Greetings

     How many times have you heard someone say "Yeah,  Climate Change is terrible, I'm just glad I won't be around to see the worst of it." ?

    Here's an article from Salon from earlier this ,month.  The author makes some interesting links.  First as Anderson and Bowes have pointed out - the only way to avoid the worst is a "voluntary Depression" - 10 years of 10% reduction in CO2 emissions.    That type of economic dislocation  would hit everyone pretty hard.  But , of course , it would worth it -  considering the incredible destruction to the ecosystem, other species, as well as human suffering

        But, if you look at it from the perspective of one human lifetime, you can see some generational differences.   Unless you accept some of the wilder claims -  see e.g. this  poorly researched article in TomGram, the general consensus appears that we won't hit 2 degrees until around 2050.     After that things will get much worse.

         Who will still be around in 2050?   The folks who are kids now,  mostly.     And who got the benefit of all that burning?     Hmmm....

PS:  Check out Climate Parents  

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"If you’re already in your mid-50s or later, and you’re lucky enough not to reside in any areas that are traditionally prone to hurricanes or flooding, you’ll miss the worst of our imminent destruction. But for those of us who are younger residents of this fragile orb, who hope to live long, healthy, happy lives — well, tough shit.

.....

By the middle of the century, the comfortable, wealthy, relatively-peaceful world as we know it simply won’t exist. The consequences of worldwide coastal devastation and the subsequent infrastructure damage from super-storms and storm surges combined with the “death” of the oceans – with ominous consequences beyond our current predictive capabilities — will ravage the world, our politics and our peace, preventing even the most insulated peoples and cultures from continuing their fat and happy early-21st-century lifestyles. And unlike every other time such apocalyptic predictions have been levied, these are based on extraordinarily well-researched, peer-reviewed studies and reports from hundreds of the world’s most well-respected scientists in their field.

.....

Elsewhere, apathy runs rampant. According to an oft-cited research paper by Anthony Leiserowitz, a Gallup poll recently found that “the environment” was the 16th most important issue to Americans today. Even more troubling, among environmental issues, global warming ranked 12 out of 13 — just lower than “urban sprawl.” This apathy exists in spite of poll numbers that show a vast majority of Americans believe in man-made climate change and the requisite dangers that it poses.

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http://www.salon.com/2013/12/02/thanks_for_killing_the_planet_boomers/

Thanks for killing the planet, boomers!

The world as we know it is ending, and the indifference by Americans, politicians and mainstream press is maddening

TOPICS: BABY BOOMERS, ENVIRONMENT, CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBAL WARMING, POLITICS NEWS

The clouds of a thunderstorm roll over neighborhoods heavily damaged in a tornado in Moore, Okla., May 23, 2013. (Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson)

The strongest hurricane in modern history devastated the Philippines last month, killing tens of thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands more. But you’d hardly know it in places like New York City, where a (mostly) mild autumn trudged on, and few people seemed to have the energy to get upset about another catastrophic natural disaster on the other side of the world. Meanwhile, plenty of people across the Hudson are still struggling to recover from Sandy’s devastation.

After two years living under the baking Las Vegas sun, I recently returned to New York. Wearing hats, coats and scarves is something of a novelty, and the streets haven’t been bathed in a brown sludge that may or may not have actually been snow at some early phase in its life cycle; driving, horizontal sleet has yet to soak my pants up to my knees. So perhaps it’s no surprise I’ve happily romanticized this beautiful city since returning — and yet, the joy and excitement that I’ve experienced exists under a shroud of existential angst, a filter that coats everything in the surreal notion that all these happy memories are passing, subject to what the great Czech author Milan Kundera famously termed “the unbearable lightness of being.” It really may be the end of the world as we know it, and I really don’t feel fine.

If you’re already in your mid-50s or later, and you’re lucky enough not to reside in any areas that are traditionally prone to hurricanes or flooding, you’ll miss the worst of our imminent destruction. But for those of us who are younger residents of this fragile orb, who hope to live long, healthy, happy lives — well, tough shit.

Unfortunately, the world as we know it is ending, and no one can reasonably hope to avoid the constellation of catastrophic, ecological and social disasters that are all but certain to manifest, exacerbating one another’s horrific, deadly consequences. And yet our politicians can’t be bothered to care, a substantial portion of Americans aren’t convinced that it’s even happening (despite overwhelming, unimpeachable evidence to the contrary), and the enormity of the issue is downplayed basically everywhere outside the bounds of the largely-ghettoized “environmental/green reporting,” uniformly marginalized and dismissed by the mainstream press.

