The only one we have, Earth Day or not!

Earthrise.

It was called “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” Rightly so!

Those words were spoken by the late Galen Rowell, the famous Californian wilderness photographer, commenting about the Earthrise photograph taken from Apollo 8 on December 24th, 1968 during the first manned mission to the Moon.

No one who saw that picture of the planet we all live on could fail to be moved. Indeed, none more so than onboard NASA astronaut Frank Borman who uttered the words as the Earth rose above the horizon of the moon, “Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.” It was fellow Apollo 8 crew-member, Bill Anders, who then took the ‘unscheduled’ photograph.

Who hasn’t gazed into a night sky and been lost in the beauty above our heads. Or felt the wind, flowing across our ancient lands, kiss our face. We stand so mite-like, so insignificant in all this immensity of creation. Our planet is ‘pretty’. Indeed, Planet Earth is good, beautiful, and so precious to life. Life that arose in just a fraction of time after our Solar System formed 3.7 billion years ago; the oldest traces of life have been found in fossils dating back 3.4 billion years. Our miracle of life.

But the one thing we cannot do is to take that miracle of life for granted. Here’s a perspective on that. Just a couple of months after that famous Earthrise photograph, in February 1969, America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recorded the level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere as 324.42 parts per million (PPM).

From 43 years ago we fast forward to February of 2012. NOAA now recorded that CO2 level as 393.65 PPM, some 21% higher than the 1969 level, but even more importantly over 12% higher than the figure of 350 PPM which is regarded by climate scientists as the maximum safe level for our Planet. And the trend upwards is steepening. Not just for CO2 but also for Methane and Nitrous Oxide which have the potential to be incredibly more damaging to our beautiful planet than CO2.

Across the face of the world people are waking up to the fact that something has to be done. While some Governments and many industries are providing great leadership, the complexities of these modern institutions means that progress is slow; far too slow. People are now taking action for themselves and for their communities.

The most notable group is the worldwide Transition Movement. It started in the UK in September 2006, indeed started in the town of Totnes, Devon, just three miles from where I used to live.

Less than 6 years later across the world there are 975 initiatives!  Including nearly 500 Transition Communities in Europe and 392 in the UK.

In the USA, there are a staggering 285 initiatives with 26 in California and three here in Arizona: Tucson, Pima and and East Valley in Phoenix ‘mulling’ it over. The ideas behind the Transition concept are powerfully simple and can be easily summarised thus:

• That it is inevitable that our lives will soon have to adapt to a dramatically lower energy consumption, especially carbon-based energy, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.
• That the over-whelming majority of communities, currently lacks resilience.
• That we have to act now to rebuild our community resilience and prepare for life without fossil fuels.
• That by tapping into the collective potential of the community, it is possible to develop new ways of living that are nourishing, fulfilling and ecologically sustainable.

Reduce our energy use, increase our resilience, switch away from carbon-based fuels and go back to the strength of communities.  No mystery about what to do!

We do not have another 43 years.  Indeed, some say we are very close to the tipping point of runaway climate consequences.

My message for this Earth Day and, indeed, for every day of the rest of our lives.

Politics, oil and our natural world – tell me it’s all a bad dream!

Note

Yesterday, Thursday, I was really under the cosh in terms of finding time to write a careful and thoughtful Post for today, being involved in meetings both in the morning and afternoon, those meetings all about launching a transition town movement for Payson.

So my apologies for taking a short-cut and reproducing an item that was published on Common Dreams that, fortuitously, linked in with yesterday’s Post Moved to help?

Obama Echoes Bush, Sets Plan for Polar Bear Extinction

“President Obama’s proposal for these magnificent and imperiled animals is a gift to Big Oil”

- Common Dreams staff

The Obama Administration issued a proposed rule yesterday that disregards the effects of greenhouse gases on polar bear habitat leading one conservation group to say that the rule echoes former President George W. Bush’s plan, and that it will lead to the extinction of polar bears.

Kassie Siegel from the Center for Biological Diversity: “President Obama’s proposal for these magnificent and imperiled animals is a gift to Big Oil and an affirmation of the pro-industry policies of the Bush government. (photo: Subhankar Banerjee)

Kassie Siegel from the Center for Biological Diversity: “President Obama’s proposal for these magnificent and imperiled animals is a gift to Big Oil and an affirmation of the pro-industry policies of the Bush government. (photo: Subhankar Banerjee)Noting that polar bears are only on the endangered species list precisely because of loss of habitat caused by greenhouse gases generated from activities outside the Arctic, the proposed rule excluding activities outside the range of polar bears from regulations will lead to the bears’ demise.

Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity called the rule “complete doublespeak,” the Associated Press reports.  “It’s saying, ‘Here is a rule necessary for the conservation of the polar bear,’ yet the only thing it does is exempt from regulation the overwhelming threat to the species.”

“If polar bears are to survive we have to directly confront the greatest threat to them: our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

“With their sea-ice habitat rapidly disappearing, polar bears need the full protection of the Endangered Species Act,” said Siegel. “President Obama’s proposal for these magnificent and imperiled animals is a gift to Big Oil and an affirmation of the pro-industry policies of the Bush government. When it comes to saving urgently endangered polar bears, the only ‘change’ Obama has delivered is more climate change.”

The rule, released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has 60-day public comment period.

* * *

Center for Biological Diversity: Obama Administration Again Proposes Polar Bear Extinction Plan
New Rule Echoes Bush Plan Ignoring Polar Bears’ Plight Against Global Warming

WASHINGTON – April 17 – The Obama administration announced today that it is reissuing a Bush-era regulation that sharply limits protections for polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. Both the current proposal and the previous Bush rule exclude activities occurring outside the range of polar bears — such as the greenhouse gas emissions of industrial polluters like coal plants — from regulations that could help stop the bear’s extinction. Today’s announcement comes as a result of a court order that struck down the Bush rule in October 2011.

