Review: Diet for a Hot Planet

"Diet for a Hot Planet:  The climate crisis at the end of your fork and what you can do about it," by Anna Lappe, is a shot across the bow of the industrial farming interests that currently control, not only almost all of today's food production but, all of the dialogue we hear regarding food production.  In this highly researched book Ms. Lappe pits the large industrial farms against todays emerging organic farming community and comes up with some surprising conclusions that go against the prevailing ideas we hold about our present first world farming system.

According to Ms. Lappe the organic farmers can match crop yields for most crops and do so sustainably and in a climate friendly way.  Along the way she suggests many ways we can make changes to our lifestyle to minimize the climate threat.  For instance, she strongly suggests that we need to get rid of our need for meat as it is a primary source of methane, one of the worst chemicals in the climate change battle, and a very inefficient use of our arable land.  I was looking for a bit of a warning about the need for organic farming in a world of reduced availability of hydrocarbons.  There wasn't that kind of a message but it was clear that organic farming is a much lower consumer of hydrocarbons and therefore should be better positioned to weather the peak-oil storm.

Ms. Lappe is clearly a strong advocate for the organic farming revolution.  I hope that she is successful in her quest.  I am pessimistic, however, as I think there are far too many corporate, big money interests in play for this kind of effort to take place peacefully.  Eventually, all farming will be organic, there is no other long term option.  But until we have run up against the wall of hydrocarbon scarcity, we will be stuck with the system that is preferred by the power brokers.

Thinking about Sustainable Behavior

I accept peak oil as a fact. Having done that, I am forced to concede many other consequences that must surely follow. One of those consequences is a future of significantly reduced consumption for everyone. That follows both because the production of consumer goods will be limited directly by energy constraints and also because we will be spending a greater share of our resources in acquiring the energy sources and thus will have less to direct towards the consumption of other things. Here in the U. S. that reality will be particularly jolting since our per capita level of consumption is so high compared to the average world consumption and is treated as a social entitlement.

No matter how much we grumble, however, as energy limits are reached we will be forced to retool our thinking and behavior with regard to consumption and sustainability. I have spent many an hour imagining how I personally, and we collectively, might approach this new reality. One of the realizations that I came to was that we have developed some pretty bizarre assumptions in our pursuit of profit in a world of “unlimited” resources (that itself, of course, is the most bizarre). One such example, is the notion of “planned obsolescence.” This, to me, is the bi-polar opposite of sustainable behavior. Intentionally designing a product to have a limited life cycle (presumably for the purpose of increasing production/sales/consumption of the product) screams out idiocy in a rational world of real world limits.

Overtly planned obsolescence is a particularly vile example but there are many, more subtle, examples of essentially the same idea. Consider the intent of fashion or style. Fads are the epitome of this construct. This is really planned obsolescence as well, however cleverly it is woven into the social fabric. Nothing should become “so last year” in just a year. Even the marketing concept of trading off quality for price (think of post-war Japanese fare) feeds this insidious cycle of consumption. If you really think it through, you realize that we have structured our entire economic existence on a doctrine of non-sustainable behavior. Harmless enough, and surely profitable, but only in a surreal world of limitless resources.

What would product design look like if we were really interested in sustainable behavior. Let’s try “planned permanence.” A truly sustainable world would use non-renewable resources as if they were precious artifacts. A product that was produced in such a world would be intended to last forever or for as long a possible. These products would be perfectly functional, durable, repairable, maintainable, upgradable and in the end completely recyclable. There would be no economics of scale. Only those that were needed would be made. Finally, when you obtained such a product you would expect to keep it for as long as you had a need for such a product. Imagine inheriting your grandfather’s toolkit and having the builder’s grandson tune it up for you. Until you can accept such a way of life you won’t be happy in a truly limited resource, recyclable world.

Petrophy

On American Sustainability - Anatomy of Societal Collapse (Summary)

[Link: The Oil Drum]

"As the historically abundant and cheap resources upon which our American way of life depends become increasingly scarce and expensive, a scenario that is already in process, the total level of natural resources and derived goods and services available for our consumption will decline dramatically, as must some combination of our population level and material living standards.

