Peak Oil // Current

Modern Life Is Probably Screwed by Peak Oil, But It's Not Too Late to Avoid Mass Starvation | | Alte

It's time to order some non-GMO seeds.

Monkey_Films
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4 days ago
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1 comment

Whistleblowers Say Oil Reserve Numbers Deliberately Inflated to Avoid Panic, Appease the US

World oil reserves are far lower than officially reported, the situation far more... more

WakeUpPeople
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11 days ago
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25 comments

‘We have already entered peak oil,’ IEA source reportedly claims

bansheewail
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13 days ago
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3 comments

Taking back the tap-one city at a time

Grand Rapids, Michigan is the latest U.S. city to join the effort to “Take Back The... more

JanforGore
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26 days ago
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1 comment

Connecting South Central Asian Resources with American Sustainability

Find out about the what resources are located in south central Asia that effects... more

Eric_Stewart
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1 month ago
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0 comments

Hemp ethanol will only cost 50 cents per gallon

I was just watching Jodie and Marc walking through the hemp field and I thought it... more

copperdragon
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3 months ago
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40 comments

Peak Oil Again...

ah, but what the hell does a guy like Michael Lynch, the former director for Asian... more

plusaf
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3 months ago
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0 comments

Running Out Fossil Fuels: A Cause For Glee?

Indeed, it does seem that the Earth will run out of oil, natural gas and coal much... more

jips
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3 months ago
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0 comments

9/11 Mind Swell

As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 consider this paradox. In the post 9-11... more

jips
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3 months ago
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0 comments

How dependent are we on foreign oil? (Very)

Oil helped fuel the United States' prosperous 20th century, and the growing country... more

common_sense_allowed
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3 months ago
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Digging for victory: Britain's food revolution

Britain is to commit itself to a massive increase in domestic food production to feed the population in the next 40 years, The Independent on Sunday has learnt. The UK will announce tomorrow that it intends to "play a full part" in meeting a United Nations target of raising food production by 70 per cent by 2050.

The surge in homegrown crops and meat – which has echoes of the Dig for Victory campaign of the Second World War – is needed to cope with rising global population levels and crop failures and water scarcity caused by climate change.

British officials are increasingly concerned that food supplies will come under strain as a result of rocketing demand from newly prosperous and powerful nations such as China and India. Self-sufficiency has fallen in recent years, and only about 60 per cent of the food British people eat comes from the UK.

Tomorrow, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hilary Benn, will set out the scale of the problem and challenge farmers to raise output rapidly while cutting greenhouse gases. In the search for a new green revolution, he will say new research is needed to develop new crop breeds and techniques. Manufacturers, retailers and households will be urged to cut current massive levels of waste. Households can help by growing more food in back gardens and allotments.

Civil servants described the new food strategy as a "wake-up call" for farmers, retailers and the public.

Farmers who have long criticised the Government for taking a relaxed attitude towards food security will welcome the focus on domestic production. Wildlife groups, however, fear that further agricultural intensification will hit wildlife. Ripping out hedgerows, growing crops on meadows and dousing fields in pesticides and fertilisers have badly affected farmland birds and animals in the past 50 years.

Numbers of farmland birds such as skylarks, yellowhammers and corn buntings have almost halved and many wildflowers have been left on the brink of extinction. Most of England's hedgerows have been lost since 1947.

The Government's new approach is set out in a new document, the UK Food Security Assessment. It says that Britain's position is currently favourable because agricultural production has risen in recent years, with Britain a major exporter of wheat and barley. But it warns that rising population pressures and a likely worsening environmental picture will pose serious challenges in coming decades.

In a list of challenges to UK food security are the changing climate, floods, drought, soil erosion, water scarcities and the breakdown of ecosystems. Global temperatures may rise two to three degrees in the next 50 years, threatening large-scale crop failure in Africa.