Polar bears were the first species added to the endangered and threatened species list solely because of threats from global warming. Regulations issued under the Endangered Species Act must provide for the “conservation” of threatened species. Notably, the press release issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announcing the new proposed rule today did not mention greenhouse gases or climate change at all, while the very purpose of the rule is to exempt greenhouse emissions from the reach of the Act.

“If polar bears are to survive we have to directly confront the greatest threat to them: our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “But the Obama administration seems to be living in a fantasy world where the way to solve a difficult problem is to deny its existence.”

The proposed rule severely undermines protection for polar bears by exempting from portions of the Endangered Species Act all activities that occur outside of the bears’ range. But the species is endangered precisely because of activities occurring outside the Arctic — namely the emission of greenhouse gases and resulting warming that is leading to the rapid disappearance of summer sea ice.

“With their sea-ice habitat rapidly disappearing, polar bears need the full protection of the Endangered Species Act,” said Siegel. “President Obama’s proposal for these magnificent and imperiled animals is a gift to Big Oil and an affirmation of the pro-industry policies of the Bush government. When it comes to saving urgently endangered polar bears, the only ‘change’ Obama has delivered is more climate change.”

The special rule also reduces the protections the bear would otherwise receive in Alaska from oil-industry activities in its habitat.

When the polar bear was listed as a threatened species in May 2008 (following a petition by the Center), the Bush administration simultaneously issued a special rule under section 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act. A similar rule was finalized in December 2008 and defended by the Obama administration in court. On Oct. 17, 2011, a federal district court judge struck it down owing to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s failure to conduct an environmental review of the rule’s impacts.

The challenge was brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace and Defenders of Wildlife. Today’s proposal, in response to the 2011 court order, triggers a 60-day public comment period, with the rule scheduled for finalization by the end of 2012.

So I ponder on how to respond to the question from my grandson, currently one-year-old, when, in a few years time, the polar bears are no longer?

A plea to take action to preserve the Western Arctic Reserve in Alaska.

I received the following email from the Center for Biological Diversity the other day.

Dear Paul,

The Western Arctic Reserve, also known as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, is the largest tract of unprotected, relatively pristine public land in the United States. But Big Oil has the reserve in its sights and will not hesitate to turn this vast wilderness into a sprawling industrial complex to drum up massive profits.

The 23.5 million-acre reserve is home to imperiled polar bears, seabirds and one of the densest populations of nesting raptors in the world. Its shores and lagoons harbor beluga whales, seals, walruses and other marine mammals.

In the rapidly warming Arctic, short-sighted oil and gas development will further stress the remarkable wildlife that lives and breeds there.The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is now collecting comments on a planning document that will set the stage for oil and gas leasing in the western Arctic for decades to come.

You can help save this national treasure: Take action to tell the BLM to protect the Western Arctic Reserve from dirty fossil fuel development.

The action that is requested is to email or mail the following to the BLM  (the link is here.)  The email address for Bob Abbey, taken from the relevant BLM webpage is Director: Bob Abbey E-mail: Director@blm.gov

Director Bob Abbey
Bureau of Land Management
NPR-A IAP/EIS Comments, AECOM Project Office
1835 South Bragaw Street, Suite 490
Anchorage, AK 99508
US

Subject: Comments Regarding the BLM’s National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska Integrated Activity, DEIS

The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or Western Arctic Reserve, comprises the largest unprotected tract of public land in the United States. It provides habitat for a wide variety of Arctic species, and its wilderness values are second to none. While the most environmentally protective alternative analyzed by the Bureau of Land Management (Alternative B) is an improvement over previous plans, it still allows over 11 million acres of ecologically intact wilderness-quality lands to be leased for oil development. As the BLM develops the “integrated activity plan” and “final environmental impact statement” for the reserve, I urge you to provide maximum protection for areas with high-value habitats by designating all of the Special Area contained in Alternative B, and to create additional protections for all other areas in the reserve that contain ecologically intact and/or wilderness-quality lands.

The BLM must also consider the long-term impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas development, and any future impacts of climate change on the low-lying western Arctic. Arctic animals are already stressed by a melting and warming Arctic, and none of the alternatives considered go far enough to protect these species from the wide array of impacts from oil and gas development.

Among other things, the BLM must account for sea-level rise due to ice melt, permafrost collapse, coastal erosion and increased high-energy storm events that will degrade, or wipe out, critical coastal habitat, including the Teshekpuk Lake area. The BLM must also consider the impacts of ocean acidification, changes in circulation, increased freshening due to sea ice melt, and shifts in productivity to the marine environment and to marine species, including polar bears, ice seals, walruses, bowhead whales, and beluga whales.

Congress has required that “maximum protection” be given to Special Areas in the reserve. I encourage the BLM to adopt an alternative that provides protections for these areas, which include Teshekpuk Lake, the Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon, and the Utukok River Uplands. The BLM must also protect the Dease Inlet-Meade River area, Peard Bay and adjacent wetlands, and the Ikpikpuk River and adjacent wetlands.

I implore the BLM to adopt a management alternative that includes the strongest possible protections for the Western Arctic Reserve. This means designating Alternative B as the preferred alternative, and adding additional protective measures for important wildlife habitat and wilderness areas so they are not destroyed by ecologically devastating oil and gas development, or from the long-term impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Thank you.