Absent immediate fundamental changes to both our distorted worldview and our dysfunctional resource utilization behavior, American society will collapse—not in 1000 years, or 500 years, or even 50 years; but almost certainly within 25 years. America, as we know it, will cease to exist well before the year 2050."

This article makes a strong statement about the true consequences of the sustainability quandary. Sustainability is not a direction of travel but rather a destination. As children of the age of growth, if we think about limits at all, we tend to think about ceilings. How much is too much? As a society that is living far beyond its means, however, we should be thinking about floors. How far do we have to fall?

All of the trappings of a modern, industrial society are interrelated. Both our products and our means of production are fed by unsustainable resource consumption. Somehow we will have to learn to produce sustainable products using sustainable production methods with sustainable sources of power if we are to maintain a functioning sustainable society. In addition we will probably have to figure out how to limit our actual numbers. None of this is a likely result, if we wait until the unsustainable resources are gone, or even until society realizes that they eventually will be gone.

All of this seems somewhat obvious to me. And yet, honestly, I cannot find a way to drop my lifelong habits and move towards a non-consumptive, or even lower consumption existence. The built in prejudices from living my life in a powerful, industrial society are difficult to ignore. For the vast majority of people even the concept of limits is still impossible to embrace. I think the author is right, the inevitable readjustment we are facing will, almost certainly, come as a surprise and we will probably never know what hit us.

Magazine Preview - The Big Fix - Can Barack Obama Really Transform the U.S. Economy? - NYTimes.com

[Link: NYTimes.com] "For centuries, people have worried that economic growth had limits — that the only way for one group to prosper was at the expense of another. The pessimists, from Malthus and the Luddites and on, have been proved wrong again and again. Growth is not finite. But it is also not inevitable. It requires a strategy."

The MSM carries the "infinite growth" ball onto an uncertain field of play. It couldn't be stated more clearly, "Growth is not finite." With a good plan we can keep the game going forever. WRONG! With a really good plan we might be able to survive, but it isn't going to look like the modern Western model of ever growing consumption by an ever growing number of people. Infinite growth may be the only thing that will save our way of life but that doesn't prove it is real.

How America Can Quit Its Oil Addiction

[Link: Newsweek Issues 2009: Rules for a New World | Newsweek.com]
"Around this cheap and versatile fuel, the United States built an impressive civilization—one featuring universal car ownership, highways stretching to the horizon, endless suburban tracts, affordable airline travel, malls, Disneyland and other aspects of the American Dream. But the United States no longer produces enough oil to sustain this civilization—yet it continues to rely on petroleum for a huge proportion of its energy needs."

People who should now know better continue to proclaim that if we really don't want to base our energy consumption on petroleum and other hydrocarbon supplies we need only change our minds and start towards using something else. Something that won't involve complicated political maneuvering with despicable foreign despots. Something that won't continue to feed vast quantities of carbon compounds into our atmosphere causing ongoing climate change. Something that won't require us to modify our extravagant lifestyles. Something, in fact, that doesn't exist.

It isn't a matter of will. There are no technologies that can be scaled to provide the energy density we need to go on with our life as is. Our lifestyle is a hydrocarbon lifestyle. Even if we could build a new infrastructure to harness the wind from continents filled with windmills, convert all of our roofs to solar collectors and convert all of our agriculture into producing biomass to be converted to fuels, the resulting world would not be the same as we have now. We would not have the same mobility or lifestyle flexibility that we have now. We would not have the disposable energy wealth to spend as we have now. Such a world would be complicated and difficult because it takes energy to build energy production. We would be realizing a much smaller marginal energy gain from these new supplies. As I have pondered before, how would windmills be built if we only had windmill power to build them with.

We use our petroleum reality based mind to imagine a new non-petroleum world. Forgetting that we wouldn't have any petroleum to build it with.

