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UK on target to tackle global warming, apparently

Friday, June 5th, 2009

The UK is on target to exceed its Kyoto commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5 per cent, according to a report.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has indicated that UK greenhouse gas emissions are expected to be around 23 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010, exceeding the Kyoto target of 12.5 per cent.

In a report to the United Nations, the department outlined its policies to help the UK almost double its emissions reductions targets.

It also highlighted long term measures to reduce climate change including the Climate Change Act, which requires the UK to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

The department stressed the importance of international agreements in reducing carbon emissions in its report.

It comes as officials prepare for a meeting on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, with discussions focusing on a successor for the existing Kyoto agreement.

Climate change minister Joan Ruddock said: “Our latest report to the UN shows what can be achieved when government, communities and business work together to reduce emissions.

“We already have significant achievements under our belt, but we know there is more to be done - we must continue to work urgently to reduce our emissions further and faster.”

She continued: “But our progress report tells those who claim there is no alternative to a high-carbon society: there is an alternative. We’re creating an alternative.

“We know that individual actions account for more than 40 per cent of emissions, so I would urge people around the country to use ‘world environment day’ as a chance to assess their own impact on the environment, and take steps to reduce their individual carbon footprint.”

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Government should offer incentives for homes to go green

Monday, March 30th, 2009

By Hank Kalet |

The federal government should help homeowners go green.

Several states are already seeking ways to encourage homeowners to switch from dirty fuels to cleaner energy sources, kick-starting a green revolution house by house.

In New Jersey, the state Legislature recently passed a bill that would require homebuilders to offer buyers solar energy systems as an option. And the state government provides grants and loans for solar installation on existing housing.

Communities, neighborhood groups and educational facilities in New Mexico are experimenting with solar and biomass systems, and dozens of cities and counties around the country are doing the same.

Take a look at California, where several cities are offering homeowners the opportunity to finance the installation of solar power the same way most public water, sewer or gas-line projects are financed — over a 20-year period to be paid back as a special assessment on a homeowner’s property taxes.

Cities and towns, however, have to get the money to finance these programs. Berkeley, the first city in California to create a public-financing program, turned to the banks for financing. Palm Desert, another California community that offers financing, used its own reserves to get its pilot project off the ground.

But interest in such programs could outstrip the ability of local governments to procure financing, which is why the federal government must step in.

Most states and towns face tight budgets because revenue has become scarce and their budgets, by law, have to be balanced.

Federal money ought to be made available — as it has for energy-efficiency projects and large-scale conversions of the energy grid.

By engaging individual homeowners in going green, we will not only reduce our carbon footprint one household at a time. We will simultaneously be building the larger constituency we’ll need to arrive at our clean energy future.

Hank Kalet is online editor and columnist for The Princeton Packet newspaper group in New Jersey. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

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Activists lose legal bid to stop expansion

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

Have Your Say: Activists lose legal bid to stop expansion
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From Fuel Cell to Jail Cell

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Or how we learned to stop encouraging scientific innovators and start prosecuting them. 

By Phil Leggiere The DCExaminer.com reports

Critics who contend federal prosecutors too often go far beyond common sense and the law in enforcing bureaucratic gobbledygook, especially on environmental matters, could list as Example One the strange case of Krister Evertson, aka federal prisoner number 15003-006.

 

Evertson is spending 21 months in the Sheridan, Oregon, federal prison for an environmental “crime” in which no environmental harm occurred and during the commissioning of which he was trying to find a way to help the environment.

Evertson had no history of legal problems, and a long history of charitable service - especially in teaching sign language to deaf young people, a talent he learned while coping with a severe stutter that partially lingers to this day. He is described in federal court documents as a “good-natured, kind, gentle person.”

Now 54, Evertson has been a science wiz since grade school, and won the Kailua Intermediate School science fair in Hawaii for research into making bio-chemical fuel cells using coconut juice.

