It´s Official, Peak Oil is soon!

The International Energy Agency has produced a report revising it´s projections for the onset of Peak Oil. Read George Monbiot´s assessment of the report compared to the IEA´s previous position over at celsias or at his own site along with his other articles.

Sail assisted cruise ship

I caught a program on TV while hanging out in southern Spain about a couple cruising the Med in a small sailboat. In the background I saw this amazing craft. Check it out at the Professional Travel Guide site which is where I found the image.

Wind assisted shipping

Here´s an interesting post over on Roland Piquepaille´s Technology Trends
which is also where I found the excellent graphic. Thanks Roland.

"German designers, who tested a prototype last year, estimate that such a hybrid sailing ship would see a 50 percent reduction of its fuel consumption. Danish and Japanese companies are also designing wind-assisted ships."

The rest of the post is very interesting and is well worth a visit to the site.

Sailing

Hello all,
I´m back on dry land, caught up on my sleep and fresh produce consumption and am looking forward to getting back to the blog. We are still in Spain and have internet access only at the local internet cafe so I´m limited in what I can do at the moment. I´ve got lots of thoughts about increasing the use of sail for shipping and want to do a series of posts on it at some point. It will have to wait until I get more done on my thesis though as it will require some research.

For now suffice it to say that I don´t think a return to square rigged ships is the way forward as they are quite limited in their ability to go upwind and this affects their ability to sail to a schedule. Also the amounts of manpower required on a traditionally rigged brig is quite high. So much to think about. I believe some ships are using kites to increase fuel economy downwind. I hope to look into this at some point.

Thanks for sticking with us during my break and I hope to provide you with lots of content in the months to come.

Robb

Taking a break

Hello All,
I'm off on a sailing trip for a month and so will be out of touch. Please browse the archives while I'm away and read any posts that crop up from the other contributors.
I'll back around Christmas.
Cheers
Robb

Ancient Forests petition

The Bush administration is bound and determined to do as much damage as they can before leaving office. They are trying to open up the tiny amount of ancient forests we have left to exploitation. Let them know this is unacceptable.
Sign the petition.

Thanks to the Rogue Valley Independent Media Center for the graphic

Who Owns Nature?

Greed knows no bounds. In the rush to commodify life, fewer and fewer corporations have gained control over more and more of our common heritage as living organisms on this planet. The ETC Group has released a report which you can download cataloging the extent of the situation. Or you can read a summary over at Organic Consumers Association.


"ETC Group's report highlights similarities between the current financial and food crises. "Corporate-controlled food systems, suffering from decades of deregulation, have resulted in a cornucopia of calamities making us sicker, fatter and more vulnerable," says ETC's Research Director Hope Shand. Ongoing food contamination scandals, the global obesity burden and ocean "dead zones" caused by fertilizer pollution are among the food chain disasters cited in Who Owns Nature? "Unhealthy and hazardous food products are constant reminders of a corporate food chain broken to bits," adds Shand.

Governments are working hand-in-hand with corporations to deny the root causes of the crises and sidestep structural reforms. "Despite the implications for democracy and human rights, no international body exists to monitor global corporate activity and no UN body has the capacity to monitor and evaluate emerging technologies," says ETC Group's Kathy Jo Wetter. "The ongoing food emergency and imploding global economy testify to the need for monitoring and oversight of corporations, as well as social control of powerful new technologies."

What to do? Buy local and non corporate, buy organic, or even better don't buy at all, grow your own, avoid F1 hybridized seed, seed swap, grow heritage varieties, lobby your government representatives to limit corporate power and excess.

Thanks to Diary of a Bad Housewife for the graphic.

Froggie in a pesticide mine

Amphibians are a bellweather species. Much like a canary in a coal mine they indicate the overall health of the environment.

When I lived in Bermuda I used to sit and watch the giant toads come out around sunset and snap up the giant cockroaches as they emerged from the septic tank vent pipe. I began to hear about the startling high numbers of these massive amphibians being found with extra legs, even extra heads. There are pesticides for sale in Bermuda which are made in the US but are illegal for use in the US. The pesticides for sale in the US are tested, minimally, for safety as individual chemicals, as if in a vacuum. Nothing in nature occurs in a vacuum. It has been suspected that the naturally resulting cocktail of chemicals derived from our love of poisons is far more dangerous both to the ecosystems upon which we depend and indeed directly upon ourselves than any chemical in isolation. Recent research bears this out. This is over on the Organic Consumers Association website where you will also find a link to the original research.

"PITTSBURGH, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists studying 10 of the world's most popular approved pesticides say, when combined, the chemicals caused 99 percent mortality in tadpoles.

University of Pittsburgh researchers said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved pesticides, when mixed together, can decimate amphibian populations even if the concentration of the individual chemicals is within limits considered safe.

Such "cocktails of contaminants" are frequently detected in nature, the scientists said, noting their findings offer the first illustration of how a large mixture of pesticides can adversely impact the environment.

Associate Professor Rick Relyea, the study's lead author, exposed gray tree frog and leopard frog tadpoles to small amounts of the 10 pesticides -- insecticides carbaryl, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, endosulfan, and malathion, as well as five herbicides: acetochlor, atrazine, glyphosate, metolachlor, and 2,4-D.

He used each of the pesticides alone, the insecticides combined, a mix of the five herbicides, or all 10 of the poisons.

Relyea found a mixture of all 10 chemicals killed 99 percent of leopard frog tadpoles, as did the insecticide-only mixture."

Monsanto and Fertility

Many suspect that GM foods are not only dangerous for the ecosystems they infiltrate but are also bad for human health. Since the companies that produce these poisons are not required to adequately prove the safety of their products it is left to independent groups to do the research. Here is information about a study linking a Monsanto product with infertility. It's over at the Organic Consumers Association.

Avego Shared Transport

Support Organic Agriculture

The US needs a secretary of agriculture who understands the need for the regeneration of our most precious resource, our soils, and who will not speak from the pocket of the agribusiness.
As reported over at the Organic Consumers Association;

"Unfortunately, it is now being widely reported that former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack is being considered for the Secretary of Agriculture position in the Obama Administration. Vilsack is a notorious cheerleader for genetically engineered crops and chemical and energy-intensive industrial agriculture--certainly no friend of organic food and farming. Tom Vilsack's appointment would represent a major disappointment for the Organic Consumers Association and its members. But there is still time to make your voice heard."

sign the petition

urge Obama to choose a better candidate!

Welcome Aran McKittrick

I'm very happy to welcome to Sustainable Living a new contributor. Aran brings a wealth of experience and a unique island perspective. I'll let him describe himself in his own words.

"I am an island boy by nurture having grown up in Bermuda but must admit its only been in recent years that I have become more acutely aware of the detrimental effects we have on our surroundings and each other.

Bermuda itself is a good modern day example as it starts to sink under the weight of its own affluence. Hence my recent ambition to return to university after six years of working as an IT computer engineer to see how I could help the island shed some of that “weight”! I started out in Dublin where I studied a PG.Dip in International Development Studies at UCD and then moved to London last year to do a MSc. Environment and Sustainable Development at UCL which I have just completed. All good stimulating stuff for the grey matter!

So now I have a head full of “big ideas” and am enthusiastic to create/find future opportunities and people with which to share them, professionally or otherwise and this Blog sounds like a great place to start! When my newly discovered social-ecological conscience is not getting the better of me, my down time involves rediscovering my passion for playing and listening to music and sailing when and wherever I can. "