It’s strange, this deep indifference to the greatest threat the industrialized world has ever faced. Imagine the global response if an asteroid half a mile wide were barreling toward Earth, and scientists were confident that it would strike our planet in 30 or 40 years. Imagine the Gene Roddenberry-esque cooperation and global oneness that would form among Earth’s peoples. Unfortunately, an apocalyptic meteor threatening our very existence is a pretty apt analogy for the ecological nightmare we’re confronting, except that in this funhouse-mirror version of reality we like to call “the real world,” our politicians are sitting on their hands as the asteroid hurtles ever closer.

By the middle of the century, the comfortable, wealthy, relatively-peaceful world as we know it simply won’t exist. The consequences of worldwide coastal devastation and the subsequent infrastructure damage from super-storms and storm surges combined with the “death” of the oceans – with ominous consequences beyond our current predictive capabilities — will ravage the world, our politics and our peace, preventing even the most insulated peoples and cultures from continuing their fat and happy early-21st-century lifestyles. And unlike every other time such apocalyptic predictions have been levied, these are based on extraordinarily well-researched, peer-reviewed studies and reports from hundreds of the world’s most well-respected scientists in their field.

Unfortunately, Americans have gained a cynicism when faced with these sorts of dire predictions, suspicious of any and all claims that the world as we know it might be ending. Between the craziness of the late ’90s — Heaven’s Gate, Y2K, David Koresh, etc. — and the earlier, heavily propagandized warnings of the “Red Threat” and “duck and cover,” from the ’50s through the ’80s, some healthy skepticism about the severity of this crisis by the casual newsreader might be understandable — even admirable. But it’s also completely misguided and dangerous.

Elsewhere, apathy runs rampant. According to an oft-cited research paper by Anthony Leiserowitz, a Gallup poll recently found that “the environment” was the 16th most important issue to Americans today. Even more troubling, among environmental issues, global warming ranked 12 out of 13 — just lower than “urban sprawl.” This apathy exists in spite of poll numbers that show a vast majority of Americans believe in man-made climate change and the requisite dangers that it poses. According to Leiserowitz, since the year 2000 polls have consistently shown that 60-70 percent of people in the U.S. “believe that global warming is real and already underway (74 percent), believe that there is a scientific consensus on the reality of climate change (61 percent), and already view climate change as a somewhat to very serious problem (76 percent).”

Finding real solutions will require global initiatives, and in a world populated by governments that seem incapable of “thinking big,” it’s hard to imagine our politicians coming together to make the kind of wholesale changes to our society and economic structure necessary to bring global emissions down to a sustainable level. In an article for the New Statesman, journalist, activist and all-around badass Naomi Klein highlights recent research by climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows. According to Klein, their “research shows that our entire economic paradigm is a threat to ecological stability.” Working for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Anderson and Bows have published papers suggesting that industrialized nations need to start cutting emissions by 10 percent annually right now if we want to have a 50/50 chance of staving off the worst effects of global warming. (Decades — centuries, really — of indifference make a certain amount of calamity and pain unavoidable, of course.) The only problem is, cuts this large to emissions have no historical precedent. Klein notes that during the Great Depression, the U.S. decreased carbon pollution at a rate of about 10 percent annually, but this was due to catastrophic economic collapse, which should give you a sense of the enormity of the challenges we face going forward.

After decades of delays, discussions and superficial, pro-business “solutions” like a carbon tax credit, we find ourselves in a world where substantively “moving the dial” on climate change’s worst effects will be practically impossible. As Klein explains,

climate impacts come not just from what we emit today and tomorrow, but from the cumulative emissions that build up in the atmosphere over time. And [Anderson and Bows] warn that by focusing on targets three and a half decades into the future – rather than on what we can do to cut carbon sharply and immediately – there is a serious risk that we will allow our emissions to continue to soar for years to come, thereby blowing through far too much of our 2° “carbon budget” and putting ourselves in an impossible position later in the century.

