who lives in a well-insulated house, who wears organic clothing and who religiously recycles and composts and avoids unnecessary purchases is living sustainably.

They are not. As we've explored a bunch of times in different ways here on Worldchanging, the parts of our lives that actually fall within our direct control are the tips of systemic icebergs, and often changing them does nothing to alter those systems: not individually, not in small groups, not even in larger lifestyle movements. If we're going to avoid catastrophe, we need to change those larger systems, and change them for everyone, and change them quickly.... We can no longer afford to mistake the symbolic for the effective, or put our hopes in the mystical idea that if enough of us embrace small steps, our values will ripple mysteriously out through the culture and utterly transform it. We've been saying that for more than 40 years, it hasn't happened and we need to stop lying to ourselves that it will. Live the life that fits your values, but don't mistake that for changing the world."

I agree, the symbolic is vital but it certainly isn't adequate to the task. This brings me to the main point of today's post. A fundamental change in the energy density of our society is coming. We can wait for it to happen to us with all the attendant chaos that implies or we can plan for it.

We need to go for the big targets first, where are the biggest emissions coming from, Coal and oil fired electricity generation, industrial agriculture, and oil fueled transport. All three require government intervention to rectify. That won't happen if you don't get involved to make it happen. If you live in the US take the example from the UK where protests have caused Eon to shelve it's plans to build a new cola fired plant at Kingsnorth and Greenpeace protesters continue to occupy existing stations as well the roof of the Houses of Parliament. At the very least let your government representative know that you support strong climate targets, the cessation of construction of all fossil fuel powered power stations, the cessation of mountaintop removal and the cessation of the exploitation of the Alberta Tar sands. Go to a "Coal Country" house party to get educated and find others in your community that are involved in stopping dirty coal.

Realize that these actions are requiring a severe reduction in fossil fuel use in a very short time. It is important for the symbolic power but also for your own security that you powerdown your own life. Go car free, grow your own food, go off grid for your electricity, harvest rainwater, eliminate waste and debt fueled globalized consumerism from your life, start or join a Transition initiative to help your community powerdown and relocalize.

Are you qualified or important enough to know about Peak Oil?

I find it astounding that while the IEA (International Energy Agency) dithers, obfuscates, and turns away from facing the realities of Peak Oil it is the US Military that is being straightforward about it!

"...the US Joint Forces Command concludes:

By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD… The implications for future conflict are ominous..."

The implications for our way of life are even more ominous. Check out the rest of the article by Lionel Badal over at Seeking Alpha.

Here's some more of what the IEA is saying;
On the one hand,

"... in a recent interview to the British newspaper, The Independent[2], Dr. Birol was reported to say that the world was heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery.

The article added, “In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated”.

In fact, in 2008 the IEA conducted for the first time a detailed field-by-field analysis of global oil production and its findings are bleak. Asked by a journalist on what the previous analysis relied on, the Chief-Economist of the IEA admitted, “it was mainly an assumption”[4]. In the 2008 World Energy Outlook (the key document on oil used by OECD countries), they have analysed about 800 fields, which account for ¾ of global reserves and more than 2/3 of global oil production. They come to the conclusion that decline rates are far higher than previously thought, between 6.7 and 8.6% a year[6]. As result, they now estimate that to maintain the current levels of oil production (about 85 MBD) by 2030 the world would need to develop and produce 45 MBD; as said by Dr. Fatih Birol, approximately four new Saudi-Arabias.

Simultaneously, they have analysed all the projects that are financially sanctioned in all the countries in the world (about 230) up to 2015. As it takes five to ten years to produce oil from a new field, they have a clear image of the coming situation. When they add all the projects together (if all of them see the light of the day – unlikely with the current credit crunch-) they will bring about 25 millions barrels per day. However, because of the important decline rates, the world will still be short of “at least” 12.5 MBD before 2015. Asked by a journalist if this means Peak Oil, Dr. Birol answered, “We are facing a serious threat”

And on the other hand,

"Nevertheless, things are never clear when it comes to the IEA and Peak Oil, especially with Dr. Birol.

“Misquoted by the journalist…”

On the 27^th of August, David Strahan, a British journalist, asked the IEA press office confirmation that the IEA recognised Peak Oil would happen “in about 10 years” as reported by The Independent.