But if that doesn’t work then there is a full webpage offering detailed information and which also has links relevant to letting the BLM know your views.  That webpage starts,

ARCTIC OIL DEVELOPMENT

Alaska’s north coast and ocean waters are teeming with species found in few other places, and many of them are now under threat. The Western Arctic Reserve and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge provide critical denning areas for polar bears, support vast caribou herds and are essential nesting grounds for thousands of bird species, including threatened eiders and yellow-billed loons. The sea ice of the Arctic Ocean is hunting and denning habitat for polar bears and a foraging platform for Pacific walrus and numerous Arctic ice seal species. Under the sea ice, endangeredbowhead whales and other whale species live off the biological richness of the Arctic Ocean.
Nearly all Arctic species are at risk from global warming. But that’s not the only problem: In a drastically changing environment, Arctic species must now contend with dirty, industrial fossil fuel development.

Please go here, read the the full information and do your little bit.  It all makes a difference.

On the 23rd March, I wrote a piece entitled The most important alarm ever heard.  It opened as follows:

The most important alarm ever heard.

The heading says it all.

In fact the heading was taken from an email that came in from Bill McKibben’s 350.org yesterday.  But before reproducing that email in full, let me take you back to the 6th January this year when I published a piece simply called Keystone XL pipeline.  This is how that Post opened up,

Yesterday, I had published a lecture given in Melbourne by Britain’s eminent Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees.  Lord Rees concluded his lecture with the call for us to take better care of our own planet. He, like many others, recognises the unique place in history that we occupy. For the first time a single species is capable of exerting profound changes on the Earth’s natural and physical environments.

Over and over again, scientists are reporting the rise in climate temperature of Planet Earth and the implications thereof if we do not wakeup soon to changing our ways.  The Keystone pipeline is a huge potential mistake!

Bill McKibben of 350.org

Not easy to focus on a single sentence from Lord Rees but this one’s pretty direct, “For the first time a single species is capable of exerting profound changes on the Earth’s natural and physical environments.”

Now have a read of the article on 350orbust.com called Things Happen, But It’s Time To Connect The Dots. I’ve taken the liberty of republishing it in full.  But first the video:

Things Happen, But It’s Time To Connect The Dots

APRIL 16, 2012

Thailand has the worst flooding in its history, only a month after Central America has the worst flood in its history, a month after Vermont has the worst flooding in its history in the same year that the Mississippi river has the worst flooding in its history. And Queensland in Australia has its worst floods only a few months after Pakistan floods so badly that 20 million people are forced from their homes – it’s connected, folks.

Across the planet now we see ever more flood, ever more drought, ever more storms. People are dying, communities are being wrecked — the impacts we’re already witnessing from climate change are unlike anything we have seen before.

But because the globe is so big, it’s hard for most people to see that it’s all connected. That’s why, on May 5, we will Connect the Dots.

In places from drought-stricken Mongolia to flood-stricken Thailand, from fire-ravaged Australia to Himalayan communities threatened by glacial melt, we will hold rallies reminding everyone what has happened in our neighborhoods. And at each of those rallies, from Kenya to Canada, from Vietnam to Vermont, someone will be holding a…dot. A huge black dot on a white banner, a “dot” of people holding hands, encircling a field where crops have dried up, a dot made of fabric and the picture taken from above — you get the idea. We’ll share those images the world around, to put a human face on climate change–we’ll hold up a mirror to the planet and force people to come face to face with the ravages of climate change.

Anyone and everyone can participate in this day. Many of us do not live in Texas, the Philippines, or Ethiopia — places deeply affected by climate impacts. For those communities, there are countless ways to stand in solidarity with those on the front-lines of the climate crisis: some people will giving presentations in their communities about how to connect the dots. Others will do projects to demonstrate what sorts of climate impacts we can expect if the crisis is left unchecked. And still others of us will express our indignation to local media and politicians for failing to connect the dots in their coverage of “natural disasters.”

However you choose to participate, your voice is needed in this fight — and you can sign up here: www.climatedots.org

These will be beautiful events, we’re sure. But they will also have an edge. It’s important for all of us whose lives are being damaged to know that it’s right that we get a little angry at those forces causing this problem. The fossil fuel industry is at fault, and we have to make that clear. Our crew at 350.org will work hard to connect all these dots — literally — and weave them together to create a potent call to action, and we will channel that call directly to the people who need to hear it most.

May 5 is coming soon; we need to work rapidly. Because climate change is bearing down on us, and we simply can’t wait. The world needs to understand what’s happening, and you’re the people who can tell them.

Please join us–we need you to send the most important alarm humanity has ever heard:www.climatedots.org

Onwards,

Bill McKibben for the whole team at ClimateDots.org

A valuable contribution from a reader.

Yesterday, I posted an item built around a visit by Prof.  Nicole Darnall, ASU, outlining the practical ways that a society can respond to the present challenges.

That post prompted a email to me from a Environmental Specialist who did not have the authority to speak publicly.  Nonetheless, it seems perfectly valid to voice those views, as follows:

Dear Mr. Handover:

I found your posting via a Google alert I’ve set up. I like your idea of trying to pull the high-flying concept of saving the planet down to a local level by referencing analysis from a local expert.

But I wonder whether you chose the right expert; e.g., if Dr. Darnall’s forecast is correct, then her recommendation of Meatless Mondays won’t go far and fast enough. It can’t even be said to be a good start — as its very name locks people into thinking that just one meatless day suffices. In fact, no consumer product is ever marketed by asking consumers to use it just one day a week; e.g., very little Pepsi-Cola would be sold by prodding consumers to drink it one day a week, conceding that Coca-Cola remains the drink of choice the rest of the week. A City University of London prof might be making more sense when he recommends one meat day per week, see Eat meat on feast days only to fight obesity, says adviser.