Ever since then, he has dreamed of developing an inexpensive, mass-use fuel cell that could be used to generate power without polluting the air. His enthusiasm for the project is such that Evertson will gladly talk at length, providing scientific explanations, with citations, of why his cell will work to produce “clean energy” if only a few kinks can be worked out.

And it seems nobody doubts his basic science, only the practicality of making it available for widespread use by the general public.

Yet Evertson was convicted after being charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly violating obscure regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency by “abandoning” semi-hazardous waste that actually had been meticulously saved, sealed and stored with a friend.

“This is how we reward innovators in America?” asked senior legal policy analyst Andrew Grossman of the Heritage Foundation, his inflection turning the statement into a question. “They wind up in jail?…. This isn’t the way regulation is supposed to work.”

Among Grossman’s assignments at the conservative Washington think tank is working with former Attorney General Edwin A Meese on the foundation’s Over-criminalization Project.

The project was initiated by Meese, who heads Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, to oppose the growing trend in government and the legal community in which trivial conduct is punished as a crime.

Evertson’s story has become a favorite illustration in Meese’s efforts. It is a tale that must be told in two parts, both of which ended in court rooms, which you will find here and here. And go here for additional background on groups from across the political spectrum in the legal community who are uniting to do something about over-criminalization.

Thanks to Andrew Grossman

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Hemp Could Be The Plastic Of Tomorrow

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Plastic was one of the great innovations of the 20th century, but German scientists believe a new invention, liquid wood, could soon supplant the chemical in terms of everyday usefulness.

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The Asian Brown Cloud: Global Climate Chaos and Tropical Glaciers

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Colonos |

The United Nations have released a report on the phenomenon dubbed as the Asian Brown Cloud, which is a thick soup of human waste engulfing Asia, and which has been widely reported:

“A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns around the world and threatening health and food supplies, the U.N. reported Thursday.

The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as “atmospheric brown clouds.”

When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth’s atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.”

In the report itself it reads:

“One of the most serious problems highlighted in the report is the documented retreat of the Hind Kush-Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers, which provide the head-waters for most Asian rivers, and thus have serious implications for the water and food security of Asia”

This taken together with the alarming development all over the world, but particularly with regards to propical glaciers in South America, mainly Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, it is looking more and more like game over soon. There really isn’t much time left. The Asian Brown cloud, first reported on in 2002 has now grown to a full scale threat of immanent disaster. Water is running out, the Himalayan glaciers whose decay are accelerated by the Asian Brown Cloud feed around 2 billion people with water to drink and to grow crops. Now go figure…

In the summer of 2008, colonos did research for and delivered a series of workshops about climate change for indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Peruvian Andes. Our findings were shocking, here in the words quoted from a World Bank report, not exactly the frame of reference we would normally choose, but the institution’s corporate bias puts things in an illuminating perspective:

“About 99 percent of the Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia has disappeared since 1940, says World Bank engineer Walter Vergara, in his new report, “The Impacts of Climate Change in Latin America. One of the highest glaciers in South America, Chacaltaya is one of the first glaciers to melt due to climate change. Although the glacier is over 18,000 years old, it is expected to vanish this year. “The greenhouse gases are the main driver,” says Vergara. “The scientific community has a consensus - this is man made.”

Within the next 5-8 years, on a conservative estimate, more than 30 million people in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador will be without water, in particular in the big cities, La Paz, Lima and Quito and the problems have already begun:

“The effect of diminishing glaciers is most evident in El Alto, an indigenous community of 800,000 people perched above the capital of La Paz. Waves of mostly Aymara immigrants - the satellite city is growing at between 5 percent and 10 percent a year - arrive daily, fleeing the poverty of their native highlands. With the disappearance of glacial water supplies and a decrepit and poorly managed water company, the city could soon suffer a severe water shortage, experts say” (Murphy 2008)

Living as we do in a world of accelerated urbanisation where already the majority of the world’s population live in cities the pressure for the circulation of water is increased dramatically and the problems thus intensified:

“Ecuador’s Quito draws 50% of its water supply from the glacial basin, and Bolivia’s La Paz, 30%. The volume of the lost glacier surface of Peru is equivalent to 7,000 million cubic meters of water, that is about ten years of water supply for Lima.”

