from:"Karl S North"

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Capitalism Produced Trump: Let's Move Beyond "Resistance" to This Fascism by R.D. Wolff

2017-04-03 Thread Karl S North

On Mon, Apr 3, 2017 at 12:06 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

>
> http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40068-capitalism-
> produced-trump-another-reason-to-move-beyond-it  news/item/40068-capitalism-produced-trump-another-reason-to-move-beyond-it
> >
> Capitalism Produced Trump: Another Reason to Move Beyond It
> Sunday, April 02, 2017
> By Richard D. Wolff 

Finally someone to clearly explain to the anti-Trump hystericals their
short-sightedness! Who among them and their "lesser evil" fellow travelers
voted for the administrations of both parties that over decades brought the
long building crisis of capitalism to  this point? Who among them have
grasped the opportunity Trump presented in being the first president in
living memory to attack the ruling class for its warfare imperialism, its
off-shoring of the economy, and its refusal to countenance dangerous Russia
bashing? Trump will not follow up on his rhetoric; as Wolff explains, like
all politicians, his role is to serve the power elite, not seriously oppose
it. But others should.

Wolff is the rare economist who sees the inherent contradictions of
capitalism that are deepening its crisis. But like most economists even he
fails to factor in what will likely be the crowning blow to the system: the
energy and other finite resource depletion that capitalism must ravenously
feed on to sustain itself as a system. This depletion and its toxic
consequences have permanently eroded the carrying capacity of the earth to
support industrial civilization.  For the observant, evidence of the damage
to our society began at least four decades ago. There is no solution, under
capitalism or any other system that aims to rebuild the industrial dream.
We must simply adapt.

As Wolff says, the power elite will likely attempt a solution that combines
a police state with more of a command economy - a kind of 21st century
fascism that allows them to channel dwindling resources to an ever
decreasing affluent minority. Resistance will take many forms, some more
effective, many not so much. It will really depend on our level of
awareness, our ability to grasp the bigger picture.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

[sustainable_tompkins-l] Another nail in the biofuels coffin?

2016-08-31 Thread Karl S North

The news report:

http://www.zmescience.com/science/biofuels-not-neutral/


The study:


http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1764-4

Suspiciously noteworthy in the news article is that critics of the study
lean heavily on the argument that the fossil fuel industry funded the
study. The author claims he had to resort to this source when no one else,
including environmental organizations, would fund the study.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Cashing in on Cellulosic Ethanol: Subsidy Loophole Set to Rescue Corn Biofuel Profits

2016-08-12 Thread Karl S North

On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 12:09 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> From: Jonathan Latham  bioscienceresource.org>>
> Subject: Cashing in on Cellulosic Ethanol: Subsidy Loophole Set to Rescue
> Corn Biofuel Profits
> Date: August 7, 2016 10:14:44 PM GMT-04:00
>
> Dear Friends and Colleagues
>
> Published today (Monday 8th August) on Independent Science News:
>
> Cashing in on Cellulosic Ethanol: Subsidy Loophole Set to Rescue Corn
> Biofuel Profits
> by Almuth Ernsting
>
> https://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/cashing-in-on-
> cellulosic-ethanol-subsidy-corn-biofuel/
>

So far, the discussion provoked by this article has revealed some of the
many problems of corn and celullosic ethanol production, but has ignored
the core problem: neither can replace fossil fuels without stealing energy
from somewhere else. Why?

Because neither delivers positive net energy. The net energy of corn
ethanol is already zero or below. And the above article states:

"Cellulosic ethanol on the other hand, is far more difficult and expensive
to produce, and the energy balances are much worse than those for corn
ethanol."

If the net energy from corn ethanol is already zero, that means that the
net energy from cellulosic ethanol production is negative: we get less
energy out than put in. That is, the process is a net burner of energy, not
a a producer.  

Charles Hall and co-researchers, recognized worldwide and leaders and
pioneers in energy economics, calculate net energy of corn ethanol
production to be slightly negative.
http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/New_Studies_EROI_final4.pdf

In the same reference, they calculated the net energy from celullosic
ethanol production, using switchgrass as a feedstock, to be more negative
than corn ethanol.
-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] sustainable_tompkins-l digest: July 07, 2016

2016-07-08 Thread Karl S North

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 12:08 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> Subject: Re: What about EcoModernism?
> From: Marie Terlizzi 
> Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2016 19:45:26 -0400
> X-Message-Number: 3
>
> Karl – I will give a brief answer to your questions here - I hope it is
> okay
> to do so in a post to the whole list –  but feel free to write me off–list
> at  Marie Terlizzi .
>

Thanks, Marie. I'm glad you shared with the list - hopefully your account
of how you became aware of the importance of energy and raw materials
depletion will be useful to others.

For me, besides the Limits To Growth (LTG), the other early influence was
the landmark work of William Catton, Overshoot, The Ecological Basis of
Revolutionary Change
.
LTG
was a global model of the behavior over time of resource use, economic
production, food per capita, population and polution, each in interaction
with the others. Both works simply applied to human society the principles
of ecology that are elementary to systems ecologists. This was eye-opening,
not because these principles are hard to understand, but only because our
school and media have ignored the importance of educating us to natural
ecosystems and ecological services they provide, whose health are crucial
to the health and survival of our species. What is scandalous is that
 children as early as the elementary grades could easily learn the basic
principles. Building on that foundation, by the end  of secondary education
 everyone would have a would have a working knowledge of  the
interdependence of human society and the natural systems in which our
species is embedded. But that has not happened. Instead, at best, kids get
a watered down "environmentalism". It's like an English class that teaches
some vocabulary but not the structure of language and its importance to
good communication.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] What about EcoModernism

2016-07-04 Thread Karl S North

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 12:07 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> Hi Karl et al,
> I did not read your post about eco-modernism as an attack, although
> maybe it seemed a bit overwhelming due to the numbered list of seven
> points? I have enjoyed your thoughtful and iconoclastic writings over
> the years, but maybe you've come to be perceived as a bit of an
> intimidating curmudgeon? For example, in your message of 6/22, you wrote:
> "but I have studied the full-scale energy costs, not only to me but to
> society, so I have no illusions about such housing, unlike many who are
> being duped by people who claim such houses will help save the planet. "
>
> The lesson seemed to be, if you promote some aspect of green tech or
> green behavior in a purely positive and concise way, without telling
> "the whole story", you may get accused of "duping" others.  I can see
> how article author Jon Harrod might have felt strongly criticized by the
> above, along with Elan for reposting the article.
>
> I suppose our difficulties arise from not knowing what sorts of messages
> will help shift the wider culture. Small doses of positive
> encouragement, or heavy doses of depressing realistic assessments? Maybe
> we need lots of both?
>

Thanks, Joe, this is helpful. For the record,  while I do encourage
transparency, I do not believe it is deliberately concealed; it's just that
our normal reaction is to respond to the issue at hand, and don't think
first of laying out our full point of view. As for my transparency, my
point of view should be well understood after years of active participation
on this list. If that is not enough, in our posts to the list I and others
in TCLocal  have repeatedly pointed to our writings
published on the matter of Energy Descent on our website and in hard copy
distributed widely to Ithacans. Those writings constitute as much
transparency as to my viewpoint as I was encouraging on the matter of
ecomodernism. Regarding the latter, its perspective is summarized in a
manifesto , which I encourage everyone to
read. Critically!  ;>)

As a renegade farmer accustomed to the role of outside agitator in a
landgrant agricultural school whose program I feel has long been shaped by
agribusiness, I am used to the rough and tumble of academic debate that is
short on diplomatic niceties, whether in person or in print. Perhaps I tend
to assume that in an ivy league town, there is enough of an academic
subculture to withstand going directly to the issues, without having to
tiptoe through the tulips. Perhaps that is why I sound intimidating.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] What about EcoModernism

2016-07-03 Thread Karl S North

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 12:07 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

>
> Subject: Re: What about EcoModernism
> From: Miranda Phillips 
> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2016 08:11:25 -0400
> X-Message-Number: 2
>
> Thanks, Karl, for your thoughtful, kind reply.   I think this exchange just
> goes to show how hard it is to judge intention and tone of voice over
> email.
>

I think it is dangerous and counterproductive to try to "judge intention
and tone of voice over
email
'. We should try to avoid it and try to take a person's words at face
value, not read anything into them that is not there or implied.