Producing meat is harmful for the environment as growing animals requires energy and water, and cows produce the greenhouse gas methane Photo: Christopher Jones

Preceding Dr. Darnall’s recommendation is her assessment, which states that methane has 21 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide.  But climate authorities now say methane has 25 times the effect of CO2 over a 100-year timeframe and 72 over a 20-year timeframe — which many use because methane’s half-life in the atmosphere is only about 10 years — while others use even higher figures;  e.g., see Cornell Gas Study Stirs Heated Debate

A study examining the greenhouse impacts of methane leaks in the unconventional natural gas industry has proved highly controversial.

Below you can see I’ve addressed some even more basic points to Dr. Darnall directly;  I haven’t yet had any reply.

The Environmental Specialist also included some important and pertinent points that had been sent to Dr. Darnall but I have decided to delay including that ‘letter’ for a short while in the hope that Dr. Darnall will reply.  But read the items that are linked to above.

Footnote.

Do also read the comments that came in to yesterday’s Post.

Advisory.

This Post includes the details of a live broadcast of an important event Feeding the World While the Earth Cooks from Washington D.C. If you would like to watch that broadcast then it starts at:

6am US Mountain Time Zone

9am US Eastern Daylight Time

13:00 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT/UTC)

2pm British Summer Time

Full details below.

H’mm, maybe the days of Oliver are well and truly numbered!

A quick ‘search’ found the lyrics of the famous song from the musical Oliver.  Here’s a part of the chorus:

Food, glorious food!
Don’t care what it looks like –
Burned!
Underdone!
Crude!
Don’t care what the cook’s like.
Just thinking of growing fat –
Our senses go reeling
One moment of knowing that
Full-up feeling!

Not to be taken for granted.

However, a recent announcement from Arizona State University quite rightly points out the challenges that lay ahead in terms of feeding the world’s population.  Here are the details of that ASU announcement.

The future of food: feeding the world while the Earth cooks

Editor’s Note: This event is presented by Future Tense, a partnership between Arizona State University, the New America Foundation and Slate, that examines emerging technologies, public policy and society.

Arizona State University, the New America Foundation and Slate present Feeding the World While the Earth Cooks live from Washington, D.C., on April 12.

The program will air in it’s entirety on ASUtv.

The event considers the agricultural crisis that may ensue when today’s toddlers are parents themselves – a time when the world population will reach 9 billion. “A growing global middle class will demand more food. And climate change will leave farmers holding seeds that won’t sprout. By 2050, will our global appetite outgrow our agricultural capacity?”

Tune in to find out how everyone – growers, technologists, governments, business leaders, and carbon-conscious consumers – will be part of the solution.

Speakers include Nina Fedoroff, special advisor on science and technology to the Secretary of State; Fred Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and President of Stone Barnes Center; Debra Eschmeyer, founder and program director of FoodCorps; and Bill Hohenstein, director of the USDA Global Change Program Office.

Let me highlight that the event is being carried live and is available to view.

The link you need to that ASUtv programme is here.  From where you will see that:

Arizona State University, the New America Foundation , and Slate present “Feeding the World While the Earth Cooks” live from Washington, D.C., this April 12 from 6:00 am to 12:15 pm. The program will air in it’s entirety onASUtv.

(From the New America Foundation): When today’s toddlers are parents themselves, they will face an agricultural crisis. The world population will reach 9 billion. A growing global middle class will demand more food. And climate change will leave farmers holding seeds that won’t sprout. By 2050, will our global appetite outgrow our agricultural capacity?

Join us to find out how everyone—growers, technologists, governments, business leaders, and carbon-conscious consumers—will be part of the solution.

The day’s speakers include Dr. Nina Fedoroff, Special Advisor on Science and Technology to the Secretary of State; Dr. Fred Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and President of Stone Barnes Center; Debra Eschmeyer, Founder and Program Director of FoodCorps; Bill Hohenstein, Director of the USDA Global Change Program Office; and many more.

So if you want to watch that event then here are the UTC times.

April 12 from 6:00 am to 12:15 pm US Mountain Time equates to 13:00 – 19:15 UTC (2 pm to 8:15 pm British Summer Time)

Brilliant mathematics without the need for a calculator!

Thanks to the bottomless resources of the Internet, I could quickly find a relevant quote or two to open up today’s Post.  Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was reputed to have said, “Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.“

Sorry, couldn’t resist that!  It wasn’t the quote relevant to this essay but it was too good to miss.  (Descartes was also the person who coined the phrase: I think therefore I am!)

 The quote that I thought was relevant was this one from Descartes, “With me everything turns into mathematics.”  Well until I read something recently on the Big Think website I would have been certain that the emotions, such as happiness, were well beyond reach of the logical power of mathematics.  I was wrong!

Big Think recently reported on a new book from Mr. Chip Conley called Emotional Equations where he …….,

….. argues (against Einstein, as it happens), that everything that counts can and ought to be counted. A hotelier by trade, he says that GDP and the bottom line are blunt instruments for measuring the health of a society or a business. After the dot.com crash of 2001, and a visit to the Buddhist nation of Bhutan, which has a “Gross National Happiness” index, Conley and his team decided to create indices for measuring the well-being of their employees and customers.

And a paragraph later continues,

In Emotional Equations, Conley takes the mathematics of human happiness a step further, creating simple formulas like anxiety = uncertainty x powerlessness, which, when used systematically, he says, can give individuals and organizations a concrete method for addressing the human needs that drive them.

