Protest Tactics

Greetings peaksters

    While I admire 350.orgs goals, and wish them well, I do wonder about some of their messages:  To get to 2 degrees (never mind to 350) - would require a tremendous amount of shared sacrifice - but  they seem willing to sugar coat the facts, in order to "broaden the movement".    

     Messages like - "you won't really have to give up you current lifestyle"

"In terms of lifestyle, no one expects that everyone will suddenly cancel the family vacation because of carbon-miles. Instead, the strategy is to approach people on their own terms and get them to make reasonable changes.'

     Or  "Your consumptive ways are not the problem.  Its really the "pushers".  Someone else is the problem

“Of course you should try to reduce your footprint,” says 350.org’s Kahn Russell, “but the way the math adds up is that we’re not all equally responsible. Our society is addicted to fossil fuels, and to fight that we need to go after the drug pushers. … It goes back to that Utah Phillips quote, ‘The Earth is not dying. It is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.’”



http://inthesetimes.com/article/14282/protest_tactics_in_a_warming_world/

Protest Tactics in a Warming World

What will it take to push back climate change?

BY ERIC MOLL

"It goes back to that Utah Phillips quote, 'The Earth is not dying. It is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.' "

On Nov. 16, 2012, an estimated 2,200 New Yorkers gathered at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan to hear 350.org’s plan to prevent catastrophic climate change. It was the 10th stop of a tour, called Do The Math, that traveled to 21 cities and featured 350.org founder Bill McKibben, author Naomi Klein and video testimonies from Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The main thrust? We must stop the fossil fuel industry from extracting and burning most of earth’s below-ground reserves.

“There’s a certain amount of carbon that [fossil fuel] companies have in their reserves underground, and that figure is five times more than the allowable limit of what we can put in the atmosphere before we hit extreme runaway climate change,” says Joshua Kahn Russell, national coordinator at350.org.
 Judging by several prolonged standing ovations, the audience at Hammerstein, still reeling from Hurricane Sandy, endorsed the presenters’ message. Though inured to unabashed optimism by too many years of false starts, bad compromises and slow progress, longtime activists are guardedly hopeful about the future of the movement.

This hope is in part thanks to the reverberations of Occupy Wall Street. When OWS emerged in the fall of 2011, it revitalized every sphere of American activism at the same time it was blurring the lines between different movements. “There’s a growing understanding that there’s a significant nexus between those industries that are creating—or manufacturing—climate change, your child’s asthma, poor working conditions through out the ‘developing world,’ and the financial collapse,” says Robert Gardner, who worked on Greenpeace’s anti-coal campaign. “Bank of America is foreclosing on people wholesale, but they’re also funding mountaintop removal mining.”

But while this broadening of the movement—through which environmental issues are also viewed as social justice and economic issues—has given environmentalists new reason to hope, it also presents established environmental organizations with new challenges. How to engage as many people as possible? Which strategies have a real chance to stop the fossil fuel industry, and which ones do not? And in a large and diverse movement, how do you ensure that people act strategically and efficiently?

What kinds of actions?

Potential tactics for climate activists fall along a wide spectrum. On one end are safe and legal options: petitions, electoral campaigning, legal obstruction, boycotts, strikes. Then there are peaceful tactics that fall into legal gray areas or unabashedly break the law: sit-ins, blockades, physical obstruction. At the far end is property destruction, sabotage and violence.

McKibben’s tour began the discussion on the “safe and legal” side of the spectrum, with a campaign of divestment called “Fossil Free”—getting universities, pension funds and governments to stop investing in fossil fuel companies. In his video, Archbishop Tutu explained how such a campaign helped end apartheid in South Africa.

However, no one, including 350.org, suggests that divestment alone will work. The tour’s website says that, to fight the richest industry in history, “we have our own currency: creativity, courage and if needed, our bodies.” In other words, civil disobedience or direct action. And that requires good planning.

“A great myth in American history,” says Scott Parkin, an organizer with Rainforest Action Network(RAN), “is that Rosa Parks just spontaneously sat down on a bus. But she was actually part of a campaign” that had been in the works for months. (Indeed, several other activists had already tried the protest but hadn’t received the same media attention.)

Carefully planned direct action is alive and well in east Texas, where members of the Tar Sands Blockadehave carried out 14 different actions to stop construction of the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline. The tactics thus far have included a tree-sit-in now in its third month, work stoppages in whichblockaders locked themselves to machinery, an innovative action in which people sealed themselves inside the pipe itself and an ongoing hunger strike. Cumulatively, the blockade has stopped work at various sites for several weeks. And climate activists from around the country will be converging in East Texas from January 3 to 8 for a training camp and mass action.

What will the movement look like?

For those trying to realize a sustainable future, there are two approaches: attack, reform, and otherwise engage the existing system to create structural changes, or build new systems from the ground up. The Do The Math tour falls into the first category. One of its central themes is a refutation of the idea that, because we all drive cars or heat our homes, we’re all equally responsible and that individuals just need to reduce their impact.

“Of course you should try to reduce your footprint,” says 350.org’s Kahn Russell, “but the way the math adds up is that we’re not all equally responsible. Our society is addicted to fossil fuels, and to fight that we need to go after the drug pushers. … It goes back to that Utah Phillips quote, ‘The Earth is not dying. It is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.’”

350.org may be specifically focused on oppositional direct action, but some activists think that the broader climate movement needs both approaches; it needs to destroy the fossil fuel industry while simultaneously creating an alternative. For that to be possible, a lot more people need to become active.

“The challenge is to meet people at the point of engagement that they’re ready for,” says Nathan Santry, actions director at Greenpeace. “You go to a big public rally and you see a thousand people and there are grandmothers and kids there. It’s a fairly safe place to join in. And those rallies get bigger over time, and people go ‘Well, wait a minute, I’ve been going to rallies for a while and I’ve been writing my petitions and I feel like I want to go out and take it to the next level.’ ”

In order to empower people to do that, 350.org plans to follow up the tour with a series of trainings called “The Aftermath,” specifically tailored to the needs of each community or campus. For example, says 350.org cofounder Phil Aroneanu,“if a campus is planning to occupy an administrative building, we’ll do a direct action training with them. If we find… that everything is kind of fractured and there isn’t a lot of community alignment on what they want to work on, then we may do an organizing training or strategy session.”