And yet in America, the political challenges we face are significantly more ominous than the requisite practical challenges. There is a substantial faction of this country who hold enormous political power relative to their size, and will see every new storm and flood as further evidence against man-made climate change. Liberals hoping for some “Great Awakening” about this issue that might lead to meaningful change should consider a recent survey, reported by Adam Corner at the Guardian:

Compared to non-evangelicals, American evangelicals were less likely to believe that climate change was happening, less likely to believe that human activity was the cause, and less likely to express worry and concern. And although a majority of evangelicals supported various policy measures to tackle climate change, they were less likely to do so than non-evangelicals…

This will present a major stumbling block for any future attempts at effecting real change through our political process, when every storm is only further evidence of God’s wrath. The rampant destruction and misery playing across evangelical voters’ TV screens will only confirm their prior notions. Indeed, precisely when evangelical groups started moving toward accepting man-made climate change as a reality, the usual suspects that lead that group around by the nose got to work. According to research by Lee Fang at ThinkProgress,

In late 2005, evangelical leaders like Rick Warren joined a drive to back a major initiative to fight global warming [...] To counter this historic shift in the evangelical community, a group called the “Interfaith Stewardship Alliance” (ISA) was launched to oppose action on carbon emissions and to deny the existence of climate change.

For “stream lining” reasons, ISA relaunched as the Cornwall Alliance in 2006.

The Cornwall Alliance brags in their seminal statement that, “The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship” has been “signed by over 1,500 clergy, theologians, policy experts and other people of faith.”

And what does their declaration assert? Most notably, “while some environmental concerns are well founded and serious, others are without foundation or greatly exaggerated. [...] Some unfounded or undue concerns include fears of destructive man-made global warming, overpopulation, and rampant species loss.”Unsurprisingly, the Cornwall Alliance is funded by the “Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow” (CFACT), an anti-environment front group funded by ExxonMobil, Chevron and other oil interests.

If this were the only political obstacle standing in our way, perhaps there would still be hope: indeed, the flurry of recent success on gay rights initiatives shows that this group’s power, while considerable, has its limits. But there’s another group, considerably more powerful, and even less inclined to hear about the massive, costly structural changes society will have to undertake to save itself from destruction: the graying rich.

The Great Recession was a massive economic catastrophe for practically all Americans, but some groups suffered worse (and for longer) than others. In the last three years, a number of studies have revealed a substantial intergenerational wealth transfer toward the oldest demographic groups — a trend that only stands to hasten as baby boomers head into retirement and start leaning heavily on Social Security and Medicare benefits. According to Pew Research:

In 2009, households headed by adults ages 65 and older possessed 42 percent more median net worth (assets minus debt) than households headed by their same-aged counterparts had in 1984. During this same period, the wealth of households headed by younger adults moved in the opposite direction. In 2009, households headed by adults younger than 35 had 68 percent less wealth than households of their same-aged counterparts had in 1984.

As a result of these divergent trends, in 2009 the typical household headed by someone in the older age group had 47 times as much net wealth as the typical household headed by someone in the younger age group – $170,494 versus $3,662 (all figures expressed in 2010 dollars). Back in 1984, this had been a less lopsided ten-to-one ratio. In absolute terms, the oldest households in 1984 had median net wealth $108,936 higher than that of the youngest households. In 2009, the gap had widened to $166,832.

This is a fairly stunning revelation: Our income inequality is also a generational inequality.

What does any of this have to do with global warming? When an increasing share of our national wealth is held by an aging demographic minority, our national politics are only more likely to tilt away from confronting the “inconvenient truth” of our world’s imminent (yet slow moving) destruction. While the AARP spends over $100 million on D.C. lobbyists every year protecting sacred cows like Social Security and Medicare, no comparable institution exists to lobby on behalf of Mmillennials and “Gen Z,” the demographic groups that will face global warming’s worst consequences. We’ve been consigned to the sidelines, turned into spectators of the greatest disaster movie ever made. So go ahead: Grab a bag of popcorn and take a seat. The show has just begun.

The Big Secret

Greetings

      Nobody wants to talk about it.   It's in the back of our minds, though.

      Its the Big Secret.  

       Instead we talk about the other stuff.  We talk about divestment, and coal trains, and fracking , and about the big bad oil companies.    These are safe topics.   These are somebody else's problem.

    The big secret is that we can't  avoid 2 degrees without a power down.  It would be nice, but we can't. 

   What's a power down?  Simply - it less energy for everyone.  And less energy means less stuff.

    

        It means a long recession.  It means no flying, and damn little driving.  And wearing lots of clothes in winter.    Indoors and out.    More sweat in summer.

