Community Action Plans - Energy Policy

This is the third of a series of essays about what communities need to be doing to get ready for the future, considering the various economic, environmental and energy-related problems our civilization is facing. The first installment was on Food & Water and the second was on Transportation Systems & Building Community. Be sure not to miss upcoming installments by subscribing to the Sustainable Future website (it is free, of course). The sign-up box can be found at the top of the right-hand column.

Energy Policy

Energy issues loom large for most communities. Oil and coal are heavy polluters, and finite resources. Oil fields world-wide are already in decline. Communities must look to other sources of energy, preferably to clean, renewable sources. One valuable source is energy efficiency.

Amory Lovin of the Rocky Mountain Institute argues in favor of what he refers to as "radical resource efficiency" and points out that saving energy costs less than buying it. Radical resource efficiency is just what it sounds like - the act of achieving maximum efficiency in the use of resources, such as energy. This includes using energy efficient technology as well as designing and planning homes, businesses, communities and lifestyles in such a way as to achieve maximum efficiency.

"Without much effort, the almost 500 million citizens of the European Union could reduce their energy use by one-fifth, studies have found. That would add up to savings of roughly €60 billion ($79 billion) per year. Such huge sums become less abstract when broken down to household level: An average family could save from €200 to €1,000 by using their energy more efficiently." -- Alexander Jung, Why Conservation is the World's Best Energy Source

For more on resource & energy efficiency, please check out my Resource Miser newsletter.


Local governments can do much to encourage energy efficiency:

Start by making local government buildings & vehicle fleets as energy efficient as possible.
All vehicles purchased by local governments in the future should be electric, natural gas or flex-fuel (electric for small vehicles, natural gas or flex for trucks & buses).
Make energy efficiency a high priority in local building codes.

Reduce urban sprawl (see Transportation Systems & Building Community).

Local governments should also encourage the development of clean renewable energy in their area. Clean renewable energy sources include solar, wind, geothermal and hydro (including wave & tidal). Biomass and biofuels are also renewable sources and cleaner than oil & coal. Hydrogen is often talked about, but highly problematic since it will require technological breakthroughs before it can become a real solution. Nuclear energy is expensive, but produces no greenhouse gases. A number of environmental activists who previously were part of the anti-nuke movement have now embraced nuclear energy as part of the solution to climate change (see the essay The Resurgence of Nuclear Energy for more details).

Building the infrastructure needed (smart grids) to transport the energy to the end-users and removing restrictions that prevent the development of renewable energy are the two most important ways governments can promote renewable energy in their regions. Tax-incentives and direct grants are two other possibilities.

Local community colleges and state universities should offer programs in renewable energy technology. Unemployment programs should include training in renewable energy.

New study backs UN panel on ocean rise

Fears of ice melt raising sea levels several meters by 2100 are turning out to be baseless. Most recent studies, such as the one reported below, are showing a sea level rise between only a half-foot to two feet at most. This greatly reduces the devastation predicted by doomsday scenarios, but remains a major difficulty for very low-lying coastal areas, such as the Mississippi delta among many others.

New study backs UN panel on ocean rise

AFP, July 26, 2009

The UN's climate panel has been backed over a key question as to how far global warming will drive up sea levels this century, a study published on Sunday says.

The UN experts are right that the oceans are unlikely to rise by an order of metres (many feet) by 2100, as some scientists have feared, it says.

But, its authors caution, low-lying countries and delta areas could still face potentially catastrophic flooding if the upper range of the new estimate proves right.

In a landmark report in 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted oceans would rise by 18-59 centimetres (7.2 and 23.6 inches) by 2100.

The increase would depend on warming, estimated at between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius (1.98-11.52 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, which in turn depends on how much man-made greenhouse gas is poured into the atmosphere.

It based the calculation on thermal expansion of the seas -- when a liquid is warmed, it grows in volume.

Harder to calculate, the IPCC admitted, was how far meltwater from glaciers and icesheets on land would boost sea levels.

It ventured a provisional calculation, suggesting contributions from those sources could push the upper limit to 76 cms (30.4 inches).

The new paper, led by Mark Siddall of Britain's University of Bristol, used data from fossilised coral and from ice-core measurements to reconstruct sea-level fluctuations over the past 22,000 years, from the height of the last Ice Age to the balmy era of today.

This century, they calculate, the seas will rise by between seven and 82 cms, all sources included, on the basis of a 1.1-6.4 C (1.98-11.52 F) warming -- an estimated increase that is in the same ballpark as the IPCC's.

The study appears in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"Given that the two approaches are entirely independent of each other, this result strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results," said Siddall.

Read the full article by clicking here.

Very Bad Planet Earth Events

[This post is the fourth part of a larger essay (part three was posted earlier today). Click the links to read the first part, the second part and the third part.]

Natural Disasters

Much of what I have written about is the need to avoid man-made disasters that could threaten our civilization such climate change and desertification induced by our activities, or our using up of non-renewable resources (peak oil, etc.). The issues are very real and immediate. We are already experiencing problems that we have caused.

But the threats to human civilization are not just man-made. There are a variety of very real, very natural, disasters that potentially could destroy human civilization.

Although much of the current climate change is caused or made worse by mankind's activities, climate change is also a natural phenomenon. Our planet has gone, and will continue to go through, a variety of climate cycles - from ice ages to periods of intense heat and drought. Either could destroy human civilization and eliminate our species and the majority of other species currently abundant.

Asteroid impacts, comet impacts, super-volcanoes, unusual solar activity - all have the potential to to wipe out human civilization. And these are not hypotheticals - things that some scientists are theorizing about. All are real threats that have actually happened in the past and certainly will happen again in the future.

Much is made of the current rate of extinction of plants and animals. This current extinction event is laid at the feet of mankind. But there have been multiple extinction events in the past, none of which can in any way be blamed on mankind because we did not yet exist. The universe is a dangerous place. Dangers imposed by mankind are among the least.

John Young, a geologist, astronaut and one of only a handful of people to ever walk on the Moon, has written on the subject of what he calls Very Bad Planet Earth Events (click the link to read his essay). His conclusion, and that of many other scientists, is that the only way to ensure mankind's permenant survival is to inhabit multiple worlds.

