Friday night. What could be better for a simple dinner on a frosty night, while sitting on the sofa watching a DVD, than Flammkuchen – German pizza?

Flammkuchen – literally, “flame cake” – is a dish from the Alsace-Lorraine region (much of which bounced back and forth between France and Germany over the last couple of centuries).

Flammkuchen is made like a thin-crust pizza, topped with crème fraîche, onions, and Speck - a salt-cured and lightly smoked ham. My first taste of Flammkuchen came about two decades ago while Irina and I were staying in Cousin Alexander’s Bauernhof, right in the heart of the small German village of Oberotterbach.

Elements of Cousin Alexander’s “farm” house – like the rear wall, which the house shares with the town Catholic church and cemetery – date from the 13th century. All the while we stayed there those church bells pealed every fifteen minutes, day and night, ringing out the quarter-hour and the hour. It’s enough to make one an atheist.

It really was (and is still) a farmhouse, dead square in the middle of town. Behind those big doors are a central courtyard; barns, stalls, and sheds; tractors and wagons; a well; a kitchen garden; and a wine and root cellar beneath the living quarters. Farmers live in the village, and sortie out to their fields each day.

Oberotterbach lies just across the border from the French town of Wissembourg, which marks the start of the Deutsche Weinstrasse. Here’s the Deutsches Weintor through which we drove back and forth between Germany and France in our ancient, borrowed Fiat Cinquecento.

The border control station was just on the other side of the “wine gate”. The border controls were a joke, as they were easily circumvented. Rather than staying on the main road, instead take one of the numerous back roads that crisscross the border through the vineyards. During our stay there, EU borders were opened and the inspection stations between Germany and France shuttered.

We often walked the ~4 km to Wissembourg from Oberotterbach through the vineyards and over a shoulder of the Sonnenberg, avoiding roads completely, ending up in a bar where the Gitanes and Gauloises smoke hung so thick and heavy you had to crawl on you hands and knees to see and to breath. But I digress.

The oldest building in Oberotterbach contains a Zehntkeller (literally, “10th cellar”), which was used for storing the local baron’s “10th” share of the harvest from the surrounding area. Kind of like a 13th century version of a local IRS. Centuries later, a cramped corner of that vaulted cellar housed a jazz club called the Musikantebuckl.

Along with the music they served local beer, local wine, and Flammkuchen baked in a wood-fired pizza oven. Love at first bite: I was closer to heaven than a kid from Sacramento could ever reasonably expect to find himself.

Though the Musikantebuckl is still jumping, getting there on a Friday night is now out of reach for us. But it’s easy to recreate a bit of that heaven right here. The biggest challenge is to find a substitute for Speck, which isn’t readily available here. Some recipes call for bacon, but we find bacon too fatty and too smoky. We’ve found that the uncured side of pork we get when we buy a half a hog (which would be bacon if it were smoked) works just fine once it’s trimmed of all fat.

Flammkuchen à La Ferme Noire

For two 12? Flammkuchen:

1 lb Irina’s bread dough
½ lb well-trimmed pork belly, cut into small cubes
1 medium red onion
6 oz crème fraîche (we use the delicious crema Mexicana that is available locally)
Sea salt
Crushed black pepper
A small piece of a whole nutmeg, crushed.

Place the dough on a well-floured surface. Divide into two pieces and roll into balls, coating liberally with flour. Flatten a bit with the palm of your hand, and roll out with a pizza roller, dusting with additional flour as necessary.

This dough is really wet, so it demands a bit of special care for the process to go smoothly. When you’ve finished rolling the skins out, make sure they are well dusted with flour. Fold into halves, then quarters; place on a board covered with wax paper (we use a couple of pieces of Masonite cut into 12″ x 12″ squares), unfold, and set aside to rise for an hour or so and to dry on top a bit.

While the dough is resting, rising, and drying, trim any fat off the pork and cut the meat into small cubes. Put the cubes of meat in a bowl, add salt, crushed pepper, and crushed nutmeg, and toss until the meat is evenly coated. Peel the onion and cut into thin strips, separating the layers.

About half an hour before cooking, put your pizza stone into the oven to pre-heat. You’ll want to use a very hot oven (like 500°). We most often cook pizza outdoors on a gas barbeque, especially in the summer when you don’t want to be heating up the kitchen.

While the oven and pizza stone are getting hot, prepare the Flammkuchen. The pizza skins must be transferred to a make-up board. We use larger and thicker pieces of Masonite for this purpose, 16? x 24? x ¼”; Masonite has a slick and slippery surface, and the ample size of the make-up board allows plenty of room to get the pizza sliding around freely before sliding it onto the hot pizza stone to bake. First sprinkle the make-up board liberally with corn meal (the corn meal acts like little ball bearings). Then flip the pizza skin on top of the corn meal so it’s waxed-paper side up, and peel off the wax paper.

Spread the crème fraîche over the pizza skins. Sprinkle evenly with the onions, then with the seasoned meat. Tap the side of the make-up board to make sure the pizza is sliding free, then slide the pizza off the make-up board and onto the hot pizza stone.

Close the cover (or the oven door) and bake until the crust is browned and crispy. As my dear departed father would say, video camera in hand, here we are.

We had planned to save one of the two Flammkuchen in the freezer for another day, but it tasted so darn irresistible we ate them both!

We have made vegetarian versions of Flammkuchen too, substituting local wild mushrooms (from The Mushroomery) for the pork. While not traditional, it’s really delicious, too.

Oil prices in 2011 averaged record highs, despite global economic woes.

Brent crude, the world oil benchmark, averaged $111 per barrel, breaking the previous record of an annual average high of $100, set in 2008. That spike contributed to a huge global recession. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) rose even more, averaging $95/barrel, an increase by 20% over its 2010 average price of $79. WTI traded at a hefty discount to world oil prices throughout the year – as much as $26/ barrel.

Global automotive market intelligence firm Polk forecasts worldwide new vehicle sales in 2012 will rise 6.7% over 2011 volumes to 77.7 million vehicles. Polk expects China to make the largest contribution to global sales growth for new vehicles, with an anticipated 16% increase over 2011.

Polk expects that U.S. light vehicle sales will increase by 7.3% to 13.7 million vehicles. As this chart by Calculated Risk shows, sales are struggling to return to levels reached almost two decades ago, when the U.S. population was ~50 million less than today.

Polk is optimistically forecasting U.S. auto sales to return to “normal” levels of greater than 16 million vehicles per year by 2015 – and for global auto sales to approach 100 million by 2016.

Where is the gasoline to power all these new cars going to come from? Despite record high global oil prices, global oil production is refusing to budge. Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) – which supply ~42% of global production – produced an average of 30.74 million barrels per day in December 2011.  OPEC production has been fluctuating within a ~5% band, as has global production.

Production of crude plus condensate has been basically flat since 2005, with new sources just barely managing to compensate for a 5% decline per year from existing production. Any increase in total liquids over that time has largely come from increases in NGPLs and other liquids.

Total liquids production worldwide increased 0.5% per year from 2005 to 2010 – but that includes low net energy fuels such as biofuels. However, the global supply of net oil exports available to importers other than China and India (what Jeffrey Brown calls Available Net Exports, or ANE) fell at a rate of 2.8% per year from 2005 to 2010. Brown expects oil available for import by most of the world to fall by 5% – 8% each year for the rest of the decade.

In Saudi Arabia (now the world’s second largest oil producer after Russia), production has been declining.  Only a dozen or so of the 54 oil producing nations in the world are still increasing their oil production.

If global economic growth, feeble though it may be, manages to continue in 2012, we can expect even higher oil prices. Even if people are willing and able to pay higher prices, there are limits to global supplies of oil that can be refined into motor fuels. What good will all these new cars be, if there is not enough fuel to power them?

It’s a good bet that rosy forecasts for U.S. and global auto sales will prove to be powered by nothing more than fantasy.

The World Meteorological Organization recently reported global greenhouse gas emissions rose at a record pace in 2010. Now another new analysis by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists, comes to the same conclusion: emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, the largest amount on record. The combustion of coal represented more than half of the growth in emissions.

The brief pause in the growth of emissions during the recession is over, at least for now. Emissions grew at a rate of ~3% yearly during the last decade. The growth rate in the 1990s was ~1% per year.

The analysis showed developing countries, including China and India, have surpassed the wealthy countries in greenhouse emissions. In 2010, developing countries were responsible for 57% of global emissions. But don’t think that rich countries are off the hook. The fast rise in developing countries has been caused to a large extent by the outsourcing of energy-intensive manufacturing industries. The rich countries have exported some of their emissions while continuing to consume the imported goods.

Meanwhile, the climate talks in Durban are going nowhere. The latest “earth-shaking” news is that China may agree to legally binding emissions reductions – but no earlier than 2020, and only if Kyoto is extended, and only if rich nations kick in $100 billion annually to a nonexistent mitigation fund. The U.S. is saying it isn’t interested, preferring “bilateral agreements”.

The clock is ticking. If the rise in greenhouse gas emissions is not reversed quickly and substantially, by 2020 it will be game over for saving Earth’s human-friendly climate.

Global temperatures in 2011 have likely been warmer than any previous strong La Niña year, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Despite a relatively cool, La Niña influenced 2011, the 10-year running average for the period 2002-2011 ties 2001-2010 as the warmest 10-year period on record.

Even before the climate talks in Durban began on Monday, participating nations were conceding that the chances of reaching any meaningful agreement were zilch. Expectations are low: the best to be hoped for is an agreement to begin negotiations on a global deal that can be implemented by 2020, along with making “some progress” on establishing “financing mechanisms” to help developing nations deal with the impacts of global warming. With western economies in the process of imploding, any agreement on money transfers – no matter how modest – may now be out of reach.

Two days into the talks, actions by Canada threaten to torpedo what remains of the global climate process. A rumor surfaced that the government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on curbing climate change before the end of 2011. Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent, commenting on but refusing to confirm the report, referred to the Kyoto agreement as “in the past” and stated that opting into the treaty was “one of the biggest blunders” made by the previous Liberal government.

The “rumor”—coming so early in the climate negotiations—is likely to render the low-held chances for a treaty breakthrough at the Durban talks even more remote.

Time is fast running out if catastrophic climate change is to be averted. Just recently Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and one of the world’s foremost authorities on climate economics, warned:

If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to holding temperatures below 2 ° C will be closed forever.

The thinking that a 2 ° C rise would be “safe” is optimistic, as no climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra. A new study published in Nature titled Climate change: High risk of permafrost thaw finds the permafrost can be expected to releases up to 380 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2100:

Arctic temperatures are rising fast, and permafrost is thawing . . . . Our collective estimate is that carbon will be released more quickly than models suggest, and at levels that are cause for serious concern.

We calculate that permafrost thaw will release the same order of magnitude of carbon as deforestation if current rates of deforestation continue. But because these emissions include significant quantities of methane, the overall effect on climate could be 2.5 times larger.

The new study only looked at the land-based permafrost.  A study published last year warned release of even a fraction of the methane stored offshore in the Eastern Siberian ice shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

The new study finds:

Across all the warming scenarios, we project that most of the released carbon will be in the form of CO₂, with only about 2.7% in the form of CH₄. However, because CH₄ has a higher global-warming potential, almost half the effect of future permafrost-zone carbon emissions on climate forcing is likely to be from CH₄. That is roughly consistent with the tens of billions of tonnes of CH₄ thought to have come from oxygen-limited environments in northern ecosystems after the end of the last glacial period.

Edward Schuur, lead author of the study in Nature, pleads that we must address the source of emissions from humans if we are to have any chance of keeping Arctic carbon frozen in permafrost rather than going into the atmosphere.

Given what’s going on in Durban – where the best outcome that can be expected is for the rich nations to agree to throw a hundred billion dollars or so as a sop to the poorer nations, rather than actually doing anything to slash emissions – the chances of that coming to pass are approaching zero.

The “social justice” rankings look at a number of different factors, including poverty, education, health services, intergenerational equity, and income inequality. The GINI index is used to measure income inequality. Overall social justice ratings are not available for all nations, but the GINI index is compiled for most of the world’s nations – by the CIA, no less! While the GINI Index may not be a perfect measure of social justice, there’s a pretty good correlation between the two, and it’s the best we’ve got.

