Grand Rapids, Michigan is the latest U.S. city to join the effort to “Take Back The Tap.” Following New York, San Francisco and Portland, the Midwestern city has pledged to stop using bottled water in city facilities or at its events.
Take Back The Tap, the brainchild of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch, is a national two-part campaign. It convinces businesses to switch from bottled water to tap water and asks people to petition congress for a public trust fund that will finance water infrastructure.
Grand Rapids formally joined the movement Tuesday, as the city commission resolved to stop buying bottled water for use in city facilities or at city events. Jon Keesecker, a senior organizer for Food & Water Watch’s Take Back the Tap campaign, told the commission Tuesday that Grand Rapids’ resolution represented “one of the most comprehensive approaches that we’ve seen across the country,” noting the involvement of the city’s Saint Mary’s Health Care network in the movement.
“Tap water is a better choice than the bottled brands, for our health, our environment and our wallets,” Mayor George Heartwell told the Grand Rapids Press.
The city resolution notes that in 2006 Americans bought 33 billion bottles of water, which requires nearly 900,000 tons of plastic and more than 17 million barrels of oil for production.
According to the resolution, bottled water, at $1 per pint, is 2,400 times more expensive than tap water for residents. City water is less than a penny per gallon.Grand Rapids, Michigan is the latest U.S. city to join the effort to “Take Back The... more
Find out about the what resources are located in south central Asia that effects American sustainability. It's vaguely talked about in this TED conversation at the 12 minute mark.Find out about the what resources are located in south central Asia that effects... more
I was just watching Jodie and Marc walking through the hemp field and I thought it would be a good time to share my hemp ethanol research with y'all!
In this day of oil wars, peak oil (and the accompanying soaring prices), climate change and oil spills such as the Exxon-Valdez, it's more important than ever to promote sustainable alternatives such as hemp ethanol.
Hemp turns out to be the most cost-efficient and valuable of all the fuel crops!
And as it turns out, the whole reason for hemp prohibition - and alcohol prohibition - may have been a fuel monopoly!
So check out my hemp ethanol research ... and leave your comments here so I can find out what you think! Here's the link:
(i)Insert from Part One: The Economics of Hemp Fuels---
THE EXPERTS:
I decided to investigate these arguments against biofuels and hemp fuels by bouncing them off people doing research in this area. I spoke with Adrian Francis Clarke of Fibre (Europe) Laboratory LTD, Don Wirtshafter of the Ohio Hempery, Tim Castleman of fuelandfiber.com, and Shaun Crew of Hemp Oil Canada.
It is important to understand that hemp provides two types of fuel; hemp biodiesel – made from the oil of the hemp seed, and hemp ethanol/methanol – made from the fermented stalk. To clarify further, ethanol is made from such things as grains, sugars, starches, waste paper & forest products, and methanol is made from woody matter. Through processes such as gasification, acid hydrolysis and enzymes, hemp can be used to make both ethanol and methanol.
I asked questions about the current prices of hemp biodeisel and hemp ethanol/methanol, and what these prices would be post cannabis relegalization. To be economically viable, these fuels would have to be cheaper than gasoline, currently priced at up to 120 cents per liter (Can.) (7) or up to 3 dollars per gallon (US) (8) Of course, petroleum prices could get much more expensive in the near future, a topic which will be covered in the third part of this article under “peak oil”...
Hemp methanol, on the other hand, does make the fuel lineup. According to Tim, hemp ethanol could be produced for 1.37 per gallon plus the cost of the feedstock, with technological improvements and tax credits reducing the price another dollar or so per gallon! (14) And the cost of the feedstock would become much more available as more hemp was grown for more products, providing more and more free (or nearly-free) feedstock as a “waste product”. Could you imagine paying under 50 cents per gallon (US) or 15 cents per liter (CAN) for your hemp ethanol?!!"
ah, but what the hell does a guy like Michael Lynch, the former director for Asian energy and security at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an energy consultant know, anyway.... LOL!