        It's not the end of the world.   But it may mean  the beginning.      

Powerdown: Let's talk about it

by Joanne Poyourow, originally published by Transition US  | TODAY

We're caught in the squeeze right now.

Climate change is advancing at an incredible speed. We know we should do something, but we lack the political will to do what it takes to hold it to 2°C. UN committees are now being counseled to prepare for 4°C of warming. To keep it survivable, there's got to be a powerdown -- starting today.

Meanwhile green-tech enthusiasts cheer the rapid rate at which certain countries are installing renewable energy infrastructure. But reports are now surfacing of shortages in the rare earth ingredients needed to make that renewable infrastructure. We don't have enough rare earth materials to replace the whole fossil infrastructure and continue on our current level of consumption. No one dares speak the little secret: Even with renewables, there's got be a powerdown.

Shale oil is environmental desecration. But people are willing to consider it because there is potentially vast amounts of money in it because the easier-to-get-to oil is running out. Along with stopping fracking, there's going to be a powerdown. But no one is talking about that part.

We should "keep the coal in the ground" scientists are telling us, and activists have (rightfully) picked up the cry. But no one never mentions the other side of the Stop Coal equation: the powerdown. We have to start talking about what we are willing to give up. 

Industry charges forward: expand-expand-expand the airports, the freeways, heedless of the need for powerdown. New extractive drugs, new processed foods, new fashions and ways to consume, more-more-more energy consumption. And consumers and the market applaud it all. They're inventing new biotech, new robotics, new high tech -- all inextricably dependent on energy. Powerdown is such a big secret, that it can't even be a talking point; it draws a blank stare.

But powerdown has got to happen. And really, really soon.

Powerdown means shifting to tools, techniques, lifestyle habits which use LESS power. It means reducing our energy consumption overall. Across the board. In totality.

Powerdown doesn't mean convincing ourselves we're going to convert our entire fleet of fossil automobiles over to an all-electric fleet, because about half of the fossil energy and greenhouse gasses embodied in each vehicle is spent in manufacturing it. Rather, powerdown means shifting to bicycles and human-powered transportation and reorienting our lives and our cities to need LESS transportation.

Powerdown doesn't mean "more efficient" aircraft. Powerdown means no-fly pledges and stay-cations and moving closer to family. It means foregoing taking the kids abroad; and when your friends mention they're thinking of doing so, it means responding in a way that makes it clear that it's socially UNcool.

Powerdown doesn't mean higher tech, because that requires vast high-powered labs and vast globalized supply chains and more-more-more rare earth materials behind the scenes to manufacture all that stuff. Stuff which will so quickly be outmoded.

Powerdown means inventing tools that run on zero energy, tools made from repurposed materials that humans already have extracted, tools that are durable and repairable because this isn't a short-term fix. Rather, humanity is in this powerdown game for the long haul.

On a more intangible level, powerdown brings with it inevitable shifts in our economy. We can no longer have economic structures be dependent on more-more-more volume and more-more-more profits. Powerdown means a re-evaluation of what is important: Sufficiency. Basic needs met. Peace and harmony. (The biggest challenge is that last one.)

Powerdown means shifts in other systems too. It means parents and school officials becoming far less enchanted with the glossy hollow call of more-more-more high tech, and much more realistic about teaching the skills of powerdown. Right now we call it "green" to teach tiny kids to plant seeds in recycled plastic bottles, lessons that are completely disconnected from the reality of ecosystems, because it's so cute. That's much easier than making part of the high school curriculum the deep skills necessary to pump organic yield, like soil building, crop rotation, intensive urban ag spacing, season stretching, and food preservation. But we've got to do it.

Powerdown means our schools Just Saying No to corporate "donations" which strong-arm administrators and parents, and influence students, to place false hopes in the Big Corporate Way. It means teaching Local Foods and Buy Local, not as a "pretty-and-greener it-would-be-nice" feature, but as the core reality of our children's future. Powerdown means shifting direction today.

Powerdown means political officials finding the backbone to turn away from big corporate dollars, to turn instead toward serious preparation for the realities of our future. Rather than trying to help disadvantaged communities climb on board old-fashioned energy-intense ways, powerdown means publicly and openly declaring that was a false mirage. Powerdown means acknowledging the folly and backing away from the cliff. It means helping all citizens make a direct shift into a more appropriate future.