In terms of lifestyle, no one expects that everyone will suddenly cancel the family vacation because of carbon-miles. Instead, the strategy is to approach people on their own terms and get them to make reasonable changes.

“When you meet people where they’re at,” says Gardner, “you take away a bit of the ammunition from these corporations’ public relations firms that environmentalists just want to destroy the world, and everybody parks their cars and we’ll all sit in the dark like a bunch of druids.”

On the capacity-building side, the real challenge is to create alternative, sustainable networks and infrastructures that appeal to a broad base of people. This seems to be happening. Urban farmers are reclaiming vacant lots as community gardens, reducing crime rates and improving local nutrition. A proposed project in Detroit, the capital of vacant lots, would create the world’s largest urban farm. Urbanites around the country are campaigning for the right to raise chickens in their backyards. School garden programs are teaching children where their food comes from. Municipalities are realizing that they can build their own solar installations and wind turbines and actually save money. Bicycle co-ops and tool-lending libraries are not only making transportation and home repair affordable for more people, but they’re fostering community and the free exchange of technical knowledge.

Whatever people do, Kahn Russell says, it’s more powerful as a group. “Working on an organic farm is great, but working in conjunction with a federation of organic farms to organize and make sure you’re tapped into local food justice movements so that there are farmers’ markets with cheap organic food in the city, that’s even better.”

This ethic of mutual assistance “is what will carry us through the next century in an era of potential resource scarcity,” says Kahn Russell. “What the right wing is offering in the face of resource scarcity is a recipe that requires sacrifice, but the sacrifice that it requires is on the backs of vulnerable people, on the backs of poor people and the backs of communities of color.

“When you look at U.S. history, during World War II, the ethic was collective action and shared sacrifice,” Kahn Russell continues. “There was a value put on thrift and community. … I don’t view, on a personal level, what we need to do as deprivation or sacrifice. It’s actually an affirming part of the human experience that many people in our country yearn for.

Walking the walk

Greetings Peaksters

      Well, given the lack of leadership by governments  we thrown back to individual action.   Below Greer rants, Saniford and Tranistioners strives.  And the country becomes less and less persuaded that individual effort will make a difference.

   

Greer :

"....dear reader, as you surf the peak oil and climate change blogosphere and read the various opinions on display there, I’d encourage you to ask yourself what those opinions amount to in actual practice.  A remarkably large fraction of them, straight across the political landscape from furthest left to furthest right and including all stops in between, add up to demands that somebody else, somewhere else, do something. Since the people making such demands rarely do anything to pressure, or even to encourage, those other people elsewhere to do whatever it is they’re supposed to do, it’s not exactly hard to do the math and recognize that here again, these opinions amount to so many ways of insisting that the people holding them don’t have to give up the extravagant and unsustainable lifestyles most people in the industrial world think of as normal and justifiable. 


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Saniford:

Carbon Neutral Household Operations in 2012

In my personal quest for my family to be carbon neutral, 2012 was a significant step forward.  In 2011, we reached the point where our house itself did not require any fossil fuels to operate (by using wood heat and commercial renewable power).  In 2012, we undertook an energy audit and resulting house efficiency work to make a major reduction in the amount of electricity we use (thanks to Snug Planet). I'll quantify this when the heating season is over but we are now pretty much using no electricity for heat, relying entirely on wood for that.  Electricity usage for appliances and hot water should also have been reduced substantially.

Also, having found a carbon offset provider I like (Finger Lakes Climate Fund), I was able to offset all our personal air travel, car usage, and landscaping machinery fuel usage, resulting in overall carbon-neutral household operations in 2012 - for the first time ever.

Does this mean we are environmental saints with nothing left to do?  Absolutely not, nothing could be further from the truth.  My major goal in 2013 is to get a solar installation, which should mean we will generate most or all of our electricity on site.  Beyond that, I'd like to move to electric and/or plugin-hybrid cars to reduce our reliance on offsets.  The house could be made far more efficient still if we did a deep-energy retrofit when we replace the siding, and if we replaced the windows with more efficient (eg non-Victorian) ones.  All these are steps we can take entirely on our own in the next few years.

Looking to less easy fixes over the longer term: we buy many goods and services from suppliers who are not themselves carbon-neutral.  As carbon neutral alternatives become available, I would very much like to select those where practical.  Also, I work for a mainstream company who presently have no concern for their carbon footprint (eg, they won't reimburse carbon offsets for my work-related travel - I asked).  That too is something I'd like to improve on in the long term.

Still, it feels good to have gotten as far as we have.

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Or how about  this?  The energy descent is cool!






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http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/fewer-americans-say-their-actions-can-slow-climate-change/?src=rechp

Fewer Americans Say Their Actions Can Slow Climate Change

By JON HURDLE

Americans may be buying more compact fluorescent light bulbs these days, but they are less likely to set their thermostats low during the winter than they were four years ago and have less confidence that their actions will help to curb global warming, according to a new survey.

