By Charles Eisenstein

09 September, 2011
Theoildrum.com

When theorists approach the peak oil problem from the perspective of finding a substitute that will allow us to maintain our present energy infrastructure, their conclusion is one of despair. There may be many substitutes for oil as a concentrated form of storable energy, but none of them are nearly as good as oil itself. Those invested in the status quo would, quite understandably, like to maintain it, but it is becoming apparent even to the most highly invested that the status quo is doomed; that it can be maintained only temporarily, and at a rapidly accelerating environmental cost. The transition before us is not merely a transition in fuel types. It is also a transition in the whole energy infrastructure, both physical and psychological; a transition away from big power plants, distribution lines, and metered consumers; away from capital-intensive drilling, refining, distribution, and consumer fueling stations. More broadly, it is a transition away from centralization, concentration, and all the social institutions that go along with it.

Both the energy system and the money system are based on accumulation and the concentration of power. Not only our energy infrastructure, but our dominant yet invisible way of thinking about energy, presupposes a centralized system of distribution based on a highly concentrated energy source. Many alternative energy technologies have made little headway, not because they are technologically unfeasible, but because they don’t fit into our present physical, financial, and psychological infrastructure. Read the complete Post.

Ian Fletcher

Author, ‘Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why’

Many Americans are already concerned about China’s growing economic challenge to the United States. Indeed, the challenge itself is hardly news anymore. But a new book, Red Alert by Stephen Leeb, argues that Americans have radically misunderstood just what this challenge consists of.

Everyone who has “woken up” to the problem (i.e. not the administration, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, or the Republican leadership) understands the threat posed by China’s cheap labor and low standards for everything from child labor to environmental protection. Most people who aren’t hopeless laissez-faire ideologues are twigging to the fact that China’s state-directed capitalism is running rings around America’s private-sector capitalism right now. But what few people realize is that China has an even more radical economic strategy up its sleeve, a strategy that aims not just to equal the United States but to surpass it and quite possibly shut America out of the economic future. Read the complete Post.

Who’s super serious about renewable energy and repelling climate change? The US military, of all people.

By Andrew Nikiforuk

Dec. 20, 2010

[Editor's Note: Here begins The Tyee's latest New Ideas for the New Year, our popular annual series highlighting creative ideas for improving our lives and communities. We'll publish a new one starting today until Dec. 31.]

One of these days, Ottawa’s oil patch salesmen might want to sit down with the U.S. military and have a real “man-up” talk.

By any standard, the guys and gals in uniform now make Greenpeace look like the Boy Scouts.

In fact admirals, generals and colonels have seen the enemy, and it’s oil. They don’t care if the stuff is bloody or dirty; they just want to get off pricey crude, asap.

They also believe that climate change, another byproduct of the Oil Age, poses a serious security threat to civilization, as we know it. Not surprisingly, people call these tough hombres, “the Green Hawks.” Read the complete Post.

The New York Times
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

KRISTIANSTAD, Sweden — When this city vowed a decade ago to wean itself from fossil fuels, it was a lofty aspiration, like zero deaths from traffic accidents or the elimination of childhood obesity.

But Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels.

But this area in southern, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines. Read the complete Post.

ARRESTING NEW THINK TANK STUDY CONCLUDES: NO COMBINATION OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SYSTEMS CAN REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS
Richard Heinberg 11/13/09
Santa Rosa, CA (13. November 2009)

An alarming new study jointly released by two prominent California-based environmental/economic think tanks, concludes that unrelenting energy limits, even among alternative energy systems, will make it impossible for the industrial system to continue operating at its present scale, beyond the next few decades. The report finds that the current race by industries and governments to develop new sustainable energy technologies that can replace ecologically harmful and rapidly depleting fossil fuel and nuclear technologies, will not prove sufficient, and that this will require substantial adjustments in many operating assumptions of modern society.

The new study (“Searching for a Miracle: Net Energy Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society”) is the first major analysis to utilize the new research tools of “full life cycle assessment” and “net energy ratios” (Energy Returned on Energy Invested, EROEI), to compare all currently proposed future scenarios for how industrial society can face its long term future.

The report analyzes 18 of the most viable power production alternatives, from traditional fossil fuels and nuclear, through wind, solar, wave, geothermal, biomass, et. al. to identify their “net energy” ratios—the amount of energy that must be invested in them vs. the amount of energy they will be able to produce—as well as their environmental, social and geopolitical impacts. It also considers such important factors as resource and materials supply, resource location, transportation, waste disposal issues, and others to create a full life cycle picture of each technology’s impacts. Read the complete Post.

Citizens of Norway will soon be able to ride around town on buses powered by nothing other than methane from human excrement. It’s emissions-free, hardly costs a thing and doesn’t require drilling into the earth’s surface. Every single person in Oslo will be contributing something very personal toward this new method of powering the city’s buses. Read the complete Post.

New York Times
January 13, 2009
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Original article

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — With one of the highest per capita carbon footprints in the world, these oil-rich emirates would seem an unlikely place for a green revolution.

Gasoline sells for 45 cents a gallon. There is little public transportation and no recycling. Residents drive between air-conditioned apartments and air-conditioned malls, which are lighted 24/7.

Still, the region’s leaders know energy and money, having built their wealth on oil. They understand that oil is a finite resource, vulnerable to competition from new energy sources. Read the complete Post.