I have gone over the words in my post and have no clue what I said that
was disrespectful or unfriendly (nor has m
y wife, who read my post for typos and clarity
).
Please enlighten me if anyone who made those claims can.
If not, I have to wonder whether legitimate airing of different points of
view are being judged as personal attacks. If this starts happening, it
puts a chill on the effective use of the list as the educational tool it
was intended to be.

Although I already feel the chill, I am going to hazard a way of thinking
about the current apparent convergence of resource, environmental and
political-economic crises by outlining the range of interpretations,
especially the ones that look at the issues through a broader time lens.
That might help people put ecomodernism and other schools of thought into
perspective, seeing where their point of view falls withing the range.

At one pole of the range as I know it the future is described as Near Term
Extinction, as espoused by ecologist Guy McPherson for example. The other
pole might be exemplified by Singularity, term used to describe an
unprecedented breakthrough in the history of scientific knowledge claimed
to be occurring now that allows humanity to use matter and energy in ways
that appear to defy the basic laws of physics - the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Because of singularity, it is claimed, technological advances will sustain
industrial civilization. This view is represented within the ecomodernist
school, which includes respected scientists and well-known public figures
like Stewart Brand, the main editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, a bible of
alternative futures thinkers in the Sixties and Seventies generations.

In my view, where a perspective falls within this range has a lot to do
with how seriously one takes the laws of nature and the implications of
their violation, which until now have explained the rise and fall of at
least two dozen civilizations since the advent of agriculture.
-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] What about EcoModernism

2016-07-02 Thread Karl S North

On Sat, Jul 2, 2016 at 12:08 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> Subject: Re: What about EcoModernism?
> From: Ben Haller 
> Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2016 18:39:05 -0400
> X-Message-Number: 5
>
>   Hi Karl.  I am feeling rather attacked here, and I am under no
> obligation to act as some sort of spokesman for eco-modernism –
> particularly under attack.  You are putting words in my mouth, and you are
> adopting the tone of an interrogation rather than a friendly conversation.
> Is this how you talk to everyone with whom you disagree?  Well, in any
> case, since I am far from the only eco-modernist in the world, I have no
> doubt that you can find discussion of all the points you raise online.  I
> have no interest in engaging in an adversarial and unproductive argument
> with a partisan who has a chip on his shoulder.  Good luck to you.
>

Hi Ben, I by no means intended an attack, I am surprised that you took it
that way, and am sorry if my list of criticisms of ecomodernism sounds like
one. And of course you are under no obligation, that should go without
saying. I just thought that the viewpoint of ecomodernism being mentioned
on this list - possibly for the first time - it offered a good opportunity
to hear that viewpoint. I offered the list of common criticisms of that
viewpoint in hopes of shaping the exchange in a way that would speak to
those criticisms. I find from long experience that if I specify the
problems I see with another viewpoint, it helps make the conversation more
productive. I have no chips on my shoulder. I just think discussion should
be frank to be instructive.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

[sustainable_tompkins-l] What about EcoModernism?

2016-07-01 Thread Karl S North

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 12:08 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> Subject: Re: Guess what, we can change our light bulbs again
> From: Ben Haller 
> Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 20:41:41 -0400
> X-Message-Number: 3
>
>   Hi Miranda!  This sentence jumped out at me:
>
> "That's one reason I like a carbon tax: a financial nudge to everyone to
> power down, whether they want to or not.”
>
>   I was amused, because I tend to see a carbon tax through the opposite
> lens: as a financial nudge to the system, to adjust itself in such a manner
> that people don’t need to power down in order to achieve sustainability.  I
> think I come from a much more “eco-modernist” (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecomodernism) perspective than many on this
> list.  But we are agreed that a carbon tax would be helpful, whichever kind
> of nudge it provides (and really it probably provides both!).  :->
>

Ben,

As you have been graciously transparent as to your "eco-modernist"
perspective, it might be instructive to list readers if you would be
willing to address some of the criticism of that viewpoint. According to
the wikipedia link you provided, the view is that  judicious use of
technology, its synthetic solutions to ecological services and fossil fuels
to ramp up nuclear and other non-fossil alternative energy will permit the
modern industrial economy to continue forever as the fossil energy era
ends. Here are some of the main criticisms of that view.

1. The well-documented dangers of reliance on nuclear power despite the
cover-up of disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukushima.

2. The fact that the fuel for nuclear energy is non-renewable and fast
depleting, like fossil fuels. Use of breeder technologies to extend peak
uranium historically have been rare because of the great expense and
dangers involved.

3. Electricity from nuclear or other sources cannot economically power
heavy use requirements in industry and transportation.

4. Technological solutions typically add immensely to energy consumption at
a time when industrial societies already lack the energy even to maintain
infrastructure (keep up with entropy) and are currently using increasing
debt (theft from the future) as a prop. Nuclear power is an example.
Currently nuclear power provides 6% of global energy consumption. Where is
the immense cost of ramping up nuclear to replace the bulk of fossil energy
going to come from?

5. Technological solutions typically breed more problems over time than
they solve. The reason is that most of the science they rely on is the
result of the reductive/laboratory method: looking at a small set of
relations that deliberately ignores the ripple effects that are bound to
happen once the technology is introduced in the real world.

6. Continued energy consumption at current levels perpetuates the rapid
depletion of other essential nonrenewable raw materials that industrial
society needs. It is a cannibalistic process, killing the host. The human
species has overshot the planet's natural limits. How can a synthetic
future address that?

7. Continued energy consumption at current levels perpetuates the
increasing damage to a biosphere whose complexity synthetic solutions
typically ignore. An example is industrial agriculture and its
intensifications.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Guess what, we can change our light bulbs again

2016-06-27 Thread Karl S North

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 12:07 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> Subject: Re: Guess what, we can change our light bulbs again
> From: Pegi Ficken 
> Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 23:02:02 +
> X-Message-Number: 8
>
> Remember that carbon is not only in fuels. Regenerative agriculture can
> sequester carbon readily. Plant matter converts CO2 into oxygen.
> Photosynthesis is the greatest converter of solar energy into usable fuel.
> Grazed cows are carbon-negative. Many things can be done which sequester
> carbon. The only problem is that no one makes money off them.
>

A lot of informative responses, but I like Pegi's best. Most of the posts
imply an unstated assumption - that we can and must replace fossil fuels
(still damaging the earth with too much energy, biproducts, etc) instead of
just powering down, which we will have to do eventually anyway. So, Go
Pegi! Photosynthesis is the way!