The (Not So) Invincible Society - Scitizen

[Link: The (Not So) Invincible Society - Scitizen] "He reasons that if a significant portion of the complex, interdependent systems that make up our society fail, society will collapse. And, if that happens, it would be all but impossible to restart industrial society. He argues that industrial society relies on the continuous operation of these systems to obtain essential minerals from very lean ores using copious amounts of energy, energy procured using these same complex systems."

This little article makes a big point and one that has entered my mind on many occasions. We have reached a point in our energy use that the extraction of the resources requires a high level of usage of those same resources. If/when we encounter an interruption of the extraction process it may then be impossible to restart.

As the author reasons, the only obvious acceptable path is to try and reach for a sustainable model of living while we still have the resources to make the change. A sustainable model that results directly from a breakdown of the industrial system is probably not one we would want to have to endure.

Solving Fermi's Paradox

...On another level, though, Fermi’s Paradox can be restated in another and far more threatening way. The logic of the paradox depends on the assumption that unlimited technological progress is possible, and it can be turned without too much difficulty into a logical refutation of the assumption. If unlimited technological progress is possible, then there should be clear evidence of technologically advanced species in the cosmos; there is no such evidence; therefore unlimited technological progress is impossible.

[Link: The Archdruid Report]

I have proposed occasionally on this blog that I think the belief in ongoing technical progress that defines the human world view of the future, is probably wrong. It is my opinion the future of mankind will be much more humble than most of us imagine and that our dreams of space travel and unlimited growth will prove to be an unobtainable destiny. Up until now my doubt was based on a gut-level instinct and I felt that for someone to make the move to this trend of thought would require a major leap of faith because my, and most of humanity's, world view has been severely distorted by living in the midst of the age of hydrocarbons.

To my delight, however, I stumbled on this article by John Michael Greer of the Archdruid Report in which he develops a logical and, for me, cogent argument for the impossibility of unlimited technological progress not only for humanity but for any living species. I really believe that in order for us to begin to repair the damage we have done to the earth and to prepare for our "real" future we will first all have to accept this reality of ultimate limitations. In this article, Mr. Greer has done a good job of helping us to get to that point. Read it and see if you don't agree.

Energy crisis cannot be solved by renewables, oil chiefs say

The world is blinding itself to the reality of its energy problems, ignoring the scale of growth in demand from developing countries and placing too much faith in renewable sources of power, according to two leaders of the global energy industry

[Link: Times Online]

This is very serious talk from the heads of major oil. Most of the things they are talking about are not news to anyone who has been following the oil depletion story line. Maybe not news but a little more intimidating when you consider the source.

Demand for hydrocarbon fuels will outstrip supply. Inadequate supply will not be sufficiently bolstered by renewable fuels. Attempts to deal with climate change will falter as we resort to burning coal and trying to convert it to liquids for transportation. If the heads of Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil say so it might make sense to listen.

But what do they suggest we do to tackle these problems? Are you ready for this? Reduce our consumption (otherwise known as conservation or, as they suggest, "energy efficiency"). That is really the revolutionary message in this article. I have not seen anyone of any stature in industry or politics(especially the oil industry) suggest that we actually try to consume less. Isn't consumption what makes America tick? Certainly a politician couldn't say something like that. Let's keep our eye on this trend. It could actually change things.

From Peak Oil To Dark Age?

Even if the peakists are wrong, we would still be better off taking these actions. And if they're right, major efforts right now may be the only way to avert a new Dark Age in an overheated world.

[Link: Business Week]

I will have to say that I am surprised at this reasonable opinion under the banner of a publication like Business Week. Like many recent Peak Oil discussions in the media, this article seems to be picking up on the causal relationship that Peak Oil and Climate Change enjoy. A while ago they talked about the two subjects as independent problems. Now they have started talking about the two being like two sides of the same coin. Eventually they will understand that the two problems are really just two, admittedly bad, side effects of recklessly using (AKA: releasing back to the atmosphere) the vast accumulation of carbon pulled from the atmosphere and stored in the earths crust over many millions of years. When they understand that, they will start to comprehend what a real solution looks like. Less consumption or fewer people. Almost certainly both.