To get an idea of the scale of the problem already today it may be useful, for some, to think in terms of the lost production capacity in hydroelectricity plants, due to less water running down from the soon to be extinct glaciers (same source as above):

“The impact of Andean glacier retreat on the local economy is formidable. For example in Peru, the annual incremental cost to the power sector is estimated at US$1.5 billion”.

It will also be instructive to take a global view. The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) writes:

“Some of the most dramatic shrinking has taken place in Europe with Norway’s Breidalblikkbrea glacier thinning by close to 3.1 metres (2.9 metre water equivalent) during 2006 compared with a thinning of 0.3 metres (0.28 metres water equivalent) in the year 2005.

Other dramatic shrinking has been registered at Austria’s Grosser Goldbergkees glacier, 1.2 metres in 2006 versus 0.3 in 2005; France’s Ossoue glacier, nearly 3 metres versus around 2.7 metres in 2005; Italy’s Malavalle glacier 1.4 metres versus around 0.9 metres in 2005; Spain’s Maladeta glacier, nearly 2 metres versus 1.6 metres in 2005; Sweden’s Storglaciaeren glacier, 1.8 metres versus close to 0.080 metres in 2005 and Switzerland’s Findelen glacier, 1.3 metres versus 0.22 metres in 2005.”

Deglaciation is an effect of climate change. A major cause of climate change is deforestation, a problem that the indigenous people of the Amazon know very well. The relation between deglaciation and deforestation is of course very complex, but in its simplicity is also shows what prominent climate change researcher, James Hansen at NASA, identifies as positive feedback loops in the climatic systems.

(This is very simplified and quickly written) - When the output of a process becomes an input into the same process you have a positive feedback loop, which means that a system can run amok, since it keeps accelerating, in the crudest of terms. That is what is happening on various fronts in terms of climate change. The melting ice caps means that less sun is reflected and therefore more heart trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere, but the melting of the ice was caused by increased heat being trapped in the first place by the release of green house gasses.

Moreover, the increase in dark surface (or oceans) means that even more heat is trapped. More and more. The thawing of permafrost releases greenhouse gases trapped underneath its protective frozen, or, rather, melting shield, causing even more permafrost to give way for more gases.

The Asian Brown Cloud both attracts more heat as well we cause cooling in some places, but the mixture of the two leads to further climate chaos and irregularities on a sub-continent where they used to say that you could set your clock after the monsoon. Hot and cold and irregular weather and an acceleration of deglaciation in the Himalayas and dramatically increased “food security issues” beyond the glacially dependent regions, those are the “facts”, even if some cooling occurs:

“Globally however brown clouds may be countering or ‘masking’ the warming impacts of climate change by between 20 and up to 80 per cent the researchers suggest.

This is because of particles such as sulfates and some organics which reflect sunlight and cool the surface.

The cloud is also having impacts on air quality and agriculture in Asia increasing risks to human health and food production for three billion people.”

It is all connected.

Deforestation is predominantly directly human made, but the last few years in the Amazon, with less rain and less water running down from the glaciers have accelerated deforestation because non-human made forest fires are occurring on large scale in the Amazon, producing clouds not entirely unlike the Asian Black Cloud. The output of climate change has become inputs and when processes accelerate in this manner we reach what Hansen calls tipping points:

“The Earth’s climate is nearing, but has not passed, a tipping point beyond which it will be impossible to avoid climate change with far-ranging undesirable consequences. These include not only the loss of the Arctic as we know it, with all that implies for wildlife and indigenous peoples, but losses on a much vaster scale due to rising seas.