Actually, claimed efficiency of these new incandescent bulbs is still pie
in the sky - the current laboratory version is only a slight improvement.
So we have plenty of time to ruminate on the subject of changing the light
bulbs.
-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] sustainable_tompkins-l digest: June 24, 2016

2016-06-25 Thread Karl S North

On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 12:08 AM, Stuart Staniford 
wrote:

> I investigated these issues quantitatively for a simple model house some
> years back.  In general, embodied energy will be very small compared to the
> lifetime energy usage of a building (they typically last at least decades
> and often centuries).

Stuart,

Why do the numbers for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that you and so many use
differ so sharply from those few who pioneered a bigger view of embodied
energy and LCA, like Hall, Prieto, Bardi, Murphy, etc. who are building on
the work of H.T. Odum, who set the standard for understanding energy use in
complex systems. How do you explain the difference?

Granted that extended assessment is not easy and there are boundary
issues, but can it be simply ignored, as most LCA does? For example, can
one ignore entropy costs - the costs of maintenance and replacement? In
sum, can one ignore the ultimate costs to society that I referred to in my
original post?

Most of the apparent cheapness of energy in recent years that also distorts
most LCA  is reliant on temporary props whose costs will have to be paid in
the future. Props include failure to maintain infrastructure like electric
grid, water and sanitation utilities, and which in the US includes
education and health care. The deterioration of all of these is well
documented. Props also include a system of unequal trade and offshoring of
environmental and labor costs to cheap labor parts of the world
(imperialism) that delivers abnormally cheap raw materials and energy, but
must be backed by resource wars that themselves are an increasing drain on
energy available to US society.

Most everything we do in industrial society, including attempts at low
energy residential housing, is reliant currently on an industrial economy
that was built to need cheap energy, and is therefore unsustainable as
cheap energy disappears. I think we agree about the enormous amount of
waste and discretionary consumption in mature industrial economies. If we
could jettison a big chunk of that, yes, it would liberate energy to use to
convert the way we produce basic needs like food, shelter and
transportation to lower energy systems.

However, as Tom pointed out, it is hard to imagine the US public accepting
such a decline in energy use for unnecessary consumption , when even most
environmentalists assume we can have our cake (such as green housing) and
eat it too (keep most of the modern way of life).

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Building homes for the post-fossil fuel era

2016-06-22 Thread Karl S North

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:08 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

>
> Subject: Building homes for the post-fossil fuel era
> From: Elan Shapiro 
> Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 12:14:37 -0400
> X-Message-Number: 4
>
> Signs of Sustainability article in current issue of Tompkins
> Weekly:Building
> homes for the post-fossil fuel era by John Harrod
>
> http://tompkinsweekly.com/news/2016/06/20/building-homes-post-fossil-fuel-era/
>

To describe houses like the Ecovillage one pictured in the article as
"net-zero-energy" is a gross deception of the public because it does not
begin to account for the full life cycle fossil energy costs involved,
which are huge. I have designed and currently live in a house that
incorporates most of the elements of the Ecovillage house, but I have
studied the full-scale energy costs, not only to me but to society, so I
have no illusions about such housing, unlike many who are being duped by
people who claim such houses will help save the planet.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

[sustainable_tompkins-l] Guess what, we can change our light bulbs again

2016-05-30 Thread Karl S North

https://www.sott.net/article/319204-Return-of-incandescent-light-bulbs-as-MIT-makes-them-more-efficient-than-LEDs

Not only will it make all us light green environmentalists feel good
(again), but the return of incandescents in the new version promises to up
efficiency from 5 to potentially 40%, and actually may DO a little good -
as long as the grid lasts, that is.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] The Great Grief: How To Cope with Losing Our World

2016-04-26 Thread Karl S North

On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 12:14 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> The Great Grief: How To Cope with Losing Our World



The Five Stages of Grief is well-known in psychology, and much discussed
within the network of those who have learned from the natural resource
scientists why the future portends decades of decline in industrial economy
(we have used up most of the easily accessible fossil energy and other raw
materials essential to run our economy).

As Dmitry Orlov, a refugee from the collapse of the Soviet Union and  one
of the leading thinkers in the network of transition writers describes it,

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross defined the five stages of coming to terms with grief
and tragedy as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and
applied it quite successfully to various forms of catastrophic personal
loss, such as death of a loved one, sudden end to one's career, and so
forth. Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler and, more recently
John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the Kübler-Ross model is also
quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting the process by which society as a
whole (or at least the informed and thinking parts of it) is reconciling
itself to the inevitability of a discontinuous future, with our
institutions and life support systems undermined by a combination of
resource depletion, catastrophic climate change, and political impotence.


Orlov has built a scenario, Five Stages of Collapse, on this psychological
pattern - an elaboration from feeling to understanding to action. Many
have found his framework useful in confronting the new era. Orlov has
described his Five Stages of Collapse at length in his weekly blog
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2008/02/five-stages-of-collapse.html and in a
book http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/p/the-five-stages-of-collapse.html

He summarizes these stages as,

Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in "business as usual" is lost. The
future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk
to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial
institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital
is lost.

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that "the market shall provide" is
lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded,
import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival
necessities become the norm.

Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that "the government will take care of
you" is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to
commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the
political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that "your people will take care of you" is
lost, as local social institutions, be they charities or other groups that
rush in to fill the power vacuum run out of resources or fail through
internal conflict.

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost.
People lose their capacity for "kindness, generosity, consideration,
affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity" (Turnbull, *The
Mountain People*). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce
resources. The new motto becomes "May you die today so that I die tomorrow"
(Solzhenitsyn, *The Gulag Archipelago*). There may even be some cannibalism.



In general, I recommend Orlov's penetrating thinking and humorous style as
a great introduction to the expanding literature of transition away from
the industrial era. 




-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] NYTimes: A New Dark Age Looms

2016-04-21 Thread Karl S North

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:12 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> Re: NYTimes: A New Dark Age Looms




It is good to see recognition of climate change in the NYT. However, the
article is typical of mainstream environmentalism's failure to see climate
disruption as part of a much larger disruption of the biospheric resource
base that supports the current global economy and its ravenous consumption.
The larger constellation of related trends includes raw materials
depletion, extinctions, loss of biodiversity and damage to essential
ecosystem processes.



This larger constellation of damage to the planet is what natural resource
and ecosystem scientists refer to when they speak of overshoot of planetary
carrying capacity. Their message is not getting out to the public because
over-consumption is due to overpopulation and, in particular, per capita
consumption in the rich countries 5-6 times higher than generally in the
global south. Few are willing to acknowledge these causes
 of overconsumption
, so we focus narrowly on climate disruption.



Also the trend to overshoot is a long term continuous process, which makes
it less dramatic and therefore less visible. The gradual decline in growth
in the global economy in the last four decades is a symptom. Declining
growth and purchasing power collides with increasing resource scarcity and
cost, setting up an oscillation in prices of basic commodities like fuel
and minerals that affects the whole industrial economy. Gasoline prices are
an example. Ever higher prices in the US led to demand destruction: it
rendered some fuel consumption unaffordable for the large wage-earning
class whose income is dropping anyway as the economy weakened. Lower
consumption then caused a glut of supply, lowering gas prices, but lower
prices no longer stimulate demand as much as they used to.



