ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, argues in an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times that rising population alone isn’t the main challenge facing humanity. People are a problem only insofar as they consume and produce.

What really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local per capita consumption rate. The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.

Cornucopians promise that developing countries could achieve a first-world lifestyle if they only would install honest governments and adopt free-market economies. But this is impossible, a cruel hoax. We are having ever-increasing difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people, and at the cost of threatening  climate and ecosystem stability.

Americans would object mightily to sacrificing our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.

But living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts.

Diamond concludes:

“Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.”

A new study by Washington State University researchers titled Driving the human ecological footprint finds that the principal factors affecting climate change are the growth of human population and consumption. The research was done by WSU sociologist Eugene A. Rosa and his colleagues Richard York of the University of Oregon and Thomas Dietz of Michigan State University.

Their findings suggest the impact of these two environmental stressors is so profound that they outpace any potential environmental benefits from industrial modernization and improving technologies. Urbanization, economic structure, age of population, and other analyzed factors have little effect. A clear conclusion is that technology and modernization alone won’t rescue our planet from the detrimental environmental impacts of industrialization and other human activities.

While population in all nations is the major influence on the environment, the detrimental environmental impacts are found to be most pronounced in nations in which the population is the most affluent. This finding challenges the theory that improving technological efficiency and declines in the resource requirements of modernizing nations will ultimately lead to environmental sustainability, offsetting the negative impacts of ever-increasing growth in population and human consumption.

Rosa sums up the implications of his research:

“This suggests we’re not likely to achieve ecological sustainability by continuing to pursue endless economic growth, ignoring our growing population and hoping for a last-minute technological fix that will solve our problems.”

On the positive side, the study found that increased education and life expectancy do not increase environmental stressors, suggesting that human well-being can be improved with minimal environmental impact.

Environmentalists remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we’ve created. If we’ve altered the climate, it should come as no surprise that we have damaged other natural systems. From deforestation to collapsing fisheries, desertification, the global spread of chemical toxins, ocean dead zones, and the death of coral reefs, an array of interrelated declines is evidence of the breadth of our impact. Add the depletion of finite resources such as oil and ground-water, and the whole of the challenge upon us emerges. We’re dismantling the web of life, the support system upon which all species depend.

Yet the issue of overpopulation still remains the third rail of U.S. and world politics, and economic growth still reigns as the worlds preeminent dogma.

John Michael Greer points out that our faith in “progress” simply defines the way things are done today as more advanced, and therefore better, than the way things were done at any point in the past. It sees all of human history is a straight line that leads to us.

But in a crucial sense – the ecological sense – modern industrial agriculture is radically less advanced than most of the viable alternatives. To explain this, Greer uses the concept of ecological succession. “Pioneer” species rely on an exploitative, extractive strategy to spread quickly and widely throughout a disturbed site. “Climax” species rely on a recycling model of nutrient use. Their efficiency gives them the edge in the long term, allowing them to form stable communities.

Greer compares the evolution of human agriculture to the process of ecological succession:

“In effect, the first grain farming systems were the equivalents, in human ecology, of pioneer plant seres. Their extractive model of nutrient use guaranteed that over time, they would become their own nemesis and fail to thrive. Later, more sustainable methods correspond to later seres, with the handful of fully sustainable systems corresponding to climax communities with a recycling model of nutrient use and stability measured in millennia.”

Far from being progress, industrial agriculture represents regress.

Greer suggests that sustainable human communities will have to follow the climax model:

“[S]ustainability is about closing the circle, replacing wasteful extractive models of resource use with recycling models that enable resource use to continue without depletion over the long term. It’s a fair bet that in the ecotechnic societies of the future – the climax communities of human technic civilization – the flow of resources through the economy will follow circular paths indistinguishable from the ones that track nutrient flows through a healthy ecosystem.

Michael Pollen, author of several books on food and our food system including The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Botany of Desire, Second Nature, and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, has an article in The New York Times that highlights the vulnerability of our factory-model, monoculture food production system. He focuses on two serious emerging problems.

First is MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans each year than AIDS – 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in 2005. For several years we’ve become aware that drug-resistant staph infections are a problem in hospitals. Antibiotics kill off all but the tiny handful of microbes. These hardy survivors then get to work building a drug-resistant superrace. The methicillin-resistant staph that first emerged in hospitals as early as the 1960s posed a threat mostly to elderly patients. But a new and even more virulent strain called “community-acquired MRSA” is now killing young and otherwise healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital. This strain may have evolved in concentrated animal feeding operations. But researchers aren’t looking – the last thing we want to find is proof that one of the hidden costs of cheap meat is an epidemic of drug-resistant infection. That might then require a revolution in the way we produce meat in this country – not something agribusiness or its enablers in government want to see happen.

Pollan next looks at honeybees and Colony Collapse Disorder. Entomologists have yet to identify the culprit, but suspects include a virus, agricultural pesticides and a parasitic mite. But whatever turns out to be the immediate cause of colony collapse, many entomologists believe some such disaster was waiting to happen: the lifestyle of the modern honeybee leaves the insects so stressed out and their immune systems so compromised that, much like livestock on factory farms, they’ve become vulnerable to whatever new infectious agent happens to come along.

Pollan concludes that our industrial agriculture system isn’t sustainable:

“We’re asking a lot of our pigs too. That seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize production and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural systems and organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as machines. When the inevitable problems crop up – when bees or pigs remind us they are not machines – the system can be ingenious in finding “solutions,” whether in the form of antibiotics to keep pigs healthy or foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. But this year’s solutions have a way of becoming next year’s problems. That is to say, they aren’t ‘sustainable.’”

I want to offer a few facts and considerations about wave energy pursuant to the post “Efforts to harness wave energy starts new debate.”

The NY Times article cited notes that the “first federal permit to conduct testing for a wave energy farm off the coast of the United States was awarded in February to a company that wants to study the ocean area near Reedsport, Ore.” This company is Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), which offers a PowerBuoy system.

However, the system is not scalable. For example, consider that the University of Oregon in Eugene requires approx. 20 MW of power per day, whereas the city of Eugene uses about 350 MW per day (peak periods would be higher). The largest operational buoy OPT has built thus far has a unit capacity of only 40 KW, and to generate the full 40 KW requires optimal conditions in terms of wave action and equipment function (e.g. in waves higher than 13 ft., the units automatically shut down).

To put this in perspective, each buoy is 12 ft. diameter and 52 ft. long (12 ft. juts above ocean surface, the rest is below), anchored by large chains to the ocean floor. Even assuming perfect conditions, to generate 2 MW, which is the initial goal of the project sponsored by Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative, would require 50 buoys in operation.  To date, of OPT’s 3 demonstration projects, only one buoy per project has been deployed and tested – nowhere near the 50 required to generate a mere 2 MW.

To generate 350 MW for Eugene would require 8750 buoys, for example. If you read the fine print at the OPT website, each buoy can generate 1 KW per 2 tons of material (e.g. steel, other equipment components, etc – actually it is more like 1 KW per 2.5 tons). That is, the more power you want to generate, the more steel, etc. you have to use to build these giant things. To generate 2 MW would require more than 4000 tons of material; to generate 20 MW for the University of Oregon would require over 40,000 tons; to generate 350 MW for Eugene would require way more than 700,000 tons of material. Read the rest of this entry »

Rep. Roscoe Barnett, a conservative Republican from Maryland, has for the last couple of years been a voice in the wilderness in the House of Representatives, speaking out on the issues surrounding Peak Oil and our nations’ need to change our oil intensive way of life.

He voted against the energy bill that just passed out of the House, citing the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) as the reason for his opposition.

“I welcome the Senate’s addition to strengthen CAFÉ standards to increase gas mileage of new cars and trucks. However, the hype that using food crops for fuel, such as corn ethanol or soy biodiesel and the hope that cellulosic ethanol could achieve independence from imported oil is extremely harmful.”

The RFS would mandate 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2036 – and worse yet, 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2015.

His explanation of his vote pretty well sums up why biofuels are not only a scam – they will end up causing more harm than good.

• Corn ethanol and soy biodiesel can never replace more than a drop in the bucket of our gas and diesel use.
• Corn prices doubled due to the 2005 mandate which harms farmers who rely on grain for feed and low income people who suffer from increased prices of food.
• Mining our soils of organic matter to make fuel is not sustainable.

Barnett does not even get in to the EROEI debate. Biofuels supporters define the boundaries of what is included in EROEI calculations as narrowly as possible to reach positive results – and even then there’s just barely a positive EROEI of about 1:1.2.

PCass recently asked that One Town Square take another look at the biofuels debate.  But except in the halls of state capitals (including Oregon) and Washington, where lobbyists and big money interests hold sway, I think the debate is pretty much over.  This article in Culture Change exhaustively examines why biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America.

In a nutshell, the challenge is this: Oregon is heading in one direction but we need to get somewhere very different. What do we need to do now—in particular, with a transportation package in 2009—to have a decent chance of having the kind of Oregon that makes sense a couple generations from now?