Yale Project on Climate Change Communication

The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication found that the proportion of people who say their own energy-saving actions can make a difference in arresting global warming dropped to 32 percent in the latest survey, conducted in September, from 37 percent six months earlier.
The survey, published this week, also suggests that doubt is growing that even widespread concerted action can make a difference when it comes to climate change.
Sixty percent said energy-saving habits could help curb climate change if they were adopted by most Americans, down from 78 percent in 2008; those who say they believe that warming can be slowed by changes in personal habits across the industrialized world dropped to 70 percent from 85 percent over the same period.
The proportion saying they keep their thermostats at 68 degrees Fahrenheit or lower during the winter, rose to 53 percent from 43 percent six months earlier but was down from 62 percent in 2008.
Only 15 percent of respondents say they have volunteered or donated money over the last 12 months to help reduce climate change, while fewer are avoiding buying products made by companies that oppose efforts to curb global warming, according to the survey, for which 1,061 adults across the nation were interviewed between Aug. 31 and Sept. 12.
Still, the authors contend that that the results show that Americans are taking action on global warming.
“Many Americans are no longer content to just talk about global warming, they are doing something about it,” said Anthony Lesierowitz, a principal investigator for the project. “Many are acting individually to save energy at home and on the road and are making consumer choices that support business action on climate change.”
There have been noticeable increases in the number of people who say they walk, bike, carpool or take public transportation than in the previous survey, conducted in March.
Twenty-five percent said they “always or often” walk or ride their bikes instead of driving, more than double the 11 percent registered in the previous survey. The number of respondents saying that they carpool or take public transit rose to 17 percent from 10 percent.
More than a quarter, 27 percent, said they planned to walk or bike more often over the next year. But that was heavily outweighed by the 63 percent of respondents who said they don’t expect to change their transportation habits.
People’s acceptance of compact fluorescent lighting in their homes is growing, the survey found. Fifty-seven percent said that “all or most” of their bulbs were C.F.L.’s, up from 53 percent in March, while only 9 percent said they had none of the energy-saving bulbs in their home, little changed over the last year.
Around a third of respondents said they have bought products made by green-minded companies in the last year, while 24 percent have not bought the products of companies perceived as being opposed to efforts to combat global warming.
But light bulb purchases apparently don’t correlate to political action. Although 70 percent believe global warming is under way, only 15 percent of respondents have donated money or volunteered to address the issue over the last year, and just 12 percent have contacted a government official on the subject, the survey found. Both of those measures showed little change over the last year.
And the number of people who say they talk about global warming with their family and friends – 29 percent – is heavily outweighed by the 71 percent who “rarely or never” do so.

That "non linear" feeling

Greetings peaksters

      You know how it is.  You drive by the crash  and you don't really want to look, but you can't help yourself.   What went wrong?   Everything was fine, and then... things went "nonlinear"!

     Take a look at the latest on the Antarctic shelf here.  Temperature increases are twice what had been predicted  and the glacier thinning  is accelerating - four times faster than is was 10 years ago.   

     Or how about the arctic?  ecoshock   gives you the latest, including how the jet stream gets stuck, and creates stuff like the drought in the midwest,  Pakistani floods and the Russian heat waves.  

       Or slightly more disturbing a movie from  from The Arctic Emergency Methane Group, that tracks methane releases for the shallow oceans and tundra..  

    (Hopefully its all bunk - because the IPCC won't be considering it in its 2013 report ) 

    " A new report released in late November by the United Nations Environment Program says the IPCC MUST report on melting permafrost and methane, including a special report if needed. Yet I've spoken by email with some IPCC reviews who assure me the Arctic methane emergency is NOT included in the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel reports coming out in 2013 and 2014. Again, the IPCC is far beyond not just the science, but actual climate change known to be happening already."

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http://www.sierraclub.ca/en/blog/paul-beckwith/you-are-now-entering-nonlinearity-zone…

You are now entering the nonlinearity zone…

Submitted by Paul Beckwith on Fri, 2012-09-28 14:28

By Paul Beckwith

Push something and it moves a little. Push it a little more and it moves a little more. This is called a “linearity” response. But sometimes a little push can lead to something totally unexpected! This is called “nonlinearity” and, contrary to what one might think, nonlinearities are inherent in most systems - like our atmosphere, for example. In fact, abrupt and unexpected change happens at some point in most systems - we even have a saying for such unexpected outcomes: a tipping point.

Until recently, our atmosphere and oceans behaved like linear systems: incremental dumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere caused incremental changes, like rising temperatures and predictable rates of ice melt. But things are now changing unexpectedly fast – nonlinearity is kicking in! We only have to look at the rapidly vanishing arctic icecap for astonishing evidence.

A few years ago, I felt compelled to leave my previous pursuits in Engineering Physics (and chess master) to begin a PhD thesis focusing on abrupt climate change. I felt the planet’s climate was approaching several tipping points and analysis of Paleoclimatology records (tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediment, etc.) may provide evidence on what tipping points – nonlinearities – we might expect to see first (and maybe prevent).

Sadly, I’m late to the game. The rapidly disappearing Arctic icecap is a tipping point in motion. In all likelihood, statistically speaking, it’s gone, history. Within a few years when the ice disappears entirely, for the first time in 3 (or as many as 13) million years, hold on because our weather patterns will be drastically destabilized. Most folks in my field are still reluctant to acknowledge this 800 pound gorilla staring us right in the face.

Methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas (twenty times more efficient at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide) is a product of ancient wetlands, locked in permafrost and ocean sediments for millions of years. Today, warming air and seawater causes methane to be released more quickly. In the ocean off Siberia, methane plumes greater than one kilometre in diameter have been observed. Shocking stuff in my business.

And other tipping points abound. If the melting Arctic icecap isn’t bad enough, how about persistent droughts turning the Amazon rainforest into dry savannah? Much of the forest would burn first, delivering the double whammy of massive carbon emissions and the loss of a vital carbon sink.

Or how about collapsing boreal forest ecosystems. In Canada, drought-stressed trees, not already under attack by mountain pine beetles and emerald ash borers, would surely burn in the new norm of arid heat waves.

Perhaps the Greenland ice sheet will be the ultimate smoking gun. It contains enough water to raise global sea level by seven metres. With melt rates doubling every few years, knowing what I know, I can honestly say I am gravely concerned. Many models predict Greenland’s ice sheet will be ‘ok’ for another 3 centuries, but as I wrote in my last blog, you can officially pitch those models out the window.

Unlike our ancestors, humanity has a shot at stopping this – that is, if we throw everything we have at it. But we need to urgently focus on doing two things: radically reduce carbon emissions and prevent further warming of the Arctic Ocean; and keep as much methane locked underground as possible (we have the technology to do this today).

We have officially entered the realm of unknown-unknowns; the nonlinearity zone.

The question is will politicians reach the tipping point of reason?