Depletion never sleeps, as the oil geologists say, so the roller coaster of
oscillation between permanently increasing raw materials costs and demand
destruction with its deflationary effect is likely to continue as long as
laissez-faire policies rule our economy. Over time, however, the ultimate
consequence of rising energy and other resource costs is decline of the
industrial economy, worldwide
, and a standard of living that falls until consumption is again within
carrying capacity.



Mainstream economists refuse to acknowledge the consequences of depletion
and other ecological damage, so their explanations of these phenomena are
grossly misleading the public. The public, for its part, prefers to remain
willfully ignorant, because an end to the industrial era is unacceptable:
the American way of life is non-negotiable, as our leaders assure us.







-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] NPR: Citrus In The Snow: Geothermal Greenhouses Grow Local Produce In Winter

2016-02-14 Thread Karl S North

While we wait for the slow pace of energy descent to force towns like
Ithaca to take seriously Tom Shelley's excellent proposal to grow winter
food with biogas from town sewage, right now Ithacans can grow some their
own winter produce and partly solar heat their houses at the same time. You
can tap the same geothermal heat source described in the article Regi
Teasley provided. I did as much in my Central NY farmhouse for thirty
years, as described in the TCLocal paper,
 Three Farmhouses: A Study in Passive Solar Design


Ithacans with a little space in front of the South wall of their house can,
with relatively low investment compared to what they spend for winter
produce and house heat, add a geothermally buried solar greenhouse
attachment to their existing house. Ours rarely got colder than 40F, and
its slanted glass along with some vertical south-facing windows, completely
heated the house on sunny winter days. Because a greenhouse is an
artificial semi-ecosystem, food production without toxic chemical is
somewhat complex, but these management problems have been solved long ago
with ecologically healthy designs, available to anyone who wants to learn
them. Get on with it, Ithacans -  hey, even ancient Romans, long before the
advent of fossil energy,  understood and used solar design for their
residences and the famous Roman public baths!
-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 12:06 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

> Subject: Re: NPR: Citrus In The Snow: Geothermal Greenhouses Grow Local
> Produce In Winter
> From: Thomas Shelley 
> Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2016 19:30:05 -0500
> X-Message-Number: 1
>
> Dear Regi and Friends-- My idea is to use methane gas produced by
> anaerobic digestion to heat green houses.  The proposed development for
> the site currently occupied by the NY DoT (or perhaps part of the
> current Farmers' Market site) could be used for extensive greenhouses
> that would be heated by biogas produced by the nearby sewage treatment
> plant. The sewage treatment plant is trying to develop a district energy
> project and greenhouses would fit into such a project perfectly.
> (Greenhouses are built next to and heated by biogas from large landfills
> in Ontario Co., so there is a precedent for biogas heated greehouses
> nearby.)  The greenhouse space could be divided between commercial truck
> farms and a community garden model for the rest of the space. Using
> larger scale green houses to provide veggies in the winter would free us
> from extensively importing so much of our (very high carbon footprint!)
> food from CA and Mexico in the winter mos. Sounds far fetched, but all
> it takes is political will and citizen input.  Maybe some of the
> governor's Southern Tier Ag development money would be suitable for such
> a project?   Tom
>
> On 2/11/2016 5:13 PM, Regi Teasley wrote:
> >
> > FYI
> >
> > Citrus In The Snow: Geothermal Greenhouses Grow Local Produce In Winter
> > by Grant Gerlock
> >
> > NET - February 11, 2016
> >
> > Greenhouses could make local fruits and vegetables more available
> > year-round, but they're energy intense. In the Midwest, some growers
> > tap into the Earth's internal heat to warm the structures.
> >
> >
> http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/11/466050766/citrus-in-the-snow-geothermal-greenhouses-grow-local-produce-in-winter?sc=ipad=1001
>

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RE:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Disgust spreads over Cornell Trustees rejection of divestment

2015-10-30 Thread Karl S North

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu> wrote:

>
> The arrogance of power was on full display at the Cornell Trustee meeting
> on October 24th

As the cheap energy era ends,  profit margins and stock earnings in the
fossil fuel sector are expected to decline. If the kick in the gut that
oil stocks suffered recently is the first sign of such a trend, Cornell may
yet receive - in declining endowment earnings - its just punishment for
failure to divest. No free lunch. Mother Nature bats last.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
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Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

[sustainable_tompkins-l] Subject: Re: Tesla's New Battery Doesn't Work That Well With Solar

2015-05-09 Thread Karl S North

On Sat, May 9, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest 
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:

 Subject: Re: Tesla's New Battery Doesn't Work That Well With Solar
 From: Stuart Staniford stu...@earlywarn.org
 Date: Fri, 8 May 2015 11:06:51 -0400
 X-Message-Number: 7

   It’s reasonably cost effective to use heat pumps to heat a house now,
 and reasonably cost effective (net of subsidies) to supply electricity from
 one’s own solar, so this is readily feasible to heat a house with PV (on a
 grid-tied net basis).

I will believe that when I see a full life cycle energy cost calculation
of installation, operation and maintenance of the heat pump and the solar
electric system. The grid tie discount should be considered a transitional

benefit, for the grid will eventually become too costly for most people,
as is solar electric, even my 2k, today. No discounting for subsidies
either, for that's just stealing from Peter to pay Paul. Promoters of
energy alternatives rarely provide proper EROI energy analysis, and often
do not even know why it is necessary or how to do it.

Passive solar can be much cheaper, and does not even require installation
of new south windows, which are a main cost if they are of a quality for
the seals to last, and unlike solar windows, does not require installation
of moveable insulation. A cheaper way to get almost the same effect as
windows is a solar collector of the same size as a window, installed on an
external wall, which heats the interior by air convection  through the
wall.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/AirColTesting/SoffitCollector/Building.htm

http://tclocal.org/2013/04/three_farmhouses_passive_solar.html

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Tesla's New Battery Doesn't Work That Well With Solar

2015-05-08 Thread Karl S North

On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:

Subject: Re: Tesla's New Battery Doesn't Work That Well With Solar
From: Shawn Reeves sh...@energyteachers.org
Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 18:59:34 -0400
X-Message-Number: 5

I have yet to read a news article written by someone who understands
electrical power and energy well, except of course in industry journals.

And even industry experts fail to understand the political economics of
the resource depletion that is already visibly impinging on our society.
Not the experts fault - they get their economics from the mainstream
economists, who reject the very idea of failing finite resources impinging
on market prices or anything else.

So Shawn is right - it is nuts to use electricity, solar or other, to
heat anything in your house, as will soon become painfully evident.

And Dontcha just love Bloomberg's deceptive boosterism for Tesla batteries!
The lead batteries in my solar electric rig put out the same 2kw as a Tesla
wall pack, at a price of $2k vs $13k for a Tesla once their promotional
discount ends.

Although I feel no loss of quality of life using only 2 kw, according to
Bloomberg-think 2kw is way too little to power the average home, but they
say don't worry, battery prices will drop. Unfortunately dropping battery
prices will soon end when they run up against a global economy permanently
in decline due to resource depletion and an aging and unreplaceable
industrial infrastructure. The shrinking economy in our energy descent era
will simultaneously raise battery costs and reduce our incomes and ability
to buy them.

And Re:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-28/tesla-to-use-north-american-material-amid-pollution-worry
-- more Bloombergthink. But hey, it's nice to see a smidgin of concern for
the millions of Africans killed by our empire's wars of control over the
Congolese cobalt Tesla needs for its batteries. Maybe next Bloomberg can
find the courage to print an article on the endless lakes of radioactive
toxic waste that are a side effect (but in China - so out of sight out of
mind) of our need for iridium, paladium, platinum and rhodium, for our
electronic devices.