Amazingly, an IEA spokesman (initially) answered:

I spoke with Fatih who said he was misquoted by the journalist…The article incorrectly made it sound that the total oil production (including unconventional oil etc.) is going to peak at that time. Taking into consideration gains from unconventional oil, oil peak will be later than 2020, more around 2030...

The first obvious question anyone would ask is: if Dr. Birol really was misquoted, why didn’t he issue an official statement when the article was published?

The answer may well be that he wasn’t really misquoted at all.....

Fatih Birol feels that the article was confusing. Concerning peak oil, his position is clear and has not changed since WEO 2008… Taking into consideration gains from unconventional oil, oil peak will be later than 2020, more around 2030….

To be sure, the Peak Oil sceptics, Daniel Yergin and Michael Lynch (who, by the way recently attacked Dr. Birol) will be delighted to hear that!....

And yet, Dr. Birol who seems to be particularly concerned about his career has become a master in playing something that could be described as a “double game” regarding Peak Oil. Depending on the moment (and most likely, the pressures he receives), he publicly admits or denies or admits or denies the seriousness of Peak Oil and its potential effects.

In June 2004 the BBC[20] supported this claim and gave additional information about who Dr. Birol really is.

In public, Mr Birol denied that supply would not be able to meet rising demand, especially from the buoyant economies in the USA, China and India. But after his speech he seemed to change his tune… When BBC News Online followed up by asking if this giant increase in production was actually possible rather than simply a desire he refused to answer. "You are from the press? This is not for you. This is not for the press."

Apparently, for Dr. Birol the (hard) truth is neither for the press nor for the public."

Meanwhile what are our leaders doing about preparing for Peak Oil....Diddly! And why not, when was the last time you heard it covered in the mainstream media? As with climate change the policy seems to be "what the people (the average Joe) don't know won't hurt us (the captains of industry)"

Video - Transition TV - Eat the Suburbs: Gardening for the End of the Oil age

Video - Peak Oil Visually Explained

Is Peak Oil going mainstream?

This morning as the alarm switched the radio on I was surprised to hear on the BBC that a new report from the UK Energy Research Centre found a signifcant risk from Global Peak Oil and questioning why governments never talk about it. Tuning my television to BBC World I found mention of the report again, if only on the scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen. "This is encouraging" I thought.

After finally drinking my morning cuppa and checking on the days weather forecast, while wading through reams of twaddle on US news channels with no mention of the report or Peak Oil, I sat down to my computer and what do I see? A report over at Climate Progress about the statements from Deutsche Bank that they expect oil to hit $175/bbl by 2016 and the effects resulting from such a price. In his analysis Joe Romm also mentions a statement from Merrill Lynch,

"Steep falls in oil production means the world now needed to replace an amount of oil output equivalent to Saudi Arabia’s production every two years, Merrill Lynch said in a research report."

As the chart above shows this ain't gonna happen!

What interests me the most about this Peak Oil focused start to my day is that it is suddenly so visible, on some reputable mainstream media. Will it make a difference? Is Peak Oil going mainstream? Probably Not. Here's the closing statement for the BBC website about the UK report,

"This report does not contain new research, but is a review of data already available.

But the authors say the risk presented by global oil depletion deserves much more serious attention by the research and policy communities.

"Much existing research focuses upon the economic and political threats to oil supply security and fails to either assess or to effectively integrate the risks presented by physical depletion," they argue.

"This has meant that the probability and consequences of different outcomes has not been adequately assessed."

Despite the evidence, the report notes with some surprise that the UK government rarely mentions the issue in official publications."

Insufficient fuel to stoke the G20 fire

The G20 has decided to further the damaging addiction to unsustainable growth. As reported over at Peak Oil: Planning, Preparation, and Relocation;

"... we can examine the economic growth that the world experienced from 2003 until 2007. In 2003 oil consumption was 77 million barrels per day and in 2007 it was around 85 million barrels per day, i.e. an increase of 10 percent. At the moment consumption is around 84 million barrels per day. If the stimulus package that the G20 group decided on is to generate the same amount of growth as seen in the 2003 to 2007 period then we will need an increase of 8 to 9 million barrels per day during the next 5 years. Such an increase is not possible."

Clearly the energy to fuel the growth the G20 are planning on is out of the question.

