It’s even worse than we are officially told….

This is a guest post from my Scottish friend Jacqueline Fletcher who has taught in universities all over Europe, and even sent me a wwoofer from Finland some years ago….. she’s a permie and environmental activist beyond the call of duty. 

Yesterday evening I attended a meeting with a couple of researchers involved with IPCC reports. Dr Katarzyna Tokarska from the GeoSciences Institute at Edinburgh University and psychologist (and Scottish government advisor on mental health) Dr Nadine Andrews from Lancaster University. Tokarska explained the science, how much CO2 the atmosphere can take if we are to stay within the 1.5 degrees warming (X), how much is already in the atmosphere Y, and therefore X minus Y will tell us how much we can still emit before we lock ourselves ino the 1.5 degrees warming point (Z) and upwards towards 2 degrees.

The bad news is that in a BAU scenario, given the amount of CO2 emitted annually, globally, we will emit that amount (Z) in just three years.

We have to do something NOW. So what is on offer by way of suggestions about what to do?

A digression: In 2015 I was living in Paris and a member of the ‘social movement’ and degrowth group ATTAC. Because ATTAC was also one of the 130 or so groups that constituted CoalitionClimate21, I joined up with that too, to organise protests around the COP21 but also to collectively present a document to which all the global NGOs subscribed to the COP with our own suggestions for the transition to a low carbon society. Of course, there was a good deal more than protest; there were workshops, conferences, tribunals, a march was banned and became a human chain, smaller creative interventions and debates around energy etc and 2 colourful demos on the final day.

From the COP21 I took away a depressingly deep sense of the insurmountability of the crisis, not only were governments still trying to provide solutions that would best suit their corporations and chums in the banks, not only were the scientists watering down their reports to get governments on board, but equally the NGOs were so obsessed with fossil fuels that the Extinction Event which is wiping out the life that maintains Earth’s Biosphere was being ignored. Why is this?

I was well aware nothing significant would come out of the Paris Agreement. It was heralded as a triumph but it was a really only a triumph of PR.

Yesterday, I went to the evening organised by Transition Edinburgh feeling a bit more upbeat. This new IPCC report is very clear about how close to the edge we are. Surely, I thought, now the urgency is so obvious, something would be done, we’d get mobilsed, pressurise our government, take personal measures to change our lifestyles. But after the first speaker already, I felt severely depressed by the type of solutions on offer.

The first speaker was seemingly a proponent of BECCS (Biofuel Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage, which Pr Kevin Anderson literally claims is BS) or maybe these were the only statistics she had because the IPCC focuses on technological solutions. For the uninitiated, this entails growing more cash crop forests, burning them for ‘biofuels’, capturing the CO2 and storing it in holes in the ground, like old mines and oil reservoirs, and compressed into rock with technology that is not yet in existence (at scale) In other words yet another linear system, in which a resource is used, waste is produced, the waste is hidden out of sight…a bit like plastic (irony intended). She showed that this was more efficient for storing carbon than afforestation (basically, just not chopping down existing trees). Already this comparison carried a signicant slant.

No mention of the statistics for carbon sequestration through regenerative agriculture using biochar, no dig/till and continuous groundcover and/or holistic grazing. There are plenty of statistics out there, even reports from the UN Rapporteurs on the Right to Food, Food Security etc, and the FAO, the IPES-Food, UNCTAD on agroecology as well as statistics that can be gleaned from the growing number of small farmers doing Regen Ag. Why does agriculture never get into the mindset of people, scientists, governments etc dealing with the CO2 crisis?

I’m going to make my own comparison between BECCS and Regen Ag.

BECCS is a linear system with a waste product that is not organically disposable or recyclable. Is its use of resources really sustainable? It uses land then becomes unavailable for any other purpose and is eroded by the monoculture forestry, and which is also irreparably damaging for ecosystems.

Reg Ag on the other hand uses CO2 to grow soil, to replace the eroded soil that is yet another of our pressing crises (about 40% of the planet’s soil is already eroded). By sequestering CO2 in the living soil, the soil not only grows, but it produces healthy food (without pesticides) by maintaining a healthy soil microbiome. It is the microbial life in the soil that releases nutrients from the minerals to pass to plants and therefore creates nutrient-rich food (as opposed to the crap that comes from an agricultural system that kills the soil microbiome). It produces biomass in the soil that stores water to combat droughts and to allow water to filter naturally through to replenish the aquifers. Regen agroforestry and edible food forests also maintain healthy habitats and forage for wildlife with perennials, trees that also sequester carbon etc. It is a solution that also nurtures the ecosystems that are necessary too for our human survival. There is no waste product, everything is naturally and productively recyclable; biomass can even produce energy through biodigesting and still be returned to the soil. There is no wasteful use of land. BECCS takes land away from agriculture, carbon sequestration through regen ag integrates it.

Of course, the BECCS solution proposed isn’t about farming, it’s about energy. And what governments and corporations want to hear is something that produces energy, to continue to fuel an industrial, consumer-capitalist society at any cost for the sake of growth and profit. And if this remains the current thinking in political, commercial and financial spheres of influence, the old paradigm, the old mentality, then frankly, we really are f***ed.