As oil production fails to meet demand our climate is going to have more than coal to worry about too. Every thing that can be burned for heat or eaten will be stripped from this earth by the hydrocarbon hordes that have arisen to feed off of the cheap and plentiful oil. If it can't be burned for heat or eaten it will be stripped from the earth to make room for something that can. It won't be pretty.

So you want to save the planet? What should you consider first?

When the OPEC oil embargo hit in October 1973, Rosenfeld did a little math. He discovered that if Americans used energy as efficiently as the Europeans or Japanese, the United States could have been exporting oil in 1973, rather than sitting in rationing lines at gas stations. The solution, he realized, was not to bend the Arab oil regimes to America's will but to end America's thralldom to them by wasting less energy.

[Link: OpEdNews.com]

I remember those days after the OPEC Oil Shock. Gasoline rationing, everybody trying to figure out how to save energy, Jimmy Carter's "moral equivalent of war" speech, all of those things. I did my part. I added insulation and bought some double paned glass for my house, even bought a cool little gas-stingy car from Detroit which is the worst car I ever owned, by the way. The double paned glass in particular was a direct result of the realization that, as the author notes, conserving energy is every bit as good as finding new energy or, more importantly, not using imported energy. My purchase was subsidized by my power company, acting on that logic. That is all good and society has used it to save a lot of energy in the intervening time period. I am sure there is much more savings to be made in that way. I think that to really deal with the energy problem that we have, however, we are going to have to take energy conservation to a another level.

Peak Oil, or more correctly oil depletion, by definition has one principle cause. Excessive consumption of hydrocarbons and the products that depend on hydrocarbons. Global warming is really just a symptom of that same excessive hydrocarbon consumption. Both of these issues have come to crisis even with the great improvements in energy effciency that have been introduced since the energy crisis in the '70s. Clearly a more drastic reduction in consumption is needed if we are to have a chance of dealing with these two problems. Consumption is the product of the number of consumers and the average level of consumption of those consumers. With that in mind, it is my personal opinion that nothing will be accomplished until there is real population reduction. I don't have any idea how society will deal with this reality but I know that somewhere down the line mothers need to have many fewer babies, and they need to teach those babies to consume less by consumming less themselves. I am going to leave that one there. There is almost no common ground in our society where that discussion might be held. Which leaves us with the other factor, consumption itself.

Like it or not we live in a society that promotes consumption. Consumption is jobs. Consumptions is sales. Consumption is the preferred social activity. Consumption is the economy, stupid. I am old enough that I was raised by parents who became adults during the great depression. Consumption, for them, was painful. Things were precious and needed to be protected. The less consummed the better. Somewhere along the line that philosophy has gotten stood on its head. My children do not consider anything permanent. If a new trend comes along, they chuck the "old" to make room for the new. This is not a knock on them. Society has driven that behavior down their throats. If you have the resources that is the way you do it. It is not just my kids. Our friends kids act that way as well. I will admit that, as a consumer, I am somewhere in the never-never land between my parents and my children. I tend to turn over my stuff and pursue the latest toys, but it hurts.

Is there a way to get out of the consumption-as-a-way-of-life mode of operation? Maybe. What would have to change. First, we would have to start looking at our stuff a little differently. We would have to put a premium on durability. The best stuff would last forever and come with full instructions for maintaining it with that in mind. If it didn't last forever it would have to be easily repairable and the replacement parts would have to be readily available, forever. And it wouldn't go out of style. Technical improvements would be slowly introduced after thorough testing and would really be improvements. Ideally, the old stuff could be upgraded. Hey, you might even be able to make it yourself. Taking care of your stuff would be important so you would only have stuff you really needed. In a best case scenario, the big stuff would be pooled with neighbors and family. Everybody doesn't need everything all the time. Specifically, since we are ultimately trying to eliminate hydrocarbon consumption, we would buy our stuff to minimize hydrocarbon depletion. The best stuff wouldn't require hydrocarbons to run it, or produce it. No plastics. Low energy, sustainable production methods. Recycled supplies. The best stuff is produced and sold locally. No global supply networks. In a word the best stuff is not much stuff.