"The human race is at total war. Our enemy is ignorance, pure and simple. The last 25 years of NASA's Solar System exploration including Earth is telling us what we need to do to preserve our species. This new knowledge is useless unless we act on it. Large volcanoes on Earth, giant impacts on Earth, or unreliable solar activity cannot be ignored. Historical statistics show that these events are likely in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Knowing what we know now, we are being irresponsible in our failure to make the scientific and technical progress we will need for protecting our newly discovered severely threatened and probably endangered species -- us. NASA is not about the 'Adventure of Human Space Exploration,' we are in the deadly serious business of saving the species. All Human Exploration's bottom line is about preserving our species over the long haul. " --John Young

If we were to be hit by another large asteroid, such as the one that finished off the dinosaurs, human civilization would be completely destroyed, if it is completely Earth-bound. However, if by the time that asteroid hits, human civilization has advanced to the point that we have outposts on the Moon and a functioning colony on Mars, then our civilization will survive. Or, more likely, our space-faring civilization will have been able to detect the approaching asteroid in time to either divert it or to accomplish a partial planetary evacuation.

I know there are some who don't won't to take into consideration such Very Bad Planet Earth Events, but refusal to consider those events doesn't eliminate the likelihood of them occurring at some point in the future. As I said earlier, these aren't hypothetical problems. They are very real problems that have occurred multiple times in the past and will occur again at some point.

Earth-stewardship and green-tech alone offer no hope against these events, therefore they are ultimately not sustainable over the very long run. They can only make human civilization sustainable until the next global natural disaster.

Sustainability, Carrying Capacity, Impact

[This post is part of a larger essay. Click the links to read the first part and the second part.]

Sustainability

I think I need to more clearly define what I mean by sustainability: By "a sustainable future" I mean the ability for human civilization to continue indefinitely. My goal is for human civilization to still exist 10,000 year from now, 100,000 years from now and even one million years from now.

To achieve this goal, we have to do one of two things. Either we have to learn to live within the finite Earth system or we have to break free of the limitations of it (becoming a high tech, space faring civilization). Of course, we could do both.

The problem our civilization faces is that we currently are exceeding the Earth's carry capacity. Simply put, we are using too much, too fast of the Earth's resources. The Earth is simply unable to replenish those resources or to repair the environmental damage at a fast enough rate to keep up. Thus we have the many problems that are challenging our civilization - such as peak oil, climate change, the freshwater crisis, depletion of once-fertile soils, growing desertification and lost biodiversity.

As I have said before, there are only two ways to address the problem. We must either consume less resources or find more resources. Within a finite system, ultimately there is only one way - consume less.

Our impact on the carrying capacity of the planet is a combination of population and our consumption of resources. Our population is currently about 6,770,000,000 and growing. Our consumption is a combination of what is needed provide the needs of that population (food, water, air, clothing, shelter, sanitation, etc.) plus our economic activity and technology (all technology consumes resources).

There is no doubt that our current impact far exceeds the Earth's carrying capacity, and has since at least the start of the Industrial Revolution if not before. In the best case scenario, the impact level we have to return to in order for our civilization to be sustainable within a finite system is the level that existed in approximately the year 1750 (world population estimated at 750 million).

We can do this by reducing both population and consumption levels back to the levels of 1750. Or, if we want to allow for higher population levels we can reduce consumption even more. If we cut consumption to half that of 1750, we can double the population to 1.5 billion. If we cut consumption levels to a quarter, we can double the population once again to 3 billion. If we want a population level of six billion (still below current levels), then the 1750 consumption level must be cut to 1/8.

It is a simple algebra problem. If the 1750 impact is I, population is P and average consumption rate is C, then we must keep the following formula balanced: P(C) = I. Raise P and you must lower C by an equal amount. Or if you raise C, then you must lower P by an equal amount.

Of course this assumes that the impact in 1750 was sustainable. That certainly can be argued, though I don't see how it can be argued that civilization has been sustainable within a finite system at any time after the start of the industrial revolution. Whatever the maximum value of I is, it must be not greater than the Earth's carrying capacity and the formula P(C) = I must be balanced (meaning more population must be balanced with less consumption, or higher consumption with less population).

A final consideration is that due to the damage we have already done, the Earth's carrying capacity today might actually be lower than what it was in 1750.

{The discussion is continued in the next post.}

Which Path and Why

[This post continues my essay from earlier today, The Problem of a Finite System.]

In my earlier essay, I posited two possible solutions to the problem our civilization faces - that of living within a finite system and over-consuming its resources. There are only two possible solutions: 1- stop all growth (population, economic, technological, etc.) and undergo a period of contraction to a point that our civilization becomes sustainable; or 2- remove ourselves from the limitations of a finite system (a path necessitating constant growth - from harvesting resources near the Earth such as space-based solar energy production and mining the Moon & asteroids for resources, to eventually colonizing Mars and beyond. I further posited that there are a number of problems with each of these solutions.

In this part of the discussion, I want to examine those problems.

No Guarantees

The first problem is that neither option can guarantee achieving our goal of a sustainable human civilization.

The solution of removing ourselves from a finite system requires not only developing and mastering a variety of technologies, but doing so within the context of (still) limited resources which are being fast consumed. The clock is ticking on any window of opportunity to develop a high-tech civilization beyond the limitations of the Earth. Eventually, time will run out. In addition, I see don't see any of the powers-that-be rallying to the idea of pushing into space to harvest its resources.*

The solution of stopping all growth and contracting to a sustainable size also has several difficulties.

For one, it would require greatly reducing human population, not just stopping its growth. We would have to return to, at best, to the population and consumption levels immediately prior to the Industrial Revolution (say, 1750 with an estimated population of 750 million - a reduction of almost six billion people)**.

We would not only have to figure out a way to accomplish this, but we would have to do so within the context of the current over-consumption of limited resources. In other words, time is ticking on any window of opportunity to accomplish a contraction of human civilization in a managed way. Considering the failures of both official mandatory population controls (China) and non-mandatory programs - both official and unofficial - worldwide, I see no reason to believe human population growth can be stopped, much less greatly reversed, within a few generations.

