Steady State Revolution » Environment

Resiliency & Peak Oil

Joshua — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:40:42 +0000

Something I have been thinking a lot about lately is resiliency, both personal and communal. It’s a main topic in the book of the month, The Transition Handbook, too. What is resilience? It is the ability of a system to absorb or adapt to external changes and shocks. Essentially, it’s the ability to roll with the punches. This seems to me to be an incredibly valuable trait to have as a strong, independent human being. More importantly, it’s something we should instill in our communities and the systems upon which we rely for sustaining and enriching our lives.

We seem to be talking a lot about climate change lately, yet we should be just as worried about peak oil. I am begining to think we should worry a bit more about it, actually. Oil is in everything. Either directly or indirectly, oil rules our lives and touches everything we rely on. So what happens when we run out? Well, it’s not as important as what happens after the peak. After we cross the point of less supply yet increasing demand.

After the peak prices go up, quickly. The rise in oil prices will result in a rise in food prices, clothing prices, transportation costs, and just about everything else. This wave of cost increases will make it very difficult for everyone who is not extremely rich, especially those of us in the middle class, and even more so for those near or just under the poverty level.

Watch this little video and think about how your community. Are you fostering resilience? Perhaps you should investigate the Transition Movement, too.

Oh, a site note: I am officially a licensed professional engineer. I passed my exams. Cheers!

BP Coffee Spill

Joshua — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:56:10 +0000

A little humor is always refreshing in all the news of the ever expanding Gulf oil spill. I couldn’t resist posting this hilarious video Climate Progress pointed me towards. Enjoy.

Available to view on YouTube here.

The Earth Bleeds Out

Joshua — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:30:27 +0000

If only the words “back from whence ye came” could really have magical powers and plug the mortal wound we have inflicted upon the Gulf of Mexico (and soon her bigger cousin, the Atlantic Ocean and Eastern Coastline). Whilst our human brains convince us over and over again that we are above nature, can outsmart her, or take over her services, she shows us again and again the error in our ways. From Katrina, to Taiwan, to Haiti and many more, Mother Nature is an unrelenting and all-powerful presence in our lives. This shouldn’t be seen as an unwelcomed presence – far too often we seem to run away from nature, when we are, in fact, of nature and in nature.

I have been avoiding writing about the Gulf Disaster because it seems pretty well covered: it’s everywhere, whether you read it, watch it, or listen to it. However, I couldn’t resist promoting this incredibly moving image tool: Ifitwasmyhome.com. What would the oil disaster look like if it was centered over your home? Check it out for me here in Seattle: (Thanks to nef’s Triple Crunch Blog for first showing me this site)

Gush Forth! Oh, Mighty Earth!

Imagine this were true: the largest populated area in the Pacific Northwest would be almost entirely covered in oil, even up over the Canadian border. They’re our allies, but I can’t imagine they’d be happy with that type of sharing. All of the Olympic Rainforest and National Park would be dripping wet with crude. Lake Chelan would be filled with black gold. As far south as Centralia and stretching over the many islands of the Puget Sound – all wiped out by BP’s greed for a fossil fuel. Good-bye Orcas! good-bye Salmon! Audios watersheds, fisheries, and my beautiful hometown.

They seem completely incapable of stopping the leak (some wonder if they won’t be able to do it or it might wait until Christmas). Personally, I think it is motivation to sell your car, ride your bike, and vote for a constitutional amendment outlawing corporate personhood (had this occurred prior to 1886, the government could have liquidated BP’s assets to cover everything and thrown everyone involved in jail).

All of this is the direct result of our lust for oil. We are destroying the largest fishery in the US (something like 70% of our shellfish and 30% of all our seafood comes from the Gulf), destroying priceless natural capital. For what? BP’s giant profits. This won’t finish them unless we take them to court, and even that is doubtful to have a large, positive result within a decade. At least the local economy will get a bump in GDP while everyone rushes down there to clean it up, right?

What do you think of the developments down there?

Obama, Lead Us To Clean Energy Now!