Most of the 278 people who signed up for the speakers and discussion yesterday evening were young, students from Edinburgh University, from all over the world, and in reality we need to act NOW to save the world for them, and not to save a system of industrial production predicated on a mentality that is fundamentally antagonistic to all life on this planet, human and non-human.

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If the latest warnings contained in Monday’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—which included pronouncements that the world has less than twelve years to drastically alter course to avoid the worst impacts of human-caused global warming and that nothing less than keeping all fossil fuels in the ground is the solution to avoid future calamities—have you at all frightened or despondent, experts responding to the report have a potentially unwelcome message for your already over-burdened heart and mind: It’s very likely even worse than you’re being told.

“The IPCC understates a key risk: that self-reinforcing feedback loops could push the climate system into chaos before we have time to tame our energy system.” 
—Mario Molina, Nobel Laureate

After the report’s publication there were headlines like: “We have 12 years to act on climate change before the world as we know it is lost. How much more urgent can it get?” and “Science pronounces its verdict: World to be doomed at 2°C, less dangerous at 1.5°C” and “A major new climate report slams the door on wishful thinking.”

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Just two years ago, amid global fanfare, the Paris climate accords were signed — initiating what seemed, for a brief moment, like the beginning of a planet-saving movement. But almost immediately, the international goal it established of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius began to seem, to many of the world’s most vulnerable, dramatically inadequate; the Marshall Islands’ representative gave it a blunter name, calling two degrees of warming “genocide.”

The alarming new report you may have read about this week from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which examines just how much better 1.5 degrees of warming would be than 2 — echoes the charge. “Amplifies” may be the better term. Hundreds of millions of lives are at stake, the report declares, should the world warm more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, which it will do as soon as 2040, if current trends continue. Nearly all coral reefs would die out, wildfires and heat waves would sweep across the planet annually, and the interplay between drought and flooding and temperature would mean that the world’s food supply would become dramatically less secure. Avoiding that scale of suffering, the report says, requires such a thorough transformation of the world’s economy, agriculture, and culture that “there is no documented historical precedent.” The New York Times declared that the report showed a “strong risk” of climate crisis in the coming decades; in Grist, Eric Holthaus wrote that“civilization is at stake.”

If you are alarmed by those sentences, you should be — they are horrifying. But it is, actually, worse than that — considerably worse. That is because the new report’s worst-case scenario is, actually, a best case. In fact, it is a beyond-best-case scenario. What has been called a genocidal level of warming is already our inevitable future. The question is how much worse than that it will get.

Solving secondary problems first

I was going to write something about the insanity going viral on the internet about CSIRO’s “Hydrogen Breakthrough” when this brilliant article from Consciousness of Sheep – fast becoming my favourite blog – comes along in my newsfeed……

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Can you run a self-driving car on a desert island?

Of course not: There are no roads; and there is no fuel for the car.

Why do I mention this?  Because the received narrative around climate change and so-called “peak oil demand” is that new technologies like electric self-driving cars are going to ride to our rescue in the near future.  This is a nice fantasy; but I would draw your attention to the fact that while we still have roads, along with much of our infrastructure they are falling apart through neglect.  Without the enabling infrastructure, the proposed new technologies are going nowhere.

Energy, meanwhile, is a far greater problem.  Globally (remember most of the food we eat and the goods we buy are imported) 86 percent of our energy comes from fossil fuels – down just one percent from 1995.  Renewable energy accounts for nearly 10 percent; but most of this is from hydroelectric dams and wood burning.  The modern renewables – solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tidal, and ocean energy – that so many people imagine are going to save the day account for just 1.5 percent of the energy we use.

Modern renewables are a kind of Schrodinger’s energy because they are simultaneously replacements for (some of) the fossil fuel that we are currently using and the additional energy to power all of the new technologies that are going to save the day.  And rather like the benighted feline in Schrodinger’s experiment, so long as nobody actually looks at the evidence, they can continue to fulfil both roles.

Given the potentially catastrophic consequences of not having sufficient energy to continue growing our economy, it is psychologically discomforting even to ask why energy costs are spiralling upward around the world, and why formerly energy independent countries are resorting to difficult, expensive and environmentally toxic fuel sources like hydraulically fractured shale or strip mined bitumen sands.  This, perhaps, explains why so many people focus their attention on solving second order problems – something psychologists refer to as a “displacement activity.”

An example of this appeared in today’s news in the shape of an Australian attempt to revive hydrogen-powered cars.  In theory, hydrogen (which only exists in compounds in nature) is superior to (far less abundant) lithium ion batteries as a store of energy to power electric vehicles.  Crucially, unlike battery-powered electric vehicles, hydrogen cell electric vehicles do not need to be recharged, but can be refuelled in roughly the same time as it takes to refuel a petroleum vehicle.  And, of course, hydrogen vehicles do not require tax payers and energy consumers to foot the bill for the upgrade of the electricity grid needed for battery-powered cars.

The drawback with hydrogen is that it is difficult to store.  Because hydrogen is the smallest atom, it can gradually corrode and seep out of any container; especially if it is compressed into liquid form.  It is this problem that the Australian researchers appear to have solved.  Using a new technology, they have been able to store hydrogen as ammonia, and then convert it back to hydrogen to fuel their cars.  As Lexy Hamilton-Smith at ABC News reports:

“For the past decade, researchers have worked on producing ultra-high purity hydrogen using a unique membrane technology.

