I agree with Thomas Greco's Summer Newsletter where he writes:
<<<<The bottom line for me at this point is the urgent necessity for action to restore resilience to our communities by learning to share, cooperate, and organize as never before. We need to spend locally, save locally, and invest locally. We need to apply our dollar resources to projects that:
· Make the local community more self-reliant.· Provide greater local security in food, energy, housing, water and other necessities of life.
· Improve the overall quality of life. · Protect our savings against inflation of the dollar. >>>>I disagree with him where he writes of ethanol production as being a viable world-wdie energy technology of the future and thus, presumably, the basis for the local economy. Unfortunately there is one simple fact against it. A very considerable proportion of the solar energy that goes into the growing of sugar cane (or sugar beet in temperate countries) has to go into the structural components of the plant (the stalk and the leaf skeleton). Furthermore, in cane and beet the necessary nitrogen cannot be supplied from the air (where it is free and abundant) but only from nitrogenous fertilizer.
The latter, being made tonne for tonne from fossil fuels will become increasingly expensive from now onwards and peak oil and gas production is passed. As with modern food production, more energy would have to go into production than can be gained from it. (And this is why, of course, food will become increasingly expensive -- and at a faster rate than the future cost of oil, natural gas and coal.)
What's needed is the bacterial production of an energy chemical. Apart from the cell wall and interior reinforcement (but without the need for stalk and leaf construction) the bacterium is able to devote far more energy to its end-product -- which could be hydrogen, ethanol or any other burnable carbohydrate product. Besides the freely available solar energy and the gaseous nitrogen and carbon dioxide from the air the only other feedstock (besides trace minerals) is water.
There are two approaches by the Craig J Venter Institute and several university teams in America. One is to tweak the DNA of an existing natural bacterium, and the other is to build up a minimal synthetic bacterium from its components (nucleic acids called, A, C, T and G) which can now be bought off the shelf. The first steps of both have now been achieved (the latter only this year) even though the complexities of DNA are immense. The first approach has been mainly funded by Exxon, the second by private endowments and also the US Dept. of Energy.
Suitable bacteria for the production of biofuels cannot now be far off. Considering the fantastic strides that have been made in understanding DNA since the completion of the first draft of the Human Genome Project in 2003, then it's not too optimistic to talk in terms of a relatively few years before the first work-a-day bacterium is arrived at. Once that's achieved, then it will be developed as quickly as possible in order to produce scalable quantities to start making an ingress into the world's energy requirements presently large satisfied by fossil fuels.
Simultaneously, allied DNA research will continue apace into producing vaccines and medicines and, in the longer distant future -- say, a century or longer -- into the production of any consumer good in which organic chemicals replace present-day materials.
There can be little doubt that this will be the future technology -- and its associated social and economic infrastructures -- that will replace the present-day urbanized way of life brought about by fossil fuels. Unless geologists surprise us with vast new resources of fossil fuels then a Genomic era will inevitably replace the present Industrial one.
One major implication of the Genomic era is an interesting one, however, Just as the present ethanol production from sugar cane in Brazil takes us back to agricultural requirements of land -- that is large areas per capita -- the genomic production of fuel would probably take us back still further to hunter-gatherer times -- to even larger areas of land per capita being required. In both cases, if biofuel production is not to compete for (sunlit) land against land for normal food production or ecological reserves, then world population will have to drop enormously.
More importantly, a genomic production unit would require a highly educated team of personnel. Even if an optimal bacterium has been developed for the production of a particular item -- whether hydrogen, a vaccine or, let us say, a DNA-grown item of furniture -- its DNA will be constantly mutating. And mutations of bacteria can grow very quickly either from normal replication accidents or from the incursion of DNA material from alien bacteria or viruses. Even an "ordinary", well-developed bacterium will require the constant daily supervision of experts. Otherwise, even massive arrays of bacteria (facing the sun in the open air) could go completely "off-topic" or even die within days.
Despite the complexities and challenges of maintaining a bacterium-to-purpose, any team of workers worth its salt would also want to be researching even more efficient strains or other allied bacteria for more sophisticated end-products. These additional requirements would also need large areas of land facing the sun in the open air. Furthermore, speculating a century or three ahead, reserve areas of land could be retained for the temporary ad hoc use for growing any consumer product that the community might require. Instead of items physically imported and exported, a local firm/community could trade licences of the very latest DNA formulae for particular products.
This is now giving us a picture of a living-working environment which is as different from the urbanized industrial era of today as our is from the agriculture era 300 years ago and which was in turn different from the hunter-gatherer era 10,000 years ago.