Joshua — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:30:28 +0000

God love the actor who stands up for the environment, but there is something a little more significant (for me at least) when if comes from Robert Redford. (Maybe because he’s one of my favorites and one of the most respectable actors in Hollywood) See his challenge to President Obama:

Way to go, Mr. Redford! Thanks to Climate Progress for introducing this video to me.

Four Years. Go.

Joshua — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:00:57 +0000

We have four years to set how the quality of life will be for the 1000 years on this planet. These next few years represent the most pivotal in the history of humankind. We have significantly altered the face of our planet and it is coming down to the wire: we only have a short time before our actions will have either set in motion huge, destructive environmental changes or alter the face of human society to live within the means our planet provides us.

The Four Years. Go. campaign is a new way of “inciting a movement,” present initially by a core group of four organizations. However, they note that this is a global issue and once enough funding is raised the campaign will expand to include a more global group of organizations. As they website says,

“There is no plan, at least no ‘master plan’, managed from the top.

The path, instead, will be to foster a self-organizing, emerging open-space of collaboration and creativity among individuals, NGOs, companies and communities.

The idea is to incite a movement. And, for that movement to catalyze a newly vibrant world of wildly diverse and inspired initiatives to co-create a transformed human future.

However, so that we don’t rely on self-organization alone, FOUR YEARS. GO.does plan to provide tools and resources that will genuinely empower an authentic global conversation and catalyze the prevailing sense of urgency into creative, effective action.”

Watch their great video that aims to help inspire movement on this front:

The video is available for download and on YouTube. Check out the campaign site here.

The Limits of Efficiency

Joshua — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:48:58 +0000

A few months ago I wrote about the myth of decoupling – how you cannot separate economic growth from environmental impact. I touched on a topic in that post that is critical to the argument against continued economic growth: the limits of efficiency and the physical constraints of thermodynamics on the economy. That post received a lot of good feedback, as well as a few requests to talk about efficiency limits in more detail.

Neoclassical Arguments Defy Natural Laws

Gravity is a basic law of our existence. To hear someone claim that gravity is a myth would be astounding. A large group of people believing such a claim would be even more ridiculous (sounds like climate change deniers, actually). Yet, anyone trumpeting infinite economic growth does just that: makes a claim that violates basic laws of nature.

You might be asking yourself how I can make such an accusation when we are obviously still growing as an economy. Well, sure we are, but this is actually uneconomic growth, false growth, and debt-driven growth. All that debt is expanding while our natural resources do not – which spells C-O-L-L-A-P-S-E, if you’re curious.

The most common argument for economic growth continuing indefinitely without undermining the environment is “technological progress.” This really means technological efficiency, or our ability to do more with less and less. Neoclassical economists, policy makers, politicians, and even the average citizen today all believe technology will save us in the end. The thought is that we’ll move to an “information economy” or to a “space economy” and produce growth by using less resources.

The basic claim is we will continue to make leaps in technological progress that will maintain economic growth at the same level of ecological impact (resource use, waste, etc). We can make more today with less material per unit and less energy per unit than we could two decades ago. However, as a pointed out in my earlier post, this relative decoupling is weak in comparison to the growth of the economy as a whole. That is besides the point. The matter at hand is efficiency.

We can get better and better at production only to a certain point. Efficiency cannot improve infinitely, therefore the economy cannot rely on it for infinite growth. Period.

Physical Laws of the Universe

The scientific community is always challenging itself. This is the very purpose of research and institution of the scientific method. When someone develops a theory it is challenged by experiments designed to support or disprove that theory. Some of these lucky ideas will be supported with such strength that they are no longer considered theories, but laws.

Laws of nature are the building blocks of scientific advancement. Future theories are based on current laws. We all (should) know the laws of gravity, of basic physics, of thermodynamics, et cetera. The last is a set of laws that govern the exchange of energy, expansion of entropy, limits of efficiency and rules regarding temperature.