As long we measure progress using the outmoded concept of GDP the illusion of perpetual growth will persist. GDP allows the inclusion of environmental cleanup, such occurred after the Exxon Valdez spill, superfund sites, and treatment of the cancers that result. If on one hand we inslude the creation of the devastation that causes the cleanup and call that activity growth and then include the cleanup itself we are at least delusional, and at worst insane. As long as we allow corporations whose only motivation is profit to define "growth" and how and why we should pursue it we are in serious trouble.

It is high time we let our leaders know that a new paradigm is needed. We need a steady state, sustainable economy, one that looks after the needs of all the worlds people through to the seventh generation, rather than one that, as Paul Hawken says, "steals the future, sells it in the present and calls it GDP."

For more details read the full article by Kjell Aleklett, Professor of Physics
Global Energy Systems, Uppsala University, www.fysast.uu.se/ges
President of ASPO International, the International Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, www.peakoil.net.

New oilfields don't change a thing.

While the mainstream media gushes on about "huge" new oil discoveries it is appropriate to do a reality check about the possible impacts they will have on Peak Oil. Check out this post over at The Cost of Energy.

Peak Oil on Forbes.com

I find it surprising but undeniable encouraging to see an article by Christopher Steiner on Forbes.com frankly discussing Peak Oil. Thanks to Dr. Clifford Wirth over at Surviving Peak Oil for the heads up.

"One of the best arguments for oil's increasing scarcity has been made by Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, Ph.D., a former director of the National Iranian Oil Co. who died in 2007. In one of the doctor's last research essays, he wrote of world's oil production: "After some 147 years of almost uninterrupted supply growth to a record output of some 81-82 million barrels per day in the summer of 2006, crude oil production has since entered its irreversible decline."

Samsam added, somewhat intuitively, the decrease "will eventually come to affect everything else under the sun." American oilman T. Boone Pickens also fully realizes the changes that will have to be made in our lives going forward. Pickens, who made his billions primarily from oil, is espousing a strategy that would have America deriving much of its energy needs from wind, with natural gas filling in the holes.

"The world has been looked at. There's still oil to be found, but not in the quantities we've seen in the past," Pickens said. "The big fields have all been found and the smaller fields, well, there's not enough of them to replenish the base ... If I'm right, we're already at the peak. The price will have to go up."

As Pickens mentioned, production in many of the world's megafields has already dropped ominously. Megafields are even more important than they sound: Half the world's oil comes from just .03% of its oil fields (the mega ones). When the megafields' production begins to ebb, it's likely we'll have entered an irreversible supply decline. It's a reality that's here. Consider this: Oil fields typically enter decline after 50 years of pumping. And the average age of the world's largest 14 fields? Forty-nine years."

A new bicycle commuting system rolls out in North America

It is quite obvious, at least to me, that we are all going to be doing a lot less driving as peak oil kicks in and we move toward a low carbon economy to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Having been a bicycle commuter in Seattle for many years and in other cities I lived in before that I am convinced of the fantastic potential of bicycles to provide cheap healthy, non polluting, highly efficient transportation. During the Democratic convention last year a pilot program called Freewheelin provided a cycle commuting system to the attendees. Now having built on that success they have launched B-cycle. Check it out over at Worldchanging or at the Bcycle website.

Why are we wasting time?

Any investment in further increasing our dependence on oil is a not only a foolish waste of resources and time but increases the impact on our society when the crunch shows up. As posted earlier, the amount of energy required to pump dwindling reserves is increasing, from 100:1 in the 1930's to 11:1 today. That's 11 barrels delivered for every barrel spent chasing it. This is referred to as EROI, energy return on energy invested, and as David Murphy says over on The Oil Drum;

"Declining EROI means that the net energy contained in each unit of energy delivered to society is decreasing over time, requiring the extraction of increasingly greater quantities just to meet societal demand, decreases the quantity of energy remaining in the ground for future society, makes it more difficult to find and develop the remaining bit of energy. With every barrel we pull out of the ground we propel ourselves further down this path, creating a more difficult situation for future generations."

According to Lester Brown on The Oil Drum;

"Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. World reserves of conventional oil are in a free fall, dropping every year."