Paul Beckwith is a PhD student with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa.

Former IEA expert - 2013 - 2015 supply "tension"; decline in 2015-2020

Greetings Peaksters

    A friend of mine wrote  to tell me that "peak oil is bunk", and the evidence was that gas prices is his region had dropped to $3.    What can one say?  That the price of gas has doubled in the last 10 years?  Rising at 7% pa, twice the rate of inflation?  That price is the way we allocate scarce resources?

    Hers' what economist James Hamilton says:  here

"James Hamilton: The story is pretty simple, and even though politicians may try to distort it, you’d hope that the media would do a better job of reporting the truth than they have.  World oil production was basically stagnant between 2005 and 2008, even though world GDP was up 17%.  With economic growth like that you’d normally expect increased demand, particularly from the rapidly growing emerging economies, and in fact China did increase its consumption by a million barrels a day over these 3 years.  But with no more oil being produced, that meant that the rest of us-- the U.S., Europe, Japan-- had to reduce our consumption.  It took a pretty big price run-up before that happened.  To those claiming the price is too high, I would ask, how high do you think the price had to go to persuade Americans to reduce oil consumption by a million barrels a day?"

  In fact we should expect this cycle from now on - oil price increase - economic slow down - oil price decrease.    When the price of oil and gas goes lower - that does not necessarily indicate that oil production has increased - it may only indicate that the world economy can't afford the price of oil,   See here


"Kamakshya Trivedi and Stacy Carlson from Goldman Sachs say a disturbing pattern has emerged where each tentative recovery in the world economy sets off an oil price jump that it turn aborts the process. A two point rise in global manufacturing indexes leads to a 30pc rise in oil prices a few months later.

“Oil has become an increasingly scarce commodity. A tight supply picture means that incremental increases in demand lead to an increase in prices, rather than ramping up production. The price of oil is in effect acting as an automatic stabilizer,” they said. If so, it is “stabilizing” the world economy in perma-slump."


That is what lif looks life on the prodcution plateau.   And when will we see the production decline?   Too soon?  or too late?
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   Here's a translation of a LeMond interview.


"The production of oil has already been on a plateau since 2005 at around 82 mb/d. [NB: with biofuels and coal-to-liquid, we approximate 88 mb/d for all liquid fuels.] It appears to me impossible to go much higher. Since demand is still on an increasing trajectory (unless, possibly, the economic crisis engulfs the emerging economies), I expect to see the first tensions arising between 2013 and 2015."

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http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9737#more

#8 - Oil will decline shortly after 2015, says former IEA oil expert

Posted by Rembrandt on December 26, 2012 - 2:44pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: decline of oil production, iea, oil production, oliver rech [list all tags]

The Oil Drum staff wishes a Merry Christmas to all in our readership community. We are on a brief hiatus in this period, and will be back with our regular publications early in the new year. In the meantime, we present the top ten of best read Oil Drum posts in 2012. The third in this series is a January 2012 guest post by Matthieu Auzanneau, a freelance journalist living in Paris. This article previously appeared in Le Monde.

Olivier Rech developed petroleum scenarios for the International Energy Agency over a three year period, up until 2009. This French economist now advises large investment funds on behalf of La Française AM, a Parisian assets management firm. His forecasts for future petroleum production are now much more pessimistic than those published by the IEA. He expects stronger tensions as of 2013, and an inevitable overall decline of oil production "somewhere between 2015 and 2020", in the following interview.


Olivier Rech, responsible for petroleum issues at the International Energy Agency from 2006 to 2009.

Rech’s outlook serves as another significant contribution to the expanding listof leading sources portraying the threat of an imminent decline in global extraction of crude oil.

MA: What do you foresee? Let’s begin with the non-OPEC producers (which represent 58% of production and 23% of global reserves).

OR: Outside OPEC, things are clear: of 40 million barrels per day (mb/d) of conventional petroleum extracted from existing fields, we face an annual decline on the order of 1 to 2 mb/d.

MA: In your view, are we therefore close to the 5% decline per year from existing production mentioned by Royal Dutch Shell?

OR: Yes, that’s about it.

MA: And for OPEC production (42% of production and 77% of global reserves) ?

OR: It’s more difficult to say; the data are still opaque. We are stuck in a haze. Nevertheless, I note that Barclays and Goldman Sachs banks estimate that the spare production capacity of OPEC, more particularly that of Saudi Arabia, is significantly lower that what is officially claimed.

MA: Many new production projects are presently under development all around the world. What should we expect of them?

OR: There are new projects off the coasts of Brazil, Ghana and Guyana. The Gulf of Mexico is far from being depleted. The Arctic is far less certain, but there is real potential for natural gas there. Nevertheless, we must still expect a decade before seeing eventual and significant production of petroleum.

MA: In that case, what is your view on the timing of the global peak and decline of total world oil and alternative liquid fuels output?

OR: It is always delicate to project a precise date. The recovery rate of existing fields is increasing. The US on-shore production is declining very slowly (and one must add that they are drilling in a frenzy over there). It is an error to underestimate the know-how of drilling engineers.

MA: Taking account of all these factors capable of slowing a decline, what conclusion do you draw?

OR: We will certainly remain below 95 mb/d for the combined totals of conventional and non-conventional oil.

MA: Therefore, you are clearly more alarmist than the IEA and Total, the most pessimistic of petroleum companies. Total evokes the possibility of maintaining production on a plateau of about 95 mb/d until 2030.

OR: It's true. The production of oil has already been on a plateau since 2005 at around 82 mb/d. [NB: with biofuels and coal-to-liquid, we approximate 88 mb/d for all liquid fuels.] It appears to me impossible to go much higher. Since demand is still on an increasing trajectory (unless, possibly, the economic crisis engulfs the emerging economies), I expect to see the first tensions arising between 2013 and 2015.

MA: And after that?

OR: Afterwards, in my view, we will have to face a decline of the production of all forms of liquid fuels somewhere between 2015 to 2020. This decline will not necessarily be rapid, however, but it will be a decline, that much seems clear.

MA: You state “not necessarily rapid”. Why?