Powerdown means faith communities embracing their role of cultivating peace and healing the world. It means preaching that large SUVs and use-it-once consumerism and large families are unholy, socially unjust, and sacrilegious. Faith communities can help us acknowledge that the false mirage wasn't satisfying; that pursuit of it has made us less than who we are meant to be. Powerdown means Practice -- as a community -- of the lifestyle habits which lead to a peaceful shift: reusable dishes, onsite composting, food not lawns, bike/walk to gatherings, local food potlucks, simple living, connection.

It's much easier to talk about shiny new stuff like the latest electric car model, or whether bullet trains are a good idea. It's much easier to chat up the fantasy of high-rise hydroponic food towers, oblivious to their energy demands. But powerdown is here. Powerdown is now. We need to use the term widely.

It's time to have the tough conversations. Time to get the wider public familiar with the concept. The writing is on the wall: Powerdown is inevitable. If we want any hope of achieving it peacefully, we've got to start shifting -- minds and physical infrastructure -- today.  Powerdown: Say it. Begin it.

Working without a net

Greetings

    I stumbled on a a new energy blogger called the energy skeptic.  Worth a look

    Among other things, the site has lots about ERoEI.  Stuff I hadn't seen before.

    There were a couple of things of note.  First that "net energy" may be more important than Hubbert's  peak.  And that we may cross an important net energy threshold before the peak of oil (all liquids)  production

First the threshold. 

 Here's a review of a 41 page paper by Hall. et al,  in which we find this summary:

Minimum EROI required   Activity

• 1.1  : 1             Extract oil
• 1.2  : 1             Refine Oil
• 3    :  1             Transportation
• 5    :  1             Grow Food
• 7-8 :  1             Support Family of Workers
• 10  :  1             Education
• 12  :  1             Health Care
• 14  :  1             Arts and other culture     Source: (Lambert)

  We hit 14:1, we  start to notice that we are living in different world.   We on't have enough " extra energy" to support all the trappings of civilization.      Interestingly,  this threshold may be crossed  before we hit the Hubbert peak..  

  

Where are we now?

• The Energy Returned on Investment (EROI) has declined for all fossil fuel resources except coal since the 1950s. In the United States, the EROI of production was 30:1 in the 1970s and less than 10:1 now.  Global EROI has gone from 30:1 in 1995 to around 18:1 in 2006.

Does the US still have a lot of the high EROI stuff?

No

In the United States, the EROI of production was 30:1 in the 1970s and less than 10:1 now. 

How fast is EROI declining?

   Well, it looks like it dropped from 30:1 to 18:1 in about 20 years.  If I use my calculator correctly, that would be 12 in 20 or .6 per year.  So if it were a straight line (no idea)  - we would hit 14 in 2006+7 = 2013!   Ooops!  

    How would we know if we hit 14:1?    

• Declining EROI, at the societal level, means that an increasing proportion of energy output is diverted to getting the energy needed to run an economy with less discretionary funds available for “non-essential” projects.
• The declining EROI of traditional fossil fuel energy sources and this eventual effect on the world economy are likely to result in a myriad of unforeseen consequences.

So, we might see things , like less investment in non energy activities - like infrastructure, police and fire,     And failure to make good on promises made - like Pensions  -.   

What about alternative energy?

• EROI of renewable energy is very low:

EROI              Source

• 2:1                 Biofuels are less than 2 to 1, negative or break-even
• 18:1               Wind (perhaps)
• 7:1                 Photovoltaic solar

• Most renewable and nonconventional energy alternatives have substantially lower EROI values than conventional fossil fuels.

I don't like the looks of those numbers.   Hopefully they are wrong.  Here's some pretty detailed  info  from a study of PV in Spain. 

"This is the first time an estimate of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROI) of solar Photovoltaics (PV) has been based on real data from the sunniest European country, with accurate measures of generated energy from over 50,000 installations using several years of real-life data from optimized, efficient, multi-megawatt and well oriented facilities.

Prieto and Hall conclude that the EROI of solar photovoltaic is only 2.45, very low despite Spain’s ideal sunny climate.  Germany’s EROI is probably 20 to 33% less (1.6 to 2), due to less sunlight and efficient rooftop installations.

Have nice day!