Before I go forward I really want to drive home a point here: these are physical laws of the universe that cannot be altered or subverted. There is no way around physical laws and any hope for a scientific break through in that department is not a credible vision of the future (aka it’s pure fiction).

The Ultimate Crux To Growth: Thermodynamics

The laws of thermodynamics are very clear: everything wears out (creates entropy) and there cannot be a system that reaches (or exceeds) 100% efficiency. Herman Daly makes a note of this in his revolutionary book Steady State Economics, by pointing out it is important “to recognize that the entropy law is the basic physical coordinate of scarcity. Were it not for the entropy law, nothing would ever wear out; we could burn the same gallon of gasoline over and over, and our economic system could be closed with respect to the rest of the natural world.”

Not only does this sound impossible when common sense is applied, but we know it to be against the laws of the physical universe. Yet, we continue to clamor for economic growth. We cannot grow forever on a finite planet. There are not enough resources. Our technology has limits, most of which, I would argue, we have met – at least in terms of being able to have any large expansion of production, consumption, and waste absorption (the economy) on our tiny planet. We’re pushing forward on debt, running out of our savings (natural capital), and heading towards collapse.

Because we cannot improve our efficiency to combat the environmental degradation caused by economic growth (in fact, we cannot even come close, according to history), we are left with the same fact that economic growth cannot continue. It no longer matters if it is an “information economy,” which still relies on real-world, consuming people and technologies; or if it is a “space economy” that will rely on resources to get us off the surface of the planet and build ships. Everything has a limit, including economic growth. We’ve hit that limit on growth in the developed world. Now we need to think about our post growth society.

Growth Isn’t Possible

Joshua — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:40:15 +0000

Growth Will Kill Us All, If The Hamster Doesn't Get Us First

The new economics foundation (nef) has released a report title Growth Isn’t Possible, which is available for free download (pdf here) or purchase in a bound copy. The low-down is simple: in order to maintain the international goal of avoiding an increase of 2°C in global temperatures from carbon emissions we must stop economic growth. Basically, economic growth will kill us if we don’t “change our economy to live within its environmental budget.”

nef figures that with a growth rate of only 3%, the global economics “carbon intensity” would need to decrease by 95% by 2050 from 2002 levels. This requires an average annual reduction of 6.5%, which is even optimistically impossible in the best of circumstances. All of the “magic bullets” in the public discourse: carbon capture, nuclear, geo-engineering, et cetera are “dangerous distractions from more human-scale solutions.”

Sure, our carbon intensity has nearly flatlined in the last few years, but we need to reverse this trend not flatten out or encourage growth. Technological efficiencies can help, but physical laws limit the amount of efficiency you can pump out of any system. Worse yet, we’ll never match growth in efficiency with even mild economic growth that our system has been designed to need. It’s simple mathematics, which neoclassical economists have never been good at in the first place.

A broader support for community-scale projects like decentralized energy systems are needed over the pipe dreams currently getting all the political attention and funding. nef’s research shows that in order to prevent runaway climate change we need to change. An economy that took into account environmental thresholds will be more likely able to not only avoid runaway climate change but provide improved human well-being in the future.

As nef’s Andrew Simms points out on the Triple Crunch Blog,

“The banking crisis taught us that when things look good on paper, if the underlying accounting system is faulty, it can conceal high risk and imminent disaster – as Jared Diamond put it in Collapse, his book about societies throughout history that fell by wrongly estimating the resilience of their environmental life-support systems. What looks like wealth might just be a one-off fire sale of irreplaceable natural capital. Ecologically speaking, he writes, ‘an impressive-looking bank account may conceal a negative cashflow’.

To avoid collapse the economy has to operate within thresholds that do not critically undermine the things that we depend on on a daily basis. They’re often interconnected, like a sufficiently stable climate, productive farmland, fresh water and a healthy diversity of plants and animals.

On climate change, a new piece of research by the New Economics Foundation thinktank looks at which rates of global economic growth are compatible with prevention of a dangerous level of warming.