“The membrane breakthrough will allow hydrogen to be safely transported and used as a mass production energy source.”

Unlike batteries, which have only succeeded imperfectly at replacing lightweight vehicles, hydrogen is already used around the world to power much heavier vehicles:

“Hydrogen powered vehicles, including buses, trucks, trains, forklifts as well as passenger cars are being manufactured by leading automotive companies and deployed worldwide as part of their efforts to decarbonise the transport sector.”

Step back for a moment and you will see that this is, indeed, a displacement activity.  Insofar as humans are currently imagining a far more electrified world, then there is a competition to be won on the best form of energy storage.  And there are good reasons for believing that hydrogen is a more versatile battery than lithium ion (which also has a tendency to burst into flames if not stored properly).  However, this competition is predicated on the highly unlikely possibility of our having a large volume of excess energy in future.

Currently, almost all of the hydrogen we use is obtained by chemically separating it out of natural gas.  Using electrolysis to separate hydrogen out of water is simply too expensive by comparison.  But gas reserves are shrinking (which is why fracking is being promoted) and are already required for agriculture, chemicals, for heating and cooking, and for generating much of the electricity that used to come from coal.  Given the Herculean efforts that were required to install the modern renewables that generate just 1.5 percent of our energy, the idea that these are about to deliver enough excess capacity to allow the production of hydrogen from water is fanciful at best.

And that’s the problem.  Until we can secure a growing energy supply both hydrogen and lithium ion cars are going to end up on a global desert island.  One where there is insufficient power and unrepaired infrastructure.  To make matters worse, climate change dictates that the additional power we need in future cannot come from the fuels that currently provide us with 86 percent of our energy.  And, of course, whatever we end up substituting for fossil fuels will have to provide sufficiently cheap energy that the population doesn’t rise up and produce something a great deal worse than Brexit or Donald Trump.

UPDATE

It finally seems even renewable energy pundits are starting to see the light regarding Hydrogen…..  Renew Economy has just published an article titled Beware fossil-gas suppliers bearing hydrogen gifts

Recently there has been a flood of announcements about renewable hydrogen. Some seem fully legitimate and exciting. But in some others, are we seeing a red-herring not unlike clean-coal? Will the public-relations power of renewable hydrogen be harnessed by fossil-fuel interests only to maintain business-as-usual?

In the Aeneid, Virgil had a warning for the Trojans. Something along the lines of “you better have a squiz at this big wooden horse and see what’s up”.  So let’s take a quick break from “electrifying everything” and look at what’s up with the green hydrogen being spruiked across Australia by fossil-gas suppliers.

In Western Australia, the fossil oil and gas company Woodside says “Green hydrogen is the holy grail and if people want green hydrogen, we’re happy to deliver.” But then Woodside goes on to remind us “currently, the best way to export hydrogen is via LNG” (liquefied fossil gas).

ATCO, the Canadian owner of Western Australia’s fossil gas distribution networks will use renewable hydrogen in the quest of “maximising existing network infrastructure”.

(Note: After years of experience, we now know that Australian utility companies seeking to “maximise energy network infrastructure” whether it’s needed or not, is code for maximising utility company returns while driving up consumer energy costs.)

More at the link……..

Catastrophic Agriculture

Complete and slightly edited interview footage with Richard Manning in 2005 (which explains why he keeps talking about world population of 6 billion…), in preparation for the feature-length documentary What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire, from Timothy S. Bennett and Sally Erickson.

Nearly an hour long, so make sure you get a cup of your favourite poison before starting….

Turning marginal land into fertile soil

Since having my soil epiphany brought on from doing the NRM Small Farm Planning Course, I have been arguing with people who keep banging on about how we have to abandon meat eating to ‘save the planet’….. I disagree.  It’s just another silver bullet, as far as I am concerned, and they simply don’t exist…….  sure, most people might eat too much meat, but for anyone to tell me that marginal land can be turned into crop land, and easily at that, just riles me up……  they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about, nor do they have any experience at doing this.

As I have said before, it took me ten years at my last project to convert that marginal land into something capable of feeding two to three people. Making compost by hand, even when using your own humanure, takes years. And while you are waiting for the soil to improve, you have to buy food from some unsustainable source or other….

From where I sit, we probably have a couple of years of relatively ‘normal’ times left.

Matt smoothing out the terrain

2020 is when things will get suddenly worse, never to improve again. Even if I’m out by as much as five years, it makes no difference at all. The scale of the problem we face is totally out of control.

My current wwoofer, a vegetarian Frenchman who eats non stop (I liken it to livestock eating all day long because grass is useless food…) believes likewise. Even though I am teaching him the hard way how much work is involved!

Unloading another tonne and a quarter of compost

When Glenda was still here, I took her to Hobart to pick up a load of compost (about 1250kg, they are very generous cubic metres down there!) and on the way back, I suspect, the thermostat started playing up making ute I overheat on the big hills between here and there….  I could not even get my market garden close to finished without fossil fuels. Certainly in the time constraint I am feeling every day, as I get older, and 2020 gets closer as the clock ticks away….