Doesn't sound like a very good economic model does it? That is the rub. For most of history that is the way things worked, you know. It is only when the hydrocarbon wind-fall came along and allowed us to imagine there were no limits that this consumptive economic model could really take off. Maybe we can get back into that old pre-oil frame of mind. One thing is certain. The people in the yellow pages aren't going to like it at all.

Peak Soil: Why cellulosic ethanol, biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America

The author looks ahead to post-petroleum living with considered conclusions: "Biofuels have yet to be proven viable, and mechanization may not be a great strategy in a world of declining energy." And, "…only a small amount of biomass (is) unspoken for" by today’s essential economic and ecological activities. To top it off, she points out, "Crop production is reduced when residues are removed from the soil. Why would farmers want to sell their residues?" Here’s an Oh- god-she-nailed-it zinger: "As prices of fertilizer inexorably rise due to natural gas depletion, it will be cheaper to return residues to the soil than to buy fertilizer." Looking further along than most of us, Alice has among her conclusions: "It’s time to start increasing horse and oxen numbers, which will leave even less biomass for biorefineries."

[Link: Culture Change]

You should read this article if you believe that Peak Oil is real but that we will come up with a technical fix that will allow us to continue living our lives of consumption, but in a different way. The only technical fix that will be viable will be high speed down-scaling combined with massive population reduction. There is no way to suck enough energy out of the world to support even a fraction of our present global population at a level of existance remotely approaching today's western culture without access to the billions of barrels of oil we have been using up to now.

Energy crisis demands immediate attention

“We are not going to reach energy independence in this nation and have better control over our national security as long as we remain dependent on the internal combustion engine and air traffic to move people and goods,” Schlesinger said.

With $5 billion worth of oil being used daily and the world’s existing oil fields in a decline of about 4% a year, Schlesinger detailed three relatively immediate alternatives: conservation, renewable resources and nuclear power. However, his prediction that future demand for oil would mean finding the equivalence of nine Saudia Arabia’s had more of an impact on the crowd.

[Link: CollegiateTimes.com]

People with real credentials are beginning to talk about the energy crisis now. James R. Schlesinger is a bonafide insider and person of knowledge. If you read the message between the lines of this article, it is impossible to deny the need for speed in any solution we bring to the energy table. Sadly, we have very few energy solutions available to us and all of them involve, at least, the whole of American society and probably the entire globe. More unfortunately, there are so very few solutions at the societal level that can be implemented in less than a generation. There is no margin for error and if we fail there will be hell to pay. I wish I were more optimistic about our ability to deal rationally with a problem of this magnitude.

I recently heard someone say that we will be OK because all of history has had a record of progress and advancement of society. I wanted to say that he needed to talk to a few people in Italy during the middle of the dark ages about all of the improvements they saw in their life compared to the Roman empire. We are not on a constant upward slope. "*%$?@" happens and when it does we are not guaranteed a rain check.

Toyota picks Mississippi for new plant

Toyota Motor Corp.'s Highlander sport utility vehicle should start rolling off the assembly line at a new, $1.3 billion plant in northeast Mississippi by 2010, company and state officials said Tuesday.
Toyota disclosed the site for its eighth vehicle assembly plant in North America, saying it will be built on a 1,700-acre site at Blue Springs, about 10 miles northwest of Tupelo. It also considered sites in neighboring states Arkansas and Tennessee.
The Mississippi plant will manufacture 150,000 Highlanders a year. It also will create 2,000 badly needed jobs in an area with an economy that has slowed because of losses in furniture

[Link: Houston Chronicle]

So Toyota expects surging SUV demand in the U.S. by 2010. I guess I would have to question that projection. There are always many ways to look at the future of course. If you are a big auto manufacture, however, they must all be through rose-colored glasses. There aren't many good post-peak oil scenarios out there for auto manufacturers.