The CIA World Factbook explains the GINI Index “measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country.” The Big Picture highlights where the U.S. stands:

There we are at #39 (out of 136 – the lower the ranking, the more unequal), right next to Bulgaria and Cameroon. The CIA’s ranking of the 136 countries listed is here.

China is #52 at 41.5, India #80 at 36.8. Russia is #51, at 42.2. Fine company the U.S. finds itself in – we’re not close to even rubbing shoulders with the European countries from whom we claim to have inherited the mantle of civilization and global leadership.

It wasn’t so long ago the U.S looked quite a bit better.

A GINI rating of 0.39, which the U.S. sported about 30 years ago, would today put us in the same company as Mauritius, Malawi, and Mauritania. Now there’s something to aspire to! With a little more work we might be able match Moldova, and then maybe even Yemen!

But we’re moving in the other direction. Banana republic, here we come!

Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press reports that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are increasing faster than the worst case scenario outlined just four years ago in the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report:

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

Humans emitted about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the atmosphere in 2010 than it did in 2009 – an increase of 6%. Joseph Romm at Climate Progress posts these graphics.

China, the United States, and India are the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases. While the U.S. dithers and does nothing to stop global warming, the power to do so has slipped out of our hands. Earth’s fate now lies largely in the hands of others.

Emissions in developing countries are rising very rapidly and are projected to continue doing so. For example, between 1990 and 2009, among the top 5 emitting countries, China increased its per capita emissions by over two and a half times and India doubled them.

The demand for coal in India is expected to increase rapidly in the future, dominated mainly by the power sector as India’s government aims to double power generation over the next decade. India is currently the third largest producer of coal in the world; and India’s coal imports, which totaled 55 million tons in 2010, are expected to rise to 186 million tons by 2014 and to soar to ~300 million tons by 2016. China’s coal consumption rose to 2.28 billion metric tons of coal in the first nine months of 2011, up 10.3% from 2010. China is projected to more than double its consumption of coal by 2035.

Raymond Pierrehumbert at RealClimate sums up all you ever really need to know about CO2 emissions and climate:

• The peak warming is linearly proportional to the cumulative carbon emitted
• It doesn’t matter much how rapidly the carbon is emitted
• The warming you get when you stop emitting carbon is what you are stuck with for the next thousand years
• The climate recovers only slightly over the next ten thousand years
• At the mid-range of IPCC climate sensitivity, a trillion tonnes cumulative carbon gives you about 2C global mean warming above the pre-industrial temperature.

Pierrehumbert notes we have already emitted about half the trillion-ton figure, so our whole future allowance is another 500 gigatonnes – assuming Earth herself doesn’t kick in. Nehring (2009) estimates that known global economically recoverable coal amounts to 846 gigatonnes, based on 2005 prices and technology. That’s ~634 gigatonnes of carbon, which all by itself is more than enough to bring us well past “game-over.” Proved reserves of conventional oil add up to ~139 gigatonnes C, proved natural gas reserves another ~100 gigatonnes C – and these two energy reserves are so valuable and easily accessible that it’s probably inevitable they will get burned. The carbon associated with the Athabasca oil sands deposit adds up to about 230 gigatonnes; estimates of how much of that will ultimately be economically recoverable vary from 10% to 70%.

And Earth herself is starting to kick in. Drying of northern wetlands has led to much more severe peatland wildfires and nine times as much carbon released into the atmosphere, according to new research led by University of Guelph professor Merritt Turetsky:

Russia, Indonesia and Canada all have abundant peatlands, but they also have been hotspots for intense peat fires in the past decade. Our study shows that when disturbance lowers the water table, that resistance [to fire[ disappears and peat becomes very flammable and vulnerable to deep burning. * * * Currently, peatlands are considered important global stores for carbon. But we’ve shown that human disturbance or climate-induced drying can switch peatlands from sinks to potentially huge sources of carbon, with losses associated with severe burning far outweighing long-term rates of sequestration.

And then there's the shocking conclusion from the study “Amount and timing of permafrost carbon release in response to climate warming” in Tellus by NOAA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC):

The thaw and release of carbon currently frozen in permafrost will increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations and amplify surface warming to initiate a positive permafrost carbon feedback (PCF) on climate. . . [Our] estimate may be low because it does not account for amplified surface warming due to the PCF itself. . . We predict that the PCF will change the arctic from a carbon sink to a source after the mid-2020s and is strong enough to cancel 42-88% of the total global land sink. The thaw and decay of permafrost carbon is irreversible and accounting for the PCF will require larger reductions in fossil fuel emissions to reach a target atmospheric CO2 concentration.

There are ~1,672 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent trapped in the form of methane in the Arctic permafrost, about twice as much carbon as currently contained in the atmosphere. Methane is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon – but 72 times as potent over 20 years.While humans continue to fiddle and burn, Earth’s carbon cycle is slipping beyond human ability to control.

Last November the German Bundeswehr published an extraordinary study of the implications of peak oil. An English version of that study – titled Peak Oil: security policy implications of scarce resources – has now been made available, and is posted at Energy Bulletin. The peak oil study is Sub-study I of a two-part study entitled “Armed Forces, Capabilities and Technologies in the 21st Century – Environmental Dimensions of Security”, undertaken by the Bundeswehr Future Analysis Branch addressing the subject of finite resources and their potential security policy implications. The second part of the study will deal with climate change and demography.

The Study begins by accepting the reality that peak oil is upon us . . .

The term “peak oil” stands for the maximum rate of oil production and refers to the point in time at which the rate of a single oil field, of an oil-producing region, or globally reaches its absolute peak. * * * From peak oil, however, this level will irreversibly decline in the long term. Generally speaking, oil will therefore continue to be available and recoverable beyond the 30-year timeframe chosen in this study, albeit in quantities that are possibly too small to fully satisfy global demands and at considerably higher prices.

. . . without quibbling about the exact point in time at which the peak occurs:

The precise global peak oil date is controversial and can only be determined with certainty in retrospect.

The study states the reality that every nation in the world has a vital interest in securing energy supplies. While the world’s leaders may not be talking about peak oil to their publics, that doesn’t mean ruling elites are not fretting and plotting behind the scenes.

It can therefore be stated that against the backdrop of the ever-decreasing availability of fossil fuels, the challenge of ensuring long-term energy supply is reflected in national strategies worldwide, leaving no doubt as to the vital importance attached to this issue. In this context, the fact that energy supply aspects occupy an increasingly important place in the national security strategy documents of various countries is an indication of the increasing securitisation of this area * * * is likely to have consequences on the nature of future energy relations.

It’s impossibly to foresee what the impacts of declining oil supplies will have on our lives. What’s certain is that oil-importing countries will, with increasing desperation, be scrambling to secure their share of ever-diminishing supplies:

Ultimately, it is hardly possible to calculate from today’s perspective how suppliers and consumers will respond to global peak oil. Against this backdrop, the continuous assessment of diversification opportunities seems equally necessary and difficult, particularly with regard to the ousting or competition effects with other oil-importing countries that such efforts would bring about in the face of declining production rates.

If peak oil unfolds in a “moderate” form, global business could proceed more or less as usual, only with producer countries gaining power and influence at the expense of importer countries. There would simply be a re-balancing of the global balance of power. But there’s a darker possibility, where the world devolves into political and economic chaos:

[A]peak oil scenario in which a so-called “tipping point” is exceeded where linear developments become chaotic and finally result in a worst-case scenario in terms of security policy. For example, if the global economy shrinks for an indeterminate period of time, a chain reaction that might destabilise the global economic system is imaginable. Depending on point in time and the level of dependence of the affected society, such a peak-oil-induced, economic tipping point might have such severe systemic implications that only a few general statements as to economic, political, and social developments beyond the tipping point can be made. This will clearly change the analytical framework for all other security policy conclusions. Because of the widely unexplored “tipping point” phenomenon, it is impossible to conduct a comprehensive analysis of possible effects of such a trigger element. Rather, this study is designed to raise awareness of a possible nonlinear economic development due to peak oil and of the related risk of a severe system crisis.

Over time, obtaining oil will become more of a political rather than an economic endeavor, as governments seek to gain or retain control over a scarce and diminishing resource.

The study warns that in the short term, the global economy would respond proportionally to the decline in oil supply. The consequences laid out in the study read like today’s headlines. Increasing oil prices would reduce consumption and economic output, leading to recessions. The increase in transportation costs would cause the prices of all traded goods to rise, lowering trade volumes. For the unfortunate, this means losing income; for the even less fortunate, starvation. National budgets would be under extreme pressure, as revenues plummet as a result of recession and taxes are slashed in an attempt to restart the growth machine.

The study then gets downright apocalyptic: in the medium term, the global economic system and all market-oriented economies would collapse.

What does all of this mean for Germany and German foreign policy? After the global conflagration that was World War II, the rest of the world should be very interested in German thinking.

The study urges Germany to accelerate the transition to unspecified “renewable energies and raw materials” – without inquiry into whether such energies or raw materials actually exist or could serve to supplant oil and the other building blocks of industrial civilization. In the interim, Germany should continue to rely on its traditional energy mainstays: Britain,  Norway – and, above all, Russia:

[T]he relationship with Russia is above all essential for Germany’s oil and gas supply alignment. Furthermore, it must be determined to what extent energy partnerships can be established and supply relationships can be developed and consolidated with countries of the Caspian region, the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Germany should seek to diversify its sources of energy, with particular attention to the “strategic ellipse” which contains the bulk of the globe’s remaining energy resources.

The map – which shows up early in the study, as shown by its label “Figure 1? – ominously recalls the theaters of the Second World War, where German strategy was to seize control of the oil fields of the Caucasus and the Middle East. Germans are still sensitive to their peculiar moral dilemma:

In light of global peak oil and efforts to establish strong, reliable relationships with oil-producing countries, value-based concepts of foreign, security and development policy may increasingly become subject to pressure to conform to more pragmatic rival models, like those already pursued by China and India.

A security policy more strongly focused on (economic) self-interest would be subject to special restrictions in Germany and, as evidenced by the discussions surrounding Bundeswehr operations abroad and Horst Köhler’s resignation as Germany’s Federal President, to extensive debate in politics and society. Especially in the Middle East and North Africa, Germany struggles to define its interests, which involve an element of power politics that has strong negative connotations in Germany and is irreconcilable with recent German history. Particularly in these regions, which are most important for future global energy security, Germany is thus mindful to emphasis ethical values as an important motivation.

As push comes to shove, it is realistic to expect that Germany will not reassert its national interest, even if that might be within a greater European context? And the struggle between ethical values and self-interest is not uniquely German. As peak oil begins to bite hard, that same struggle will be played out everywhere, in every nation, even within nations, around the globe.

In July 2008 – just before the big crash – gasoline prices exceeded $4.15 a gallon and gas station sales accounted for 12.47% of retail sales. When gasoline prices last rose to $3.25 a gallon, in March 2008, gas station sales accounted for 11.55% of all retail sales – significantly more than now.

Fuel prices aren’t the only thing that have been soaring – food prices have been, too. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reports global food prices reached an all-time high in January 2011.

Last year, unusual and extreme weather – too hot or cold, or too dry or wet, due in part to global warming-induced climate change – affected major food producers and exporters around the world, from Russia and Ukraine to Canada and the U.S., Germany, Australia, Pakistan, Argentina and the countries of Southeast Asia.

Food riots have started again. Political unrest, stoked by rising food prices, is sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, threatening the stability of the world’s oil supplies. Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain have seen political uprisings. There have been demonstrations in Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, and now Oman. Were instability to spread to Saudi Arabia, the world would tremble indeed.

The world’s food supply is highly dependent on oil.  In a back-of-the-envelope calculation, Paul Chefurka estimates the operation of the world’s food supply consumes about 23% of the world’s oil.

Oil shortages mean food shortages. Food shortages lead to political upheaval, disrupting oil production. Meanwhile in the U.S., we’re burning over one-third of our corn crop – one-sixth of the world’s supply of corn – to run our cars.  This chart is via Early Warning.

Estimated fraction of the corn crop devoted to ethanol

Running our cars and trucks is once again on the verge of becoming so expensive that the cost will blow up the economy.

And oh yes, in the U.S. the disparity of wealth between the rich and the rest has never been greater.

Rising inequality in the U.S. is one measure of corruption. As the hijacking of the bailout by the banksters conclusively evidences, democracy in the U.S.  – with a big assist from the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore and Citizens United – is nothing more than a sideshow and the U.S. is now demonstrably an oligarchy.

Unemployment? While the “official” rate is stated to have fallen to 9.0% – but that number would be over 11% were it not for millions of people allegedly dropping out of the labor force over the last year. And the more revealing U-6 rate is running at 16.1%.

And food costs? Over the 12 months, the food index has risen 1.8% with the food at home index up 2.1%t; both 12-month changes are the highest since 2009. More tellingly, there has been a dramatic increase in hunger in the United States in the last three years and a record 14+% of the population is on food stamps. Maybe the rich can still buy food, but it’s getting harder and harder for everybody else as their incomes are dropping even as food prices rise.

if food prices are not yet making Americans scream, Americans are much more sensitive to rising prices at the pump – God help anyone who would interfere with our love affair with our cars. The energy index has increased 7.3% over the last 12 months, with the gasoline index up 13.4%. Crude oil prices have been fluctuating around levels last seen just before the 2008 spike to $147/barrel. One additional geopolitical spark could set off an explosion the likes of which we’ve before seen.

How long before growing inequality in the U.S. results in riots and unrest?  Is what we’re seeing in Wisconsin a mere harbinger of more serious struggles to come?

Our politics – whether local, national, or international – is laughably incapable of confronting reality. Here in Oregon, even a “progressive” governor has abandoned his environmental roots and embraced “economic development,” a policy direction reiterated by his newly-appointed natural resources adviser saying the focus will be “on jobs, not mainstream environmental issues.”

Lives, both of humans and political entities, are now at stake. But we’re still thinking within the old paradigm of “growth.” How long can it be before we will at last drop the pretense, and acknowledge, and openly and honestly deal with the new paradigm reality has dealt us?

• The United Nations says that the global price of food hit another new all-time high in the month of January and is projecting that the global price of food will increase by another 30 percent by the end of 2011.
• The price of wheat has roughly doubled since the middle of 2010. Unprecedented flooding in Australia has devastated the winter wheat crop. A severe and long-lasting drought in China is projected to have a huge impact on wheat production. Russia, one of the world’s largest wheat producers, is still reeling from the effects of last summer’s record high temperatures and is actually importing wheat this winter to sustain its cattle herds. Some of the worst flooding ever seen in Brazil has caused huge losses for agriculture in northeastern Brazil while at the same time drought and scorching temperatures are withering wheat, corn, and soybean crops in Argentina.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects U.S. corn reserves will drop to a 15 year low by the end of 2011. The price of corn has already doubled in the past six months. Chinese imports of corn is now expected be about 9 times larger than originally projected for 2011.

While food prices are soaring around the globe, political unrest is rising as well. Here’s a catalog of recent events (hat tip to Jeff Rubin):

• Demonstrators force Mubarak out in Egypt. Egypt is the world’s largest importer. Egyptian food imports have been paid for by oil exports – but Egypt’s oil exports have been plunging since 1996. What’s hard to understand is why Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak would not want to take his purloined billions and flee while he can.
• Political unrest in Tunisia over high food prices in Tunisia recently sent strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali packing.
• Riots in Morocco, Algeria and Pakistan are related to the very sharp rise in food and commodity prices.
• Food riots in Algeria prompted three-term president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to lift a 19-year stage of emergency and to quickly place an order for a record 800,000 tonnes of wheat.
• Saudi Arabia, taking preemptive action, recently announced plans to double its wheat inventories.
• Bangladesh and Indonesia placed record rice orders; the former doubling its order, while Jakarta quadrupled its rice purchases.
• In Bolivia, President Evo Morales has been rattled by protests after trying to lift subsidies on gasoline, flour and sugar in December. He subsequently abandoned the effort — but did remove price controls on sugar, causing prices to double.

One phenomenon underlies these disparate events: the extreme weather that is a predicted consequence of global warming. We are suffering the consequences of global warming right now, as manifested in rising food prices, food shortages, and political unrest.

China may soon be putting additional pressure on global food supplies and prices. The severe drought in the north could result in China, normally self–sufficient in wheat, to become a significant importer this year, an eventuality that would push grain prices a lot higher.

Bill James at Seeking Alpha predicts that Mexico will follow Egypt into collapse within two years, due to the same interplay between rising food prices and falling oil exports:

• Mexicans spend about 22% of their disposable income on food. In 2010 corn prices increased 52% and wheat 47%. With the floods in Australia, ethanol in the U.S. and higher fuel prices it seems likely food will consume 50% of disposable income within a year. That is an average. There will be a critical percent of the population where food costs will exceed their disposable income. Hunger will amplify risks.
• Mexico’s government gets about 40% of its revenues from oil. As noted in BP data complied at Energy Export Database Mexico’s domestic consumption (black line) will force its oil revenues (green area) to drop to zero within a few years. Egypt’s oil revenues dropped to about zero in 2010.

James illustrates his argument with two charts.

Without the ability to feed its people or fund its security forces, how can Mexico remain a viable government?

The question begs to be answered more broadly: without the ability to feed their people or fund their security forces, how can many of the struggling nations of the world retain viable governments? Rising food prices will make this question more and more salient.

The U.S. diplomatic cables published by the Guardian reveal Saudi officials concede global oil production will soon peak, possible as early as 2012. The cables relate that Saudi Arabia is not only struggling to maintain production, but that increasing domestic demand is leaving less oil available for export.

The Oil Drum observes that real world data supports what is secretly being said and has posted this chart from Energy Exports Databrowser showing not only that production has been dropping but that net exports are dropping even faster as internal consumption rises.

The situation in the Middle East overall isn’t much better: while production may or may not have peaked, exports are down significantly from the 1970s because of rising consumption.

The agreement produced in the early hours of Saturday reinforces the promise made by rich countries at Copenhagen last year to mobilize billions for a green climate fund to help poor countries defend themselves against climate damage.

It was not clear how the funds would be raised. At Copenhagen last year, rich countries agreed to raise $100bn (£63bn) a year by 2020 for the fund. However, US officials said at the weekend that most of this would come from the private sector.

Like, we’re going to pass the hat around to corporations?

Cancún’s most significant result was putting off the tough decisions until next year’s UN summit in South Africa.

Environmental groups blamed the US for taking a hard line at the talks. But all ended well:

Despite those tensions, however, America and China avoided the mood of confrontation that undermined the talks at Copenhagen last year.

Now there’s real progress for you!

Grist reports that the talks ushered in a “a new era in international cooperation on climate change.” Kumbaya! All the nations of the world have now agreed to cooperate in doing nothing significant or effective!

Bolivia didn’t sound ready to jump on the self-congratulatory bandwagon. The agreement embraces a policy on “deforestation mitigation” known as REDD, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries. This gives polluters in the north a chance to buy carbon credits for protecting forests in the global south.

Bolivia, and most organizations on the ground and in the streets of Cancún for the past two weeks, object to REDD on the grounds that it commodifies the forests of the global South, endangers indigenous control over the forests and their right to livelihood, and allows northern polluters to keep polluting. Bolivian negotiator Pablo Solon said handing out carbon credits for protecting forests makes it easier for industrialized nations to achieve their emissions reductions targets without taking domestic action to rein in greenhouse gases.

Bolivian President Evo Morales gave an impassioned speech at the conference that refused to cut the industrial powers any slack:

We came to Cancún to save nature, forests, planet Earth. We are not here to convert nature into a commodity. We have not come here to revitalize capitalism with carbon markets . . .

We are familiar with the slogan “Country or Death,” but it is better now to talk about “Planet or Death.” To try and look for an intermediary solution is to trick people. It is the major powers here that need to abandon their arrogance in the face of the peoples of the world.

As the latest round of climate talks kick off in Cancun, the world’s oldest and most prestigious scientific society is saying:

[T]here is now little to no chance of maintaining the global mean surface temperature at or below 2^°C. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2^°C have been revised upwards, sufficiently so that 2^°C now more appropriately represents the threshold between ‘dangerous’ and ‘extremely dangerous’ climate change.

The quote above is from the abstract of the article Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world, published in a special theme issue of the Royal Society of London periodical Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The reports contained in the issue, entitled “Four degrees and beyond: the potential for a global temperature increase of four degrees and its implications”, stem from the Four Degrees and Beyond Conference held in September 2009. Participants were asked to specifically address the questions of (i) how probable a warming of four degrees or higher might be, (ii) what the consequences of such a warming might be for ecosystems and society, (iii) how to adapt to such large changes, and (iv) how to keep the risk of high-end climate change as low as possible.

Even if global carbon emission curbs were to be agreed in the future, the emissions reductions would be insufficient to limit global temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius this century. To have a realistic chance of doing that, the world would have to get carbon emissions to peak within 15 years and then follow this up with a massive decarbonization of society. The odds of this happening are zero. It won’t happen – at least not voluntarily. The politics are simply too daunting.

We’ve already built in an overshoot of 2^°C, and are heading towards 4^°C. So what?

“In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.”

The concluding piece by Rachel Warren, “The role of interactions in a world implementing adaptation and mitigation solutions to climate change,” suggests that adaptation may not be possible. The interaction of impacts is likely to be overwhelming as ecosystems collapse over large parts of the Earth:

[A] 4°C world would be facing enormous adaptation challenges in the agricultural sector, with large areas of cropland becoming unsuitable for cultivation, and declining agricultural yields. This world would also rapidly be losing its ecosystem services, owing to large losses in biodiversity, forests, coastal wetlands, mangroves and saltmarshes, and terrestrial carbon stores, supported by an acidified and potentially dysfunctional marine ecosystem. Drought and desertification would be widespread, with large numbers of people experiencing increased water stress, and others experiencing changes in seasonality of water supply. There would be a need to shift agricultural cropping to new areas, impinging on unmanaged ecosystems and decreasing their resilience; and large-scale adaptation to sea-level rise would be necessary. Human and natural systems would be subject to increasing levels of agricultural pests and diseases, and increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world. Hence, the ecosystem services upon which human livelihoods depend would not be preserved. Even though some studies have suggested that adaptation in some areas might still be feasible for human systems, such assessments have generally not taken into account lost ecosystem services.

If the conclusions of the scientists contributing to the Royal Society’s special issue are not worrisome enough, their models still do not incorporate the feedback effects of methane emissions from thawing tundra or melting methane hydrates.

Preventing global warming by giving up the burning of fossil fuels – and doing so quickly – is humanity’s only hope.  Peak oil could yet prove to be humanity’s best friend.

The U.S military, the German military, the U.K. financial community, and the U.S. investment community have all acknowledged the immanence and the potentially calamitous consequences  of peak oil. But the words “peak oil” have yet to slip from a politician’s lips (with the amazing exception of Representative Roscoe Bartlett, R-Maryland).

A political body may at last be poised to take notice.

In New Zealand, a new research paper done for the New Zealand Parliament by the Parliamentary Service predicts decades of economic turmoil and recessions face the world as oil supplies run low and energy prices surge.

The paper is titled The Next Oil Shock?. A summary is available here.

Here are the key points from the summary:

• Oil is “the lifeblood of modern civilisation”. This paper provides an overview of the global oil market. In particular, it examines the outlook for oil supply and demand over the next five years, and the economic consequences.
• Low-cost reserves of oil are being rapidly exhausted, forcing oil companies to turn to more expensive sources of oil. This replacement of low-cost sources of oil with higher-costs sources is driving the price of oil higher.
• While the world will not run out of oil reserves for decades to come, it cannot indefinitely continue to produce oil at an increasing rate from the remaining reserves. Forecasts indicate that world oil production capacity will not grow or fall in the next five years while demand will continue to rise.
• If oil production capacity does not rise as fast as demand, the buffer of spare production capacity disappears. In such a ‘supply crunch’ the price of oil ‘spikes’ to high levels. High oil prices can induce global recessions.
• Organisations including the International Energy Agency and the US military have warned that another supply crunch is likely to occur soon after 2012 due to rising demand and insufficient production capacity.
• There is a risk that the world economy may be at the start of a cycle of supply crunches leading to price spikes and recessions, followed by recoveries leading to supply crunches.
• New Zealand is heavily dependent on oil imports and will remain so for the foreseeable future. While there is potential to substantially increase domestic production, domestic oil production cannot insulate New Zealand from global oil price shocks because New Zealand pays the world price for goods like oil.
• Key export-generating industries in the New Zealand economy including tourism and timber, dairy, and meat exports are very vulnerable to oil shocks because of their reliance on affordable international transport.