OR: This will all depend on the speed at which streams of non-conventional oil will be able to be developed. Conversion of coal and natural gas to liquid fuels will remain infinitesimal. For first-generation biofuels, I believe we are already approaching the maximal limit. As for second-generation biofuels, we are still at the stage of industrial pilot projects. It should take another quarter century before we achieve a significant production on a world scale, let’s say around 2.4 mb/d.

MA: In your view, will all of this be insufficient to compensate for the decline of existing conventional oil fields?

OR: Insufficient, yes.

The Education of Nate Hagens

Greetings Peaksters

   Nate Hagens is a pretty well informed guy.  After getting a degree in finance from the Univeristy of Wisconsin, he went to get an MBA at the University of Chicago.  Then he had a series of jobs on Wall street with the likes of Salomon Brothers.  He was making big bucks, hanging with millionaires.  That's when he started his education.

As a result, he quit his job and started hanging around the Oil Drum and ASPO. He went back to school to get a degree in Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont.

And he continues to learn.Below  is recent lecture where he explores some of his ideas.   Why do people act the way they do?   What does evolution have to do with it?   How do resources play into the economy?  Is oil just another commodity?  What can we expect from the continuing growth of debt?   How will it work itself out?   And on what time frame?

One really interesting point he makes is about what recent psychological experiments have shown about how we form and abandon opinions.   We like to think of ourselves as rational.  And we are to a point.  We can hear a logical argument based on evidence and be persuaded   Especially if we are alone.  But put in a group, we will often unconsciously defer to the group, or group leader, and change our minds without even knowing it

So Nate suggest that in near future (3-5years) , things will be changing in unexpected ways.    Oil will be more expensive, economic activity will shrink, there could be disruptions in politics and markets.  Growth will end, globalization will reverse.  And one thing he suggests is that people plan now, to find ways to find, at least our necessities, locally.

Which is not as easy as it sounds.

Consider bread.   Right now bread is provided to us very efficiently, and at low cost.   The wheat is grown somewhere else, ground somewhere else, baked somewhere else, and delivered here.

Could  it be otherwise?

Check it one community's attempt here


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http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-12-21/nate-hagens-the-end-of-growth

Nate Hagens: The end of growth

by Karen Rybold-Chin, originally published by On the Earth Productions  | DEC 21, 2012

Energy Hub, WUD Society and Politics Committee, and Madison Peak Oil Group host energy/finance expert Nate Hagens for a presentation that weaves together economics, anthropology, psychology, finance, trade, energy and human behavior into a coherent story about our human social system.

In a visual synthesis using pictures and paintings instead of charts and graphs, Nate uses biophysical first principles to explain how our human economy really works, and how we achieved enormous success over the past two hundred years. But the underlying drivers of our economic juggernaut; cheap energy and resources, and an unconstrained natural environment, and increasingly, credit and debt, are unlikely to be available to continue a growth trajectory.

Nate contrasts our growing realities with the standard assumptions in economic theory that underpin our social systems. Among the key points, it is the power from cheap fossil fuels, not technology or creativity, that has enabled the majority of our wages, profits and inexpensive consumer goods. Also, Nate questions how a societal pursuit of “growth in transactions” (GDP) is either possible or desirable on a full planet with brains that evolved under much different circumstances. Nate predicts that we now face the end of global growth and although we are still incredibly rich as a society, our institutions, policies, and individual behaviors and aspirations are likely going to have to change.

Originally published by On the Earth Productions.

Gift Ideas

Greetings Peaksters

     This holiday, perhaps a little less?



http://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/

The Gift of Death

December 10, 2012

Pathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 11th December 2012

There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want. So you buy them a solar-powered waving queen; a belly button brush; a silver-plated ice cream tub holder; a “hilarious” inflatable zimmer frame; a confection of plastic and electronics called Terry the Swearing Turtle; or – and somehow I find this significant – a Scratch Off World wall map.

They seem amusing on the first day of Christmas, daft on the second, embarrassing on the third. By the twelfth they’re in landfill. For thirty seconds of dubious entertainment, or a hedonic stimulus that lasts no longer than a nicotine hit, we commission the use of materials whose impacts will ramify for generations.

Researching her film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard discovered that of the materials flowing through the consumer economy, only 1% remain in use six months after sale(1). Even the goods we might have expected to hold onto are soon condemned to destruction through either planned obsolescence (breaking quickly) or perceived obsolesence (becoming unfashionable).

But many of the products we buy, especially for Christmas, cannot become obsolescent. The term implies a loss of utility, but they had no utility in the first place. An electronic drum-machine t-shirt; a Darth Vader talking piggy bank; an ear-shaped i-phone case; an individual beer can chiller; an electronic wine breather; a sonic screwdriver remote control; bacon toothpaste; a dancing dog: no one is expected to use them, or even look at them, after Christmas Day. They are designed to elicit thanks, perhaps a snigger or two, and then be thrown away.

The fatuity of the products is matched by the profundity of the impacts. Rare materials, complex electronics, the energy needed for manufacture and transport are extracted and refined and combined into compounds of utter pointlessness. When you take account of the fossil fuels whose use we commission in other countries, manufacturing and consumption are responsible for more than half of our carbon dioxide production(2). We are screwing the planet to make solar-powered bath thermometers and desktop crazy golfers.

People in eastern Congo are massacred to facilitate smart phone upgrades of ever diminishing marginal utility(3). Forests are felled to make “personalised heart-shaped wooden cheese board sets”. Rivers are poisoned to manufacture talking fish. This is pathological consumption: a world-consuming epidemic of collective madness, rendered so normal by advertising and the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us.

In 2007, the journalist Adam Welz records, 13 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa. This year, so far, 585 have been shot(4). No one is entirely sure why. But one answer is that very rich people in Vietnam are now sprinkling ground rhino horn on their food or snorting it like cocaine to display their wealth. It’s grotesque, but it scarcely differs from what almost everyone in industrialised nations is doing: trashing the living world through pointless consumption.

