Wednesday August 24, 2005

The Climax of Humanity

sciam.com :

Demographically and economically, our era is unique in human history. Depending on how we manage the next few decades, we could usher in environmental sustainability - or collapse ...

After several centuries of faster-than-exponential growth, the world's population is stabilizing. As humanity grows in size and wealth, however, it increasingly presses against the limits of the planet.

These three concurrent, intertwined transitions - demographic, economic, environmental - are what historians of the future will remember when they look back on our age. They are transforming everything from geopolitics to the structure of families. And they pose problems on a scale that humans have little experience with. As Harvard University biologist E. O. Wilson puts it, we are about to pass through "the bottleneck," a period of maximum stress on natural resources and human ingenuity.

Looking at the present era in historical context helps to put the world's myriad problems in perspective. Many of those problems stem, directly or indirectly, from growth. As growth tapers off, humanity will have a chance to close the books on them. A bottleneck may be tough to squeeze through, but once you do, the worst is behind you.

This process is already evident in countries at the leading edge of the transitions. The Social Security debate in the U.S., like worries about pensions in Europe and Japan, is the sound of a society planning for life after growth.

Once you blow away the fog of ideology, the outlines of a comprehensive action plan begin to emerge. A recurring theme of this plan is that business is not necessarily the enemy of nature, or vice versa. Traditionally the economy and environment have not even been described in like terms. The most-watched economic statistics, such as gross domestic product (GDP), do not measure resource depletion; they are essentially measures of cash flow rather than balance sheets of assets and liabilities. If you clear-cut a forest, GDP jumps even though you have wiped out an asset that could have brought in a steady stream of income ...

In recent years, economists and environmental scientists have come together to hang a price tag on nature's benefits ... society must sometimes make real trade-offs. But it is only beginning to explore the win-win options ...

(2005-08-24 23:21:58 SGT) [Env] Permalink

Visitors Rush To Glimpse Vanishing Glaciers

rense.com :

The four distinguished visitors looked on in awe at the sight before them. Exit Glacier in Alaska's Kenai Fjords national park is one of continental America's most imposing monuments, and last week it was at its most impressive - a hulk of ice and snow imperceptibly making its way toward the sea. But lately that movement has quickened, a fact that will not have been lost on visitors. One of the most popular tourist attractions in Alaska, Exit Glacier has receded 300 metres (1,000ft) in the past 10 years ...

The four VIPs included an unlikely couple, both probable presidential candidates in 2008, both plausible winners, and from opposite ends of the political spectrum. One was John McCain, Vietnam veteran and republican senator from Arizona. The other was Hillary Rodham Clinton, White House veteran and New York senator. That they should choose to visit Alaska together in order to investigate climate change raised a few eyebrows ... but, despite the political barbs, the senators had a serious purpose. Soon the issue of climate change - often code for global warming - was back on the national political agenda.

(2005-08-24 23:11:21 SGT) [Env] Permalink

Looming Credit Squeeze On American Banks

rense.com :

On October 17, the new bankruptcy law will go into effect. That is the day that the banks will see their cash cow wander off into the field toward the butcher's. The new law cuts those juicy 20-year loans to 10 years. Monthly payments will jump accordingly. Also, the new law requires borrowers to repay these loans even after bankruptcy ... this will come at a time when gasoline price increases are already forcing major budget readjustments. So, it will become more difficult for banks to increase the number of takers when they advertise their "low, low, low" rates.

Millions of people are already at their limits, squeaking by and paying the minimum on their credit card balances ... new home owners have gotten in late. They are paying up to half of their monthly take-home pay to live in their newly purchased homes. Property taxes have not been hiked. This tax hike is coming. OPEC is also squeezing them. Now comes the new bankruptcy law ...

(2005-08-24 23:02:53 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

How Cities Can Survive the Energy Crisis

peakoil.com -> raisethehammer.org :

Seventy percent of the oil consumed in North America is used for transportation ... whatever means we use to get around will have to find ways to leverage that [road] network : ... develop light rail systems for intra-urban transportation between distant points in the city ... transform existing highways into rail lines ... share city streets for pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, etc ...

Low-density, use-segregated building guarantees that people will live far from the amenities and services they need to live ... public transit is not viable in sprawl, because the population density is too low to make buses or light rail cost-effective.

Governments must : throw out their zoning regulations that encourage sprawl ... change building codes to require more energy efficient building design ... ban drive-thrus and other building models that force the primacy of driving ...

Ways to stabilize the electricity grid : wind turbines have an important role to play, as the cost per kilowatt hour is becoming increasingly competitive ... encourage conservation. The easiest way to "produce" more electricity is to use less ... encourage intertie production. Buildings that generate their own power can tie it back into the grid. If a building produces more electricity than it uses, then the meter runs backward and the power company pays the producer ...

- The above is heavily excerpted. Urban dwellers should read it in its entirety. Not quite sure how much time there is to implement any of these things, given that the clock is ticking with accelerating rates of resource depletion, but Ryan McGreal seems to actually make somewhat of a case for vertical suburbia.

He did not really mention food though. That's where the "peak oil survivalists" seem to come in, like the "Y2K survivalists" before them, perhaps half a generation ago. But farming is not exactly easy either.

The community has been discussing many scenarios, mostly variants of "slow crash vs fast crash". Well, only time will tell. Let's hope that they do not have to suddenly call up the able-bodied males and start issuing out those M-16's ...

(2005-08-24 22:50:05 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

The $10,000 question

peakoil.com -> nytimes.com :

John Tierney : I don't share Matthew Simmons's angst, but I admire his style. He is that rare doomsayer who puts his money where his doom is. After reading his prediction, quoted Sunday in the cover story of The New York Times Magazine, that oil prices will soar into the triple digits, I called to ask if he'd back his prophecy with cash. Without a second's hesitation, he agreed to bet me $5,000 ...

Mr. Simmons said he favored a simpler wager, based on his expectation that the price of oil, now about $65 per barrel, would more than triple during the next five years. He said he'd bet that the price in 2010, when adjusted for inflation so it's stated in 2005 dollars, would be at least $200 per barrel.

... I suggested that we use the average price for the whole year of 2010 instead of the price on any particular date - that way, neither of us would be vulnerable to a sudden short-term swing as the market reacted to some unexpected news. Mr. Simmons agreed, and we sealed the deal by e-mail.

... all the money is being put into escrow in a joint account; the winning side will collect the $10,000 plus any accrued interest on Jan. 1, 2011.

(2005-08-24 22:10:54 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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