The description of the book on the Amazon website is thus,

Mr Chip Conley

Using brilliantly simple math that illuminates universal emotional truths, Emotional Equations crystallizes some of life’s toughest challenges into manageable facets that readers can see clearly—and bits they can control. Popular motivational speaker and bestselling author Chip Conley has created an exciting, new, immediately accessible visual lexicon for mastering the age of uncertainty. Making mathematics out of emotions may seem a counterintuitive idea, but it’s an inspiring and incredibly effective one in Chip Conley’s hands. When Conley, dynamic author of the bestselling Peak, suffered a series of tragedies, he began using what he came to call “Emotional Equations” (like Joy = Love – Fear) to help him focus on the variables in life that he could deal with, rather than ruminating on the unchangeable constants he couldn’t, like the bad economy, death, and taxes. Now this award-winning entrepreneur shares his amazing new self-help paradigm with the rest of us. Emotional Equations offers an immediately understandable means of identifying the elements in our lives that we can change, those we can’t, and how they interact to create the emotions that define us and can help or hurt our progress through life. Equations like “Despair = Suffering – Meaning” and “Happiness = Wanting What You Have/Having What You Want” (Which Chip presented at the prestigious TED conference) have been reviewed for mathematical and psychological accuracy by experts. Conley shows how to solve them through life examples and stories of inspiring people and role models who have worked them through in their own lives. In these turbulent times, when so many are trying to become “superhuman” to deal with our own and the world’s problems, Emotional Equations arms readers with effective formulas for becoming super human beings.

So it all seems not quite so daft as one might initially guess.  Indeed, settle down for twenty minutes and watch Chip eloquently explain his ideas captured at that TED Conference referred to above.

There’s also an audio conversation with Mr. Conley that you can download free from here.

Finally, let me close with yet another quote from Rene Descartes, “It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.” Amen to that!

With thanks to Dan Gomez for sending me the YouTube link.

It’s a crazy old world but sometimes that craziness provides a relief from the ‘serious’ side to life.

This week the Dutch company PAL-V announced the first flights of its prototype “flying car”.
This unique vehicle is called the PAL-V One, or the ‘Personal Air and Land Vehicle’, and It marks the start of a new era.

On the ground the vehicle drives like a sports car. Within minutes its rotor is unfolded and its tail is extended: then it is ready to take off thanks to the advanced gyrocopter technology.

With these successful test results it is proven that it is not only possible to build a flying car but also that it can be done within existing international rules for both flying and driving.

Having passed this important milestone the company is now inviting investors to join them in creating the future.

The next step will be the design of the first commercial production model of the PAL-V, and first deliveries are expected in 2014.

For 100 years people have dreamed of a flying car, and many attempts have been made to realize this dream, but now it has truly become a reality.

www.PAL-V.com

Nothing stays the same for very long!

I wanted to call this post Change out of hope but that title was used on March 17th so opted for Turning corners instead!

Either way, this Post is prompted by a recent item published on the Earth Policy Institute website.  While Lester Brown’s book World on the Edge is a tough read, Lester is President of the Earth Policy Institute, it’s all too easy to think that the future for humanity is wall-to-wall gloom.  So here’s the article that was recently published, reproduced here under the copyright terms of the Earth Policy Institute.

Hope turning on the wind!

Wind Tops 10 Percent Share of Electricity in Five U.S. States

by J. Matthew Roney

A new picture is emerging in the U.S. power sector. In 2007, electricity generation from coal peaked, dropping by close to 4 percent annually between 2007 and 2011. Over the same time period, nuclear generation fell slightly, while natural gas-fired electricity grew by some 3 percent annually and hydropower by 7 percent. Meanwhile, wind-generated electricity grew by a whopping 36 percent each year. Multiple factors underlie this nascent shift in U.S. electricity production, including the global recession, increasing energy efficiency, and more economically recoverable domestic natural gas. But ultimately it is the increasing attractiveness of wind as an energy source that will drive it into prominence.

Wind power accounted for just 2.9 percent of total electricity generation in the United States in 2011. In five U.S. states, however, 10 percent or more of electricity generation came from wind. South Dakota leads the states, with wind power making up 22 percent of its electricity generation in 2011, up from 14 percent in 2010. In 2011, Iowa generated 19 percent of its electricity with wind energy. And in North Dakota, wind’s share was 15 percent.

The two most populous U.S. states are also harnessing more of their wind resources. While adding more than 900 megawatts of new wind farms in 2011 to its existing 3,000-megawatt wind capacity, California was able to increase its wind electricity share from 3 to 4 percent. Texas has the most wind installations of all the states, with 10,400 megawatts. In fact, if Texas were a country, it would rank sixth in the world for total wind capacity. Figures from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the independent service operator that delivers 85 percent of the state’s electricity, show that wind’s share of electricity in the ERCOT region jumped from 2.9 percent in 2007 to 8.5 percent in 2011.

Even though the cost of generating electricity from the wind has fallen substantially, certain policies have been needed to help it compete with the longtime support and lack of full-cost accounting for fossil fuels. Through so-called renewable portfolio standards (RPS), 29 states now require a percentage of utilities’ electricity to come from renewables by a certain date. This includes 8 of the top 10 states in total installed wind power capacity. For example, California’s RPS requires one third of the state’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020. But the biggest policy driver of U.S. wind power growth thus far has been the federal production tax credit (PTC) for each kilowatt-hour of electricity a wind turbine generates. When Congress has allowed the PTC to expire, as it is scheduled to do again at the end of 2012, wind installations in the following year have plummeted.

In the short term, extending the PTC will be critical for the U.S. wind industry, which boasts more than 400 turbine component manufacturers and employs some 75,000 people. Ultimately, moving away from the recurring boom-bust threat by establishing a national RPS or a carbon tax would encourage even greater manufacturing growth and wind installations.

In a country where wind resources could power the entire economy, there is still great potential to be realized. Four states in northern Germany have set the mark, with each getting more than 40 percent of their electricity from the wind. Which U.S. state will get there first?

For more information and data on wind energy in the United States and around the world, see Earth Policy Institute’s Wind Indicator, “World Wind Power Climbs to New Record in 2011,” at www.earth-policy.org.

Copyright © 2012 Earth Policy Institute

This video is well worth watching as well as going to that link at the end of the essay above.

Lester Brown, Thomas Friedman, and Paul Krugman discuss the need for a carbon tax in order to price carbon emissions at their true cost.