Ocean levels will increase slowly at first, as losses at the fringes of Greenland and Antarctica due to accelerating ice streams are nearly balanced by increased snowfall and ice sheet thickening in the ice sheet interiors.

But as Greenland and West Antarctic ice is softened and lubricated by meltwater, and as buttressing ice shelves disappear because of a warming ocean, the balance will tip toward the rapid disintegration of ice sheets.

The Earth’s history suggests that with warming of two to three degrees, the new sea level will include not only most of the ice from Greenland and West Antarctica, but a portion of East Antarctica, raising the sea level by twenty-five meters, or eighty feet. Within a century, coastal dwellers will be faced with irregular flooding associated with storms. They will have to continually rebuild above a transient water level.” (James Hansen 2006)

Hansen leaves no doubt about where to find those responsible for human made climate change on a global and threatening scale. In 1988 Hansen spoke before the U.S Congress and said that we can be 99% sure that climate change is human made and in 2008 he returned to speak before congress, now certain not only of what causes climate change, but also about who to hold responsible, namely CEOs of corporations that are “fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading” (and causing). That would in other words be the leading capitalists in the oil and energy sectors of the market.

These climate change stories can be seen as evidence that the capitalist market place and mode of production are unsustainable: they use more resources than the world can regenerate with disasters already occurring.

Conclusion: industrial capitalism is bad for you! Act NOW!

For else, where do the children play?

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Genuine UK Activists Invade and Occupy UK Power Plant

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Because they care about the issue — not about Youtube hits, UK truthers take note ;)

By Alex Felsinger |

The crown jewel of Greenpeace’s naval arm, the Rainbow Warrior, pulled in to the harbor alongside the Kingsnorth coal-fired power plant today before six activists stormed the facility to prepare to project video of impacts of global warming onto the plant’s giant smokestack.

The action comes mere months after a jury acquitted Greenpeace protesters who had vandalized the same smokestack. The court ruled that the activists were acting in the public’s interest because the power plant will cause property destruction in the future due to its release of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

So far, Greenpeace says there have been no arrests.

 

The activists hope to prevent the owners of the plant, E.ON, from going through with their plan to build another coal plant nearby. Greenpeace says the new plant would spew as much greenhouse gas as the world’s 30 least-polluting countries combined. To symbolize this, 30 volunteers carried the flags of those countries into the power plant.

Two of the protesters were among the original ‘Kingsnorth Six,’ who were acquitted of all wrongdoing amid controversy this summer.  Police have not reported whether the activists will face charges for today’s action.

You can follow any developments through Greenpeace UK’s website.

Photo courtesy of Greenpeace UK.

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10 Ways to Reduce Plastic Consumption

Friday, September 5th, 2008

By Neil McLaughlin | By now you have likely heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a tragic byproduct of the plastics industry and consumerism that is an island of garbage floating in the northern Pacific Ocean. Originally the size of Texas and approaching the size of the Sun, this gargantuan pile of plastic is collected by currents that swirl around in a big circle. Most of the debris is picked up from the shores of both China and North America that sandwich it.

As plastic never goes away, it eventually crumbles up into tiny bits (photo-degrades). These bits of plastic enter the food supply and are passed from the jelly fish all the way back up to humans where it is stored in their livers (that part is only fair). Plastic also pollutes the water with PCB’s (PolyChlorinated Biphenyls, dangerous carcinogens and hormone disruptors).

While no one person is to blame, every person has contributed to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (it’s a safe bet the Atlantic also has one lurking somewhere). Whether one throws litter on the ground or trusts in their municipal trash companies to do it for them, everyone throws away plastic and it ends up in the ocean and then back in our bodies.

While some say cleanup is impossible, hopefully someday someone will find a solution. Perhaps they will find a way to convert plastic to energy (it is made of oil after all), and they can make a ship refueling station out there that will produce energy from plastic. Or perhaps nanotech robots can disassemble it and bring it to the recycler. (Such technology would be extremely dangerous as it would have to be careful not to accidentally disassemble Kenny Rogers face). In the meantime there are many things people can do to at least help prevent this pile of garbage from getting any larger.