So enough already with the super-size malted milkshake mentality! It will
soon be obsolete!

--
Karl North - http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
—Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please
visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] It's time to talk about The Next System!

2015-04-03 Thread Karl S North

Regarding industrial civilization, thanks for spelling it out, Tom. Those
who have properly calculated the full fossil energy and raw materials cost
of most large scale solutions see them as just kicking the can down the
road a bit to prolong the inevitable demise due to depletion and rising
costs of the fossil energy and raw materials needed to keep the industrial
economy gooing.

So I think you're right about retrieving and adapting the old fashioned
ways. My hot water tank runs off my wood burning kitchen range with a
convection loop through a water jacket in the firebox, just like everyone
used to have in rural USA. You still find those rigs in old farmhouses.
Ours has run for 35 years without a hitch until this month when the tank
rusted through enough for a drip leak. We'll weld a patch over it and maybe
the tank will last another 10 years. In summer we shift over to another
tank that heats off an outdoor solar flat plate collector, again via a
convection loop. No electric use or complicated technology other than the
well pump that pressurizes the house and barns water system.

The kitchen range is our only house heat to supplement the passive solar
design. We usually burn 2 cord a winter. This year we had record snow
accumulation - 189 inches and still 2 feet on the ground on April 1st, no
April fooling. So we burned an extra half cord this year this far. For
details on the house and hot water systems see
http://tclocal.org/2013/04/three_farmhouses_passive_solar.html

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 12:07 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest 
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:


 Subject: Re: It's time to talk about The Next System!
 From: Thomas Shelley t...@cornell.edu
 Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2015 17:55:36 -0400
 X-Message-Number: 12

 Great points, Karl.  If we try to prop up Industrial Civilization with
 technology requiring lots of fossil fuels and extractive industries we
 are going down the same path of global suicide, regardless of the
 desired reversals that might be achieved with the technology itself.
 This concept is really hard for even the 'greenest' of us to grapple
 with, even Bill McKibben.

 And in my recent experience the ole' timey ways that were more carbon
 neutral still work better.

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] It's time to talk about The Next System!

2015-04-02 Thread Karl S North

Gar Alperovitz has been writing about the next system for many years, and
his decentralist approach to a future political economy makes sense to me.
Having lived in Rochester and become familiar with its activist community,
I suspect we can learn from the project there. But Ithacans don't need to
look to Rochester to start learning; those of us writing for Tompkins
County Relocalization (TCLocal.org) have been presenting ideas and
scenarios for nearly a decade on how the post-petroleum future will unfold,
and what kind of system can adapt to that predicament. And I believe we are
writing with a better understanding of the energy implications for the next
system than people like Bill McKibben in The Next System Project, who like
many environmentalists still thinks we can save industrial civilization
with large scale wind and solar.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying


On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 12:08 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest 
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:

 Subject: It's time to talk about   The Next System!
 From: Elan Shapiro elanshapiro...@gmail.com
 Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2015 22:54:24 -0400
 X-Message-Number: 5

   Exciting new national initiative from Gar Alperovitz and the Democracy
 Collaborative., The Next System Project.  As the Democracy Collaborative
 will be working in Rochester, we should find ourselves quite close to
 developments.

  http://thenextsystem.org/ includes a powerful 4.5 minute
 video
 
  Check it out!
 
Krys Cail

krys.c...@gmail.com

 
 Related article
 It's Time to Talk About the Next System   3-31-15


 www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29928-it-s-time-to-talk-about-the-next-system

  Elan


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If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
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[sustainable_tompkins-l] appropriate technologies, and curbing resource consumption

2015-01-27 Thread Karl S North

On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 12:33 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest 
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:

 From:  Miranda Phillips phillipsvi...@gmail.com
 Reply-To:  Sustainability in Tompkins County
 sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu
 Date:  Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 7:55 PM
 To:  Sustainability in Tompkins County
 sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu
 Subject:  [sustainable_tompkins-l] appropriate technologies, and curbing
 resource consumption

 Hey again,

 In previous conversations on this listserv, Karl North has advocated
 strongly for small-scale technologies (like solar ovens), that require
 fewer
 resources to produce, and lend themselves to DIY maintenance.  It got me
 wondering...

 Does anyone know of organizations that are doing good work to promote such
 appropriate technologies, or to curb resource consumption /rampant growth
 generally?

 thanks for any leads,

 Miranda

Literature on that subject peaked in the mid-1970s, and what little
revival has occurred has taken two forms.

One, aimed at readers in the industrialized world, has the weakness of
trying to combine low fossil fuel use with high convenience. The result is
solutions that are too costly for widespread adoption, and/or still
promote technologies that rely too heavily on the long term survival of an
industrial economy,itself vulnerable to the rising scarcity of oil.
Examples are the German passiv house, energy-efficient refrigeration and
other fossil-fuel dependent appliances. Even our own Chesea Green, the
go-to publisher on such subjects, has little to offer collected in one
place. One possibility is their Designing Local Habitats
http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/designing_ecological_habitats:paperback
.

The other, aimed at the less industrialized world, provides good resources,
although often adapted to tropical climates and raw materials. An example
is http://www.villageearth.org/ , whose Appropriate Technology Sourcebook
http://www.villageearth.org/appropriate-technology/appropriate-technology-sourcebookreviews
over 1150 best books on the subject.
http://www.villageearth.org/appropriate-technology/appropriate-technology-sourcebook

Some of the most vulnerable essential services in the future are:

   - water supply
   - sewage (including the need for proper recycling)
   - energy, especially discretionary electricity consumption
   - space and water heating
   - food production

I would search for literature on specific solutions in these areas, like The
Humanure Handbook

Most of the solutions that I have  modeled in my own life are designed for
a rural farmstead, but I discussed urban household solutions for some of
these areas, like guerrilla composting outhouses, in my writing for TCLocal
http://tclocal.org/ , for example Visioning County Food Production Part
Four: Urban Agriculture
http://tclocal.org/2010/05/visioning_county_food_prod_4.html and Three
Farmhouses: a Study in Passive Solar Design
http://tclocal.org/2013/04/three_farmhouses_passive_solar.html

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Abundant Clean Renewables? Think Again!

2014-11-24 Thread Karl S North

My comments on questions by Gay and Stuart:

My question is why are the feedback loops for social learning in American
society so broken?  Do the majority of Americans recognize that the Civil
Rights Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, nuclear non-proliferation
treaties, and Montreal Protocol, etc were good for our nation?  Will
America ever acknowledge that these progressive movements got it right?

Having followed their consequences through most of my life, I find that
whatever their intent, these laws did not effectively address the issues in
the long run. From my systems viewpoint, these were what has been labelled
tailpipe solutions. In the case of clean air, rather than address the
root of the problem, which was private automobile transportation and the
internal combustion engine, it focused on cleaning up the exhaust coming
out of the tailpipe. Long after the Clean Water Act, all our major lakes
and rivers are polluted. And the Civil Rights Act addressed superficial
issues like who gets to sit a a lunch counter or use what restroom, or the
right to vote when the real problem is who controls the minds of the
voters.