At best, and with great effort, population growth can be slowed. Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute have done much research on slowing human population growth by attacking poverty and women's education. They have shown that societies with less poverty and a higher level of education among women naturally have less children, and have them later, thus slowing population growth. But slow growth isn't good enough for this scenario to work. For the solution of a much smaller human civilization to work, it requires human civilization to actually become much, much smaller.

In the wake of failure to create a managed population decline, there is the reality of an unmanaged decline - violence, war, pestilence, drought, famine... Imagine things getting bad enough to wipe out nearly 95% of the human population within only a few generations. I find that unacceptable.

Another problem is that even if stopping growth and contracting to a sustainable size can occur, it may be too late. The climate is already changing, many freshwater supplies have already been damaged or greatly drained (some permanently so, such as the Ogallala aquifer under the Plains of North America), once-rich soils have been depleted, desertification is growing worldwide, and lost biodiversity cannot be recovered (except perhaps through millions of years of evolution). To that extent, calls to reduce human population & consumption of the planet's resources are similar to telling a child to be careful where he throws his ball after he has already broken the window.

The damage has already been done.

{Note: there is another set of reasons to argue against a smaller human civilization in order to create a sustainable future, but I will discuss that set in a later post in this series.}

My Choice

Examining the situation in the harsh light of reality, I can see no way to manage a sharp decline in human population and consumption within the relatively short time span that exists (a few generations at most).

Further, I find an unmanaged decline too horrific to be acceptable, though unfortunately a real possibility.

Which leaves the technology-based solution as the only acceptable alternative for me. Luckily, I do strongly believe in the possibilities provided by science and technology. I am somewhat less enthusiastic about the political will of the powers-that-be, and am greatly concerned by the financial cost, the resource limitations and the short time frame we have to work with.

My idea, of which I can offer no honest guarantees of its ultimate success, is to use Earth-stewardship ideas and green technology to buy us the time and resources we need to pursue a high-tech, space-faring civilization.


What Happens If It Doesn't Work Out?

What happens if we fail to achieve my vision of high-tech, space-faring civilization? Then we go into a chaotic, unmanagered decline and face eventual extinction as a civilization and as a species. Same as would happen if we fail to stop all growth and to contract in a managed way to population level and consumption rate that would be sustainable (much, much smaller than our current levels).

Failure to achieve either solution leads to the same disaster. So it is a choice of which solution offers the best chance of success. I see no path to success with managed population & consumption decline. I see a potential path to success (though not an easy one) with the technology based solution.

[More to come in the next post.]

Footnotes

*The possible exceptions to this are China and India, which both seem to be seriously eyeing the possibility of harvesting space-based resources. However, the space programs of both nations are far behind the USA, Russia and even the Europeans - all with space programs that seem to flounder from a lack vision and motivation. The democratic nature of all but the Chinese also contributes to difficulty with long-range planning since elected governments tend to only think as far out as the next election, and priorities change with each newly elected government.

**Even this estimate may be over-generous. There is some evidence that human civilization passed the sustainable mark even before the Industrial Revolution. Studies in Medieval demography indicate that the period of the "great clearances" in Europe during the 11th century resulted in a population boom and much ecological damage that lead to calamities of later centuries, such as the Great Famine, the Black Death and even the Hundred Years War. The resulting population decline was not reversed until the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions of which we are still benefiting today. Therefore, population & consumption levels from just prior to this time period may be more appropriate as a goal (say the year 950 with an estimated worldwide population of 300 million).

The Problem of a Finite System

[Note: This essay comes out of a discussion in the comments section of my recent post Honesty, hope, optimism and a sense of balance.]

Lessons From Australia

I watched a documentary earlier this week on the death of the mega-fauna of Australia, which occurred shortly after the first humans arrived. It has long been a mystery as too what caused the die-off since it is thought that the earliest humans in Australia lacked the technological prowess to hunt them to extinction.

The newest theory is now that humans did indeed cause the mass extinction, just not through over-hunting.

What is known is that the early inhabitants in Australia practiced a form of slash-and-burn agriculture called fire-stick farming. Research has shown that this constant burning and re-burning of Australia's vegetation caused a massive change in the flora over a very short time-frame, removing from the ecosystem the easy-to-digest food of the mega-herbivores, causing their extinction.

The loss of the mega-herbivores in turn caused the extinction of the mega-predators.

The ultimate cause of our civilization's problems is our use of technology to simply overwhelm our environment. It works for a while - I am sure those early Australians ate well with their fire-stick farming techniques. And our modern industrial society has had a great run with life expectancy near 80 years in many countries.

A Finite System

Earth is a finite system. By that I mean there is a limit on how much resources are available for our civilization to use. There is only a certain amount of oil, natural gas and coal - major sources of industrial society's energy. Uranium, copper, zinc, phosphorous and any other metal or mineral you can name also exist in finite amount on the Earth. Our ability to grow food is limited by the availability of healthy soils and freshwater supplies (not to mention the heavy dependence of modern agricultural methods on inputs from petroleum). Even the air we breathe is a finite supply; if we pollute it beyond the Earth's ability to cleanse/recycle it we are stuck with the consequences.

Because of these limits, constant growth within a finite system cannot be sustained forever. We are already seeing the consequences of the massive population, economic and technological growth of the past few hundred years - deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, loss of healthy soils, peak oil, damage to our freshwater supplies, and sharp increases in greenhouse gases and pollutants in the atmosphere among many other consequences.

Scientists estimate that our civilization is now consuming resources at a rate greater than the Earth's capacity to replenish/repair (rates of consumption of individual resources vary greatly, with some being consumed less and some much more). That pace is simply unsustainable, and in fact is damaging the the ecosystem. We are fouling our nest, perhaps someday to the point that human civilization can no longer survive.

Yes, we may be able to do some things in the way of recycling, new technologies, increased efficiencies and so forth, to extend our civilization's lifespan a bit longer. But ultimately there are only two possible solutions to how to survive within a finite system.