It shows that, even with the most optimistic likely uptake of low-carbon energy, it is seemingly impossible to reconcile a growing global economy with a good likelihood of limiting global temperature rise to 2C, the agreed political objective of the European Union, and widely considered the maximum rise to which humanity can adapt without serious difficulty.”

We Need A Sustainable Economy First, or Must We Believe In The Impossible Hamster

A steady state economy is the only means of staving off the worst climate change can bring while preserving jobs, improving economic stability, encouraging income equality, and providing a human society that can flourish indefinitely on Earth. The alternative of growth addiction will mean less biodiversity, increased resource scarcity, and now nef has shown it will mean the worst case scenarios of climate change.

Questioning economic growth may seem way out of the mainstream, if not also politically unwise, but it is the only way we can preserve human society past the next century. As odd as it might be to question continued economic growth, stranger still is the complete acceptance of it in the face of natural systems that deny the same growth. An example that the nef Triple Crunch Blog references is the hamster.

“From birth until around six weeks old, a hamster doubles its weight each week. If, it didn’t stop and continued doubling each week, on its first birthday, you would be looking after a very hungry nine billion-tonne pet hamster. There is of course one thing in nature that grows uncontrollably. It’s called cancer and tends to kill its host. So when those growth figures come out, let’s hope the government scans the results for what they really mean.”

Watch the “Impossible Hamster” video from nef here:

The Impossible Hamster from new economics foundation on Vimeo.

*Subtitle reference to Dr. Strangelove subtitle

My Climate Solution

Joshua — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:18:59 +0000

We Hold the Future in Our Hands

You may have noticed that in spite of all my posts about climate change I have been silent on the subject during these past weeks. Whilst the Copenhagen Climate Conference has been filling the media, blogs and my spare time I have decided to keep my blog free of yet another Copenhagen report. If you would like to learn about the (mostly) disappointing results of the conference I suggest you go elsewhere.

The alternative for me is to discuss solutions instead of pointing fingers. This is a pivotal time in the history of our species – not our nation or group of nations, the whole world – all of humanity is at stake here. Time is short for positive action.

There are so many solutions out there – many that will work, many that will not. We should be conservative and aim for strong goals with multiple redundancies. It would be rash to place all our eggs in one basket. The worst thing that happens if we are over conservative in our efforts is we have less climate change harm and a more sustainable society. The worst thing that happens if we are not conservative enough is (besides wasted efforts) runaway climate destabilization that kills millions, threatens billions more and irreversibly alters the very face of human society on Earth (not to mention the planet itself).

I have done some research, as much as I can, and written about possible solutions for adverting climate destabilization. Ultimately I can talk all I want about what needs to be done, but by this point you have probably heard more than a few ideas of solutions. In truth, what our governments do is incredibly important if we want to transform our societies into sustainable versions. However, the people are likely to do the changes and prepare for the shift regardless of the talking heads in the state house.

In the End, It Doesn’t Really Matter

Despite all my talk, and all the talk of others, about this plan or that plan, this provision or that provision, it doesn’t matter. The group must as a whole make a change. While the heads of state continue to negotiate (argue) and waste time, people on every continent have formed thousands of groups to make these changes. The movement is coming, regardless of what the governments end up doing. My hope is for government to clue in before the wave washes over them.

Those of us who join or form these groups will be more resilient to the changes coming to our world (they will come, it’s a matter of severity at this point). We will have re-learned so many things our society has conditioned out of us: how to live off the land, how to create and build with what the Earth gives us, how to live within our ecological means.

So here’s my climate solution: pressure your country through action. Join the transition town network, advocate carbon rationing, eliminate wasteful habits, be a model to those around you, buy and eat local and seasonal, vote for people who will make local and governmental changes, make positive community choices and prepare for the coming changes. When the politicians are trying to use their paper or digital money to buy the means of survival, we will have already adopted the real wealth needed to survive the next century.

If the governments clue in to the music in time then we might maintain some semblance of a global society during this century. We must on a local and individual level prepare for the eventuality that they will not catch on in time, while campaigning for them to do so. Prepare for the worst, plan for the best.