In our oligarchal society legislation that results from social movements
gets chipped away or diluted at over time because while social movements
cannot sustain themselves, the oligarchy can keep pressure constantly on
government to prioritize its interests. From a systems viewpoint, making
problems stay fixed requires leveraging solutions deeper in the system, in
this case changing the very structure of power - abolishing the oligarchy.
So far, the oligarchy has made sure that middle class progressives never
suffer enough in our system to want to mount a real revolution.
Pacification works. Weapons of mass deception work.

Can you also think of some historical examples in which progressives and
left wingers tried things that turned out not to work, or even created
disastrous problems?

Actually I can. Some attempts at civil rights legislation were disastrous.
At the time they were implemented, I thought busing and affirmative action
were viable solutions, but soon realized they were not.

Busing kids to good white schools is another superficial solution that
addresses a symptom. The root cause is low income and class warfare against
the lower classes; it is obvious that the more affluent classes get better
education. It may take more than a generation, but the evidence from truly
welfare states is that a combination of equalization of income and
educational opportunity together is a better solution. Moreover busing
yanks kids out of their neighborhood friends' schools, and forces them to
sit in a bus for hours. Neighborhoods gradually become more inter-racial
when incomes are more equal.

Affirmative action was even worse. The upper crust minority of the black
community were the main beneficiaries, and the poor majority just kept
getting poorer. Affirmative action angers the lower class whites, because
they are suffering from unequal educational and economic opportunity too.
Again the root cause is social inequality, not just racial inequality.

Systems thinker Peter Senge advocates using a tool of inquiry into a
problem that he calls The Five Whys. It's simple: just keep asking Why is
that until it reveals the root of the problem. Why do inner city schools
provide little education? Because the inner city tax base cannot afford
better schools. Why is that? Because incomes are low in the black ghetto.
Why is that? Because they have so little power versus the businesses that
employ them.  We are back to the structure of power and wealth again.

In my view, we have never in this country had the will to deal with the
root of these problems.

Karl

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

[sustainable_tompkins-l] Abundant Clean Renewables? Think Again!

2014-11-19 Thread Karl S North

Something converted to gibberish (see below) the subject line I inserted
in my response on this thread, so of course few if any bothered to read it.
In any case no one responded, despite the fact that many participants on
this forum believe 'renewables' will 'save us'. So I am posting my response
again in hopes of provoking discussion.

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 12:24 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest 
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:


 Subject:
 =?UTF-8?B?4oCL4oCL4oCLIEFidW5kYW50IENsZWFuIFJlbmV3YWJsZXM/IFRoaW5rIEFnYWluIQ==?=
 From: Karl S North kno...@binghamton.edu
 Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 13:40:59 -0500
 X-Message-Number: 2

 On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 12:18 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest
 
 sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:

 
  Subject:
  
  Abundant Clean Renewables? Think Again!
  From: Tony Del Plato tonydelpl...@gmail.com
  Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 18:21:50 -0500
  X-Message-Number: 1
 
 
 
 
 
 http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27392-abundant-clean-renewables-think-again


 It's good to see that critiques of wind and solar energy as a solution to
 any nation's energy problem are moving from small networks focused on
 energy analysis into news media with a broader focus - and target audience
 - like truth-out, albeit a part of the alternative news network, not the
 mainstream.

 However, even the truth-out article reveals only the first layers of what I
 would call the onion of delusion that surrounds much advocacy of wind and
 solar. The article does reveal the cost in fossil energy and other fast
 depleting raw materials of so-called renewables. There is more to the
 story.

 The large scale manufacture of these energy technologies is totally
 dependent on the existence of a (presently global) industrial economy,
 which itself requires a massive daily injection of fossil fuel just to keep
 operating!

 Moreover, every source of energy, including wind and solar, once consumed,
 ends up as heat (2nd law of thermodynamics - the entropy law). Rarely does
 energy analysis consider this heat as part of the problem of climate
 change. Greenhouse gas, the other part of the problem, is virtually always
 the only focus. But there has to be heat produced for greenhouse gas to be
 a problem in the first place.

 Now if it is only solar heat at levels of absorption that the planet is
 used to handling - like photosynthesis in plants -  that's not a problem.
 But the efficiency gains in modern solar-electric panels cause them to
 capture much more than has happened on the planet ever before. Any
 technology that absorbs more than what the planet is used to is ultimately
 a climate change problem. That's why it was a mistake to dig up fossil
 fuels - we should have left them under ground. The heat they produce when
 consumed is abnormal for the planetary system. Same with nuclear fission.

 To focus exclusively on the emissions problem of energy production, and not
 on the heat produced, is to dawdle in the delusional onion.





-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] role of independent power grids

2014-09-01 Thread Karl S North

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 12:09 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest 
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:

 Subject: Re: role of independent power grids
 From: Stuart Staniford stu...@earlywarn.org
 Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 22:12:46 -0400
 X-Message-Number: 12

 There’s no question that if we tossed much of the existing housing, and
 started over with much higher density very efficient housing designed
 around a public transportation system, we could get by with way lower
 energy consumption per capita.  Point freely granted.

 However, housing is extremely long-lived.  At the peak of the housing
 bubble, we were only creating a bit less than 1.5% of the total housing
 stock each year, and now it’s below 1%.  With interest rates incredibly low
 as far as the eye can see, there’s little prospect of a major revival in
 house building.

Why assume housing replacement is the only option, when renovation is
already happening on a small but increasing scale? To give a rough idea of
a cost comparison, the components in my current new house that make it
highly energy efficient, described in
http://tclocal.org/2013/04/three_farmhouses_passive_solar.html, were only
15% of the total cost. These components, standard in passive solar design,
are: high quality thermopane windows with movable insulation, R40/60
wall/ceiling insulation held in double framing, and masonry heat storage.
In my Cortland County farmhouse described in the same piece, home-built and
salvaged solar components served just as well at much less cost. The total
cost in materials of that owner-built house was $15000 in 1980 dollars.

Renovation is what will happen, because ultimately the only other choice
for most people in the Northeast will be freezing to death. People will add
framing and insulation, reposition glass on the south side, construct
masonry walls, floor or other thermal mass inside the envelope, and craft
simple movable insulation, as we did originally in the Cortland house with
pop-in wood frames filled with bubblepack. It can be affordable. And it's
not rocket science.

I think the whole tenor of the energy debate on this forum, whether of
heating, housing, transportation or electricity use will change as the
global financial ponzi scheme, now close to its tipping point, finally
collapses and the real state of economies is revealed. With ongoing energy
and resource depletion contributing, the resultant economic decline will
prohibit most of the options discussed currently.

Sawdust demand outpacing supply from sawmills has been pushing up its cost
for years, as any dairy farmer knows. End of pellet fuel option. A pellet
user I know fears common winter grid failures because the stoves need an
electric pellet feed.

Electric car transportation and its necessary new grid is so costly a
conversion that it will not appear on any useful scale - the declining
economy will not afford it. Even conversion to steel-on-steel public
transport, the most efficient option, will not occur without a shift to
centralized control of economic planning and investment, a 'wartime
economy' that capitalist propaganda has taught us for generations is evil
incarnate.
-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] sustainable_tompkins-l digest: April 30, 2014

2014-05-01 Thread Karl S North

On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 12:31 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest
sustainable_tompkins-l@list.cornell.edu wrote:

From: Stuart Staniford stu...@earlywarn.org
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 10:54:17 -0400
X-Message-Number: 8

. If the price of PV drops sharply (which it in fact has since
2006/2007), then the Hall estimate of PV EROEI must change radically
because a lot of it comes from just looking at the high price of PV and
saying that much money must equal so much energy somehow, somewhere in the
economy.