Potential Solutions

1- Stop all growth. In fact, just stopping all growth won't do the trick because we are already using more than one planet's worth of resources (hence our many problems). Not only will we need to stop all growth but we will have to have a period of contraction. This will have devastating consequences to the quality of life we are accustomed to enjoying.

Ultimately, for this solution to work, we will need to give up most of our technology, including all of our modern technology. But even that may not work because, as those early Australians proved, even the use of primitive technology can wreak havoc on the ecosystem.

2- The only other possibility is to remove ourselves from the finite system we are currently in. This path means constant growth - from harvesting resources near the Earth (space-based solar energy production, mining the Moon and asteroids for resources) to eventually colonizing Mars and beyond.

There are three main problems with each of these scenarios.

First, neither is guaranteed to work out in the long run.

Second, both require more than a few tweaks to the status quo.

Third, the powers-that-be seem determined to more or less maintain the status quo, making only a few minor tweaks in one direction or the other, and even then being quite inconsistent about it.


To avoid having one extremely long post, I am breaking up this discussion into smaller bits. This ends part one of this discussion. Additional parts will be posted consecutively (meaning no other posts in between). The next post should be made within a few hours of this one.

Discovery Project Earth

Last year, a series of documentaries aired on the Discovery Channel. The series was called Discovery Project Earth. It is now re-airing on the Science Channel.

The series covers a variety of scientific projects being developed to combat global warming. The projects are in various stages of research, development and testing. Some have been proven feasible, mainly requiring political will and the financial resources needed to fully implement them. Others still need a good deal of work before they are ready (if they ever will be). These are large-scale solutions to very big problems, so if even one or two are successfully implemented it will make a huge difference.

There are nine shows documenting eight projects. The following is a list of the shows and projects:

1- Engineering the Future is the introduction to the concept of geo-engineering and to the series.

2- Wrapping Greenland looks at the possibility of using special geo-textiles that will reflect the sun's rays and keep the glacier intact (project of Dr. Jason Box, Department of Geography, Atmospheric Sciences Program, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University).

3- Raining Forests examines the possibility of reforesting areas of bare Earth from helicopters using seeds/seedlings dropped in special canisters. The team, led by Environmental Engineer Mark Hodges, successful tested the method, planting a large area of barren Earth with a Mangrove forest.

4- Brighter Earth is an attempt by atmospheric physicist John Latham and engineer Stephen Salter, to make reflective clouds by changing the size of water droplets within a cloud, making them more reflective of sun's heat. They successfully tested their idea on marine stratocumulus clouds, chosen because they are low-lying and common worldwide. In addition, they designed the boats used in the project to be carbon-neutral.

5- Infinite Winds examines a revolutionary wind turbine designed by engineer Fred Ferguson that harnesses the energy of high-altitude winds. The team tested a 70-foot (21 m) prototype attached to a blimp over the Appalachian Mountains to harness the endless supply of wind.

6- Hungry Oceans looks at the work of three teams of scientists studying the possibility of increasing the ability of Earth's oceans to sequester excess carbon dioxide. The team led by Dr. Brian von Herzen is testing wave powered pumps to enrich the ocean and trigger large blooms of phytoplankton. Teams from the University of Hawaii and Oregon State University are studying the risks and benefits of such large scale blooms.

7- Space Sunshield is the idea of astronomer Roger Angel and others to create a 100,000-square-mile sunshade by placing trillions of lenses in space.

8- Orbital Power Plant is the program on space-based solar power (see my essay on Space Solar Energy).

9- Fixing Carbon examines a machine prototype built by Canadian professor David Keith that sucks air into one end, sprays it with a sodium hydroxide solution removing excess carbon dioxide, then expels clean air out.

Honesty, hope, optimism and a sense of balance

Hi Folks,

I think it is time to once again explain my philosophy in dealing with issues like global warming, peak oil and other problems our civilization is facing. Let's start off by looking at my mission statement:

The mission of Sustainable Future is to promote both Earth-stewardship and technology-based solutions as the best response to the many economic, environmental and energy-related issues challenging our civilization.

Sustainable Future chooses to do so in a positive way that stresses the needs of both nature and people.

In order to accomplish this mission Sustainable Future attempts:

• To build consensus by being for things, rather than against things.
• To consider both the needs of the environment and of people.
• To avoid the use of scare tactics, misinformation and sensationalism.
• To base solutions in science and reason, rather than emotion.
• To reject doom and gloom in favor of hopeful realism.

In various essays on my blogs, and in many posts to the various groups I have moderated or participated in over the years, I have given this advice, worded in more or less the same way every time:

"Don’t dwell on the negatives. Be a hopeful realist. It is important to understand the problems we face. Just don’t obsess over them. In other words, don't get overwhelmed by the hype. Instead, start working towards solutions. Acting to make positive changes, even small ones, will increase your confidence and encourage yourself, your family and your friends."

I firmly believe the way to motivate people is through honesty and hope, not through fear, misinformation or sensationalism.

And I am not the only one who feels that way.

Toby Hemenway is a permaculture writer and activist who contributes on a regular basis to the Energy Bulletin. Toby is a peak oil believer but, like me, he rejects many of the extreme views of some peak oilers. I hope everyone will take a few minutes to read his essays on this topic, Apocalypse, Not and Origins of Peak Oil Doomerism. Both are worth the read, though if you have bought in to the "End Of The World" mindset you will find the essays very challenging to your basic assumptions.

I post links to his essays in hopes of explaining my view of peak oil, climate change and the other problems our world is facing. I do not think it is the end of the world, nor the end of civilization as we know it. I do not believe there will be a massive die-off with billions of people dead, or even resource-based world wars (though local and regional violence and wars will occur, just as they have in the past). Nor do I believe that martial law will be declared in the USA or any other first world nation. Our future will not resemble the movie Mad Max.

But neither Toby nor myself are naive, blind optimists or Pollyannas of any kind. What I believe, same as Toby Hemenway and numerous others, is that the future will be difficult - widespread unemployment and hardships will effect people and will change, but not destroy, our civilization.