All this might seem absurdly futuristic but some of the pointers -- negative with regard to the present era, positive with regard to the basic technology of the future -- seem very clear indeed.
Keith Hudson At 13:18 12/08/2010 -0700, you wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: <mailto:[email protected]>Thomas Greco To: <mailto:[email protected]>Thomas Greco -- thg Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 01:12 PM Subject: Summer Newsletter dec423.jpg Summer Newsletter 12 August 2010 Thomas H. Greco, Jr. O.L.D.No, you havent missed anything; this IS the first newsletter Ive sent out since April. Old Lazy Dog would happily spend all his time reading novels, watching movies, playing computer games, drinking beer with friends, wandering around, visiting family, and lazing around on beaches. I do a bit of that, but thats not what life is all about or what the times require. Theres still a lot of work that needs to be done.The Great UnravelingNo one likes to talk about, much less hear about, things that they consider bad or unpleasant. Gloom-and- doomer is a term that is often applied to someone who tries to give warning about some impending challenge. I say challenge instead of disaster because disaster is a judgmental term and the quality of our experience depends a lot on how we view it and our willingness to let go and accept what life brings us. Granted, some things are hard to bear and there are many things that I hope I never have to experience, but Well, you get the picture.What Im leading up to with all that is the financial and economic weather report. I think Ive gained some understanding of these things over the years, and I consider myself fairly well informed about the changing circumstances which leads me to conclude that we are now in the early stages of what Im calling The Great Unraveling. When I wrote my first book, Money and Debt: a Solution to the Global Crisis, twenty years ago, I reported that our modern monetary system creates money on the basis of debt to which an interest/usury burden is attached, and that the compound growth of debt would eventually exceed the capacity of the real economy to bear it.If you want to get a more detailed picture of this you can watch one of the many presentations Ive given about it during the past few years. Youll find several on my blog, <http://beyondmoney.net/>http://beyondmoney.net/. The most recent presentations which I gave last month are not yet available, but there are several from last year. You might start with the one I did in Seattle last November (The direct link is <http://vimeo.com/7490027>http://vimeo.com/7490027).I would also suggest that you pay attention to other sources whose knowledge and insights I respect. Among these are Ilargi and Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth, <http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/>http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/. Stoneleigh (a.k.a. Nicole M. Foss) gave a presentation in the UK in June which Aaron Wissner has made available at <http://localfuture.org/stoneleigh.htm>http://localfuture.org/stoneleigh.htm. I strongly recommend that everyone take the time to listen to it. I think the picture Stoneleigh paints is quite accurate and her short-range predictions are almost certainly correct. If there is one thing I might take issue with, it is what might be expected to happen over the longer term. There are numerous factors that are converging to reshape our world. What has so far been lacking is a process by which the various perspectives can be adequately combined to discover likely scenarios and formulate effective responses.One thing seems certain to me; civilization is at a point of historical singularity. While there are similarities with past situations (like the Great Depression), it would be a mistake to think that things will play out as they did before. Ive been talking lately about the emergence of The Butterfly Economy, and if the metaphor is anywhere near the mark, it seems worthwhile to study the way the metamorphic process works in nature. In my view, the old Caterpillar Economy is finished, done, kaput. It is disintegrating beneath our feet. The basic question now is how do we channel the resources of the disintegrating caterpillar economy in ways that will support the emergence of the new Butterfly Economy. I gave a talk on this subject just two weeks ago in Portland. No, I dont have all the answers, and my talk just barely scratched the surface, but I am pretty confident about the direction we need to take.The bottom line for me at this point is the urgent necessity for action to restore resilience to our communities by learning to share, cooperate, and organize as never before. We need to spend locally, save locally, and invest locally. We need to apply our dollar resources to projects that:· Make the local community more self-reliant.· Provide greater local security in food, energy, housing, water and other necessities of life.