I agree with Stuart that EROIE depends on changing conditions in the whole
economy.

But the whole economy cannot achieve a major reduction in fossil energy
use

and other resource use and still be the kind of economy that can support a
conversion to significant renewable energy production.

So Hall's PV EROEI is low is really equivalent to PV costs a lot. But
that isn't news. Everyone knows that PV has historically been expensive.
What makes it promising is not that it was cheap all along, but that the
costs have been coming down rapidly for decades. PV has the fastest
learning curve of any energy technology. This in turn is the rationale for
subsidies - to create the economies of scale required to bring costs
further down and make it grid competitive. Have a look at slide 40 in this
presentation:

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/photovoltaics-report-slides.pdf

As a technology producer to the German pv industry, Fraunhofer reflects
the bias of the industry with lots of graphs showing plunging prices and
growing adoption, but never putting such progress in its proper context of
total energy production. Despite a massive public investment, now condemned
by both major German political parties as a misuse of resources, German
wind and solar is stil
l little over 14% of total German energy use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany

Also, I notice that you haven't responded to my point that we only spend a
tiny fraction of GDP on energy total, but it's a critical point. Given
that we (collectively) aren't making more than the most negligible efforts
(as evidence by how little of our hard earned dollars we are willing to put
towards the problem) isn't it clear that our problem is lack of will, lack
of the mainstream taking the problem seriously, rather than that people
have tried everything they could think of and the problem is hopeless and
we should all give up?

The cost of energy use is running about 10% of GDP in the US. U.S. Energy
Consumption as Percent of GDP
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2008/07/us-energy-consumption-as-percent-of-gdp.html
How is the cost of energy use relevant to whether the US economy can
convert to renewables? It is the cost of conversion including a new
transmission grid that is unaffordable in my view.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2008/07/us-energy-consumption-as-percent-of-gdp.html

I agree that some attempts to render the transition to a low energy
economy are affordable, were there the political will. There is much
discretionary consumption in the US that is wasteful use of resources :
consumption in the upper classes in particular, the weapons and
pharmaceutical industrial complexes, most of the auto industry, and the
activities of the parasitic FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate)
sector. Theoretically resources in these areas could be redirected toward
changes that are affordable, like low energy cost steel-on-steel public
transport and nationwide energy-efficient building renovation. It is hard
to imagine such policy changes happening at the national or state level
under capitalism. At a local level it seems more likely.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Will wind and solar really keep industrial society running?

2014-04-30 Thread Karl S North

A couple of responses suggest efficiency as a solution to the deepening
energy and raw materials crisis the world faces. Efficiency sounds good but
unfortunately does not work, as economist William Jeavons explained in his
now famous Jeavons Paradox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stanley_Jevons. And he has been
corroborated by history ever since. To put it briefly, we just use the
energy saved somewhere else. Theoretically we could decide to leave the
saved energy in the ground, but that would require a major shift to a
social system where public policy in the public interest reigned in
economic decision making rather than the anything-goes economy run by
powerful private interests that most countries have had in recent centuries.

It is hard to imagine such a shift when the public consciousness has been
so heavily indoctrinated with the notion that any alternative to the
present system results in a Stalinist horror show. That is only one of the
obstacles to even a first step in that direction like the carbon tax.
Another obstacle at present is the overwhelming power of the 1%. Another is
that when public realizes that a serious carbon tax cuts deeply into our
'sacred' Way of Life, the majority will object to it.

Karl

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Will wind and solar really keep industrial society running?

2014-04-30 Thread Karl S North

Stuart says,

The Hall/spanish study I don't buy because they use financial/energy
conversions to estimate the EROEI, meaning that if the staff at the PV
factory haven't insulated their houses, that counts against the EROEI of
the PVs (in fact, it effectively incorporates the energy efficiency of the
Spanish economy as a whole into the measurement).  It also means that the
study is hopelessly dated, since the data is from 2006/2007, and PV prices
have dropped dramatically since then.  EROEI sounds like it's some kind of
physical number, but it really isn't at all when you set boundaries as
widely as Hall et al do.

Because EROEI (energy return on energy invested) is so important a concept
to understand to realistically calculate our energy situation, I am sorry
to see it dismissed so quickly. Boundaries are important. The fact that
EROEI incorporates the energy efficiency of the Spanish economy was
exactly my point in saying that conversion to wind and solar requires a
high tech, industrial economy, which itself is ultimately the root problem.
Through ravenous resource depletion and accelerating ecological damage, the
industrial economy is digging its own grave, that process is insured by the
rules by which the present system runs.

Karl

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Will wind and solar really keep industrial society running?

2014-04-29 Thread Karl S North

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 12:25 AM,

Stuart Staniford stu...@earlywarn.orgwrote:

Mmm. Browsing through that blog reveals the author to be a pretty clear
climate denialist. Is there a better source that covers this issue?

Of course all the usual suspects (denialists, fossil fuel industry) are
using this situation for their own nefarious purposes. But it doesn't
matter what the blogger thinks, as he provided the link to the speech by
Germany’s Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor to Angela Merkel, Sigmar
Gabriel, whom he quoted in the blog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Ca72-WxuIfeature=youtu.be

Here is corroboration from a Slate article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/project_syndicate/2012/02/why_germany_is_phasing_out_its_solar_power_subsidies_.html?wpisrc=newsletter_slatest

Here is a book review of a critical analysis of Spain's alternative energy
policy co-authored by our own Charlie Hall. It tells much the same story.
http://energyskeptic.com/2013/tilting-at-windmills-spains-solar-pv/

Here is evidence from California that an economy in decline from
permanently rising energy and raw materials costs and damage to essential
ecological services (soil, air, water) is in no position to convert to
energy alternatives.

A snip:

But San Francisco-based Energy + Environmental Economics, a respected
consultant, has projected that the cost of California's electricity is
likely to increase 47% over the next 16 years, adjusted for inflation, in
part because of the renewable power mandate and heavy investments in
transmission lines.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-power-prices-20140426,0,6329274.story#ixzz30HwpVlnV

The US economy is not even able to maintain its transportation,
electrical, water and sewers infrastructure. It is hard to imagine it has
the capacity to invest in a significant degree of alternative energy,
although surely attempts will continue for a while.

We need to start connecting the dots. Although such information is kept out
of the mass media, for those who will look, evidence is everywhere that we
have kicked the can down the road too far, too many times.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Will wind and solar really keep industrial society running?

2014-04-29 Thread Karl S North

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:52 AM, Miranda Phillips
phillipsvi...@gmail.comwrote:

 You make a good case.

 So if not large scale renewables, then what?
 Big cuts in energy use, and then (smaller scale) renewables?

 I think I understand what you're against.  Can you articulate for us what
 you are in favor of?

 Miranda



Yes, Miranda, accepting the inevitable: an economy and material standard of
living that declines toward a pre-industrial society. And small, local
renewables for local use. These will have to be low enough tech (current
wind and solar electric are not) for a deindustrialized economy to build
and maintain. Small biogas digesters running on farm manure. Windmills that
make direct use of the mechanical energy they produce. Small hydro on small
streams, again mostly using the mechanical energy directly. Solar
concentrators that use solar heat directly to cook, fire clay, make steam,
etc. See examples at http://www.gosol.org/. Passive solar residences,
greenhouses, businesses, see my paper,
http://tclocal.org/2013/04/three_farmhouses_passive_solar.html


Also I am for all the end to the damage, both material to our lives and the
biosphere, and emotional/cultural, caused by industrial society, see my
paper, co-authored with Bethany Schroeder, A Consideration of the Benefits
of a Lower Energy
Civilizationhttp://tclocal.org/2012/04/benefits_lower_energy_civ.html

Also I am for teaching people to farm with input-self-sufficient
agricultural systems, as I have tried to do for forty years, to prepare for
the end of energy-intensive industrial agriculture.