Much of what I am doing with my Sustainable Future franchise, of which this blog is the flagship, is to prepare people for what lies ahead. I don't think that sweeping, wholesale transformations of our civilization are necessary or even advisable. Instead, I encourage people to become more self-sufficient & conservation-minded. I support wiser use of our natural resources and the build-up of renewable energy sources and infrastructure. I promote real environmentalism, rather than social or political agendas disguised as environmentalism.

I consider building consensus to be more important than tearing down those I disagree with. Dr. Patrick Moore is a Canadian and one of the founders of Greenpeace. He eventually left Greenpeace to pursue a different path towards the environmental goals he had been pursuing all his life. In his essay Trees Are the Answer , Moore explains his reasoning this way:

"For me it was time to make a change. I had been against at least three or four things every day of my life for 15 years; I decided I’d like to be in favor of something for a change. I made the transition from the politics of confrontation to the politics of building consensus. After all, when a majority of people decide they agree with you it is probably time to stop hitting them over the head with a stick and sit down and talk to them about finding solutions to our environmental problems." -Patrick Moore

We have reached a point where the majority of the people agree with our main goals - clean air, clean water, the need for clean renewable energy, more intelligent use of our natural resources and so forth. Of course, there is still disagreement over how best to achieve these goals, but that is why we need what Patrick Moore refers to as the "politics of building consensus".

It is time to start pushing for solutions to our problems, rather than just complaining about them. It is time to follow Patrick Moore's lead and be in favor of things for once.

One thing I keep in mind is that whatever solutions to our civilization's problems are proposed, I don't want people to be hurt. I especially don't want those members of our society most vulnerable - the elderly, the disabled and others on fixed incomes, as well as those stuck in low income jobs, often single mothers who are the sole support of their children - to be hurt.

That is why I don't like high energy prices, and the resulting high food inflation. Though some see it as merely a means to an end, high energy prices hurt people, and especially those most vulnerable. Because of this, I will never join the sickening chorus of the elites who are calling for more taxes on energy and fuel. Their heads are filled with theory, not practicality. They need to descend from their ivory-towers and see how their theories hurt real people.

As the Sustainable Future franchise expands, I will be embracing and promoting only ideas that are practical, sensible and that don't cause undue hardship for the common folks. I love nature and spend as much time outdoors as possible. I believe in protecting nature, but I also believe in protecting people. And in truth those two ideals go hand-in-hand. It is only a warped viewpoint that places one above the other.

"I am a tree-hugger, but I am also a people hugger." -- Tim Gamble, August 13, 2008 in a post on the Sustainable Future yahoo group

Most people seem to like my optimism, honesty and desire to balance the needs of both nature and people. A member of my Modern Victory Movement probably summed it up best last year:

"I'm Tony, from the north of Indianapolis, zone 5. I've ended up here by way of any number of Peak Whatever, Hard Times, Great Die Off, Doomer sites and lists and books, and I'm tired of being told that no matter what I do, it wont matter anyway. By people with an apparent investment in doing nothing at all except prophesying doom. So, when I saw "nuts and bolts" in your description, and read "Apocalypse, Not" in your files section, I thought, at last, a voice of reason! I just cannot believe that we can't make things better!" -- Tony from Indiana (MVM post # 548)

Or take this recent comment posted on Sustainable Future:

"I greatly appreciated your comments in this article. There is much to be concerned about and it can feel overwhelming, but if the experience of life is the journey, not the destination, then, I would rather share the world view that includes "possibilities and opportunities!" -- Patricia (Comment on SF blog, July 13, 2009)

And the applause at a hopeful message goes on and on...

"Thank you Tim. I love hearing about the positives and things we can do to make a difference in our daily lives... I love hearing a message of hope and it is encouraging." --Lisa Z. (SF post # 651)

"I think the blog is great..." -- Jen M. from Maryland (MVM post #779)

"Great site, one of the best I've ever seen," -- Howard S. (comment on SF blog, Oct. 15, 2008)

This isn't to toot my own horn, but to point out how starved people are for a positive, hopeful message. These people aren't impressed by Tim Gamble. They are impressed by honesty, hope and a positive attitude.

Of course, my positive style does have it's share of critics, like the person who has reacted so strongly against my recent essay The Myopic "Doom & Gloom" Crowd. I couldn't have asked for a better illustration to prove my main point of the essay then that critic's multiple rantings in the comments section. This person was so "off the chart" in their negativity that I at first thought he was agreeing with me and just trying to be ironic. But it turns out that it was just someone so wrapped up in a negative worldview that he was unable to see just how perfectly he was proving my point. :-)

So, for those of you looking for honesty, hope, optimism and a sense of balance, Sustainable Future will be here for you!

Sincerely,

Tim Gamble

Top Green Jobs

On the Fast Company website, Anya Kamenetz has an article entitled Ten Best Green Jobs of the Next Decade. You can read the article in full by clicking the link, but here is a list of her top ten:

1- Farmer - sustainable agriculture requires small-scale, local, organic methods rather than petroleum-based machines and fertilizers

2- Forester - modern forestry a complex combination of international project finance, conservation and development

3- Solar Power Installer - installing solar-thermal water heaters and rooftop photovoltaic cells is a relatively high-paying job--$15 to $35 an hour--for those with construction skills

4- Energy Efficiency Builder - not only skilled architects and engineers, but a workforce of retrofitters

5- Wind Turbine Fabricator - an opportunity for autoworkers and other manufacturers to repurpose their skills

6- Conservation Biologist - opportunities in teaching, research and fieldwork for government, nonprofits, and private companies

7- Green MBA and Entrepreneur - business services like legal, research and consulting account for the majority of all green jobs

8- Recycler - specialized companies that can close the loop by recycling and repurposing e-waste, clothing, plastic bags, construction waste, and other materials

9 - Sustainability Systems Developer - green economy needs a cadre of specialized software developers and engineers

10- Urban Planner - Employment in this sector is projected to grow 15 percent by 2016


Tim's Comments

I would point out that in addition to hiring the skilled workers, these industries will be expanding greatly over the next ten years and will need additional support staff - office workers, receptionists, janitors, accountants, bookkeepers, security guards, salespeople and the like. So even if you don't have the primary skills that these green companies are looking for, you may find that more traditional skills are also in great demand.