Ways to Reduce Plastic in Landfills

1) Avoid Products that use Plastic to Begin With

Plastic is made from petroleum hence it is so ubiquitous today. Plastic is convenient but most of the cheaper grades (the clear stuff) find its way into our food, often leaving a film on anything that is wrapped in it and which we then eat. Microwaving anything in plastic cooks plastic residues right into the food, vaporizing other chemicals that contaminate the food and air. Consider the amount of sheer waste a single meal or even serving produces (Kraft Singles is second only to Individually Wrapped Breaths of Air ™ in the Most Wasteful Products Award). Reuse glass or Tupperware containers for leftovers instead of plastic wrap. Store water in the high grade blue plastic bottles only. Prefer cheese that is made from raw milk.

2) Kick the Bottle

High on the list of most wasteful products is Individually Wrapped Drinks of Water, a lingering 1990’s fad for those pretending to be health conscious. Picture a lake compared to a lake of plastic bottles and that is basically what we now have in the Pacific. Corporations are taking over town aquifers and selling it back to the people for $2 per bottle. Shipping one bottle of water costs on average 1/3 bottle of fuel. It is best to filter or distill your own water and use metal or glass containers. Companies like Nalgene make trendy reusable water containers of high grade plastic. Opt for tap water with lemon in restaurants. Note: wait staff seem trained to always supply a plastic straw with every drink (probably so you don’t notice the lipstick on the rim of the glass), so remember to request no straw with your drink.

3) Recycle or Reuse Materials

Plastic can be recycled and you will find that when you start recycling you at least save money on trash bags. Many containers can be washed out and reused (though they should be sterilized with apple cider vinegar). Note that only the higher grade plastics can be reused.

4) Choose Products with Biodegradable Plastic

Now many plastic cups along with packaging peanuts and other supplies are available in a biodegradable form. Companies like Ecosafe and Natur-Tec are providing real solutions to the plastic problem.

5) Repair, Sell or Upgrade Gadgets

Many people run out and buy the latest new cell phone or iPod more often than needed, discarding their old phones in the rubbish where they not only add to plastic landfill but also leak out various other contaminants like Mercury. Meanwhile older components, while larger, are often superior as they tend to be constructed of much more solid materials. By repairing your items you can keep things in top shape much longer. Tackle small problems when they arise. Take the time to fix things right. Buy used products when possible and sell your items when they are no longer needed. Prefer products that offer replacement parts.

6) Recycle Computer Parts

If you must discard items like monitors or printers, at least take them to an electronics recycler. Staples accepts old monitors, etc. for a small fee.

7) Use Cloth Grocery Bags

While this is more of a challenge for men as they look like pocketbooks, it is important to avoid bringing home so many plastic bags. Cloth bags can help. Some shoppers at the farmers market seem afraid to let any vegetables touch any other vegetables, insisting that each be individually wrapped. A better method is to use as few bags as possible, to reuse those taken, recycle them when they tear, and especially to avoid using them to begin with by bringing your own bag. Eventually this will save money as stores are considering charging for them.

8)Do Sweat the Small Stuff
The worst pieces of plastic are the tiny bits. These are the ones that birds, turtles and fish mistake for food and eat and then can’t pass them. Eventually these poor animals become full of plastic and they die of starvation, or they are consumed by larger animals and the process continues. After these animals die, the plastic is the only part that is left behind where it kills again.

9)Don’t be a Litter Bug
Many feel that if they don’t litter, they will be putting the garbage man out of a job. Some will simply chuck their used car batteries (full of sulfuric acid) into the woods behind their home. The truth is that this debris will persist for decades and humans leave enough of a footprint without adding insult to injury. In the 1970’s there were TV commercials with Woodsy Owl reminding us to “Give a Hoot Don’t Pollute”. In today’s corporate controlled media the best we get is talk about the Carbon Tax. Even the threat of Nuclear War is brushed aside by the media in favor of the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and the War on Manners.

10)Clean up your Neighborhood Ponds
Many neighborhoods have small ponds containing water that is cleaner than their municipal tap water. These ponds are often teeming with fish and turtles that help keep them pure. Sadly however these ponds (and wildlife) are normally loaded with plastic debris. By taking 15 minutes each week, one person can really help clean up their neighborhood. The process is surprisingly relaxing and the animals will appreciate it. Do note that random passerby will think you are out on parole, so wearing an orange jumpsuit is not recommended. Ideally, organize a neighborhood trash pickup (nowadays that may require legal waivers in case participants obtain a boo boo).

References

GPGP Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Paci…

Plastic grades:
http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/108/plastic

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SchNEWS DRILLS FOR THE TRUTH IN PEAK OIL THEORY

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

SchNEWS | From Transition Town workshops to the city slickers at the Financial Times (to over-excited pieces in ill-researched journals like SchNEWS), there’s been more and more interest in ‘Peak Oil’. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the price of a barrel reaching $140+ (down to a mere $115ish at the mo), and more noticeably for most, petrol at the pumps is at record highs. Not to mention UK power companies pushing the burden on to punters with up to 35% price increases.

So, is the reality of scarce energy really beginning to hit home? Is the oil now running out?
The basic premise is what’s known as Hubbert’s Peak. Oil, a finite commodity with an ever expanding demand, will reach its halfway point somewhere in the early 2000s (now) and from then on will irreversibly decline. Hubbert developed his theory in the 1950s when he predicted that America’s domestic oil would peak by the mid 70s. In the mid-80s they realised he was right. Since then others have taken his predictions and expanded them to fit the whole globe, where the consensus has been for a peak in the first decade of the 21st century.

Scary stuff, and not just for gas guzzling SUV drivers but for all of us; it’s oil that fuels the equipment that sows and reaps our crops (and makes the pesticides to slowly kill us with blemish-free uniform produce) and oil that fuels the trucks that drive the food to our shops. Add to this plastics, fertilisers, and all the other by products it becomes easy to predict apocalypse if the pumps ever run dry (see SchNEWS 499).

Something like this actually happened not so long ago, back in the ‘90s, in that wacky dictatorship called North Korea. The industrialised and oil dependent nation found itself without petroleum after its sole provider - the Soviet Union - collapsed. The result was that, far from western eyes, over a million people died as the infrastructure collapsed. And, so warns the Peak Oil doomsayers, this could happen on a global scale.

WELL WELL WELL

All of this has some anarcho-primitivists jumping with glee at the prospect of the imminent collapse of earth-raping industrial capitalist society. But, before you stock up on tinned goods, shotgun cartridges and bottled water, here’s a few things to consider:

Firstly, there’s no oil shortage. This may come as a bit of a surprise to all those who’ve been watching the prices rise and rise. As the Saudis recently pointed out to outgoing President Bush - pumping more oil won’t lower the price. Actually, there’s a glut of oil in the supply markets. The Iranians (one of the oil nations pumping under their maximum capacity) have tankers full of the stuff that they just can’t shift because no one wants it. What’s lacking is refining capacity.

While oil use in the US has increased 35% in the last 30 years, no new refineries have been built to keep up with demand. The ability to turn oil into petrol, diesel, aviation fuel etc is massively underdeveloped by the oil corporations, who generally like to keep refining to ‘safe’ (i.e. Western and friendly) countries. By artificially creating a bottleneck in the amount of usable oil, the price just goes up and up, leading to massive profits for the oil business as this nice little scam can keep functioning. Exxon Mobil made profits of $11.8 bn in the last quarter alone, and the other big five oil companies are making similarly obscene dosh. The scam has worked pretty well so far.

The predictions of world oil reserves are based on proven, reachable oil. This is a tricky concept because, as it turns out, there’s a whole lot of ‘unproven’ marginal oil that’s already making its way on to world markets. The most known about of these are the tar sands of Alberta, Canada. Until very recently (when the technology became economical on a large scale) these were considered ‘unproven,’ yet a lot of these are now making their way to the US (and world) oil markets.

The tars sands, also known as bitumen, are a very dirty form of oil, one that’s very expensive, polluting and energy hungry to exploit and process. It takes the equivalent of one barrel of oil to extract six barrels of oil from the tar sands. They also happen to be located in an area of unspoilt natural wilderness, but hey, what profitable minerals aren’t these days? Canada’s tar sands contain an amount of oil in excess of that under Saudi Arabia’s sands. And exploiting them is fast becoming its most profitable activity.

Venezuela has similar deposits of bitumen in Orinoco, and significantly larger than Canada’s. They’re estimated at around 260 million barrels (i.e. another Saudi Arabia) on top of the 80 million or so of ordinary oil. They’re easier to exploit than Canada’s and are barely touched. It’s no wonder that the US has got such a keen interest in the actions of Venezuelan President, Hugo the Chavmeister. Industry experts had been saying that these areas will become among the world’s future energy heartlands, but that until oil was worth over $40 per barrel it was too expensive to develop. Oil’s now worth over $100 and will be so for some time to come, so go figure.

CRUDE THOUGHTS

A real danger of Peak Oil, or rather, the fear of peak oil, is that it risks handing states and corporations even more planet-wrecking power. If people believe the oil is running out, then pressure from consumers and businesses alike is to find more at any cost. This is already being written into the US election strategy of the republicans, where John McCain is promoting drilling in the Arctic Circle as a way out of the energy ‘crisis’.

This could lead to a seriously deadly irony: The warnings of Peak Oil by environmentalists could lead to the erosion of the public’s psychological barriers protecting the few remaining areas of wilderness left. There’s oil in unknown (but quite possibly huge) quantities in Greenland, as well as plenty in Alaska, where the Bush junta has already green-lighted the destructive process of exploring and exploiting. The Russians have laid their claim to their chunk of the Arctic Circle too, with an eye to expansion for more oil.

And, in a genuinely insane piece of economic logic, as global warming melts the Arctic’s frozen seas, the previously unreachable oil reserves that lay under the ice become more exploitable, and, as they are burned, yet more undersea oil becomes available. Or if that runs out there’s always the Antarctic…

And if these reserves still don’t prove to be quite enough to satisfy demand, there’s always ole king coal. China, main producers of the world’s plastic consumer tat, is rich in coal but virtually empty of large oil deposits.

To keep their economy expanding at its current pace they are building two coal fired power stations a week. However, they need oil as well for their cars and trucks (and tanks). As oil’s expensive and foreign suppliers can be notoriously unreliable (they haven’t as yet turned to Amercian-style invasion of oil producers) what they really crave is a domestic source of oil, which they don’t have.

Or at least didn’t, until they turned to the combined wisdom of the Nazis and the apartheid-era South Africans. Both the Nazis during the war and the South Africans during sanctions found it hard to import oil. Luckily for them a German scientist found a way to turn coal into synthetic oil, known as the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis. It’s a very energy hungry process (of course) and needless to say massively polluting (obviously) but it does mean that, even if oil is tricky to get hold of, you can just magic some out of coal - kind of like a very dirty alchemy that’s bad for the planet.

China has already constructed its first huge synthetic oil refinery in Chinese Mongolia.

PRICE OF SUCCESS?

The current cost of oil, often mistaken as a indicator of its scarcity, is actually driven by far more complex forces.

As a commodity like any other, it’s traded on the international markets via brokers. In recent years the power of the cartel that set the price of oil, OPEC, has been significantly reduced, and now it’s the speculators that call the shots on its price (more or less - OPEC still caries a lot of weight, but it’s a player now rather than the whole game). That means that, as long as the price of oil is rising, speculators will push the price even higher.