A battle over biofuels

"To see where corn production can go, it is helpful to see how far it has come. In 1945, U.S. farmers harvested about 40 bushels of grain per acre. Today, thanks to elite hybrids, new technologies and growers' management practices, the U.S. average is 160 bushels per acre. Many growers consistently produce 250 bushels, up to a record of 400-plus bushels."

[Link: DesMoinesRegister.com]

It is interesting that nowhere in this article did the author discuss net-energy or try to estimate how much of the increased yields that he does mention are derived from the application of petroleum derived (natural gas) nitrogen fertilizers. I am not an expert on crop yields, I probably couldn't even be considered a knowledgeable layman, but I am pretty sure that a lot of the reason we are continually pulling really high yields from the same land is because we are able to artificially ignore soil replenishment and pest resistance by using hydrocarbon based fertilizers and insecticides. I suspect, as misleading as it is, that these dependencies are hidden in his phrase "management practices." We are going to have to do much more than add technology to our farming practices to increase yields. We are also going to have to find a way to replace the petrochemical fertilizers and insecticides that we rely on now. It would be very interesting to hear about the yields without any petrochemical help.

Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare

Link: New York Times

Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.

Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

As we desperately try to replace oil as a primary fuel for our civilization's transportation needs, this is going to be an ongoing story I'm afraid. Most high capacity agricultural projects are high impact operations. We have developed agricultural methods that are efficient and energy intensive. That is the way things are done today. But that is for food. The fuel industry is going to be added on top of the food industry. There will be no place safe from the gasoline farmers. Of course it will be an eco-nightmare. How could it not be.

10 Principles of Post Peak Oil Planning

This is a really good presentation. Mr. Moerman is definitely talking about the real future here. His discussions about wasting food producing land on bio-diesel and transportation planning are splendid. In his introduction he talks about our faulty planning which is based on our false belief in the existence of ever increasing supplies of cheap oil. That is the false present that I have talked about here before.

We need to listen to these thinkers. The real future will belong to those who accept the real present. We are desperately in need of understanding and even more urgently in need of top level planners who will act on that knowledge.
[Primary Link: 10 Principles of Post Peak Oil Planning, pointer from Energy Bulletin]

PetroWorld

Let's take a look at the big picture. In the past there were no usable hydrocarbons because uses for them had not been found. In the future there will not be any usable hydrocarbons because many uses for them will have been found and all of it that could be extracted will have been consumed. In between was/is PetroWorld.

PetroWorld is an artificial state of existence caused by having access to so many hydrocarbon resources that you begin to believe that there will always be hydrocarbons. Once you have taken residence in PetroWorld you are able to imagine a future that has unlimited hydrocarbons and you can even begin to plan for your future with that assumption in mind. Residents of PetroWorld begin to envision bizarre things like unlimited population expansion, unending economic growth, unbridled consumption, limitless travel (eventually to the stars), continual technological expansion and even virtual immortality. Anything is possible. In the real world, however, we all know that those things are not really attainable. All of those things depend on unlimited energy. Energy is not unlimited. In the past those things did not exist. In a very short while (our lifetimes) we will have to face up to the finite nature of hydrocarbon energy and those things will again have no meaning.

Inevitably, we will have to leave PetroWorld and return to the real world. I believe that will happen, not when we have used up all the hydrocarbons but rather, when our culture truly accepts the fact that we will not always have hydrocarbons. When we admit that the real state of existence is hydrocarbon free. At that point our future will become real and we can begin to plan accordingly. We can begin to build a world that is founded on rational limits and realistic expectations. We can begin to build a real world.

Stanford Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability

This is a link to an ambitious project from Stanford University seeking to understand the environmental ramifications of sustainability. The site is divided into four sections dealing with energy and the climate, land use, oceans and fresh water. I dont' know whether they will produce any useful answers to those powerful questions but if the following excerpt from the site is any indication, they are certainly heading in the right direction.

Researchers and scholars at Stanford are asking the key question: Can we adequately meet current human needs while protecting and restoring planetary life support systems for the welfare of people today and generations yet to come?

[Link: Stanford Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability ]