The Era of Catastrophe? Geologists Name New Era After Human Influence on the Planet
By Mike Davis, Tomdispatch.com. Posted August 11, 2008.

A striking report from the front lines of science suggests we’re officially entering a period in which humanity may simply outrun history itself.

Editor’s note: This TomDispatch article has been edited for length. You can read the original here.

1. Farewell to the Holocene

Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its scientific obituary.

This February, while cranes were hoisting cladding to the 141st floor of the Burj Dubai tower (which will soon be twice the height of the Empire State Building), the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London was adding the newest and highest story to the geological column. Although the idea of the “Anthropocene” — an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force — has been long debated, stratigraphers have refused to acknowledge compelling evidence for its advent.

At least for the London Society, that position has now been revised. This new age, they explain, is defined both by the heating trend … and by the radical instability expected of future environments. In somber prose, they warn that “the combination of extinctions, global species migrations and the widespread replacement of natural vegetation with agricultural monocultures is producing a distinctive contemporary biostratigraphic signal. These effects are permanent, as future evolution will take place from surviving (and frequently anthropogenically relocated) stocks.” Evolution itself, in other words, has been forced into a new trajectory. Read the complete Post.

Shoulder Season
From the Clusterfuck Nation blog

America is on vacation from its financial, fiscal, and economic problems, having left the centers of power in Wall Street and Washington for a Nantucket-of-the-mind, where, in a haze of artisanal vodka and bong smoke, it’s out in the cool dune grass watching imaginary whalefishes blow, leaving only the TV Bubbleheads behind back home. Larry Kudlow of CNBC was practically drooling into his cufflinks on screen last week when the dollar popped against the Euro, and crude oil slumped, and the equity markets climbed up a flagpole.

This sort of euphoria is actually an alarming pre-crash symptom, in this case of a patient (the US) entering the terminal phase of sclerosis. Our society and all its playerz — especially the appointed communicators — just can’t fathom the reality of the threats we face, which are 1.) the loss of primary energy resources, 2.) the loss of technological potency, and 3.) the loss of a comfortable standard of living. Read the complete Post.

‘Think Less………Act Locally’
The Rise of Localization
By Russell Precious

VPO note: the author refers to “localization” vs. “relocalization” because he doesn’t believe we’re returning to something that existed in the past, but rather moving towards something entirely new.

“The most personal reaction to landscape, to people, to ways of living, is that which is rooted in the local.” Wallace Stegner

In recent years it has been increasingly presumed that civilization was firmly entrenched on the path to some sort of nirvanic global village, a vision held equally by those representing both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’—albeit based on different principles and expected outcomes. The right viewed it more as an economic paradise of ever expanding markets and greater prosperity while the left saw it as a truly democratic world wide web of shared information and a diminishing gap between wealth and poverty.

Few have been willing to address the herd of elephants in the room that are poised to derail these presupposed outcomes. What are these elephants, and how did they (and we) get here? Read the complete Post.

by Rex Weyler
From his “Deep Green” column
Original article

As the era of cheap liquid fuels draws to an end, everything about modern consumer society will change. Likewise, developing societies pursuing the benefits of globalization will struggle to grow economies in an era of scarce liquid fuels. The most localized, self-reliant communities will experience the least disruption.

Oil is a fixed asset of the planet, representing stored sunlight accumulated over a billion years as early marine algae, and other marine organisms (not dinosaurs) captured solar energy, formed carbon bonds, gathered nutrients, died, sank to the ocean floors, and lay buried under eons of sediment. Like any fixed non-renewable resource, oil is limited, and its consumption will rise, peak, and decline.

World oil production increased for 150 years until the spring of 2005, when world crude oil production reached about 74.3 million barrels per day (mb/d), and total liquid fuels, including tar sands, liquefied gas, and biofuels reached about 85 mb/d. In spite of the efforts since, and tales of “trillions of barrels” of oil in undiscovered fields, liquid fuel production has remained at about 85.5 mb/d for three years, the longest sustained plateau in modern petroleum history. Discoveries of new fields peaked 40 years ago. Read the complete Post.

By Richard Heinberg
Original source

Climate Change is the worst environmental crisis ever. It is a problem of fossil fuel dependency, and solving it requires reducing that dependency quickly and dramatically.

But from a policy standpoint, Climate Change is hard to address. Because the worst of its impacts may come decades from now, its solution is framed as a moral imperative: we should reduce fossil fuels for the environment and future generations. Many policy makers genuinely want to do the right thing, but when a choice arises between climate protection and economic growth, growth wins nearly every time. Because 85 percent of world energy comes from fossil fuels, it is hard to find a way to quickly end their use without a severe reduction in available energy, and a resulting contraction of the economy. Any politician campaigning for economic contraction faces a tough battle.

The peaking in production rates of oil, coal, and natural gas presents a different problem. Again, it is one of fossil fuel dependency; but in this case, instead of a sink (or pollution) dilemma, it is one of source (or scarcity). Fossil fuels are finite. Depletion ensures that the rate of extraction of these substances will soon start to decline, wreaking havoc on industrial economies, perhaps leading to societal collapse.
Read the complete Post.

Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver SunPublished: Thursday, July 31, 2008

North American cities had better start adapting to a future characterized by climate change and depleting oil. Fewer parking lots. More condominiums. No more big highway upgrades. No further airport expansion. Emergency response and health care systems that can respond to the potential impacts of global warming and energy shocks.

The future is here, declares Bryn Davidson, a Vancouver engineer and architect who, with fellow planners Jonathan Frantz and Tom Lancaster, established the Dynamic Cities Project in 2005.

The project is a non-profit organization aimed at jolting designers and planners out of a torpor that has them carrying out business as usual.

To date, only the municipality of Burnaby has done any formal analysis of trends that are starting to hit North America.

A group of activists calling themselves the Vancouver Peak Oil Executive launched a petition recently urging Vancouver to strike a committee that would address the same issue.

Davidson’s Dynamic Cities Project website (www.dynamiccities.org) features a slide show detailing the ways in which climate change and declining petroleum reserves will drastically alter people’s behaviour.

Yet government planners have been fashioning civic infrastructure based on past trends.

The Pacific Gateway Strategy in B.C. — upgrading bridges, highways and road networks connecting ports, rail and the airport — is one example.

“A terrible idea,” Davidson says.

Indeed, planning documents for the $3-billion project, from 2005, predict Asia-Pacific air traffic would double at YVR by 2020. In 2008, already the outlook is quite different. Read the complete Post.

I watched  scores of footage of town hall meetings, speeches, press conferences and political ads by the two candidates. And there was a strange echo, something I’ve heard before from someone I don’t quite like. So I rewound back to Bush’s 2007 State of the Union and here’s what I found.

Michael McCarthy’ cover story Out of Gas for Friday, June 27, 2008 is a long overdue story. The issue of global oil peak has been spuriously overlooked, suppressed, ignored, and/or misunderstood for a long time.

McCarthy’s hypothesis that “EcoDensity may not be enough to save our oil-dependent society” is an understatement. EcoDensity targets middle to low-income earners and impacts in no substantial way the wealthiest of our society. The large homes in Shaughnessy are going to remain so, with relatively sparse occupancy in comparison to the density numbers EcoDensity proponents would like to see. EcoDensity principles will not apply to the wealthiest of neighbourhoods. (I’m convinced that proponents will argue the contrary.)

But EcoDensity in a world without the energy utility of petroleum will be one of the least of our social problems. By “us” I’m specifically referring to Canada and North America where we consume 25% of the world’s daily energy expenditure. Once our advantage is gone, we will plunge into a deep economic slump that will be difficult if not impossible to rectify.

There are many reasons this issue has been buried by government and media. Most importantly, the science behind oil-peak seems not only to elude the commoner, but confounds those charged with providing information. Peak Oil was not well explained by McCarthy.

Read the complete Post.

Climate change could increase flooding in coastal areas, like the flooding that hit the Philippines.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Global warming could destabilize “struggling and poor” countries around the world, prompting mass migrations and creating breeding grounds for terrorists, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council told Congress on Wednesday.

Climate change “will aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions,” Thomas Fingar said. “All of this threatens the domestic stability of a number of African, Asian, Central American and Central Asian countries.”

Read rest of article here:

Statement to US House of Representatives

Synopsis:

• “Economic refugees will perceive additional reasons to flee their homes because of harsher climates” That will put pressure on countries receiving refugees, many of which “will have neither the resources nor interest to host these climate migrants,” – Thomas Fingar, chairman of the National Intelligence Council

• storm surges that could affect nuclear facilities and oil refineries near coasts, water shortages in the Southwest and longer summers with more wildfires,

• “The United States depends on a smooth-functioning international system ensuring the flow of trade and market access to critical raw materials, such as oil and gas, and security for its allies and partners. Climate change and climate change policies could affect all of these,” he warned, “with significant geopolitical consequences.”

• Wealthy countries will be able to handle the situation better than poorer ones
• potentially increased migration and water-related disputes — could have a harmful global impact

By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Jun 6, 7:06 AM

TOKYO – The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a “energy revolution” that would greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

Read rest of article here:

Summary:

• 1400 new nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power (increased by 17,000 units annually) to 1/2 GHG’s by 2050
• to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2

• International Energy Agency envisions a “energy revolution”
• require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale
• massive investment in energy technology development and deployment…increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy.
• $45 Trillion (1.1% of World GDP) – 3X the size of the US economy
• an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20 gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050.
• Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a 130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050

Link to the International Energy Agency report Technology Perspectives: http://www.iea.org/Textbase/techno/etp/index.asp

This is very sobering news. I once again pose the following question: Is the size of our collective response equivalent to the magnitude of the problems we face? If the answer is ‘no’ then what does that mean?