The “Journey to Planet Earth” series continues with a special program, hosted by Matt Damon, which features environmental visionary Lester Brown and author of “Plan B.” This documentary delivers a clear and unflinching message — either confront the realities of climate change or suffer the consequences of lost civilizations and failed political states.

I will see how much material there is available online with regard to that programme hosted by Matt Damon and, maybe, present some of it on Learning from Dogs.

Finally, the picture of the wind turbine at the head of this Post came from a website called www.windgeneratorblog.com.  Fancy a home wind generator?

Further reflections on where next for US Energy policy.

Pumping our way to extinction!

On the 28th March, I republished a powerful essay from Patrice Ayme under my Post title of Questions are never stupid.  In fact, Patrice’s essay was called Energy Question For The USA and concluded thus:

Total oil sales, per day are about 100 million barrels (in truth the cap is lower, see graph above), at, say $100, so ten billion dollars a day, 3.6 trillion a year. The USA uses about 25% of that. Some have incorporated the price of the part of the gigantic American war machine and (what are truly) bribes to feudal warlords insuring Western access to the oil fields, and found a much higher cost up to $11 a gallon.

Ultimately, and pretty soon, in 2016, specialists expect oil prices to explode up, from the exhaustion of the existing oil fields. Then what?

Moreover, in 2016, the dependence upon OPEC, or, more exactly Arab regimes, is going to become much greater than now. What’s the plan of the USA? Extend ever more the security state, and go occupy the Middle East with a one million men army? To occupy, or not to occupy, that is the question.

Is it time for a better plan? And yes, any better plan will require consumers to pay higher energy prices. As consumers apparently want the army to procure the oil, they ought to pay for it.

So when Michael Klare published an essay just two days ago on TomDispatch entitled, Welcome to the New Third World of Energy, the U.S. it seemed highly relevant to have that follow-on from Patrice’s essay.  Again I am very grateful to Tom Engelhardt for giving me permission to republish.  Readers may like to know a little of Michael Klare’s background, from here:

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil. Consider this essay a preview of his newest book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, which has just been published by Metropolitan Books. A brief video of Klare discussing key subjects in his new book can be viewed by clicking here.

So here is that essay.  I’m going to include Tom’s introduction because it’s fair to so do!

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Welcome to the New Third World of Energy, the U.S.

[Note for TomDispatch Readers:With today’s Michael Klare piece, you get your last chance to receive a signed, personalized copy of his new book, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, in return for a contribution of $100 or more to this website.  (Visit our donation page to check it out.)  The offer will end later this week.  Many thanks to those of you who have already given.  Klare’s book is little short of prophetic and the dollars you so generously send in really do help keep TomDispatch afloat! Tom]

Here’s a simple rule of thumb when it comes to energy disasters: if it’s the nuclear industry and something begins to go wrong — from Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 to Fukushima, Japan, after the 2011 tsunami — whatever news is first released, always relatively reassuring, will be a lie, pure and simple.  And as the disaster unrolls, it’s not likely to get much better.  The nuclear industry is incapable of telling the truth about the harm it does.  So when the early stories appear about the next nuclear plant in trouble, whatever you hear or read, just assume that you don’t know the half, not even the quarter, of it.

When it comes to the oil and gas industry and disasters, a similar rule of thumb follows: however bad it first sounds, the odds are it’s going to sound a lot worse before it’s over.  (See BP, Deepwater Horizon.)  So when you first hear about an oil leak from a Chevron well off the coast of Brazil or from a natural gas well in the North Sea operated by the French oil giant Total and you getthose expectable reassurances, they, too, are likely to be nothing but gas.

And here’s the sad thing, you’re going to get all too many chances to test out these simple rules when it comes to bad energy news.  After all, as Michael Klare has been writing at this site for years, we’re entering the “tough energy” era.  The big energy companies are going to be extracting hydrocarbons in ever more hazardous, difficult-to-reach places like the Arctic and they’re going to be using ever uglier methods to do so.

It’s a guarantee that, however bad the environmental damage we’ve seen so far, it’s only going to get worse as the energy industry despoils various regions to give us our fossil-fuel fix and theirmega-profits.  As Klare points out, one of those regions is slated to be not in distant Africa, the Persian Gulf, or the Caspian Sea, but right here in the U.S.  Klare has been ahead of the energy curve ever since, in the late 1990s, he suggested that we would soon be on a planet embroiled in“resource wars.”  His new book, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, catches the nightmarish nature of the planet’s last energy boom in a way no one else has.  And don’t be surprised if that nightmare lands squarely in your backyard. Tom

A New Energy Third World in North America?
How the Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the United States into a Third-World Petro-State 
By Michael T. Klare

The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged, while tiny elites rake in the energy dollars and corruption rules the land.  Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet’s twenty-first-century “new Saudi Arabia” for “tough energy” – deep-sea oil, Canadian tar sands, and fracked oil and natural gas.  But here’s a question no one considers: Will the oil curse become as familiar on this continent in the wake of a new American energy rush as it is in Africa and elsewhere?  Will North America, that is, become not just the next boom continent for energy bonanzas, but a new energy Third World?

Once upon a time, the giant U.S. oil companies — Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, and Texaco — got their start in North America, launching an oil boom that lasted a century and made the U.S. the planet’s dominant energy producer.  But most of those companies have long since turned elsewhere for new sources of oil.

Eager to escape ever-stronger environmental restrictions and dying oil fields at home, the energy giants were naturally drawn to the economically and environmentally wide-open producing areas of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America — the Third World — where oil deposits were plentiful, governments compliant, and environmental regulations few or nonexistent.