And above all, I am for preparing and adapting to this future now, when we
have the time and at least some of the resources of the fossil fuel economy
to help.

Thanks for asking,

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] EROEI

2014-03-16 Thread Karl S North

On Mar 15, 2014, at 12:58 PM, Stuart Staniford stu...@earlywarn.org wrote:

I think failing agriculture around here is an interesting example - the
land under cultivation in our area peaked in about 1870 and has been
declining ever since from the top of the hills down.

Declining from the hills down is a good way to describe it.

That had nothing to do with global scarcity (it started long before), and
everything to do with the fact it was cheaper to grow food in the midwest
where conditions are better.

I was not suggesting that it had anything to do with global scarcity. My
point in using the example of an unsustainable farm was to point out a
general pattern of unsustainable complex systems: they manage different
ploys to keep going long after they have started to deteriorate. The
failing dairy farmer deliberately ignored his deteriorating farm
infrastructure. Similarly, as the unsustainable US industrial economy
begins to visibly fail we are keeping it running by allowing its
infrastructure to dilapidate. Other ploys include debt financing and
reliance on superpower privileges like the reserve currency status of the
dollar. These tend to temporarily prop up the system by consuming its
capital (natural, infrastructural, political) instead of its income, while
obscuring for many the evidence that the system is being undermined from
within.

As an example, I think of the nice big melon in my garden that continued to
ripen gently in the Indian summer after a light frost had killed the vines.
When I turned it over a little mouse hole became visible in the underside.
When I cut into the melon, I saw that the mouse had made the melon its
house and grocery, for it had devoured all the ripe flesh, leaving an empty
shell that still looked fine from the outside.

I believe we have choices here (collectively).  The future is not yet
determined.  Oil is somewhat scarce now (though not yet actually in
decline).

I agree that we have choices, if we can collectively agree on what they
are. My reading of the critical literature on scaling up renewable energy
persuades me that is too late in the game for much of that to be
economical. It is not just a question of the EROEI  of the renewables
themselves, but of the ability of an industrial juggernaut with the pieces
falling off, to use Jon's term, to replace much of fossil fuel consumption
with renewables when failing ROI of many resources has over decades
weakened it to the present degree. The US may try at some point, but the
attempt will gradually run out of gas (literally). The inability of the
Spanish and German economies to continue to subsidize operation of their
significant wind and rooftop solar efforts (respectively) is a foretaste of
how little a permanently weakening economy can do.

-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] EROEI

2014-03-15 Thread Karl S North

Stuart is correct that the global economy is still growing slightly, and
this is in line with evidence that global energy production is still
increasing slightly (while the rate of increase drops). But Stuart needs to
take the long view: the quantitative evidence that this growth rate, and
incumbent global prosperity, has declined steadily since at least 1960, as
in the graphs in this paper.
http://www.npg.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/WhatEverHappenedGoodOldDays.pdf

The growth rate decline in the last half century follows from increasing
scarcity, as Jon claims. Increasing scarcity is also documented for key
NNRs (nonrenewable natural resources) in the same paper. And Stuart never
refutes the logic of increasing scarcity ultimately causing permanent
economic decline.

We should not be misled: pieces start falling off the jugernaut due to
increasing scarcity in many ways long before decline shows up in GDP. My
metaphor to visualize that is the one, common in upstate NY of the dairy
farmer who can keep milking cows for years while his farm's built plant
falls apart. Eventually a key piece cannot be repaired or replace, and he
stops milking cows. He may continue in business selling hay for a while at
a lower income. Eventually he goes out of business.

As for technological improvements, the declining growth rate shows they
haven't solved a problem that has been evident for 50 years. Even NASA is
beginning to doubt.
See:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientistshttp://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001AFFC45WAyN6gijSFN4ljvrHWc8KN3dF-nisJMd0hwtBxMeFcgMkazoJvHbRUWcMca7GDZrmlwWcuWhV2ykBebA9XWzd6b79vZysIl6U0UAFhmfW_dn0O8t0f3Zf6gzTBgwxSO85X_KzwGxf-Vu7T0furlugWWCXHqK2x5-02ClUUED7-fC7nLkMFr_JKw5Gynk-nQC5OZrjwEkz0oCs5LEmwZOrc-rjvx_LFqlOse9stT6Z0PEoiT6kRhosU0PUl499KvfsEzF66NNzPORauydjU4RTW3qq1bUYaTKWVDxKiqHEXBFEfg_w4zMuIGgZEc=b1FWvYfaa3IXWru1ZRrn8gGP-sddTuFA3NcbdISJJ9T-oE36y-AxAQ==ch=636KeySWyzjUMCsh09_sYQDodR0ZtFl6_gKFtm2LM9en5LqeZZUeig==

When even engineers, who tend to cling to technological fundamentalism,
give up on it, I see light in the dark tunnel of denial.

Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Ecological Fish Farming

2014-02-13 Thread Karl S North

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 12:24 AM,
Tony Del Plato wrote:

 Almost sounds too good to be true. I wonder what the limitations or
 downside might be to this ecological model of feeding ourselves
 

 As a general model for the design of food production, estuaries and other
wetlands are probably one of the most productive natural ecosystems,
right up there along side rain forests, I would guess. That's why I began
to study traditional farming systems based on wetlands, as potential models
for a more sustainable agriculture of the future.

As for limitations, the fish farm in the TED talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html
has to rely on a number of unsustainable inputs for the same reason as even
the most sustainable land farms today: otherwise they would not be
economically viable in the current economy. Nonrenewable external inputs
like boats and other fish harvest materiel, pumps, machinery to recreate
and manage the wetland, marketing materials, etc.

However, this type of fish farm - that relies on the ecosystem to feed the
fish - is valuable as a model because its nonrenewable inputs could be
reduced to a minimum in a future economy where less ecologically
sustainable competition will gradually collapse.

Typically, the TED presenter finessed the sensitive question: Will this
type of food production - extensive is the word he used - feed the world?
He trotted out the usual answer: present global food production would feed
the world if it were distributed properly. Of course that is true, but that
avoids the question: present global food production is mostly industrial,
and will not last. That's what unsustainable means. But the most
sustainable alternatives, like this fish farm, are extensive. That means
they cannot produce the amount of food/acre of the conventional intensive
models. That is because they have to use some of the acreage of the
resource base and its energy for maintenance purposes: to sustain the
system, be it an aquatic or a land-based type of production. In other
words, it's never going to produce enough to sustain today's human
population. That's why the ecologists say we are in overshoot of carrying
capacity.

Despite these blunt statements about the food productivity limitations of
more sustainable models, I am excited about the design of agroecosystems
that incorporate wetlands because, although they will never attain the food
per acre of industrial models, they will outlast them, and I believe they
are among the most productive of models to survive the test of nature's 2
billion years of history.


-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
Pueblo que canta no morira - Cuban saying
They only call it class warfare when we fight back - Anon.
My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel.
 —Saudi saying

For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please 
visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom 
Shelley, at t...@cornell.edu.

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