It’s estimated that as much as 60% of the price of today’s oil is pure speculation. To give an example of the logic of nonsense capitalism: Today oil is worth, say $125 a barrel. As the price is going up, you, a speculator, figure that if you buy some at that price today, you can sell it in a week or two for $135. Because you’re buying oil, other speculators have more confidence the price will continue upwards, so they’re happy to pay $130 after you.

This continues until no one who actually needs to use oil for their cars, homes or businesses etc. can even afford to refill their zippo lighters, at which point the entire economy crashes, taking the price of oil with it.

In fact, herein lies one of the central flaws in the theory of peak oil - supply and demand: that fundamental essential of capitalism. If the price of oil goes up as its demand goes up (and its availability goes down) then at some point it will be too expensive for oil based industrial capitalism to afford. At that point we enter a new depression/recession. Businesses collapse, people can’t afford to run their cars, factories grind to a halt and so on. The effect of a depression means that, with the entire economy in free fall, the demand for oil drops. As the demand drops so does its price, until at some point people can afford to buy it again, and, hurrah, capitalism reasserts itself (albeit in a leaner, less carbon-heavy form).

DRILLER KILLER

The truth is that the oil has already peaked for Western multinationals. In the 70s, major Western oil giants controlled over half the world’s oil, they now only own 13%. As Arjun Murti, an energy analyst at Goldman Sachs puts it: “What we have now is geopolitical peak oil.”

There’s plenty of oil left, but it’s all in either politically unstable / US-unfriendly states (Iraq, Iran, Russia) or difficult and expensive to get at (the Arctic, Canadian tar sands). These alternative sources of fossil fuels could keep us going well into the future, past our lifetimes and maybe even that of our grandchildren. The problem is: exactly that. The effect of burning a trillion tons of coal and perhaps a trillion barrels of oil is that the planet will burn up faster than a petrol-soaked moth near a candle. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the world’s leading authority) predict a global temperature rise of at least 3°C by 2050, with further predictions that CO² and climate temperatures will rise and rise.

Mother nature has been steadily locking away excess carbon under the ground for the last three billion years in order to maintain a steady, liveable temperature for all of us life-forms. Suddenly, us wayward children have begun reversing the process, sticking it back in the air. In the process we’re experimenting with the atmosphere on an unprecedented scale, causing massive changes to the climate and biosphere, driving many species to extinction on a par with the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The real problem isn’t that we’re going to run out of fossil fuels. The problem is what happens when we don’t…

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Leave it in the ground!

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Earth First |

A new open cast coal mine site is about to get under way in beautiful Derbyshire unless we stop it. Lodge House site which is east of the village of Smalley and spans either side of Bell Lane, is one of seven new sites that UK Coal is to open cast.

The area is about to be devastated. Despite objections from local councils, residents and local environmental groups the Secretary of State granted planning permission in 2007. The 122 hectare site will have one million tonnes of coal ripped out over 5 years and UK Coal claims that it will be returned back to its natural state afterwards.

However residents fear there may be more to the plot, as they were excluded from parts of the planning meeting under grounds of commercial confidentiality. According to campaigners UK Coal are one of those companies that looks to maximise their profits by raping the land and profiting from it any way they can. After coal extraction, they often turn the area into business parks, housing and industrial estates. According to their website in some cases they return it to farmland and charge the farmers rent or in low grade land grow energy crops. They are apparently even into wind power, but have yet to erect a single turbine.

Coal is not clean energy and is a major contributor to climate change. With the new onslaught of proposed power stations, UK Coal are looking to cash in on climate devastation and destruction unless we stop them.

The area is rich with wildlife and backs onto Shipley County Park. Some houses, (the sort of place you dream of living in) have been shuttered up and items like toys, dog kennels and other personal bits remain looking like something from a hurried evacuation from a war zone. UK Coal has stated that the site will be returned to farm land, but they are able to expand beyond the 122 hectares without needing further planning permission.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 12:22 pm and is filed under UK-News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.