This boom has not happened by accident. Our lives have been corralled and shaped in order to encourage it. World trade rules force countries to participate in the festival of junk. Governments cut taxes, deregulate business, manipulate interest rates to stimulate spending. But seldom do the engineers of these policies stop and ask “spending on what?”. When every conceivable want and need has been met (among those who have disposable money), growth depends on selling the utterly useless. The solemnity of the state, its might and majesty, are harnessed to the task of delivering Terry the Swearing Turtle to our doors.

Grown men and women devote their lives to manufacturing and marketing this rubbish, and dissing the idea of living without it. “I always knit my gifts”, says a woman in a television ad for an electronics outlet. “Well you shouldn’t,” replies the narrator(5). An advertisement for Google’s latest tablet shows a father and son camping in the woods. Their enjoyment depends on the Nexus 7’s special features(6). The best things in life are free, but we’ve found a way of selling them to you.

The growth of inequality that has accompanied the consumer boom ensures that the rising economic tide no longer lifts all boats. In the US in 2010 a remarkable 93% of the growth in incomes accrued to the top 1% of the population(7). The old excuse, that we must trash the planet to help the poor, simply does not wash. For a few decades of extra enrichment for those who already possess more money than they know how to spend, the prospects of everyone else who will live on this earth are diminished.

So effectively have governments, the media and advertisers associated consumption with prosperity and happiness that to say these things is to expose yourself to opprobrium and ridicule. Witness last week’s Moral Maze programme, in which most of the panel lined up to decry the idea of consuming less, and to associate it, somehow, with authoritarianism(8). When the world goes mad, those who resist are denounced as lunatics.

Bake them a cake, write them a poem, give them a kiss, tell them a joke, but for god’s sake stop trashing the planet to tell someone you care. All it shows is that you don’t.

www.monbiot.com

1. http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/

2. It’s 57%. See http://www.monbiot.com/2010/05/05/carbon-graveyard/

3. See the film Blood in the Mobile. http://bloodinthemobile.org/

4.http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_dirty_war_against_africas_remaining_rhinos/2595/

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7VE2wlDkr8&list=UU25QbTq58EYBGf2_PDTqzFQ&index=9

6. http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/07/commercial-for-googles-nexus-7-tablet-revealed/

7. Emmanuel Saez, 2nd March 2012. Striking it Richer: the Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2009 and 2010 estimates).http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf

8. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p424r

Tight Oil Productions trends

Greetings Peaksters

       Well, we're all counting on tight oil to come on strong.  And so far its done well.  But it turns out to have  a "Red Queen" aspect.  The first year there is lots of oil, but then production falls off quickly.  In order to make up for the drop in production you have to drill another, and so on.   Until you run out of places to put holes.  Around 2017. Then you crash.
   

Future production from U.S. shale or tight oil

by James Hamilton

I attended the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco two weeks ago at which I heard a very interesting presentation by David Hughes of the Post Carbon Institute. He is more pessimistic about future production potential from U.S. shale gas and tight oil formations than some other analysts. Here I report some of the data on tight oil production that led to his conclusion.

A number of analysts have issued optimistic assessments of the future production potential of U.S. shale or tight oil. For example, the International Energy Agency recently predicted that the U.S. would be producing over 10 million barrels per day of oil and natural gas liquids by 2020 before resuming a gradual decline. Citigroup is even more optimistic.

Source: David Hughes, AGU presentation, December 2012.

Source: David Hughes, AGU presentation, December 2012.

David Hughes has been studying detailed data on each individual well in shale gas and tight oil formations in the United States as part of a study that will be released by the Post Carbon Institute in February. The most successful new oil-producing region is the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana, which currently accounts for 42% of the U.S. tight oil total and accounts for about 1/5 of the tight oil production that is projected by Citigroup for 2022. Hughes finds that once output from a typical Bakken well begins to decline, within 24 months its production flow is down to 1/5 the level achieved at its peak. This is in line with estimated decline rates separately published by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources.

Source: David Hughes, AGU presentation, December 2012.

Given the observed decline rates on existing wells, it is then a straightforward mechanical exercise to ask the following question. Suppose that no new wells were drilled after 2010. What would the path of Bakken oil production then look like?

Source: David Hughes, AGU presentation, December 2012.

Increasing the annual production thus requires not just new wells but an increasing number of new wells each year; Hughes estimates that 820 new wells are needed just to offset Bakken field decline. But a second feature in the data posing challenges for that plan is that while a few wells in the Bakken have proven to be very productive, the average well productivity is much lower. A limited number of lucrative sweet spots account for much of the success so far.

Source: David Hughes, AGU presentation, December 2012.

Source: David Hughes, AGU presentation, December 2012.

Hughes argues that there are limits to the number of new wells that will plausibly be drilled each year and the number of available well locations. These factors make achieving the IEA or Citigroup objectives difficult and mean a much more rapid decline in the production rate after the peak is reached. For example, here are Hughes' calculations if the current drilling rate were maintained-- 1500 new wells per year leading to a tripling in the number of operating wells-- and if the EIA's estimate of remaining productive locations is accepted. By contrast, the Citigroup projection of a continuous plateau after reaching peak production would require tens of thousands more well locations than estimated to be available by the EIA.

Source: David Hughes, AGU presentation, December 2012.

Oil produced from shale or tight formations is going to be very helpful to the U.S. economy. But this is an expensive way to try to get oil, and there may have been some overselling of how much these fields are actually going to deliver.

Recognizing Reality

Greetings Peaksters

       At some time we are forced to recognize reality.    I started this newsletter and blog with the goal of informing people about resource limits and climate change.   And the hope was, of course that this information would  assist in the enactment of policies which would address those problems before they became crises.

       At this point that goal seems a bit out of reach.

I recently stumbled upon the blog of a UK Glaciologist, Chris Vernon,  here who can speak with more authority:

As Chris Vernon says:

"The time for hope is over; it is simply illogical to continue believing that dangerous future climate projections can be mitigated through national and international agreements, or through pro-active action. We now have to consider life in a 4 °C warmer world, described here in a report for the World Bank [7]."