The question was made vivid to me by Damon Fordham, ODOT Sustainability Program Manager, who gave a presentation to the University of Oregon Live Move student group a couple days ago. In particular, the following slide caught my eye:

click on picture to enlarge image

Read the rest of this entry »

Psychologist John Feeney at The Oil Drum asks, why don’t elected officials and political writers, or even many environmental organizations and environmental writers, “get” the nature of our ecological plight? Could it be they’re simply unaware of the ecological principles which enable one to understand it?

He then provides a brief list of axioms and observations from population ecology with which everyone should be familiar, and concludes that no one could fully comprehend those principles and still deny we face a grave, worldwide ecological crisis. Only self gain or political ideology tied closely to self-image could be enough to fuel such denial – at least until the mounting evidence simply becomes too overwhelming. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a fact that goes largely unnoticed:

Americans eat almost as much in fossil fuels as we burn in automobiles.

As a consequence, the continual decrease in the world’s oil reserves will more likely result in longer bread lines than longer gas lines.

We are eating fossil fuels in the form of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides – but this is resulting in the degradation of farm land. Farm land is also being gobbled up by urban sprawl.

Using fewer machines and less chemical fertilizer and pesticides would actually be good news for the poorer countries where farmers can’t afford expensive “inputs.” We must re-invent an ecologically intensive agriculture that produces a better yield without degrading the ecosystems. Sustainable or “organic” agriculture was simply the right way to farm for many centuries.

A Monash University (Australia) environmental engineer has warned in a new report that mineral resources are running out, excavation costs are escalating and the environmental costs of mining are devastating.

The world-first report, The Sustainability of Mining in Australia: Key Trends and Their Environmental Implications for the Future, was authored by Monash researcher and lecturer Dr Gavin Mudd in conjunction with the independent Mineral Policy Institute.

Despite the talk about “sustainable” mining, research shows that minerals are being mined at an alarming rate, mining companies have to work harder to source it, and as a result the environmental costs of the process and clean-up – including greenhouse gas emissions – are rising exponentially.

Twenty years ago the World Commission on Environment and Development–often referred to as the Brundtland Commission–issued its landmark report,  Our Common Future, which outlined a litany of environmental challenges requiring concerted, long-term action. The report is famous for its clarion call to adopt a system of “sustainable development” or “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  

Today, the United Nations Environment Programme issued its latest Global Environment Outlook report (GEO-4), which states that there “are no major issues raised in Our Common Future for which the foreseeable trends are favourable.” The report warns that “major threats to the planet such as climate change, the rate of extinction of species, and the challenge of feeding a growing population are among the many that remain unresolved, and all of them put humanity at risk.” According to the report, failure to address these major, persistent problems will likely undo the positive gains in other areas, such as reduction of ozone-depleting chemicals and an increase in acreage designated as protected. However, the report stresses that its objective “is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario, but an urgent call for action.”

Kurt Cobb at Resource Insights reflects on the frustration with the slow pace of change in Willets, CA – one of the first American communities to try to come to grips with peak oil.

Teaching people how to use a chainsaw can take only a few minutes. That’s fast knowledge. Teaching people the importance of trees in creating and protecting the soil, encouraging biodiversity, preventing runoff, storing carbon and influencing climate is a task that requires time, concentration and reflection. It assumes a body of knowledge about the natural world that most people simply don’t have and therefore must acquire. And, it assumes an eye trained to look for subtleties in the natural landscape. Moreover, such learning does not yield the immediate and visible economic benefits of the chainsaw. . . . Read the rest of this entry »

Bill McKibben in his book Deep Economy argues that the “growth economy” we idolize and worship is unequal, unsustainable, and – perhaps most importantly – depressing.

It is unequal because, though our economy has been growing, most of us have relatively little to show for it. The median wage in the United States is the same as it was thirty years ago and the real income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has declined steadily.

Even if we found the political to spread wealth around more evenly, that would not solve the problem of sustainability. We are using up all of the fossil fuels, especially oil, that power our current growth economy while imperiling our lives on this planet through the build up of carbon in the atmosphere – which is produced, of course, by burning all those fossil fuels in the first place. Even if we liked the economy we have now, we have little chance of keeping it.

And the growth economy and its avalanche of stuff has not made us any happier – instead, it has made us decidedly unhappier. Up to a certain point – for those living in poverty, for example – “more” increases aggregate and individual levels of happiness. After that point, though, happiness becomes subject to the laws of diminishing returns, until the returns become losses and “more” actually correlates with unhappiness. We work longer hours to buy more things to make ourselves more miserable instead of doing what does make us happy: spending time with our families and in our communities.