Here, then, is the energy surprise of the twenty-first century: with operating conditions growing increasingly difficult in the global South, the major firms are now flocking back to North America. To exploit previously neglected reserves on this continent, however, Big Oil will have to overcome a host of regulatory and environmental obstacles.  It will, in other words, have to use its version of deep-pocket persuasion to convert the United States into the functional equivalent of a Third World petro-state.

Knowledgeable observers are already noting the first telltale signs of the oil industry’s “Third-Worldification” of the United States.  Wilderness areas from which the oil companies were once barred are being opened to energy exploitation and other restraints on invasive drilling operations are being dismantled.  Expectations are that, in the wake of the 2012 election season, environmental regulations will be rolled back even further and other protected areas made available for development.  In the process, as has so often been the case with Third World petro-states, the rights and wellbeing of local citizens will be trampled underfoot.

Welcome to the Third World of Energy

Up until 1950, the United States was the world’s leading oil producer, the Saudi Arabia of its day. In that year, the U.S. produced approximately 270 million metric tons of oil, or about 55% of the world’s entire output. But with a postwar recovery then in full swing, the world needed a lot more energy while America’s most accessible oil fields — though still capable of growth — were approaching their maximum sustainable production levels.  Net U.S. crude oil output reached a peakof about 9.2 million barrels per day in 1970 and then went into decline (until very recently).

This prompted the giant oil firms, which had already developed significant footholds in Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, to scour the global South in search of new reserves to exploit — a saga told with great gusto in Daniel Yergin’s epic history of the oil industry, The Prize. Particular attention was devoted to the Persian Gulf region, where in 1948 a consortium of American companies — Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, and Texaco — discovered the world’s largest oil field, Ghawar, in Saudi Arabia.  By 1975, Third World countries were producing 58% of the world’s oil supply, while the U.S. share had dropped to 18%.

Environmental concerns also drove this search for new reserves in the global South. On January 28, 1969, a blowout at Platform A of a Union Oil Company offshore field in California’s Santa Barbara Channel produced a massive oil leak that covered much of the area and laid waste to local wildlife. Coming at a time of growing environmental consciousness, the spill provoked an outpouring of public outrage, helping to inspire the establishment of Earth Day, first observed one year later. Equally important, it helped spur passage of various legislative restraints on drilling activities, including the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, theClean Water Act of 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. In addition, Congress banned new drilling in waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida.

During these years, Washington also expanded areas designated as wilderness or wildlife preserves, protecting them from resource extraction. In 1952, for example, President Eisenhower established the Arctic National Wildlife Range and, in 1980, this remote area of northeastern Alaska was redesignated by Congress as theArctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Ever since the discovery of oil in the adjacent Prudhoe Bay area, energy firms have been clamoring for the right to drill in ANWR, only to be blocked by one or another president or house of Congress.

For the most part, production in Third World countries posed no such complications. The Nigerian government, for example, has long welcomed foreign investment in its onshore and offshore oil fields, while showing little concern over the despoliation of its southern coastline, where oil company operations have produced a massive environmental disaster. As Adam Nossiter of the New York Timesdescribed the resulting situation, “The Niger Delta, where the [petroleum] wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates.”

As vividly laid out by Peter Maass in Crude World, a similar pattern is evident in many other Third World petro-states where anything goes as compliant government officials — often the recipients of hefty bribes or other oil-company favors — regularly look the other way. The companies, in turn, don’t trouble themselves over the human rights abuses perpetrated by their foreign government “partners” — many of them dictators, warlords, or feudal potentates.

But times change.  The Third World increasingly isn’t what it used to be.  Many countries in the global South are becoming more protective of their environments, ever more inclined to take ever larger cuts of the oil wealth of their own countries, and ever more inclined to punish foreign companies that abuse their laws. In February 2011, for example, a judge in the Ecuadorean Amazon town of Lago Agrio ordered Chevron to pay $9 billion in damages for environmental harm caused to the region in the 1970s by Texaco (which the company later acquired).  Although the Ecuadorians are unlikely to collect a single dollar from Chevron, the case is indicative of the tougher regulatory climate now facing these companies in the developing world.  More recently, in a case resulting from an oil spill at an offshore field, a judge in Brazil hasseized the passports of 17 employees of Chevron and U.S. drilling-rig operator Transocean, preventing them from leaving the country.

In addition, production is on the decline in some developing countries like Indonesia and Gabon, while others have nationalized their oil fields or narrowed the space in which private international firms can operate. During Hugo Chávez’s presidency, for example, Venezuela has forced all foreign firms to award a majority stake in their operations to the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A.  Similarly, the Brazilian government, under former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, instituted a rule that all drilling operations in the new “pre-salt” fields in the Atlantic Ocean — widely believed to be the biggest oil discovery of the twenty-first century — be managed by the state-controlled firm, Petróleo de Brasil (Petrobras).

Fracking Our Way to a Toxic Planet

Such pressures in the Third World have forced the major U.S. and European firms — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Total of France — to look elsewhere for new sources of oil and natural gas.  Unfortunately for them, there aren’t many places left in the world that possess promising hydrocarbon reserves and also welcome investment by private energy giants. That’s why some of the most attractive new energy markets now lie in Canada and the United States, or in the waters off their shores.  As a result, both are experiencing a remarkable uptick in fresh investment from the major international firms.

Both countries still possess substantial oil and gas deposits, but not of the “easy” variety (deposits close to the surface, close to shore, or easily accessible for extraction).  All that remains are “tough” energy reserves (deep underground, far offshore, hard to extract and process). To exploit these, the energy companies must deploy aggressive technologies likely to cause extensive damage to the environment and in many cases human health as well.  They must also find ways to gain government approval to enter environmentally protected areas now off limits.