I even had to get my neighbour to come back with the excavator to level off the soil we moved at the last Permablitz last year. There’s no way my back would have handled doing it by hand with a shovel. As I keep saying……  the power of fossil fuels.

Adding sheep manure

The soil on the second half of the garden, without the advantage of all that black stuff full of decomposed cow manure we scraped off the drive 18 months ago, was even more marginal than what I started with on the first half. I’ll have to get another four loads – five tonnes – to finish the middle section that still needs doing. Plus I will have to drive god knows how far to get another tonne of Calcium rock to amend the pH of the soil to something veggies will grow in…….

To be sure, the feeding of grain to livestock is pure madness and only done to maximise

Tilling it all in with chickens and the rotary hoe

profits. The meat derived therefrom is not even healthy, as it’s full of Omega 6 fatty acids that cause chronic inflamation.  Is it any wonder so many people are sick with diets like that which all the shops supply to unsuspecting consumers……

George Monbiot’s latest effort is what got me started on this – even though I feel the need to chronicle the improvements happening on the Fanny farm. Monbiot writes

When we feed animals on crops, we greatly reduce the number of people that an area of cropland can support. This is because, on average, around two-thirds of the food value of the crops fed to livestock is lost in conversion from plant to animal.

Of course he’s right….  we should not be feeding crops to animals that are perfectly happy to eat grass! The problem is industrial agriculture, not meat eating. And he’s wrong calling his article “Eating the Earth”, because what we are in fact doing, is eating fossil fuels, and that’s not even close to the same predicament.

And finally, here’s a short video of what two of my neighbours have achieved after attending the above mentioned Small Farm Planing course.

A response to Changing the Conversation

Ed. Note: Richard Smith’s article, Climate Crisis and Managed Deindustrialization: Debating Alternatives to Ecological Collapse, which Saral is responding to this post, can be found on Resilience.org here, or here on DTM where I republished it. My only gripe with Saral’s essay is the total lack of mention of debt abolition…..  canceling debt is the only way forward when we start talking about what to do about all the job losses.

By Saral Sarkar, originally published by Saral Sarkar blog

In his article,¹ Richard calls upon his readers to “change the conversation”. He asks, “What are your thoughts?” He says, if we don’t “come up with a viable alternative, our goose is cooked.” I fully agree. So I join the conversation, in order to improve it.

Let me first say I appreciate Richard’s article very much. It is very useful, indeed necessary, to also present one’s cause in a short article – for those who are interested but, for whatever reason, cannot read a whole book. Richard has ably presented the eco-socialist case against both capitalism and “green” capitalism.

But the alternative Richard has come up with is deficient in one very important respect, namely in respect of viability. Allow me to present here my comradely criticisms. It will be short.

Is only Capitalism the Problem?

(1) Richard writes, “Capitalism, not population is the main driver of planetary ecological collapse … .”. It sounds like an echo of statements from old-Marxist-socialism. It is not serious. Is Richard telling us that, while we are fighting a long-drawn-out battle against capitalism in order to overcome it, we can allow population to continuously grow without risking any further destruction of the environment? Should we then think that a world population of ten billion by 2050 would not be any problem?

I would agree if Richard would say that capitalism is, because of its growth compulsion, one of the main drivers of ecological collapse. But anybody who has learnt even a little about ecology knows that in any particular eco-region, exponential growth of any one species leads to collapse of its ecological balance. If we now think of the planet Earth as one whole eco-region and consider all the scientific reports on rapid bio-diversity loss and rapid dwindling of the numbers of larger animals, then we cannot but correlate these facts with the exponential growth of our own species, homo sapiens sapiens, the latter being the cause of the former two.

No doubt, capitalism – together with the development of technologies, especially agricultural and medical technologies – has largely enabled the huge growth of human numbers in the last two hundred years. But human population growth has been occurring even in pre-capitalist and pre-medieval eras, albeit at a slower rate. Parallel to this, also environmental destruction has been occurring and growing in these eras.

It is not good to tell our readers only half the truth. The whole truth is succinctly stated in the equation:

I = P  x  A  x  T

where I stands for ecological impact (we can also call it ecological destruction), P for population, T for Technology and A for affluence. All these three factors are highly variable. Let me here also quote Paul Ehrlich, one of my teachers in political ecology. Addressing leftists, he once wrote, “Whatever [be] your cause, it is a lost cause unless we control population [growth]”. Note the phrase “whatever your cause”. Ehrlich meant to say, and I too think so, the cause may be environmental protection, saving the earth, protecting biodiversity, overcoming poverty and unemployment, women’s liberation, preventing racist and ethnic conflicts and cleansings, preventing huge unwelcome migration flows, preventing crime, fighting modern-day slavery, bringing peace in the world, creating a socialist world order etc. etc. etc., in all cases stopping population growth is a very important factor. Sure, that will in no case be enough. But that is an essential part of the solutions.

Note that in the equation cited above, there is no mention of capitalism. Instead, we find there the two factors technology and affluence. We can call (and we generally do call) the product of T x A (production of affluence by means of industrial technologies) industrialism, of which there has until now been two main varieties: the capitalist one and the planned socialist one (of the soviet type). Nothing will be gained for saving the ecological balance of the Earth if only capitalism is replaced with socialism, and ruling socialists then try to increase production at a higher rate, which they must do under the pressure of a growing population which, moreover, develops higher ambitions and aspirations, and demands all the good things that middle class Americans enjoy.