We’re not quite ready yet in our political discourse to face hard reality. And we’re not yet quite ready to concede that peak oil means peak demand as well – that is, the growth that is assumed in our political and economic thinking is over:

The world’s oil production capacity may not be sufficient to match growing demand in coming years. The potential for short-falls arises from geological, infrastructure, and political/economic constraints limiting the ability of world oil production capacity to grow while demand continues to rise.

Note the conditional language “if” and “may”, in the passage above and in this passage describing consequences of oil supply shortfalls:

If oil supply cannot meet demand a price spike may be triggered, with major detrimental effects on economies, especially those heavily dependent on oil imports.

Nevertheless, an important milestone has been reached. One political body in a major developed country is formally entertaining the concept of peak oil, considering the consequences, and conceiving that there may be storm clouds on the economic horizon. Notable for its absence is any indication of awareness that there may be political consequences as well.

Pakistan is reeling from its worst flooding in recorded history – a predicted  consequence of global warming.  Er, make that “global climate disruption“:

Global warming is a misnomer. It implies something gradual, uniform, and benign. What we’re experiencing is none of these.  – John P. Holdren, White House Science Advisor

The floods washed away homes, roads, and bridges, wreaking destruction from northern Pakistan to the southern province of Sindh; and damaged millions of hectares of cultivatable land and crops, destroying seed stocks, and killing at least 1.2 million livestock and costing many farmers their store of seeds. Soggy soils could make farmers miss the September planting season, raising the specter of famine.

Now, Pakistan is faced with another threat: an energy crisis.

Pakistan is bracing for a major shortage of petroleum products as the Pakistan State Oil company moves closer to a financial emergency, a source suggested. PSO is on the verge of defaulting on its international payments as $190 million in debt is due to foreign suppliers. An official at the company told Pakistan’s English-language Dawn newspaper that PSO was considering canceling a significant amount of oil imports.

“The situation is very bad,” the source said. “It has never been like this.”

Irfan Qureshi, the managing director at the company, in a series of “urgent letters” sent Thursday warned government ministries that the country was on the verge of a major energy crisis, the source added.

Islamabad was warned that PSO is unable to make its payments to refineries and exhausted its financing for future supplies.

The PSO source added that Pakistan was already short of diesel, furnace oil, jet fuel and gasoline.

A cutoff in oil supplies would be but another staggering blow in Pakistan’s ongoing energy crisis, suffering from chronic power failures that authorities fear could prove to be destabilizing.

Pakistan is the world’s seventh-most populous country (the average age is 21, and over 37% of Pakistanis are under 15 years of age). It has a nuclear-armed military and an intelligence service that provides financing, training and sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan is ranked the 10th most failed state in the world, just three places below Afghanistan.

What would a failed Pakistan look like, and what consequences may entail? We may soon find out.

Spiegel Online International reports A confidential German army study, warning of a looming oil crisis which could have dramatic political and economic consequences, has been leaked. The study – a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military – depicts the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials.

According to Spiegel Online, the report concludes there is “some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later”. The study warns of:

[S]hifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the “total collapse of the markets” and of serious political and economic crises.

The article provides the following summary of the report’s main points:

• Oil will determine power: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center writes that oil will become one decisive factor in determining the new landscape of international relations: “The relative importance of the oil producing nations in the international system is growing. These nations are using the advantages resulting from this to expand the scope of their domestic and foreign policies and establish themselves as a new or resurgent regional, or in some cases even global leading power.”
• Increasing importance of oil exporters: For importers of oil more competition for resources will mean an increase in the number of nations competing for favor with oil producing nations. For the latter this opens up a window of opportunity which can be used to implement political, economic or ideological aims. As this window of time will only be open for a limited period, “this could result in a more aggressive assertion of national interests on the part of the oil producing nations.”
• Politics in place of the market: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center expects that a supply crisis would roll back the liberalization of the energy market. “The proportion of oil traded on the global, freely accessible oil market will diminish as more oil is traded through bi-national contracts,” the study states. In the long run, the study goes on, the global oil market will only be able to follow the laws of the free market in a restricted way. “Bilateral, conditioned supply agreements and privileged partnerships, such as those seen prior to the oil crises of the seventies, will once again come to the fore.”
• Market failures: The authors paint a bleak picture of the consequences resulting from a shortage of petroleum. As the transportation of goods depends on crude oil, international trade could be subject to colossal tax hikes. “Shortages in the supply of vital goods could arise” as a result, for example in food supplies. Oil is used directly or indirectly in the production of 95% of all industrial goods. Price shocks could therefore be seen in almost any industry and throughout all stages of the industrial supply chain. “In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse.”
• Relapse into planned economy: Since virtually all economic sectors rely heavily on oil, peak oil could lead to a “partial or complete failure of markets,” says the study. “A conceivable alternative would be government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other short-term coercive measures to replace market-based mechanisms in times of crisis.”
• Global chain reaction: “A restructuring of oil supplies will not be equally possible in all regions before the onset of peak oil,” says the study. “It is likely that a large number of states will not be in a position to make the necessary investments in time,” or with “sufficient magnitude.” If there were economic crashes in some regions of the world, Germany could be affected. Germany would not escape the crises of other countries, because it’s so tightly integrated into the global economy.
• Crisis of political legitimacy: The Bundeswehr study also raises fears for the survival of democracy itself. Parts of the population could comprehend the upheaval triggered by peak oil “as a general systemic crisis.” This would create “room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government.” Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could “in extreme cases lead to open conflict.”

The study, Peak Oil: Sicherheitspolitische Implikationen knapper Ressourcen, is available here (unfortunately in German). Robert Rapier has posted a translation of the major points in the report at his R Squared Energy Blog.

China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest consumer of energy, according to data from Paris-based International Energy Agency. The IEA said China consumed the equivalent of 2.25 billion tons of oil last year, slightly above U.S. consumption of 2.17 billion tons. The measure includes all types of energy: oil, nuclear, coal, natural gas and renewable energy sources.