The formula for making Canada and the U.S. the “Saudi Arabia” of the twenty-first century is grim but relatively simple: environmental protections will have to be eviscerated and those who stand in the way of intensified drilling, from landowners to local environmental protection groups, bulldozed out of the way.  Put another way, North America will have to be Third-Worldified.

Consider the extraction of shale oil and gas, widely considered the most crucial aspect of Big Oil’s current push back into the North American market. Shale formations in Canada and the U.S. are believed to house massive quantities of oil and natural gas, and their accelerated extraction is already helping reduce the region’s reliance on imported petroleum.

Both energy sources, however, can only be extracted through a process known as hydraulic fracturing (“hydro-fracking,” or just plain “fracking”) that uses powerful jets of water in massive quantities to shatter underground shale formations, creating fissures through which the hydrocarbons can escape. In addition, to widen these fissures and ease the escape of the oil and gas they hold, the fracking water has to be mixed with a variety of often poisonous solvents and acids. This technique produces massive quantities of toxic wastewater, which can neither be returned to the environment without endangering drinking water supplies nor easily stored and decontaminated.

The rapid expansion of hydro-fracking would be problematic under the best of circumstances, which these aren’t.  Many of the richest sources of shale oil and gas, for instance, are located in populated areas of Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. In fact, one of the most promising sites, the Marcellus formation, abuts New York City’s upstate watershed area.  Under such circumstances, concern over the safety of drinking water should be paramount, and federal legislation, especially the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, should theoretically give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to oversee (and potentially ban) any procedures that endanger water supplies.

However, oil companies seeking to increase profits by maximizing the utilization of hydro-fracking banded together, put pressure on Congress, and managed to get itself exempted from the 1974 law’s provisions. In 2005, under heavy lobbying from then Vice President Dick Cheney — formerly the CEO of oil services contractor Halliburton — Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which prohibited the EPA from regulating hydro-fracking via the Safe Drinking Water Act, thereby eliminating a significant impediment to wider use of the technique.

Third Worldification

Since then, there has been a virtual stampede to the shale regions by the major oil companies, which have in many cases devoured smaller firms that pioneered the development of hydro-fracking. (In 2009, for example, ExxonMobil paid $31 billion to acquire XTO Energy, one of the leading producers of shale gas.)   As the extraction of shale oil and gas has accelerated, the industry has faced other problems. To successfully exploit promising shale formations, for instance, energy firms must insert many wells, since each fracking operation can only extend several hundred feet in any direction, requiring the establishment of noisy, polluting, and potentially hazardous drilling operations in well-populated rural and suburban areas.

While drilling has been welcomed by some of these communities as a source of added income, many have vigorously opposed the invasion, seeing it as an assault on neighborhood peace, health, and safety. In an effort to protect their quality of life, some Pennsylvania communities, for example, have adopted zoning laws that ban fracking in their midst. Viewing this as yet another intolerable obstacle, the industry has put intense pressure on friendly members of the state legislature to adopt a law depriving most local jurisdictions of the right to exclude fracking operations. “We have been sold out to the gas industry, plain and simple,” saidTodd Miller, a town commissioner in South Fayette Township who opposed the legislation.

If the energy industry has its way in North America, there will be many more Todd Millers complaining about the way their lives and worlds have been “sold out” to the energy barons.  Similar battles are already being fought elsewhere in North America, as energy firms seek to overcome resistance to expanded drilling in areas once protected from such activity.

In Alaska, for example, the industry is fighting in the courts and in Congress to allow drilling in coastal areas, despite opposition from Native American communities which worry that vulnerable marine animals and their traditional way of life will be put at risk. This summer, Royal Dutch Shell is expected to begin test drilling in the Chukchi Sea, an area important to several such communities.

And this is just the beginning. To gain access to additional stores of oil and gas, the industry is seeking to eliminate virtually all environmental restraints imposed since the 1960s and open vast tracts of coastal and wilderness areas, including ANWR, to intensive drilling. It also seeks the construction of the much disputed Keystone XL pipeline, which is to transport synthetic crude oil made from Canadian tar sands — a particularly “dirty” and environmentally devastating form of energy which has attracted substantial U.S. investment — to Texas and Louisiana for further processing. According to Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the preferred U.S. energy strategy “would include greater access to areas that are currently off limits, a regulatory and permitting process that supported reasonable timelines for development, and immediate approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.”

To achieve these objectives, the API, which claims to represent more than 490 oil and natural gas companies, has launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to sway the 2012 elections, dubbed “Vote 4 Energy.” While describing itself as nonpartisan, the API-financed campaign seeks to discredit and marginalize any candidate, including President Obama, who opposes even the mildest version of its drill-anywhere agenda.

“There [are] two paths that we can take” on energy policy, the Vote 4 Energy Web site proclaims. “One path leads to more jobs, higher government revenues and greater U.S. energy security — which can be achieved by increasing oil and natural gas development right here at home. The other path would put jobs, revenues and our energy security at risk.” This message will be broadcast with increasing frequency as Election Day nears.

According to the energy industry, we are at a fork in the road and can either chose a path leading to greater energy independence or to ever more perilous energy insecurity. But there is another way to characterize that “choice”: on one path, the United States will increasingly come to resemble a Third World petro-state, with compliant government leaders, an increasingly money-ridden and corrupt political system, and negligible environmental and health safeguards; on the other, which would also involve far greater investment in the development of renewable alternative energies, it would remain a First World nation with strong health and environmental regulations and robust democratic institutions.

How we characterize our energy predicament in the coming decades and what path we ultimately select will in large measure determine the fate of this nation.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author of The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resourcesjust published by Metropolitan Books.  To listen to Timothy MacBain’s Tomcast audio interview in which Klare discusses his new book and what it means to rely on extreme energy, click here, or download it to your iPod here.  Klare can be followed on Facebook.

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Copyright 2012 Michael T. Klare

Fascinating times indeed!