(2) Modern-day old-socialists do not deny the existence of an ecological problem. They have also developed several pseudo-solutions such as “clean” and “renewable” energies and materials, efficiency revolution, decoupling of GDP growth from resource use etc.

It’s good that Richard rejects the idea that green capitalism can save us. But why can’t it? “Because”, he writes, “companies can’t commit economic suicide to save the humans. There’s just no solution to our crisis within the framework of any conceivable capitalism.” This is good, but not enough. Because there are old-socialists (I know many in Germany) who believe that it is only individual capitalists/companies and the system capitalism that are preventing a rapid transition to 100 percent clean renewable energies and 100 percent recycling of all materials. Thanks to these possibilities, they believe, old-socialist type of industrialism, and even economic and population growth, can be reconciled with the requirements of sustainability. I don’t think that is possible, and I have also earlier elaborately explained why.² Said briefly, “renewable energies” are neither clean nor renewable, and 100 percent recycling is impossible because the Entropy Law also applies to matter. What Richard thinks is not clear from this article of his. It is necessary to make his thoughts on this point clear.

Is Bottom-up Democracy of Any Use in the Transition Period?

(3) Richard writes, “Rational planning requires bottom-up democracy.” I do not understand the connection between the two, planning and democracy. At the most, one could say that for better planning for the villages, the planning commission should also listen to the villagers. But at the national level? Should, e.g., the inhabitants of each and every 500 souls village in the Ganges basin codetermine in a bottom up democratic planning process how the waters of the said river and its tributaries should be distributed among ca. 500 million inhabitants of the basin? If that were ever to be attempted, the result would be chaos, not planning. Moreover, how do you ensure that the villagers are capable of understanding the national interest and overcoming their particular interests? Such phrases are only illusions.

In his 6^th thesis, Richard sketches a rosy, idealistic picture of a future eco-socialist society and its citizens. That may be attractive for him, me and other eco-socialists. But this future lies in distant future. First we would need a long transition period of contracting economies, and that would cause a lot of pain to millions of people spoilt by consumerism or promises of a consumerist future. We shall have to convince such people, and that would be an altogether difficult job. We should tell them the truth, namely that austerity is necessary for saving the earth. We can promise them only one thing, namely that all the pains and burdens as well as the benefits of austerity will be equitably distributed among all.

What to Do About Jobs?

(4) Richard writes: “Needless to say, retrenching and closing down such industries would mean job losses, millions of jobs from here to China. Yet if we don’t shut down those unsustainable industries, we’re doomed.” And then he puts the question “What to do?” We can be sure that all people who wholly depend on a paid job for their livelihood, whom we must also win over, will confront us with this jobs question. Let me finish my contribution to this conversation with an answer to this question. 

There is not much use talking to ourselves, the already converted. We need to start work, immediately and all over the world, especially in those countries where poverty and unemployment is very high. We know that, generally, these countries are also those where population growth is very high. People from the rich countries cannot simply tell their people, sorry, we have to close down many factories and we cannot further invest in industrializing your countries. But the former can tell the latter that they can help them in controlling population growth. The latter will understand easily that it is an immediately effective way to reduce poverty and unemployment. A massive educative campaign will of course be necessary in addition to concrete monetary and technical help.

In the rich countries, contrary to what Richard perhaps thinks, it will not be possible to provide new equivalent jobs to replace those jobs we need to abolish. For such countries, reducing working hours and job-sharing in the short term, and, in the long term, ostracizing automation and labor-saving technologies, and using labor-intensive methods of production instead, are together the only solution. That is already known. Another thing that would be needed is to negate free trade and international competition. However, it must also be said openly that high wages and salaries cannot be earned under such circumstances. 

We eco-socialist activists must begin the work with a massive world-wide political campaign in favor of such ideas and policies.

Notes and References

1. Smith, Richard (2017) “ Climate Crisis and Managed Deindustrialization: Debating Alternatives to Ecological Collapse.”
https://forhumanliberation.blogspot.de/2017/11/2753-climate-crisis-and-managed.html
and
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/11/21/climate-crisis-and-managed-deindustrialization-debating-alternatives-ecological

2. My views expressed in this article have been elaborately presented in my book:
Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity’s Fundamental Choices (1999). London: Zed Books,  and in various articles published in my blog-site
www.eco-socialist.blogspot.com

No Soil & Water Before 100% Renewable Energy

Hot on the heels of my last post from someone else who has given up campaigning for renewable energy, comes this amazing article that defines why it’s all a futile effort…. I am beginning to think it is all starting to catch on…..

After all, excessive energy use got us into this mess, more energy will not get us out. As Susan Krumdieck says, the problem is not a lack of renewable energy, it’s too much fossil fuel consumption…….

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Many say we can have 100% renewable energy by 2050. This is factually incorrect.

We can have 100% renewable electricity production by 2050.

But electricity production is only 18% of total world energy demand.

82% of total world energy demand is NOT electricity production.

