In China, the word for "crisis" is the same as the word for "opportunity".
-Barney, a la The Simpsons. Patrick -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of stan moore Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 12:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: regarding my recent postings on crises ahead Folks -- Just to avoid a bit of possible confusioin, I would like to point out that among my own postings in the last couple of weeks are references to multiple problems, all of which seem to be coming at us simultaneously, some of which interact and synergize with one another and some of which have had proposed solutions that create yet new crises. Global climate change is absolutely a crisis facing humanity, but in and of itself is the least mentioned crisis by me, because I believe this group well understands the nature of the crisis. I have not mentioned global climate change in the context of discussions of alteration of our civilization. What I have discussed to some extent are how some of the proposed solutions for global climate change, designed to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere, such as biofuels, pose their own threat to the local ecologies as well as to the survival of subsistence farmers in the poorer nations of the world. But biofuels are also a proposed solution to yet a different problem, which I can call the Peak Oil crisis. This is THE huge crisis I have focused on with regards to the survival of our civilization as we have known it. Peak Oil means the depletion of 1/2 of all known petroleum deposits ever produced by planet Earth, with severe implications as to the ability of nations to run their economies, to feed the masses, to transport people and goods around the planet as well as locally, and so forth. A good reference to explain why Peak Oil is such a big deal is "The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Society" by Richard Heinberg. Biofuels, in addiition to theoretically reducing global climate change by decreasing carbon emissions, are also alternative fuels to petroleum and are allegedly sustainable forms of energy. A new report from Asia this week pointed out that palm oil, formerly considered a sustainable, non-polluting form of energy, is not carbon-neutral, in part because a significant amount of area planted to palm trees to produce the oil are in peat bogs, whose alteration will release far more carbon into the atmosphere than saved by the burning of palm oil This realization is causing nations and big industries to rethink their plans to continue to dramatically expand palm oil production in order to produce sustainable, renewable, "low impact" energy. Kunstler wrote about peak oil as a mechanism that will drive enormous, perhaps catastrophic changes to our society. Michael Klare wrote about resource wars, primarily based on the competition for petroleum by world powers moving forward. Kunstler may or may not be aligned with Lyndon Larouche -- I don't know and I am not a Larouche supporter in any way. But Kunstler's vision of how the U.S. will be forced to change due to Peak Oil is consistent with the analyses of other informed persons, including Heinberg and others. It is positively mild by comparison with the vision of Jay Hanson, who sees no way to avoid nuclear war in years ahead. Richard Clark Duncan's Olduvai Gorge Theory is not precisely about Peak Oil, though Peak Oil is integral to the fact that the length of the tenure of industrial society can be predicted empirically. But Duncan's analysis uses data that by far predate the burning of oil and it is only because oil has been such a phenomenon driver of the industrial development of man that Peak Oil is related to the conclusions of his book in Duncan's final analysis. If nuclear power had proved to be a replacement for petroleum on the worldwide scale that petroleum has occupied as an energy source, then Duncan's conclusions would have been different. In fact, as Heinberg explained very well, it is the fact that petroleum is unique in being such a versatile and universal energy source that makes the depletion of petroleum such an enormous problem for our species, whose meteoric rise in numbers and influence on the planet has been tied to the advent of the petroleum era in world history. There are other crises that we face as well. Consumption (which is obviously related to energy) is an ecological problem because we consume earth resources faster than the earth produces them. We are living off of the capital and not the interest of earth's natural productivity. However, because of the relationship between oil as energy source and consumption, I have little hesitation in saying that ultimately the crisis of Peak Oil will diminish the crisis of consumption. Our changed habits and lifestyle due to Peak Oil will leave us no ability to consume in the future as we have in the past. But there will be synergies among the crises. Global climate change will exacerbate consumption problems in terms of water supply, for instance. Melting glaciers and reduced snowpack in some areas will make it hard for existing regional populations of humans to exist, much less flourish. Climate change may produce violent storms and other destructive natural phenomena and the effect of Peak Oil on national economies may make it very difficult to recover and rebuild our infrastructure. What if sea levels do rise and low-lying, but densely populated areas are washed out? New Orleans may be a harbinger of what will happen to many other areas nationally and globally, not only in human suffering, but in the failure to bring adequate resources to bear to protect, rescue, and repair the damage. All of these crises have been known to experts for years, if not decades. We have not been prudent. We lost our memory of the contrived oil shortages of the 1970's, which should have led to intense preparation for the end of the Age of Oil. We started out well, but we petered out when North Sea oil and Alaskan oil came on line. I believe we will pay a steep price for allowing ourselves to forget the lessons of the Arab Oil Embargo. Some day a future generation will hear about Hummers and other SUVs and wonder "What were they thinking!" And here we are. I think that it is unquestionable that we are fast approaching a period of drastic, involuntary change in human history. Why hasn't the U.S. government gone to the people and informed them of the difficulties and difficult choices in the near future? I think they decided they did not want to panic the stock market. But panic will be hard to prevent when the realization of what lies ahead hits the masses. Perhaps that is why a police state has been in preparation here in the U.S. for several years. I suspect that in a few years, "terrorists" will include dissidents who vigorously complain about the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources in the nation and world lying ahead. Stan Moore San Geronimo, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ Interest Rates near 39yr lows! $430,000 Mortgage for $1,399/mo - Calculate new payment http://www.lowermybills.com/lre/index.jsp?sourceid=lmb-9632-18466&moid=7581