Tar Sands and Ragnarok

You better free your mind instead

- John Lennon

Greetings

     Is climate change a scientific problem?  A political problem?   I'd suggest that it is more of  psychological problem.   One that is rooted in the prevailing myths - the ones that are repeated over and over in the stories we tell ourselves.   The myth of progress,  of humanity's special place, that the world , that we, are machines -  something non-alive and subject to tinkering  Something that can be torn apart and put together again.   

     But the world is not a machine.  It is alive.   

Interesting ideas about the next stage of myth here

About the stories we tell here

"We believe that the roots of our converging global crises – peak oil, mass extinction, climate change, a cannibalistic economic model – were not technological, nor even economic, but were rooted in the stories we tell ourselves as a civilisation about who we are and where we are going. The Dark Mountain Project was set up to challenge these stories and begin to write new ones. Our challenge was to unlearn the ways of thinking that we took for granted, so as to be able to understand better the cultural currents that have got us to this point. In other words, to un-civilise our minds.

What do some of the older stories tell us?

The Tar Sands and the World Tree – can Ragnarok be avoided?

by Robert Holtom, originally published by Open Democracy  | NOV 27, 2013

Norse mythology tells of Ragnarok, a cataclysmic disaster akin to ecocide. In order to avoid this fate we need new stories that reunite human experience with nature.

What do the “selfish gene,” homo economicus and the idea that human nature isimmutable all have in common? They mix selective evidence with supposition, and masquerade as truth. Contemporary narratives, often woven in the mainstream media, further naturalise these taken-for-granted constructs to the point at which questioning their veracity becomes almost unimaginable. Fortunately, this triptych of so-called truths share another characteristic - they are stories.

For thousands of years, stories have been used by people to understand themselves and discover their place in the world. But stories are also used to strengthen and legitimize certain beliefs, and like other technologies they can be used to undermine or strengthen the search for social justice and sustainable development.

Take the above stories as examples. The theory of the “selfish gene” tries to convince us that human evolution is governed by a single, self-interested motive;homo economicus posits that human reasoning can be condensed into a glorified cost-benefit calculation; and the idea that human nature is immutable reduces the rich diversity of peoples and cultures to a small number of fixed character traits that are fed into policy making.

All three of these stories are dangerous. They stifle our imaginations and lead us to adopt a narrow range of “solutions” that are built around self-interest and competition. These solutions create more problems of their own, and they contribute to the destruction of communities and of the environment that surrounds them.

Isn’t it time we told ourselves a different set of stories?

In contemporary capitalist mythology, the world is a mere resource, something to be mined, exploited and profited from, with little regard for current and future generations. The impact of this story is already being felt right across the world. Take, for example, the boreal forests of Alberta in Canada. These swampy coniferous forests, typical of the high northern latitudes, are over eight thousand years old. They house large quantities of wetlands, teem with biodiversity, and act as a huge carbon sink.

Unfortunately, they are also home to the infamous “Tar Sands” – deposits of bitumen that form one of the dirtiest sources of energy in the world but are still irresistible to global oil companies. These companies engage in large-scale felling of the forests, open-cast mining, and steam-assisted gravitational drilling, operations that are hugely polluting and energy-intensive. They require large quantities of water - between 2.4 and 4 barrels of water for every barrel of oilthat is extracted. And they leave behind huge toxic tailing ponds - lakes of poison in which numerous bird populations have already been extinguished.

The Tar Sands are also exceptionally dangerous to human beings, not least to the people who actually operate the mines and drill sites, but also to the communities that call the forests home. They include First Nations communities like theBeaver Lake Cree, who have documented rising levels of cancer and other diseases as their soils and waterways have become polluted by toxins that leach from the Sands.

There is a name for destruction on this scale: “ecocide.” It is defined as “extensive damage to, destruction of, or loss of ecosystem(s) in a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished.”

The Eradicating Ecocide Initiative was established in 2010 to fight this problem. It aims to make the mass destruction of ecosystems a legal crime. In 2011 a mock ecocide trial was held at the UK’s Supreme Court, and a jury found two fictitious CEOs guilty for their companies’ activities in the Tar Sands. The law of ecocide is also restorative, as well as retributive, calling on companies, governments and banks to repair the damage they have done.

Paralleling these efforts, the European Citizens’ Initiative is collecting one million votes in support of a Law of Ecocide in the European Union. And many First Nations communities in Canada are protesting the destruction of their homes and livelihoods as part of a national movement called Idle No More, which calls on all people to live with greater respect for the earth. In recognising the rights of the natural world, making ecocide illegal would not only foster the healing of decimated land, it could also ensure that communities who depend on these lands for their survival might flourish.