This chart is posted at The Daily Reckoning:

As this chart posted at The Daily Reckoning shows, China has a long way to go to catch up with U.S. per capita energy consumption:

40% of the world’s population – China and India – uses two barrels of oil per person per day. In the US, we use 25.

China dismissed the IEA’s analysis, saying the IEA data on China’s energy use is unreliable. China’s National Bureau of Statistics said in a report in February that China’s energy consumption last year stood at 3.1 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, or 2.132 billion tons of oil equivalent. Even by China’s reckoning, China is fast approaching U.S. energy consumption levels.

In June, China consumed approximately 9.4 million barrels each and every day. Of this total, they imported 5.44 million barrels. Between them, China and India together now consume about 28 million barrels-per-day, nearly 33% of the world total.

But while China’s oil consumption is rising and China is busy locking up future oil supplies around the world, U.S. oil consumption is declining – and improved efficiency has nothing to do with it. Oil consumption has likely peaked in the United States because our economy is trashed and likely to remain so. In 2007, the last year before the crash, American oil consumption often exceeded 21 million barrels per day. Those days are over. U.S. consumption is now bouncing around 19 mbd, a decline of ~10%. ]]> http://www.goal1.org/archives/2010/07/21/china-overtakes-u-s-as-world%e2%80%99s-biggest-energy-user/feed/ 0 http://www.goal1.org/archives/2010/04/16/who-are-to-going-to-believe-xie-or-your-lying-eyes/ http://www.goal1.org/archives/2010/04/16/who-are-to-going-to-believe-xie-or-your-lying-eyes/#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:59:13 +0000 Jim Just http://www.goal1.org/?p=4152

A recent post pointed out our actions belied any intention to actually do anything about global warming – we’re not really serious. Here’s another example.

First, Bloomberg reports Chinese president’s special envoy Xie Zhenhua vowing to “vigorously” fight “world scale climate destruction”:

The scale of economic destruction would be equivalent to that of the two world wars and the Great Depression combined” if global temperatures rise by 3 degrees (5.4 Fahrenheit) to 4 degrees Celsius, Xie said. “Human beings and the Earth cannot afford such disasters.

On the very same day, China Daily reports a huge jump in Chinese coal production:

China’s coal output grew 28.1 percent year-on-year to well over 751 million tons in the first quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday. . . .

The report estimates China’s total coal production capacity has exceeded 3.6 billion tons.

Channeling Groucho Marx:  who are you to going to believe, Xie or your lying eyes?

Developed countries are “outsourcing” more than a third of their carbon emissions associated with products and services to other countries, according to a new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science. To be meaningful, regional climate policy thus needs to take into account emissions embodied in trade, not just domestic emissions.

This map shows the flow of carbon emissions embodied in trade among the major exporting and importing countries. Net exporting countries are in blue and net importers in red. China is by far the largest exporter of carbon dioxide emissions. Arrows indicate direction and magnitude of flow; numbers are megatonnes. (Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science)

The study finds that, per person, about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are consumed in the U.S. but produced somewhere else. The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.

Says co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology:

Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume.

Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by specific countries.

For Europeans, the figure can exceed four tons per person. In Switzerland and several other small countries, outsourced emissions exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within national borders. Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.

Davis explains:

Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China. On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported.

Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system. Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.

The report is published online in the March 8, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Stuart Staniford at Early Warning has posted some revealing graphs showing past carbon emissions – and projected future carbon emissions from China.

First, a history of carbon emissions. Notice emissions didn’t really start to take off until the 1950s.

Next, a closer look at emissions since 1965, broken out by major contributors.

Future Chinese emissions make doubtful any prospect of avoiding dangerous or even catastrophic global warming, whether or not the Chinese economy continues along its current growth path.

Exactly how is the world going to achieve 20% cuts (from 1990 levels) by 2020, much less 80% by 2050? Copenhagen sure doesn’t leave much room for optimism.

Amanda Gelder has a great interview with Jeremy Rifkin at Culturelab. What I find most intriguing are the connections Rifken draws among psychology, politics, and economics. We find ourselves in a pickle of historic proportions at the moment at least in part because of errors in thinking about these things.

I’ll try to pull together a couple of threads to focus on economic thinking and its relationship to the global crisis we face:

The Enlightenment view is that human beings are rational, detached agents that pursue our own self-interests and our nation states reflect that view. . .

A lot of interesting new discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, child development, anthropology and more suggest that human nature might not be what Enlightenment philosophers suggested. For instance, the discovery of mirror neurons suggests that we are not wired for autonomy or utility but for empathic distress; we are a social species.

* * *

Geopolitics is an extension of the Enlightenment view of human nature, the idea that we pursue our utilitarian pleasures and individual self-interests. In geopolitics, the nation-state becomes a macro view of that. Nations deal with nations by being rational, detached and calculating, pursuing self-interests, excercising power and acquiring more capital and wealth. That’s why Copenhagen failed. The world leaders weren’t thinking biosphere, they were thinking geopolitics. Everyone was looking out for their nation’s self-interest.

* * *

A lot of business people would say that you can’t be empathic in the market. But the market is a secondary institution–it’s an extension of culture. The real invisible hand of the market is trust, which is the result of empathic engagement. The only way you can have a market is if you have a shared narrative. The market is not a utilitarian frame of reference, it only exists by the social trust that allows people to engage in anonymous settings and believe that their engagements will be honored. When that trust fails, markets collapse and that’s what is happening now.

Rifken thinks the new world of distributed knowledge and distributed energy means we’ve moving from Homo sapien to Homo empathicus. His vision is attractive. I wish I could share his optimism. Still, we too often forget that philosophy does not live just in acedemia – it has real world implications. The “market” we have come to deify today is really nothing more than a myth, a powerful one that has turned destructive and threatens to consume civilization itself.

Rifkin has just published a new 600-page book, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, in which he expands on the ideas explored in the interview. I recall in my college days (note we were flower children of the 60s) reading books about evolving human consciousness.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s  The Phenomenon of Man. Lancelot Law Whyte’s The Next Development in Man. Remember Charles Reich’s The Greening of America? Answer: not without some embarrassment.

So count me skeptical. My remaining aspirations are much less ambitious than forging a new human consciousness, rather just to eat well and live warmly in an increasingly uncertain world.