McKibben argues that the solution to all these economic ills – inequality, sustainability, and happiness – lies in revitalizing local economies and local communities.

John Michael Greer writes at the Archdruid Report that peak oil and global warming are symptoms of a systemic problem with our modern economy:

. . . the industrial economy can best be described in ecological terms as a scheme for turning resources into pollution at the highest possible rate. Thus resource exhaustion and pollution problems aren’t accidental outcomes of industrialism, they’re hardwired into the industrial system: the faster resources turn into pollution, the more the industrial economy prospers, and vice versa. That forms the heart of our predicament. Peak oil is simply one symptom of a wider crisis – the radical unsustainability of a system that has evolved to maximize resource consumption on a finite planet – and trying to respond to it without dealing with the larger picture simply guarantees that other symptoms will surface elsewhere and take its place.

In the ’70s, for a moment, we toyed with the idea of creating a more sustainable civilization.  That’s when the environmental movement, and the land use movement here in Oregon, first took hold.  But environmentalism has been on the defensive ever since, and has pretty much succumbed to the onslaught of free-market fundamentalism. Read the rest of this entry »

John Michael Greer applies the model of succession to human ecology and finds it a remarkably useful way of looking at the predicament of industrial society.  He compares the industrial economies of the present to weeds, early succession species that maximize production at the expense of sustainability. The successful economies of the future, which will emerge in a world without today’s cheap abundant energy, will need to maximize sustainability at the expense of production, like late succession species. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.K. Conservative Party released its Blueprint for a Green Economy this morning – and it makes you realize how completely out of touch with reality U.S. politics is.

The authors argue for redefining progress away from purely economic measurements of well-being, advocate smart growth and a roads moratorium (!), demand “zero carbon” new home construction standards, and even call for stiff carbon pricing as “the most effective surrogate for environmental cost” for greening the economy. They call for recognition of absolute ecological limits and of the demands those limits place on us.

Can you imagine a U.S. presidential candidate giving this speech:

A fixation on the idea that the market can manage all things if ‘externalities’ are ‘internalised’ is wrong, firstly because of the scale and urgency of the challenge which means that we simply do not have time for the market to ‘adjust over time’, and secondly, because we have a far from perfect understanding of the complex interactions between the climate, biosphere, soils and other elements which make up the delicate balance of the Earth. We know too little of the potential implications of the changes in sea pH, temperature and salinity. We don’t fully comprehend how these interact with climate or how climate impacts on sea life and the fish stocks upon which large sections of the global population rely. It is areas of debate such as this that it is clearly not possible to put a value and ‘price’ on the natural world. Simply to ignore anything of which we are not certain would be irresponsible so we have to protect where we cannot be utterly certain. If, however, our appetite for material goods continues on its current trajectory, it is unlikely that resource-use efficiency in and of itself will halt or reverse our impacts on the planet… Simply cleaning up existing lifestyles and patterns of economic growth will not take us far enough, not least if we are to achieve equitable global development within the natural limits of the planet. After all, if everyone on Earth equaled the resource consumption of our citizens here in the UK, it would take three planets to support us. If we all aspired to US patterns it would demand five planets.

The issue is not whether but when we recognize that fact. The current economic model, relying on universal cheap energy, is bust. There are sticking plaster solutions but, in the end we have to find an alternative way forward. Sensibly, we should do that before we damage the environment irreversibly. If we are stupid, we’ll fail to act now and then seek the solution in extremis when, even if an answer is still possible, it will be immeasurably more difficult and infinitely more expensive. If society at large can shift its thinking away from ‘what can I buy?’ to ‘what do I want from life?’ or ‘what needs do I have?’ then perhaps we can decouple economic growth from resource input. This is our challenge.

So far to go, so little time.

Geoff Manaugh writes at BldgBlog:

Unless a “green” building actively remediates its local environment. For instance . . . a high-rise that off-sets some of its power use through the installation of rooftop wind turbines is great: it looks cool, magazine readers go crazy for it, and the building’s future tenants save loads of money on electricity bills. But once you factor in these savings, something like the new Castle House eco-skyscraper still ends up being a net drain on the system. It’s not good for the environment; it’s just not as bad as it could have been. Read the rest of this entry »

The focus on reducing carbon emissions has blinded us to the real problem—unsustainable lifestyles, of which climate change is yet another symptom. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Rapier points out that the fundamental problem with biofuels is that photosynthesis is not very efficient. Read the rest of this entry »

Professor David Hess gave a talk in Lisbon entitled “Rethinking the Sustainable City: Exploring the Potential of Local Social Enterprises” on the consequences of peak oil to the future of our society. Read the rest of this entry »