       It seems the best we can do at this point, is to be aware of the changes, and find constructive ways to adapt to the "new normal."

Read more »

Food for thought

Greetings Peaksters

       Here's an interesting article about the future of the Colorado River.   The river that serves the southwest and parts of California  an area that accounts for 15% of the US crops.  Annual flows could drop 20 percent by mid century.  (see below).

    By then, of course, there will be a great need for water.  The West will already be very parched.    For instance, check out these maps from a 2010 study by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) .  They are pretty mind blowing.   By 2060,  agriculture appears nearly impossible in most of the US.

     As you can see,  the US won't be alone. Unfortunately we won't have to wait until 2060.   In fact the  UN  is already warning of a looming worldwide food crisis in 2013     Besides the US.  Australia, Canada, and even Europe, major food producers, are predicted to be hit severely
   
For a more thorough look,  check out Stuart Saniford's Future of Drought series

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Read more »

Caution: Objects may appear further away than they are

Greetings Peaksters

     Very interesting musings from Ugo Bardi.   Remember the good old days, when the Climate Changes were going to happen in 2100?    When there was a potential that Peak Oil would come along and knock the juggernaut off course?

     Well, we hit peak crude in 2006, peak exports in 2008,  but CO2 never missed a beat.  Mean while the impacts predicted for  2011 were revised to 2050, then 2030.     Then the Northwest passage opened up.  Super storms, droughts and forest fires arrived.

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Bonus feature:

Stuart Saniford's theory (circa 2006) of what deline rate it would take (11%) to knock us off course

Read more »

Meadows - What Collapse looks like

The future is already here.  Its just not evenly distributed
=William Gibson

Greetings Peaksters

      I'm always interested in what Dennis Meadows has to say. (H/T to Bob Takai)

Here is a very perceptive  view on what "collapse" looks like:  (it's lumpy)

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Let's assume that you are right and that the collapse will arrive in this century. What will it look like?

Meadows: It will look different in different places. Some countries are already collapsing, and some people won't even notice. There are almost a billion people who are starving to death these days, and people here basically aren't noticing. And there is the issue of speed: The difference between a decline and a collapse is speed. The rich can buy their way out of a lot of things. The end of fossil energy, for example, will be gradual. But climate change will come to the industrial countries no matter what. And the geological record clearly shows that the global temperature doesn't increase in a linear way. It jumps. If that happens, a collapse will occur. But it would be nothing new, of course. Societies rise and fall. They have been doing so for 300,000 years.

Read more »

Victory Garden

Greeting peaksters

  Hope you are enjoying your winter greens!

     I had the chance to attend a local meeting focusing on food related issues   Lots of energetic ideas about community gardens, food preservation, and local food markets. 
      At one point we heard a presentation from a couple of young people who are interested in organic farming. They have got themselves educated, and have on the ground experimenter, but are running into a major problem.  They cant afford land.    Not sure how to bridge the gap.

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Here's some info on food price trends and  community gardens

http://www.ecoshock.info/2012/12/victory-gardens-past-and-future-with.html

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Below Heinberg wonders about industrial ag.

Read more »

Scientist asks "Is Earth F**cked?"

Greetings Peaksters


  Here's a new One.  At the American Geophysical Union, one speaker tried answer the the question everyone is asking.  First he models the normal way, taking into account the physical situation, then tries to add in a social science component.   Hie conclusion - the normal bureaucratic methods won't stop Climate Change.  But resistance might.

----  
see Joe Romm's take   here

Read more »

Profound ‘Disconnect’ Between Science and Doha

Greetings peaksters

   Not much to add here.    I am reminded of the story about the fable of the storm that threw thousands of star fish onto the beach.   Thousands of them dried up and died.  And the person who was throwing them back into the sea was saying "At least I saved that one."

     Here the insider / blogger says:

"Responses to the meeting’s outcome have been varied, but, as with most of these climate summits it is largely considered far from adequate to address the growing climate crisis.  EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard called it a “modest step toward a global climate deal.”

But these criticisms seem overwrought. It’s not that critics of the meeting are wrong to want faster international action on climate change. We all should.  It’s just pointless to imagine this body working much faster than it is designed to do. This is especially true now."

Climate Progress

      It seems apparent that the world is missing the opportunity to avoid "dangerous" temperature increases.   Nevertheless, this person, at least, thinks, that the continued negotiations can make things "less bad".    

Read more »

The only chart you need

Greetings peaksters

        I must confess I'm a sucker for charts.   And this one is a beauty.    Not only is it colorful, it comes from a respected governmental organization, and best of all,  it simply tells the truth!




Read more »

In Praise of P

Greetings Peaksters

   When Mother Jones and Business Insider both warn of "peak phosphorous", maybe its something to take a look at.     From the looks of , the optimistic scenario is that phosphorous production peaks around 2030.   Of course, if "peak oil" is any indication, the price will rise well before we hit the peak.

       However, there is also the less optimistic scenario.  It seems that 85% of all high grade phosphates  are located in the Western Sahara.

"The Western Sahara is an occupied territory. In 1976, when Spanish colonialists left, its neighbor Morocco invaded, and has held it ever since. Most observers believe the vast phosphate deposits were the major reason that Morocco took an interest. Whatever the truth, the Polisario Front, a rebel movement the UN recognizes as the rightful representatives of the territory, would like it back. "



http://e360.yale.edu/feature/phosphate_a_critical_resource_misused_and_now_running_out/2423/

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http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/11/are-we-heading-toward-peak-fertilizer
     
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A Genius Investor Thinks Billions Of People Are Going To Starve To Death — Here's Why

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/peak-phosphorus-and-food-production-2012-12?op=1#ixzz2EPN28q8u

Investor Jeremy Grantham of GMO recently published a startlingly depressing outlook for the future of humanity.

Grantham thinks the number of people on Earth has finally and permanently outstripped the planet's ability to support us.

Grantham believes that the planet can only sustainably support about 1.5 billion humans, versus the 7 billion on Earth right now (heading to 10-12 billion).

Basically, Grantham thinks most of us are going to starve to death.