REMEMBER “peak oil”? It’s the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe. Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put an end to such talk, along comes Fatih Birol, the top economist at the International Energy Agency, to insist that we’ll reach the peak moment in 10 years, a decade sooner than most previous predictions (although a few ardent pessimists believe the moment of no return has already come and gone).
Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak oil theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material. But because the news media and prominent figures like James Schlesinger, a former secretary of energy, and the oilman T. Boone Pickens have taken peak oil seriously, the public is understandably alarmed.
When the large supply disruptions of 1973 and 1979 led to skyrocketing prices, nearly all oil experts said the underlying cause was resource scarcity and that prices would go ever higher in the future. The oil companies diversified their investments — Mobil even started buying up department stores! — and President Jimmy Carter pushed for the development of synthetic fuels like shale oil, arguing that markets were too myopic to realize the imminent need for substitutes. All sorts of policy wonks, energy consultants and Nobel-prize-winning economists jumped on the bandwagon to explain that prices would only go up — even though they had never done so historically. Prices instead proceeded to slide for two decades, rather as the tide ignored King Canute.
In the end, perhaps the most misleading claim of the peak-oil advocates is that the earth was endowed with only 2 trillion barrels of “recoverable” oil. Actually, the consensus among geologists is that there are some 10 trillion barrels out there. A century ago, only 10 percent of it was considered recoverable, but improvements in technology should allow us to recover some 35 percent — another 2.5 trillion barrels — in an economically viable way. And this doesn’t even include such potential sources as tar sands, which in time we may be able to efficiently tap.
much more at link.
and remember, when oil hit $150 a barrel and everyone said it was going to $200 and more and would never be cheaper in our lifetimes, i predicted that it would drop back to $50 a barrel. it dropped to less than that. lately, it's leveled off around $75 a barrel, and my forecast is that it will bounce around that number for several years at least.
recent developments in LNG production and transportation will also keep pressure on oil's pricing.
ah, but what the hell do i know... and Michael Lynch, too...
enjoy your fears. get more fear at CNN...ah, but what the hell does a guy like Michael Lynch, the former director for Asian... more
Indeed, it does seem that the Earth will run out of oil, natural gas and coal much more quickly than was, originally, anticipated by researchers keeping track of overall expenditure of these resources [1]. At the same time, others warn that any expectation of nuclear power taking over as an effective substitute is both unrealistic and, potentially, ruinous.Indeed, it does seem that the Earth will run out of oil, natural gas and coal much... more
As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 consider this paradox. In the post 9-11 years the scientific evidence for disbelieving the official government story has mounted incredibly. And the number of highly respected and credentialed professionals challenging the official story has similarly expanded. Yet, to the considerable disappointment of the international 9/11 truth movement, the objective fact is that there are no widespread, loud demands for a new government-backed 9/11 investigation. The 9/11 truth movement is the epitome of a marginalized movement, one that never goes away despite not achieving truly meaningful results, which in this case means replacing official lies with official truth. What has gone wrong?As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 consider this paradox. In the post 9-11... more
Oil helped fuel the United States' prosperous 20th century, and the growing country built its infrastructure with that in mind. But the sprawling suburbs and far-flung freeways ended up locking America into long-term dependence on the nonrenewable sludge, which passed coal as the nation's favorite fossil in 1951.