· Improve the overall quality of life. · Protect our savings against inflation of the dollar.Along these lines, alternative financial consultant, Susan Boskey asked me a few weeks ago to write something about investing for her newsletter. The short article I wrote titled, Investing in Uncertain Times, expresses my ideas about our current situation, and my advice about how to better use our resources in this time of transition. Ive posted it on my blog at <http://beyondmoney.net/2010/08/03/investing-in-uncertain-times/>http://beyondmoney.net/2010/08/03/investing-in-uncertain-times/.And, of course, we need to reduce our dependence upon banks and conventional money by organizing private exchange systems that can be networked together to provide an interest-free and inflation-free means of payment, while making credit reliably available to local productive enterprises.Northwest Tour, July 23 - August 4The Portland presentation I alluded to above was part of a tour of the Northwest. When I was invited a few months ago to go to southern Oregon to meet with local exchange advocates, we agreed that late July would be a possible timeframe. I put the word out to my network and it developed into a two week tour with the following itinerary:1. A public lecture in Medford on The End of Money and the Future of Civilization,2. A workshop in Ashland to assist the southern Oregon group in advancing to the next stages of their project,3. A public lecture in Eugene similar to the one I gave in Medford,4. A public lecture in Portland titled, The Butterfly Economy: How communities are building a new world from the bottom up. In Portland I also consulted with the Xchange Stewards group, which I have been advising since last year. The Butterfly Economy lecture covered a broader scope than the others and included advice on how people might allocate their spare cash to promote local energy and food security in ways that can also provide a hedge against inflation.5. A Cashless Exchange Colloquium in Seattle that brought together individuals and groups that are either operating or planning exchange systems in Oregon, Washington, or BC.BALLE conference and Eastern Tourdec4bf.jpgToward the end of May I traveled east for about three weeks to visit family and to participate in the annual BALLE (<http://www.livingeconomies.org/>Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) conference which was this year held in Charleston, SC. I was on a panel with Derek Huntington of Sonoma GoLocal and Jenny Kassan of the Katevich Law Group in Berkeley. Jenny has created a dialog group called <http://cuttingedgecap.ning.com/>Cutting Edge Capital Raising. It is billed as the place to talk about capital raising for small community businesses. It is open to all who wish to participate and you can sign up at <http://cuttingedgecap.ning.com/>http://cuttingedgecap.ning.com/.Localized small-scale Production of Ethanol FuelAn unexpected outcome of the BALLE experience was a meeting with Christapher Cogswell who is an associate of David Blume in a startup company, Blume Distillation, LLC, that will manufacture small-scale ethanol production units. I had, up until then, not regarded ethanol to be a viable alternative to gasoline as a motor fuel but after Christapher explained the many advantages of small-scale localized production, I came to realize that communities might gain a great deal from producing their own ethanol for fuel.dec50d.jpgSubsequent correspondence led to David Blumes visiting Tucson and his presentation at the downtown library on July 19. David is the author of the book, <http://www.permaculture.com/>Alcohol Can Be a Gas!, a massive book that provides a wealth of information on all aspects of ethanol fuel production and use. The localized approach has the potential to solve virtually all the problems associated with our addiction to petroleum. Thats a bold statement, but David is able to back it up with hard facts and an amazing knowledge of permaculture, history and the politics of technology.Dave's talk was inspiring and informative. (Be sure to view his videos at <http://www.permaculture.com/>http://www.permaculture.com/).At that event a number of people expressed interest in pursuing the possibilities of ethanol fuel for enhancing local energy security, dec56b.jpgso now there is on ongoing discussion about it. Im enthusiastic about a local ethanol production project because it fits in with my ideas about community economic development and resilience. We need to invest our local resources in local value creation, not in competing with other communities to attract outside interests that are more interested in exploiting rather than improving our community.Viewed in a broader context, a local ethanol production facility might be created by a local investment cooperative or LLC that would aggregate small amounts of savings and investment capital to establish enterprises that produce food, electricity, affordable housing, and other necessities. Besides his encyclopedic knowledge of the technical aspects of alcohol fuel, Blume has lots of knowledge on how to properly organize an LLC to produce it.Whats next?Im honored to have been invited to participate in the International Commons Conference, which is being jointly organized by the Heinrich Boell Foundation (<http://www.boell.de/foundation/about-us.html>http://www.boell.de/foundation/about-us.html) and the Commons Strategies Group, to be held in Berlin on November 1 and 2. According to the Foundation website:The Heinrich Böll Foundation is part of the Green political movement that has developed worldwide as a response to the traditional politics of socialism, liberalism, and conservatism. Our main tenets are ecology and sustainability, democracy and human rights, self-determination and justice. We Are a Green Think Tank and an International Policy Network.This will be my first visit to the Continent since 2005 and I am pleased to be returning in connection with such a worthy effort.Let us be thankful to be living in these exciting times. Thomas Thomas H. Greco, Jr. PO Box 42663, Tucson, AZ 85733, USA Website: <http://reinventingmoney.com/>http://reinventingmoney.com Blog-Beyond Money: <http://beyondmoney.net/>http://beyondmoney.netBlog-Tom's News and Views: <http://tomazgreco.wordpress.com/>http://tomazgreco.wordpress.com Photo Gallery: <http://picasaweb.google.com/tomazhg>http://picasaweb.google.com/tomazhgSkype/Twitter: tomazgreco
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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