As this devastation unfolds a new story is emerging, one that reaches back to much older myths that portray a radically different relationship with the Earth and its natural resources. Take the story of Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, for example, a giant ash that’s also known as the “world tree.” This tree was the centre of the Norse cosmos, a meeting place of the gods and the three sisters of fate who were believed to decide the destinies of all human beings. A whole mythical world was dependent on Yggdrasil, just as the contemporary world is dependent on a thriving network of bio-diverse forests.

By reinventing the stories through which we live, we may be able to ensure that myths like the “selfish gene” that have been used to justify human greed do not become self-fulfilling prophecies. Both the Norse myths and the stories that are emerging from the Tar Sands transcend the binary view that nature and society are separate from one another, and they weave the human experience back into the larger earth community in which it belongs.

At the heart of these stories is the recognition that our world cannot live without forests. Trees form a vital part of the carbon cycle, transforming carbon dioxide into oxygen through the process of photosynthesis. They store much of the carbon they process, which means that they can act as carbon sinks at certain times of the year. In all of their diversity, trees have a central role to play. For example, the needles of pine trees catch mist and facilitate falling moisture to enrich the soils beneath. Tree roots stabilise soil and prevent further erosion. We rarely thank them for it, but trees do an awful lot for us as humans.

Norse mythology also tells of Ragnarok, a cataclysmic event of clashing gods, natural disasters, and the whole world drowned in water. It’s a story that seems disturbingly prophetic for our times, but from the flood emerges new land, and two humans who repopulate the species. We still have time to prevent future manifestations of the Ragnarok mythology, but to do so means keeping Yggdrasilalive.

Carbon budget and the Energy Trap

Greetings

    It's tricky business getting from here to there.  "There" being a sustainable society -  

    Basically  it's like "we had to destroy the town to save it"  .  In order to "save" the ecosystem, we need to create a new sustainable infrastructure.  In order to create the new system, we have to burn more fossil fuels.   By burning more now, we destroy the ecosystem .

         We can't see that the way out, is to forgo consumption now, for survival later.  Kind of like not eating seed corn.

" “Politically, the most acceptable path is to finance the energetic investment not by decreasing energy use for consumption today but by maintaining energy use for consumption while increasing the total energy appropriation of the economy. But ecologically, that most acceptable path will lead to climate catastrophe.”

    

    

http://monthlyreview.org/2013/09/01/fossil-fuels-war

A realistic historical assessment tells us that there is no purely technological path to a sustainable society. Although a rapid shift to renewables is a crucial component of any conceivable path to a carbon-free, ecological world, the technical obstacles to such a transition are much greater than is usually assumed. The biggest barrier is the up-front cost of building an entirely new energy infrastructure geared to renewables rather than relying on the existing fossil-fuel infrastructure. Construction of a new energy infrastructure requires vast amounts of energy consumption, and would lead—if current consumption and economic growth were not to be reduced—to further demands on existing fossil-fuel resources. This would mean, as ecological economist Eric Zencey has explained, “an aggressive expansion of the economy’s footprint in paradoxical service to the goal of achieving sustainability.” Assuming the average EROEI of fossil fuels keeps falling, the difficulty only becomes worse. Ecological economists and peak-oil theorists have dubbed this the “energy trap.” In Zencey’s words, “The problem is rooted in the sunken energy costs of the petroleum infrastructure (which makes the continued use of petroleum energetically cheap)” even when the EROEI of such fossil fuels in the case of unconventionals is lower than wind and solar.41 It follows that building an alternative energy infrastructure—without breaking the carbon budget—would require a tectonic shift in the direction of energy conservation and energy efficiency

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http://blogs.worldwatch.org/moving-beyond-fossil-fuels-before-it%E2%80%99s-too-late/

“Unlike monetary investments, which can be made on credit and then amortized out of the income stream they produce, the energy investment in energy infrastructure must be made up front out of a portion of the energy used today,” says Eric Zencey, fellow of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont and author of Chapter 7, “Energy as Master Resource.” “Politically, the most acceptable path is to finance the energetic investment not by decreasing energy use for consumption today but by maintaining energy use for consumption while increasing the total energy appropriation of the economy. But ecologically, that most acceptable path will lead to climate catastrophe.”