U.S. oil production peaked 19 years later, and America suddenly was faced with outsourcing a pillar of its business model. From 1900 until 1969, the country's oil imports had risen by an average of 70.7 million barrels per decade, but in the '70s they rose by nearly 1.9 billion. Making matters worse was political instability in the Middle East, where the United States got much of its imported oil at the time. Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War and again during the 1979-'81 Iran hostage crisis, Americans cut back on oil use, and gasoline consumption dipped for the first time since World War II. But that conservative spirit didn't last.Oil helped fuel the United States' prosperous 20th century, and the growing country... more
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
Informative interview with Raj Patel, author of 'Stuffed And Starved' regarding the global food crisis and the reasons for the increase in food prices.Informative interview with Raj Patel, author of 'Stuffed And Starved' regarding the... more
The world will remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal for the rest of this century, despite the best efforts of governments to move toward renewable energy.The world will remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal for... more
Our economy is unsustainable. That means at some point in the future it will cease to be sustained. People will lose homes and jobs, and lifestyles will change. Sound familiar to our present day scenario? In my previous post I added a link to the Crash Course, a video series about the challenges America faces over the coming 10 years from our oil addiction: our generation gap of baby boomers retiring and not enough workers to pay for their retirement, our incredibly increasing debt, our lack of savings, and our exponential growth due to fossil fuel consumption resulting in a degrading supply of resources as well as destruction of the ecology we depend on for life. Peak Oil was another issue I brought up in a recent blog. All of these issues will bring about future scenarios that can play in multiple ways.Our economy is unsustainable. That means at some point in the future it will cease to... more
How does the Economy, Energy, and the Environment all tie up together to effect the next couple of years for America? As we enjoy this Independence day weekend lets work on becoming independent from Fossil fuels!How does the Economy, Energy, and the Environment all tie up together to effect the... more
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
he Iranian revolution underway is a sign of the times. Millions of oppressed people Twittering and linking up forging networks to create and topple a system that’s in need of reformation. Women have been the very foundation of this movement. Moussavi the leader of the resistance’s wife spoke at one function this quote:
“I hope freedom of the speech, freedom of the pen, freedom of thought will not be forgotten” - Zahra Rahnavard
We, too, in America are in the mist of an revolution. A transformation from a domination culture that views the world as fleeting and open to exploitation, to a partnership culture that wants its society to be permanent and seeks to partner with the world to create harmony.he Iranian revolution underway is a sign of the times. Millions of oppressed people... more
I've been witnessing the rhetoric coming from both Tallahassee, FL. about offshore drilling and the failure of the congress to enact a good climate change which lead me to rethink a few things. For the past year I've been researching a topic called Peak Oil as well as locating resources on how to forge resilient communities to higher gas prices.
Find out what peak oil is and it's effects on our economy by reading my creative loafing blog.
If you enjoy it, Digg it, Tweet it, Facebook it, and comment!
Thanks,
Eric StewartI've been witnessing the rhetoric coming from both Tallahassee, FL. about offshore... more
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
If passed, the bill would be a giant step toward low-carbon electric power, but it would not, as many of its proponents claim, solve the grave problem of U.S. oil dependence.If passed, the bill would be a giant step toward low-carbon electric power, but it... more
http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call "The Special Period." The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope
AlchemyHouse Productions Inchttp://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990,... more
World oil demand is surging as supplies approach their limits.
"Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline."
Forecasts of peak oil are highly controversial - not because anyone thinks oil will last forever, but because no one really knows how much oil remains underground and thus how close we are to reaching the halfway point.
So-called oil pessimists contend that a peak is imminent or has actually arrived, hidden behind day-to-day fluctuations in production.
Optimists, by contrast, insist the turning point is decades away, because the world has so much oil yet to be tapped or even discovered, as well as huge reserves of "unconventional" oil, such as the massive tar-sand deposits in western Canada.
When the International Energy Agency released a forecast showing global oil demand rising more than a third by 2030, to 116 million barrels a day, several oil-company executives voiced doubts that production could ever keep pace.
French oil giant Total, flatly declared that the "optimistic case" for maximum daily output was 100 million barrels—meaning global demand could outstrip supply before 2020.
Royal Dutch Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of "easy-to-access" oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.
Discovery rates - Oil can't be pumped from the ground until it has been found, and yet the volume discovered each year has steadily fallen since the early 1960s.
Political and Economic factors above ground, rather than geologic ones below, are the main obstacles to raising output.
War-torn Iraq is said to have huge underground oil reserves, yet because of poor security, it produces about a fifth as much as Saudi Arabia does.
And in countries such as Venezuela and Russia, foreign oil companies face restrictive laws that hamper their ability to develop new wells and other infrastructure.
"The issue over the medium term is not whether there is oil to be produced, but rather how to overcome political obstacles to production."World oil demand is surging as supplies approach their limits.
"Peak oil is the... more