Community Action Plans - Transportation Systems & Building Community

This is the second of a series of essays about what communities need to be doing to get ready for the future, considering the various economic, environmental and energy-related problems our civilization is facing. The first installment was on Food & Water. Be sure not to miss upcoming installments by subscribing to the Sustainable Future website (it is free, of course). The sign-up box can be found at the top of the right-hand column.


Transportation Systems & Building Community

National transportation systems should be focused on trains for the long distance movement of goods and people, rather than on trucks and cars. There needs to be a massive buildup of the rail system similar to the buildup of the Interstate system fifty years ago. Rail is by far the cheaper and cleaner method to transport both goods and people over long distances, compared to cars and trucks, and requires much less fuel. There also needs to be a similar buildup of light rail systems providing public transportation in urban areas.

Local transportation systems should emphasize walkways & cycling, natural gas & biofuel buses, as well as rail systems where appropriate. Car pooling and park-and-ride systems can be encouraged. Designing more compact communities is a big step to improving local transportation systems.

Greenways, hiking trails and bike paths can both create inexpensive transportation alternatives that use fewer resources, as well as provide recreational opportunities on the local level.

Urban sprawl is a major problem, especially here in the USA. The results of urban sprawl include increased public expense to expand & maintain road systems (which means higher taxes), increased use of fossil fuels, increased pollution and the loss of agricultural land. Eliminating urban sprawl would be both economically wiser and environmentally sounder.

Better urban planning is needed to make communities smaller, geographically speaking. The travel distances from home to work, home to markets, and home to schools need to be decreased. There will always need to be people living outside of urban areas in agricultural belts, but most of the population should be living in high density communities. The growth of traditional suburbs should be discouraged by public policy, not encouraged.

Recreational and cultural opportunities should be promoted within communities. Local festivals and open-air concerts, parks, tennis courts, golf courses, hiking trails, greenways, libraries, museums, zoos, botanical gardens, historical sites and community theater are some of the opportunities for local entertainment that can be promoted. People should recognize that there are opportunities to enjoy vacations and holidays within their local regions, and that by doing so it will both save them money and save limited resources for society as a whole.

The smaller the geographic area that people can live, work and play in, the less resources that will be consumed by the typical person in living their life. This principle is both financially and environmentally essential in building a sustainable future.

Community Action Plans - Food & Water

This is the first of a series of essays about what communities need to be doing to get ready for the future, considering the various economic, environmental and energy-related problems our civilization is facing. Be sure not to miss upcoming installments by subscribing to the Sustainable Future website (it is free, of course). The sign-up box can be found at the top of the right-hand column.

Local Sustainable Agriculture

Most of the food that citizens of Western nations eat is trucked or flown in from all over the world. For many people, the piece of fruit that they will eat today is much more a world-traveler than they are. In my local grocery stores (I'm in NC, USA) there are fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as frozen and canned goods, from places as far away as Chile, Peru, Argentina and the Philippines.

But what if you suddenly couldn't import your community's food from all over the globe? Could your community survive on only the food produced locally? The fact is there are many reasons why you may not be able to import large quantities of food in the future - everything from peak oil and sky-rocketing energy prices to world-wide food shortages to crop failures caused by disease or drought.

Communities should encourage people to produce a portion of their own food. This can be done by reviving the Victory Gardens idea of the first two world wars. Communities should also do everything possible to promote local sustainable agriculture.

Ways to Encourage Local Food Production

1. Promote the idea Victory Gardens (both private and community-based) and food co-ops.
   
2. Provide training courses in gardening and permaculture through local community colleges and agricultural extension offices.
3. Remove unnecessary restrictions on people growing their own food (maintaining needed restrictions to promote health & safety and prevent animal cruelty).
4. Remove unnecessary restrictions on local farmers selling their crops to local markets (often put in place due to lobbying by big agri-business).
5. Require that government food services (such as school lunch programs) spend an increasing portion of their budgets on locally produced food.
6. Encourage the formation of farmers markets.
7. Local relief agencies should provide vouchers or special debit cards for use at local farmers markets as part of their assistance programs.
8. Promote the health, economic and environmental benefits of low-meat diets (educational programs only - what people eat should be their choice).
9. Public tree-planting programs should include fruit and nut trees.
10. Support programs to capture organic waste (food scraps, animal & human manure, leaves & other yard waste, agricultural waste) for composting to improve soils.

Water Systems

Clean water is the invisible crisis and providing continuing supplies of clean water for local communities is perhaps the biggest challenge of the 21st century. Did you know that as much as a third of a typical city's water usage is flushing toilets? Various types of dry and composting toilets can greatly reduce this inefficient use of clean water. One of the shopping malls in my local area recently installed dry-flush urinals in its public restrooms, and they seem to be working perfectly.

Leaking pipes, not just in homes and businesses, but in the local water systems themselves, is a major problem that wastes huge amounts of water. Detection and elimination of such leaks should be a high priority. (Water conservation is the theme of two editions of my Resource Miser newsletters, RM #004 and RM #011.)

Local governments can also encourage water conservation by charging less per gallon to customers that use less water. In other words, a household that uses 100 gallons a month would be charged less per gallon than a household that uses 1000 gallons a month.

In my area, the water supply comes from two main sources - a lake and an nearby river. Local governments have actually been fairly pro-active in protecting these sources. Over the years they have surrounded the lake with a large municipal park, protecting it from development and pollution. And they have worked diligently protecting the river through a series of parks and conservation easements. Local governments depending on the river for water have come together to hire a "River Keeper" whose job is to patrol the river looking for illegal dumping and other threats.

Also in my area they are a couple of days a year (one is typically Earth Day and the other in the Fall) that are promoted as "waterway clean-up days". Individuals and community groups are encouraged to clean trash out of out local ponds, streams and wetland areas. This is heavily promoted in the local media, and local governments provide trucks and workers to haul off the trash that is collected.