Why?

In part because we're churning through a finite supply of something that is critical to our ability to produce food: Phosphorus.

Phosphorus is a critical ingredient of fertilizer, and there is a finite supply of it. The consensus is that we will hit "peak phosphorus" production within a few decades, after which point our phosphorus supply will inexorably decline. As it declines, we will be unable to feed ourselves. And you know the rest.

Of course, ever since Malthus, a steady stream of doomsayers have predicted a ghastly end to the human population explosion--and, so far, they've all been wrong.

So why is a man of Grantham's intelligence adding his voice to this chorus?

And how real is this threat? Are we all going to starve?

Humans have been around for a while. But for most of our existence, our population was small and stable. Then it exploded.

Wikipedia

Most of this explosion has come in the past 200 years--just as Malthus predicted. What Malthus did not foresee was the discovery of oil, commercial fertilizer, and other resources, which have (temporarily) supported this population explosion.

GMO

For the past 100 years, technology has made these resources cheaper to extract and produce, which has made them ever cheaper. Grantham thinks that trend has now permanently ended.

GMO

Take oil, for example. Oil traded at about $16 a barrel for a century. Then, as demand outstripped supply, the "normal" price increased to ~$35 a barrel. Now, Grantham thinks "normal" is about ~$75 a barrel

GMO

Why are oil prices rising? Because oil demand is now growing far faster than oil supply. The world's oil production has barely increased since the 1970s, while oil usage has exploded.

GMO

Demand is exceeding supply for other commodities, too. Like metals. Here's a hundred-year look at the prices of Iron ore.

GMO

But the real problem is food.

AP Images

Over the past century, the world has produced ever more food from the same (relatively) finite supply of arable land. For example, this chart shows global wheat production in the past 50 years. The blue line is farmland. The yellow line is total wheat production. The pink line is "yield per hectare." Production is rising because yield is increasing.

The Current Moment, USDA

Why are crop yields increasing? Fertilizer.

chuckoutrearseats via Flickr

In the past half-century, we have used an ever-increasing amount of fertilizer. Not just in total, but per acre. This chart, for example, shows the number of tons of fertilizer used per square kilometer of farmland.

GMO

And this leads us to the first problem. 40 years ago, the average growth rate of crop yields per acre was an impressive 3.5% per year. This was comfortably ahead of the growth rate of global population. In recent years, however, the growth in crop yields per acre has dropped to about 1.5%. That's dangerously close to the growth of population.

GMO

That brings us to the second problem. We don't have an infinite supply of fertilizer.

Wikipedia

For most of human history, we used "natural fertilizer" (poop). But then we started making more powerful stuff.

Wikipedia

Commercial fertilizer requires, among other ingredients, potassium and phosphorus. There are finite quantities of both. Phosphorus, especially, is in short supply.

Wikipedia

Phosphorus (P) is essential for life. Plants absorb it from fertilized soil, and then animals absorb it when they eat plants (and each other). When the plants and animals excrete waste or die, the phosphorus returns to the environment. Eventually, given enough time, it gets compressed into rock at the bottom of the ocean.

United Nations Environment Program

Phosphate is a critical ingredient of fertilizer, and there is no substitute for it (because plants are partially made from it). This photo shows the difference between corn fertilized with phosphorus (background) and corn without.

United Nations Environment Program

Most of the phosphate we use in commercial fertilizer comes from phosphate rock, which was once sediment at the bottom of the ocean. This mine is located in Togo.

United Nations Environment Program

In the past ~120 years, we have become completely dependent on phosphate rock for phosphorus used in commercial fertilizer. Before that, our phosphate came from manure.

United Nations Environment Program

As the human population grows, and emerging markets get richer and need more food and animal feed, we're consuming more and more phosphorus (red line).

United Nations Environment Program

The amount of phosphate rock we use, therefore, continues to climb.

Sustainable Phosphorus Futures

The trouble is that there isn't an infinite amount of phosphate rock. Estimates differ on the amount of reserves available in the world, but they're not unlimited. Some scientists think we have enough to last hundreds of years. Others, however, are far less optimistic.

United Nations Environment Program

The consensus of many scientists is that we will hit "peak phosphorus" production in about 2030. After that, phosphorus production is expected to decline.

Sustainable Phosphorus Futures

As phosphorus production drops, crop yields will drop. And then, the concern is, we won't be able to grow enough food to feed ourselves.

So is that it? Are we screwed?

Dorothea Lange | Library Of Congress

Not necessarily. It turns out that our urine and feces contain a lot of phosphorus--which is why they make good fertilizer. If we got serious about recycling our bio-waste, we could reduce our need for phosphate rock.

United Nations Environment Program

But although conservation and recycling will help, they won't fix the problem. Because a huge amount of phosphorus will still be lost to runoff. Phosphate that isn't consumed by plants leaches out of the soil into rivers and then to the ocean.

Wikipedia

So, eventually, the finite supply of usable phosphorus could be a big problem.

Dorothea Lange, Library of Congress

Jeremy Grantham, by the way, thinks the finite supply of fertilizer and limits of crop yields are starting to affect food prices. Soybean prices, for example, have jumped in the last 10 years.

IndexMundi

So have corn prices.

IndexMundi

And wheat prices.

IndexMundi

So, why is all this happening now, when the global population has been exploding for two centuries? The answer, in part, is the spectacular growth of China, India, and other massive countries. The resource-usage of these countries is mind-boggling. Here, for example, are Grantham's estimates of the percentage of world consumption of various resources that are consumed by China alone.

GMO

Common sense will tell you that finite resources can't support infinite growth. And another look at the "growth curve" of human population shows why it might be silly to dismiss Malthus, et al, as "obviously wrong." (Maybe they were just early).

Human population.

Wikipedia

But here's hoping science and ingenuity help us find a way to fix the problem.

Wikipedia

Depressed yet? If not, check out...

GRANTHAM: We're Headed For A Disaster Of Biblical Proportions

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Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/peak-phosphorus-and-food-production-2012-12?op=1#ixzz2EPMklqr5