The other 82% of the world’s energy is used to extract minerals to make roads, cement, bricks, glass, steel and grow food so we can eat and sleep. Solar panels and wind turbines will not be making cement or steel anytime soon. Why? Do you really want to know? Here we go.

TWED = Total World Energy Demand

18% of TWED is electrical grid generation.

82% of TWED is not electrical grid generation.

In 20 years, solar & wind energy is up from 1% to 3% of TWED.

Solar & wind power are projected to provide 6% of TWED by 2030.

When you hear stories about solar & wind generating
50% of all humanity’s electrical power by 2050,
that’s really only 9% of TWED because
100% of electrical production is 18% of TWED.

But, it takes 10X as much solar & wind energy to close 1 fossil fuel power plant simply because they don’t produce energy all the time.

Reference Link: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n6/full/nclimate1451.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201206

Reference Link:
https://citizenactionmonitor.wordpress.com/2015/12/27/renewable-energy-hope-or-hype/

That means it will take 10 X 18% of TWED to close all fossil power plants with intermittent power.

Research says it will take 4 X 82% of TWED for a 100% renewable energy transition. But then again, whoever trusts research?

10 X 18% + 4 X 82% = 100% Renewable TWED.

CONCLUSION:
We require 10X the fossil electrical grid energy we use now just to solve 18% of the emissions problem with solar & wind power. This also means that even if we use 100% efficient Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) for all the world’s electricity generation, we would still only prevent 18% of our emissions. 100% efficient CCS is very unlikely. Switching to electric vehicles would only double electrical demand while most of our roads are made out of distilled oil sludge.

These figures do not include massive electrical storage and grid infrastructure solar & wind require. Such infrastructure is hundreds of millions of tons of materials taking decades to construct, demanding even more energy and many trillions of dollars. With that kind of money in the offing, you can see why some wax over-enthused.

Solar & wind systems last 30 years meaning we will always have to replace them all over the world again 50% sooner than fossil power plants.

Solar and wind power are an energy trap.

It takes 1 ton of coal to make 6-12 solar panels.

Business As Usual = BAU

In 15 years 40% of humanity will be short of water with BAU.

In 15 years 20% of humanity will be severely short of water.

Right now, 1 billion people walk a mile every day for water.

In 60 years humanity will not have enough soil to grow food says Scientific American. They call it, “The End of Human Agriculture.” Humanity’s soil is eroding and degrading away at 24 million acres per year.  And, when they say 60 years they don’t mean everything is wonderful until the last day of the 59th year. We will feel the heat of those words in much less than 30 years. Soil loss rates will only increase with severe droughts, storms and low-land floods. Here’s what BAU really looks like.

50% of humanity’s soil will be gone in 30 years.

50% of humanity will lack water in 30 years.

50% of humanity will go hungry in 30 years.

A 100% TWED transition takes 50 years minimum. It is a vastly more difficult and complex goal than you are told.

Reference Link:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/12/four-billion-people-face-severe-water-scarcity-new-research-finds

Reference Link:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/

We are losing earth’s soil and fresh water faster than we can effect 100% renewable TWED.

In 25 years civilization will end says Lloyds of London and the British Foreign Office.

In my opinion, in 30 years we won’t have enough fossil fuel for a 100% renewable TWED transition.

This is the most important fact I’ve learned:

Renewable Energy is Unsustainable
without massive energy demand destruction

Humanity will destroy its soil and water faster than we can switch to renewable energy with BAU. We cannot sustain economic growth with renewable energy. Without massive political-economic change, civilization will collapse with 100% certainty. But, don’t worry, I like to fix things.

Animal Agriculture = AA

Humans + Livestock = 97% of the weight of all land vertebrate biomass

Humans + Livestock = 80% of the cause of all land-air extinctions

Humans + Livestock = 50% of the use of all land surface area

Humans + Livestock = 40% consumption of all land plant growth *
* Net Primary Production.

50% of the soy grown in South America is shipped over to China to feed their pigs. Rainforests and deep-rooted scrub are cleared to grow animals & feed so that their required fresh water is in reality a sky river exported in boats to China and Europe leaving little moisture in the air to reach São Paulo. Since rainforest roots are so thick they don’t require very much, or even good, soil;  this leaves rainforest soil so poor and thin that it degrades and erodes faster when exposed to the elements.

The Himalayan mountains are heating 2X faster than the planet and many fear that China will run out of water in 15 years by 2030.

50% of China’s rivers have vanished since 1980.

60% of China’s groundwater is too poisoned to touch.

50% of China’s cropland is too poisoned to safely grow food.

Animal Agriculture will destroy our soil and water long before we can effect 100% intermittent TWED transition with BAU.

BAU means 7 billion people will not stop eating meat and wasting food without major $$$ incentive. Meaning a steadily rising carbon tax on meat. Just saying that can get you killed in some places.

Without using James Hansen’s 100% private tax dividends to carbon tax meat consumption out of the market earth will die. 100% private tax dividends means 100% for you, 0% for government.

100% for you, 
    0% for gov.

The funny thing is that meat and fire saved our ancestors from extinction and now meat and fire will cause mass extinction of all the life we love on earth. Survival is not an optional menu item as is eating meat. We have to act now, not 5 years from now, or forever be not remembered as the least greatest generation because there’ll be no one left to remember us.