So why are wasting time? Why am I? Why are you?
Why are we waiting for government to do something about this? It is not likely to happen until they, the government, see us doing something about it first. So.....

Start a transition initiative to get yourself and your community off of the oil addiction turntable.

Walk, ride a bike, use public transport.

Convert your house to use renewable energy.

Grow your own food.

Find an occupation that is not dependent on fossil fuels.

Invest in resilience not in consumerism.

The scale of change required is huge. The sooner we get started the more likely we will succeed. Do something to make a difference.

Peak oil is likely to be much worse than previously thought

As reported over at Worldchanging;

"The More Oil We Use, The More Oil it Takes to Get Oil...
David Murphy at The Oil Drum gave an interesting analysis of the Net Hubbert Curve this week. He bases his predictions on a report from Cutler Cleveland of Boston University about the sharp decline in EROI (energy return on investment) -- in other words, it now requires much more energy to extract energy that we can use. Specifically, the report says, EROI has declined (in the U.S.) from 100:1 in the 1930s to 11:1 as of 2000.

How did we go from spending 1 barrel of oil per 100 to spending the same amount for a mere 11? Well, Murphy explains, as we use more and more of the world's oil reserves, the remaining oil is much more difficult to extract. This we knew. But Murphy takes this equation to the Hubbert Curve to produce an new curve, showing that post-peak oil, we don't actually have half the world's reserves left in net energy. We actually have much less.

Figure 3 shows the results of this analysis. Unlike the original Hubbert curve that shows equal quantities of gross energy resources on the left and right side, the Net Hubbert Curve is skewed so that most resources are on the left. For example, according to the original Hubbert curve, 50% of the energy resource is remaining when production levels reach the peak, but this is quite different for the Net Hubbert curve. Due to declining EROI, by the time peak production is reached, 73% of the net energy available is already used.

The implications of these results are vast, but in general, declining EROI is going to make it very difficult to meet the net energy needs of future society. Although this study may not be very precise, it does imply that if we have reached Peak Oil (and I think we have), that society has already spent quite a bit more than half of the net (or discretionary) oil energy that will ever be available."

2009 International Energy Outlook from the Energy Information Agency acknowledges peak oil

As reported by Michael T Klare over on Organic Consumers Association website,

"For the first time, the well-respected Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with those experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close. Almost as notable, when it comes to news, the 2009 report highlights Asia's insatiable demand for energy and suggests that China is moving ever closer to the point at which it will overtake the United States as the world's number-one energy consumer. Clearly, a new era of cutthroat energy competition is upon us.

Peak Oil Becomes the New Norm

As recently as 2007, the IEO projected that the global production of conventional oil (the stuff that comes gushing out of the ground in liquid form) would reach 107.2 million barrels per day in 2030, a substantial increase from the 81.5 million barrels produced in 2006. Now, in 2009, the latest edition of the report has grimly dropped that projected 2030 figure to just 93.1 million barrels per day--in future-output terms, an eye-popping decline of 14.1 million expected barrels per day.

Even when you add in the 2009 report's projection of a larger increase than once expected in the output of unconventional fuels, you still end up with a net projected decline of 11.1 million barrels per day in the global supply of liquid fuels (when compared to the IEO's soaring 2007 projected figures). What does this decline signify--other than growing pessimism by energy experts when it comes to the international supply of petroleum liquids?

Very simply, it indicates that the usually optimistic analysts at the Department of Energy now believe global fuel supplies will simply not be able to keep pace with rising world energy demands."

Peak Oil explained in video

Organic Consumers Association has posted a series of video's that very effectively explain peak oil and the situation we as planet find ourselves in as a result. One of my favorite points is that in 1985 when OPEC began basing its production quota's on stated reserves, all members raised their reserves overnight by 2X sometimes 3X! And the numbers haven't changed much, after all these years of production. The fact is that even the International Energy agency predicts the peak in worldwide production as early as 2015 and there is growing evidence that production peaked in 2008.

For more detail about Oil, our dependence on it, our willingness to wage war over it, and our unwillingness to deal with it's depletion in a meaningful way watch the videos over at OCA.

Richard Heinberg on Resilient Communities-Part One

This 6 part talk was delivered to Findhorn in the UK in March 2008. You can read a debate between Rob Hopkins and Richard Heinberg regarding these ideas over at Transition Culture.