"The Government is monitoring the climate risks to harvests and the potential for more volatility in supplies and prices. We will also examine any implications for animal disease and food safety," the document said. "Other areas of climate-change impacts on our food will include further pressure on fish products from increasing ocean acidification; supply strains on water-reliant crops such as fruit from the Mediterranean; and the impacts of increasing episodes of coastal flooding and erosion."Britain is to commit itself to a massive increase in domestic food production to feed... more

JanforGore
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4 months ago
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3 comments

Raj Patel: The global food crisis

Informative interview with Raj Patel, author of 'Stuffed And Starved' regarding the... more

JanforGore
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4 months ago
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2 comments

World dependent on fossil fuels for a century

The world will remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal for... more

common_sense_allowed
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4 months ago
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1 comment

Future Scenario's for Post-Recession America

Our economy is unsustainable. That means at some point in the future it will cease to... more

CodeGreenCommunity
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5 months ago
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3 comments

Crash Course issues affecting America

How does the Economy, Energy, and the Environment all tie up together to effect the... more

CodeGreenCommunity
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5 months ago
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Transitioning Tampa Bay area Into Sustainable Communities

As a young man growing up in this wonderful state I’ve seen the growth of the local area around me. I still recall the farmlands when I first moved to Pasco county nearly 10 years ago. Now they are all gone, replaced by rolled out lawns of Bermuda grass, cul de sacs, and neat rows of similar looking houses. I recall as a young man building some of those homes: installing windows, replacing dishwashers with custom brand new dishwashers, adding water softeners to neighborhoods far away from any development, with the closest road being I-75. Yes I grew up in the boom that was the post 9/11 years.

I’m 24 years old now, recalling the remarkable growth that I’ve seen over those years working on the growth in Pasco gives me reflection. Reflection on George W. Bush’s speech where he mentioned for America to go shopping. Yes I, too, got caught up into the fantasy of an easily accessible credit card line and a brand new plasma screen TV. We Americans consumed to our hearts content on easily borrowed money, second mortgages, and home equity loans. I don’t know how many times I’ve recalled seeing ads for debt consolidating or a new book proclaiming how to get out of debt. Easy money creates easy consuming. Now looking back I notice the hypocrisy. We are still currently at war in two nations for a greater length of time than even World War II. Yet at home, we bought up brand new homes and filled them with brand new things only to turn around and get rid of them when a brand new thing of another product came out. We became gluttonous as a nation.

Now in 2009, with another 500,000 jobs gone, a few more trillion added onto our ever growing debt, a few more million homeless and hungry, a few more soldiers committing suicide in the military, I can’t help but think our society has gone insane. We have lost all the things that made us moral and strong. The American dream that our forefathers built up is turning into an American nightmare.

There is another way. A transition to another culture. It’s already beginning: We are using less electricity, producing less carbon dioxide, more people are riding bikes than ever before. America is learning again how to be frugal, how to garden, how to reconnect with family/friends/neighbors to rebuild their communities. We are slowly gaining the consciousness that for too long we’ve built up a throw-away society. One that values people as much as plastic plates. We treat our world like a garbage heap or a thing to be mined until exhaustion. Is our society content with a pacific island made of plastic? I don’t think so. We need to transition our culture away from the childlike consciousness of wastefulness and wanting to a more adult-like and wise culture that values the next generation. We need a permanent culture. A culture that strives to create a world providing for the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.As a young man growing up in this wonderful state I’ve seen the growth of the local... more

CodeGreenCommunity
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5 months ago
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4 comments

From Domination Culture to Partnership Culture

he Iranian revolution underway is a sign of the times. Millions of oppressed people... more

CodeGreenCommunity
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5 months ago
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0 comments

Are we at peak oil?

I've been witnessing the rhetoric coming from both Tallahassee, FL. about offshore... more

CodeGreenCommunity
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5 months ago
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6 comments

The oil intensity of food

Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource whose production will soon be falling. Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. World reserves of conventional oil are in a free fall, dropping every year.