Michael Mann says we will lock-in a 2 degree temperature rise in 3 years for 2036 with BAU. Ocean fish will be gone in less than 25 years simply because of the BAU of meat consumption. The BAU of fishing kills everything in its path producing lots of waste kill. We are stealing all the Antarctic Ocean’s krill just to sell as a health supplement. You can learn a lot about fishing by watching “Cowspiracy” on Netflix.

We cannot let governments get control of carbon markets like how Sanders, Klein and McKibben want government to get 40% of your carbon tax dividend money. Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben are funded by the Rockefellers. Klein’s latest video about herself was funded by the oil-invested Ford Foundation. This is 100% in direct opposition to James Hansen’s tax dividend plan and immoral. Hansen said that governments should get 0% of that money, not 40%.  I strongly believe your carbon dividends should be in a new open-source world e-currency directly deposited to your phone to be phased in over 10 years. But, I’m kinda simple that way.

Google: Rockefellers fund Bill McKibben. Believe me, the Rockefellers don’t fund 350.org out of the kindness of their hearts. To learn why they would do such a thing, you can watch the educational video at the bottom of this page.

Reference Link:
Rockefellers behind ‘scruffy little outfit’

Reference Link:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/12/04/can-climate-change-cure-capitalism/

James Hansen repeated at COP21 that his 100% private carbon tax dividends would unite Democrats and Republicans because government would be 100% excluded. Socialists like Sanders, Klein and McKibben want government to control 40% of that money. They are divisive and Republicans will never accept their revolutionary rhetoric. We don’t have time for this endless fighting. Forget the Socialist vs. Capitalistmentality. We barely even have time to unite, and nothing unites like money. Environmentalism in the 21st century is about a revolving door of money and power for elite socialists and capitalists. Let’s give everyone a chance to put some skin in the game.

Reference Link: http://grist.org/climate-energy/sanders-and-boxer-introduce-fee-and-dividend-climate-bill-greens-tickled-pink/

What humans & livestock have done so far:

We are eating up our home.

99% of Rhinos gone since 1914.

97% of Tigers gone since 1914.

90% of Lions gone since 1993.

90% of Sea Turtles gone since 1980.

90% of Monarch Butterflies gone since 1995.

90% of Big Ocean Fish gone since 1950.

80% of Antarctic Krill gone since 1975.

80% of Western Gorillas gone since 1955.

60% of Forest Elephants gone since 1970.

50% of Great Barrier Reef gone since 1985.

40% of Giraffes gone since 2000.

30% of Marine Birds gone since 1995.

70% of Marine Birds gone since 1950.

28% of Land Animals gone since 1970.

28% of All Marine Animals gone since 1970.

97% – Humans & Livestock are 97% of land-air vertebrate biomass.

10,000 years ago we were 0.01% of land-air vertebrate biomass.

Humans and livestock caused 80% of land-air vertebrate species extinctions and occupy half the land on earth. Do you think the new 2-child policy in China favours growth over sustainability? The Zika virus could be a covert 1% population control measure for all I know. Could the 1% be immune? I don’t know, but I know this…

1 million humans, net, added to earth every 4½ days.

http://www.vox.com/2016/1/30/10872878/world-population-map

Transportation: How long can we adapt before we fall off the Net Energy Cliff?

This is an older post (2014) from Alice Friedemann’s blog, which somehow flew under the radar……. There is one bullet point in this that stunned me:

1. America is likely to be outbid by China, India, etc., for oil exports.  At China’s current growth rate, China alone would consume ALL exported oil by 2020.

IF you have been following this humble blog long enough, you might know that I’ve been ‘forecasting’ that Australia will be totally out of oil by around 2020, and will therefore need to import 100% of our liquid fuel needs…….  what happens then?

When I asked Alice for more details, she replied “I suspect when I wrote this it was common knowledge, they’re rising empires as other nation fade. But now with China’s housing and other bubbles, and the corruption in both China and India, and ecological destruction, it’s probably not true now. I’ve met Australians who fear a China invasion someday but don’t know how realistic that is.”

Furthermore, as China’s spectacular growth rates have somewhat shrunk, we may get a few more years relief…. but how long will it last? Here’s Alice’s post, very interesting as usual….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

The problem we face is a liquid fuel crisis.  Absolutely essential vehicles, such as agricultural tractors and combines, railroads, and trucks run on diesel fuel, ships on bunker fuel.  They can never be battery or fuel-cell operated or electrified, nor do we have the decades it would take to build a new fleet even if there were a solution.

In 2011, the United States burned 29021 trillion BTU’s of mainly petroleum for transportation to move 13 billion tons of freight, worth $11.8 trillion, for 3.5 trillion ton-miles:

• Trucks: 69%  1.4 trillion miles  9.0 billion tons
• Trains: 15%   1.3 trillion miles  1.9 billion tons
• Ships:   3%

Non-essential Transportation Fuel can be given to Trucks & Trains (see Table 1 below)

1) Cars (28%) and light trucks (26%) use 55% of transportation fuel.  All of that 55% could be shifted to essential vehicles.  Implication: That would force anyone who wasn’t 100% self-sufficient to move to a town or city because country gas stations will be closed (though rural freeway stations would remain open for essential long-distance trucks).  Also, petroleum will mainly be refined into diesel (this is already happening actually), which gasoline cars can’t burn.