Organic gardening, lasagna-style gardening, forest gardening and similar techniques utilizing compost and natural soil amendments instead of chemical fertilizers will protect local water supplies from dangerous chemical run-off. Also, these techniques typically utilize mulch and other ground cover which greatly reduces surface evaporation thus reducing the need for irrigation.

The Myopic "Doom & Gloom" Crowd

Science Proves Optimistic People Have a More Realistic Perception of the World Than Negative People

I've been dealing with sustainability issues for close to twenty years now. At first it was various environmental issues that motivated me. Later, I became aware of the ramifications of peak oil and resource scarcity in general. Of late, I am deeply concerned about economic and agricultural issues.

Over the years I've talked to many people about these issues and the need for sustainability. I've been actively discussing these issues on the Internet since 2004, in various chat groups, email groups and so forth.

During that time I have remained positive and upbeat, believing that mankind will eventfully overcome these issues, if we can just avoid destroying our civilization first. My approach to sustainability can best be described as doing whatever it takes (energy & resource efficiency, permaculture, reforestation, renewable energy, etc.) to buy us time to develop and implement scientific and technological solutions (ranging from space based solar energy production to mining the resources of the solar system to eventually becoming a true space-faring civilization.

In promoting my vision, particularly via the Internet, I have run into a variety of people that didn't share my optimism for the future or my enthusiasm for science & technology. Instead, they tend to have a quite negative outlook, something sometimes referred to as "doom and gloom."

For many of these people there simply is no hope for overcoming our problems and the only way to escape disaster is to revert back to some sort of pre-industrial/pre-technological past. Of course, this necessitates greatly reducing the population (without modern technology, there is simply no way to support six to eight billion people on this planet).

Many of these people hope to stabilize and reduce world population in a managed way, while others look towards an inevitable "great die-off" in the not-to-distant future. Most of the later folk look towards the die-off with understandable fear, but a few seem to eagerly embrace the idea as providing a fresh start for mankind.

In talking/debating these negative people, I have always been frustrated by what I considered to be their very narrow world view. They seem to only see the problems and challenges, and are never willing to look at the possibilities and opportunities. Whenever I bring up a reason to be optimistic, they tend to either ignore it or to dismiss it out of hand. They only see the negative, and that is all they want to see (or so it seemed to me). In short, their worldview always seemed quite myopic to me.

Well, science has proved me right. Negative people are myopic. A negative mindset does affect the way the brain functions, diminishing the negative person's ability to take in information about the world around them.

Dr. Adam Anderson, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, has examined brain activation levels with the fMRI scans, comparing brain activity of positive, happy optimistic people with that of pessimistic, unhappy negative people.

His findings: It turns out that people in a positive mood took in more information about the world around them, while people in a negative mood took in less.

In other words, negative people are myopic. They only process a limited amount of information (information that supports their negative view) compared to positive people. Positive people, on the other hand, take in and process more information, therefore have a more complete and realistic view of the world.

My gut feeling that negative people, the "doom and gloom" crowd, do have a narrow world view has now been proven by science to be correct. Negative people do fail to take in and consider all the relevant information, instead processing only that information which reinforces their negativity, which is something I've long suspected.

So today's bit of advice: Be optimistic, it is more realistic!

Rethinking Food Production for a World of 8 Billion

Here is the most recent press release from Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute.

Rethinking Food Production for a World of Eight Billion

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB3ch09_ss1.htm

Lester R. Brown

In April 2005, the World Food Programme and the Chinese government jointly
announced that food aid shipments to China would stop at the end of the
year. For a country where a generation ago hundreds of millions of people
were chronically hungry, this was a landmark achievement. Not only has
China ended its dependence on food aid, but almost overnight it has become
the world’s third largest food aid donor.

The key to China’s success was the economic reforms in 1978 that
dismantled its system of agricultural collectives, known as production
teams, and replaced them with family farms. In each village, the land was
allocated among families, giving them long-term leases on their piece of
land. The move harnessed the energy and ingenuity of China’s rural
population, raising the grain harvest by half from 1977 to 1986. With its
fast-expanding economy raising incomes, with population growth slowing,
and with the grain harvest climbing, China eradicated most of its hunger
in less than a decade--in fact, it eradicated more hunger in a shorter
period of time than any country in history.

While hunger has been disappearing in China, it has been spreading
throughout much of the developing world, notably sub-Saharan Africa and
parts of the Indian subcontinent. As a result, the number of people in
developing countries who are hungry has increased from a recent historical
low of 800 million in 1996 to over 1 billion today. Part of this recent
rise can be attributed to higher food prices and the global economic
crisis. In the absence of strong leadership, the number of hungry people
in the world will rise even further, with children suffering the most.

Dealing with this problem requires addressing the long-term trends leading
to growth in demand for food outpacing growth in supply. One key to the
threefold expansion in the world grain harvest since 1950 was the rapid
adoption in some developing countries of high-yielding wheats and rices
(originally developed in Japan) and hybrid corn (from the United States).
The spread of these highly productive seeds, combined with a tripling of
irrigated area and an 11-fold increase in world fertilizer use, tripled
the world grain harvest. Growth in irrigation and fertilizer use
essentially removed soil moisture and nutrient constraints on much of the
world’s cropland.

Now the outlook is changing. Farmers are faced with shrinking supplies of
irrigation water, a diminishing response to additional fertilizer use,
rising temperatures from global warming, the loss of cropland to nonfarm
uses, rising fuel costs, and a dwindling backlog of yield-raising
technologies. At the same time, they also face fast-growing demand for
farm products from the annual addition of 79 million people a year, the
desire of some 3 billion people to consume more livestock products, and
the millions of motorists turning to crop-based fuels to supplement
tightening supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel. Farmers and agronomists
are now being thoroughly challenged.

The shrinking backlog of unused agricultural technology and the associated
loss of momentum in raising cropland productivity are found worldwide.
Between 1950 and 1990, world grain yield per hectare climbed by 2.1
percent a year, ensuring rapid growth in the world grain harvest. From
1990 to 2008, however, it rose only 1.3 percent annually. This is partly
because the yield response to the additional application of fertilizer is
diminishing and partly because irrigation water is limited.