As I note in my latest book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, discoveries of conventional oil total roughly 2 trillion barrels, of which 1 trillion have been extracted so far, with another trillion barrels to go. By themselves, however, these numbers miss a central point. As security analyst Michael Klare notes, the first trillion barrels was easy oil, “oil that’s found on shore or near to shore; oil close to the surface and concentrated in large reservoirs; oil produced in friendly, safe, and welcoming places.” The other half, Klare notes, is tough oil, “oil that’s buried far offshore or deep underground; oil scattered in small, hard-to-find reservoirs; oil that must be obtained from unfriendly, politically dangerous, or hazardous places.”

This prospect of peaking oil production has direct consequences for world food security, as modern agriculture depends heavily on the use of fossil fuels. Most tractors use gasoline or diesel fuel. Irrigation pumps use diesel fuel, natural gas, or coal-fired electricity. Fertilizer production is also energy-intensive. Natural gas is used to synthesize the basic ammonia building block in nitrogen fertilizers. The mining, manufacture, and international transport of phosphates and potash all depend on oil.

Efficiency gains can help reduce agriculture’s dependence on oil. In the United States, the combined direct use of gasoline and diesel fuel in farming fell from its historical high of 7.7 billion gallons (29.1 billion liters) in 1973 to 4.2 billion in 2005—a decline of 45 percent. Broadly calculated, the gallons of fuel used per ton of grain produced dropped from 33 in 1973 to 12 in 2005, an impressive decrease of 64 percent.

One reason for this achievement was a shift to minimum- and no-till cultural practices on roughly two fifths of U.S. cropland. But while U.S. agricultural fuel use has been declining, in many developing countries it is rising as the shift from draft animals to tractors continues. A generation ago, for example, cropland in China was tilled largely by draft animals. Today much of the plowing is done with tractors.

Fertilizer accounts for 20 percent of U.S. farm energy use. Worldwide, the figure may be slightly higher. As the world urbanizes, the demand for fertilizer climbs. As people migrate from rural areas to cities, it becomes more difficult to recycle the nutrients in human waste back into the soil, requiring the use of more fertilizer. Beyond this, the growing international food trade can separate producer and consumer by thousands of miles, further disrupting the nutrient cycle. The United States, for example, exports some 80 million tons of grain per year—grain that contains large quantities of basic plant nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The ongoing export of these nutrients would slowly drain the inherent fertility from U.S. cropland if the nutrients were not replaced.

Irrigation, another major energy claimant, is requiring more energy worldwide as water tables fall. In the United States, close to 19 percent of farm energy use is for pumping water. And in some states in India where water tables are falling, over half of all electricity is used to pump water from wells. Some trends, such as the shift to no-tillage, are making agriculture less oil-intensive, but rising fertilizer use, the spread of farm mechanization, and falling water tables are having the opposite effect.

end of excerpt.Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource... more

JanforGore
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5 months ago
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3 comments

The Climate Bill is Essential, But Won't Break U.S. Oil Dependence

If passed, the bill would be a giant step toward low-carbon electric power, but it... more

common_sense_allowed
added this
5 months ago
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1 comment

tagged w/ Peak Oil

Modern Life Is Probably Screwed by Peak Oil, But It's Not Too Late to Avoid Mass Starvation | | Alte

Whistleblowers Say Oil Reserve Numbers Deliberately Inflated to Avoid Panic, Appease the US

‘We have already entered peak oil,’ IEA source reportedly claims

Taking back the tap-one city at a time

Connecting South Central Asian Resources with American Sustainability

Hemp ethanol will only cost 50 cents per gallon

Peak Oil Again...

Running Out Fossil Fuels: A Cause For Glee?

9/11 Mind Swell

How dependent are we on foreign oil? (Very)

Digging for victory: Britain's food revolution

Raj Patel: The global food crisis

World dependent on fossil fuels for a century

Future Scenario's for Post-Recession America

Crash Course issues affecting America

Transitioning Tampa Bay area Into Sustainable Communities

From Domination Culture to Partnership Culture

Are we at peak oil?

The oil intensity of food

The Climate Bill is Essential, But Won't Break U.S. Oil Dependence

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