2) Let’s give most of this fuel to essential vehicles: 7% air travel, 1% recreational water boats, 3% Construction and Mining, 1% recreational vehicles (snowmobiles, etc).  That’s another 11% shifted to essential vehicles (leaving 1% for the above, mainly to maintain and fix infrastructure).

3) Essential vehicles: 20% Medium (class 3-6) and Heavy trucks (class 7-8), 4% ships, 2% rail freight, 3% pipelines, 2% agricultural.  A lot of this freight isn’t essential, so about half of this, 15%, can be saved by not shipping non-essential cargo and shipping essential goods shorter distances.

Essential transportation has been given 81% of diesel from other non-essential sources (55% + 11% + 15%).

Meanwhile, production of oil will be dropping off rapidly, because:

1. Global peak oil production was reached in 2005
2. Oil producing countries will export less because they’re using more oil themselves (ELM model)
3. America is likely to be outbid by China, India, etc., for oil exports.  At China’s current growth rate, China alone would consume ALL exported oil by 2020.
4. The net energy cliff and the decline in the RATE of what we can get out of the ground now that petroleum is gunky and in remote places.
5. The financial system can interfere with oil production —  when credit dries up after the next financial crash, the money to drill won’t be available.

Optimistic scenario: 20 years before we hit the wall 

The likely decline rate is expected to accelerate. We’ve been on a plateau since 2005, but once production heads downhill, here’s a guess at what the decline rate might be per year: 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, 8%, 9%, and 10% from then on.

But not to worry, we’ve got some wiggle room. Remember, of the grand total of 29021 trillion BTU’s of petroleum burned in America (Table 1 below), 81% was reassigned from non-essential vehicles and cargo to essential agriculture, railroads, trucks, industrial infrastructure equipment, and miscellaneous important vehicles (ambulances, police cars, military, etc).

The other 19% — 5,541 trillion BTU — is the rock-bottom amount we need to  keep society going.

With a 4/5/6/7/8/9/10/10 /10/….. decline rate scenario, we’ll dip below the essential transportation fuel needed 16 years from now.

Of course, we can import/export less cargo, grow food locally, stop immigration, encourage 1-child families, ship goods shorter distances, and many other oil-reducing strategies as well.  This is when techno-optimists have a chance to shine, and Postcarbon, Bay Localize, Transition Towns, and many other groups help governments and communities adapt.  If all goes well, panic is avoided, and diesel fuel can be stretched out even further, that could delay collapse another 4 years.

Pessimistic scenario: 1-12 years before we hit the wall

What if states that produce energy and/or have refineries stop sharing diesel and gasoline with other states at some point? In that case, Alaska, California, Texas, Louisiana, etc., might last longer than 20 years and other states would hit the wall sooner.

Also, there are many black swans.  Here’s some wild guesses about how soon collapse might come if one of them strikes:

1 year if there’s a small nuclear war, China or some other nation takes down America’s electric grid(s) in a cyberwar, or a world war erupts.

2-5 years if there’s a major disaster, because that will probably bring down the financial system and also drive up prices of oil, natural gas, electricity, wood, cement, steel, and other resources needed to recover with.

• Hurricanes take out Gulf Coast refineries or drown New York city.
• Tsunamis or an Earthquake in Tokyo, Los Angeles, San Francisco.
• ARKStorm in California.
• Volcanic Eruptions in Japan, United States, and so on.
• Anothe Fukushima or Chernobyl event at a nuclear power plant  near a major city

3-8 years if the financial system collapses and several other events are triggered, such as social chaos, no credit left for new oil wells to be drilled, and other knock-on effects.

5 years if nations go back to negotiating deals between producing and non-producing nations and bypass the international oil market. That could suddenly cut off America’s oil imports. We’re already seeing this with the historic deal Russia and China just cut for natural gas. China, India, and other countries can afford to pay more than the United States for oil. Other nations are far closer to Russia and OPEC nations, where 83% of world reserves lie.

8-10 years if America decides to go back to the Middle east to keep other nations from getting the 2/3 of oil reserves there. Our military can’t fight without oil, so that means a lot less for everyone else

Okay. I’m going to stop guessing.  I have no idea how much sooner collapse would occur given various events, or what the actual decline rates will be.  But here are a few more black swans to think about:

• Oil shocks make investors “Peak Oil Aware” and world-wide stock markets crash
• Decline rates even higher than posited above due to a combination of the Export Land Model and middle eastern countries having lied about how much oil reserves they had.
• Oil choke-points are blocked by terrorists or nearby nations
• War breaks out in the Middle East
• Peak coal, peak natural gas, peak uranium, peak sand, peak water, peak topsoil, peak phosphorous, etc
• Electric grid outages increasingly common
• Our infrastructure is falling apart, many bridges are beyond their life-span or dangerously in need of repair, ports, energy pipelines, water treatment, sewage treatment, and other essential infrastructure has a life-span less than 50 years. The steel is rusting and the concrete is falling apart.

So, what do you think?