This calls for fresh thinking on how to raise cropland productivity. One
way is to breed crops that are more tolerant of drought and cold. U.S.
corn breeders have developed corn varieties that are more
drought-tolerant, enabling corn production to move westward into Kansas,
Nebraska, and South Dakota. Kansas, the leading U.S. wheat-producing
state, has used a combination of drought-resistant varieties in some areas
and irrigation in others to expand corn planting to where the state now
produces more corn than wheat.

Another way of raising land productivity, where soil moisture permits, is
to increase the area of multicropped land that produces more than one crop
per year. Indeed, the tripling in the world grain harvest since 1950 is
due in part to impressive increases in multiple cropping in Asia. Some of
the more common combinations are wheat and corn in northern China, wheat
and rice in northern India, and the double or triple cropping of rice in
southern China and southern India.

The spread in double cropping of winter wheat and corn on the North China
Plain helped boost China’s grain production to where it rivaled that of
the United States. Winter wheat grown there yields 5 tons per hectare.
Corn also averages 5 tons. Together these two crops, grown in rotation,
can yield 10 tons per hectare per year. China’s double cropped rice
annually yields 8 tons per hectare.

Forty years ago, North India produced only wheat, but with the advent of
the earlier maturing high-yielding wheats and rices, wheat could be
harvested in time to plant rice. This wheat/rice combination is now widely
used throughout the Punjab, Haryana, and parts of Uttar Pradesh. This
practice yields a combined 5 tons of grain per hectare, helping to feed
India’s 1.2 billion people.

A concerted U.S. effort to both breed earlier maturing varieties and
develop cultural practices that would facilitate multiple cropping could
substantially boost crop output. If China’s farmers can extensively double
crop wheat and corn, then U.S. farmers could do the same if agricultural
research and farm policy were reoriented to support it.

Elsewhere, Western Europe, with its mild winters and high-yielding winter
wheat, might also be able to double crop more with a summer grain, such as
corn, or with a winter oilseed crop. Brazil and Argentina have an extended
frost-free growing season that supports extensive multicropping, often
wheat or corn with soybeans.

In many countries, including the United States, most of those in Western
Europe, and Japan, fertilizer use has reached a level where using more has
little effect on crop yields. There are still some places, however, such
as most of Africa, where additional fertilizer would help boost yields.
Unfortunately, sub-Saharan Africa lacks the infrastructure to transport
fertilizer economically to the villages where it is needed. As a result of
nutrient depletion, grain yields in much of sub-Saharan Africa are
stagnating.

One encouraging response to this situation in Africa is the simultaneous
planting of grain and leguminous trees. At first the trees grow slowly,
permitting the grain crop to mature and be harvested; then the saplings
grow quickly to several feet in height, dropping leaves that provide
nitrogen and organic matter, both sorely needed in African soils. The wood
is then cut and used for fuel. This simple, locally adapted technology,
developed by scientists at the International Centre for Research in
Agroforestry in Nairobi, has enabled farmers to double their grain yields
within a matter of years as soil fertility builds.

Despite local advances, the overall loss of momentum in expanding food
production is unmistakable. It will force us to think more seriously about
stabilizing population, moving down the food chain, and using the existing
harvest more productively. Achieving an acceptable worldwide balance
between food and people may now depend on stabilizing population as soon
as possible, reducing the unhealthily high consumption of animal products
among the affluent, and restricting the conversion of food crops to
automotive fuels. It also calls for a concerted effort to raise water use
productivity, similar to the gains achieved for land use, and to stabilize
climate to avoid crop-withering temperatures and more frequent droughts.
These efforts combined can help put us on the path to ensuring enough food
for all.

# # #

Adapted from Chapter 9, “Feeding Eight Billion Well,” in Lester R. Brown,
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2008), available for free downloading and purchase at
www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm

Climate Change Update

Always a controversial "hot topic" (no pun intended), there have been several news stories that I need to bring to people's attention. For the record, here is my official position on the issue of climate change / global warming:

1. Climate change is real. It is happening.
2. Climate change is always happening. Natural climate change is caused by a variety of planetary and solar cycles.
3. Humans have contributed to the current climate change in two important ways: a- large-scale deforestation (over a billion hectares of forest removed over the last 100 years or so); and b- the pumping of large quantities of various pollutants into the atmosphere that otherwise would not be there in those quantities.

Those three items we know for certain. However, there are a number of things about the current climate change that we do not know for certain, despite rhetoric to the contrary. It is not "case closed" for questions of exactly how global warming will effect the climate, to what extent the climate will be effected, how fast the climate will change, or even exactly how much human activity has effected the natural cycles.

Most importantly, we do not know what, if anything, we can do to actually stop or reverse the current climate change. Many people have made various suggestions of what to do, including me. Click here to read an essay in which I give my plan, which seeks to balance the needs of both nature and people.

Now for the recent news stories:

Polar bear expert barred by global warmists
www.telegraph.co.uk June 27, 2009

"Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea."

To read the entire article, click here.


The 'Global Warming Three' are on thin ice
www.telegraph.co.uk March 21, 2009

"The only problem with a project to prove that Arctic ice is disappearing is the fact that it is actually getting thicker, says Christopher Booker...

With perfect timing, the setting out from Britain of the “Global Warming Three” last month was hampered by “an unusually heavy snowfall”. When they were airlifted to the start of their trek by a twin-engine Otter (one hopes a whole forest has been planted to offset its “carbon footprint”), they were startled to find how cold it was. The BBC dutifully reported how, in temperatures of minus 40 degrees, they were “battered by wind, bitten by frost and bruised by falls on the ice”...

...Arctic ice is being constantly monitored by US Army buoys. The latest reading given by a typical sensor shows that since last March (2008) the ice has thickened by “at least half a metre”. "

To read the entire article, click here.


Sustainable Future accepts the reality of climate change without falling into the trap of exaggerating or manipulating the facts to fit any particular agenda. We are not afraid to examine all sides of the issue. Sustainable Future seeks to find a solution that balances the needs of both nature and people. Be sure not to miss future updates by subscribing to the Sustainable Future website (it is free, of course). The sign-up box can be found at the top of the website's right-hand column.