When Sea Levels Attack

Sourced from Information is Beautiful, January 2010

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Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis

...one wonders whether we are going to WAKE UP in time, or sleepwalk our way to collapse?!

Oil is the linchpin not only for transportation systems, but global trade AND global food supplies which rely on fossil fuel based fertilisers and pesticides!!!

Peak oil is a MAJOR ECONOMIC AND FOOD SECURITY issue and we are faffing about changing goddamn lightbulbs!

Reposted in full from De Speigel, 1 September 2010

'A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document - leaked on the Internet - shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.

The term "peak oil" is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis - and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.

The issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term "peak oil" at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes further.

The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises.

The study, whose authenticity was confirmed to SPIEGEL ONLINE by sources in government circles, was not meant for publication. The document is said to be in draft stage and to consist solely of scientific opinion, which has not yet been edited by the Defense Ministry and other government bodies.

The lead author, Will, has declined to comment on the study. It remains doubtful that either the Bundeswehr or the German government would have consented to publish the document in its current form. But the study does show how intensively the German government has engaged with the question of peak oil.

Parallels to activities in the UK

The leak has parallels with recent reports from the UK. Only last week the Guardian newspaper reported that the British Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is keeping documents secret which show the UK government is far more concerned about a supply crisis than it cares to admit.

According to the Guardian, the DECC, the Bank of England and the British Ministry of Defence are working alongside industry representatives to develop a crisis plan to deal with possible shortfalls in energy supply. Inquiries made by Britain's so-called peak oil workshops to energy experts have been seen by SPIEGEL ONLINE. A DECC spokeswoman sought to play down the process, telling the Guardian the enquiries were "routine" and had no political implications.

The Bundeswehr study may not have immediate political consequences, either, but it shows that the German government fears shortages could quickly arise.

According to the German report, there was "some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later." The Bundeswehr prediction is consistent with those of well-known scientists who assume global oil production has either already passed its peak or will do so this year.

Market Failures and International Chain Reactions

The political and economic impacts of peak oil on Germany have now been studied for the first time in depth. The crude oil expert Steffen Bukold has evaluated and summarized the findings of the Bundeswehr study. Here is an overview of the central points:

Oil will determine power: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center writes that oil will become one decisive factor in determining the new landscape of international relations: "The relative importance of the oil producing nations in the international system is growing. These nations are using the advantages resulting from this to expand the scope of their domestic and foreign policies and establish themselves as a new or resurgent regional, or in some cases even global leading power."

Increasing importance of oil exporters: For importers of oil more competition for resources will mean an increase in the number of nations competing for favour with oil producing nations. For the latter this opens up a window of opportunity which can be used to implement political, economic or ideological aims. As this window of time will only be open for a limited period, "this could result in a more aggressive assertion of national interests on the part of the oil producing nations."

Politics in place of the market: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center expects that a supply crisis would roll back the liberalization of the energy market. "The proportion of oil traded on the global, freely accessible oil market will diminish as more oil is traded through bi-national contracts," the study states. In the long run, the study goes on, the global oil market, will only be able to follow the laws of the free market in a restricted way. "Bilateral, conditioned supply agreements and privileged partnerships, such as those seen prior to the oil crises of the seventies, will once again come to the fore."

Market failures: The authors paint a bleak picture of the consequences resulting from a shortage of petroleum. As the transportation of goods depends on crude oil, international trade could be subject to colossal tax hikes. "Shortages in the supply of vital goods could arise" as a result, for example in food supplies. Oil is used directly or indirectly in the production of 95% of all industrial goods. Price shocks could therefore be seen in almost any industry and throughout all stages of the industrial supply chain. "In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse."

Relapse into planned economy: Since virtually all economic sectors rely heavily on oil, peak oil could lead to a "partial or complete failure of markets," says the study. "A conceivable alternative would be government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other short-term coercive measures to replace market-based mechanisms in times of crisis."

Global chain reaction: "A restructuring of oil supplies will not be equally possible in all regions before the onset of peak oil," says the study. "It is likely that a large number of states will not be in a position to make the necessary investments in time," or with "sufficient magnitude." If there were economic crashes in some regions of the world, Germany could be affected. Germany would not escape the crises of other countries, because it's so tightly integrated into the global economy.

Crisis of political legitimacy: The Bundeswehr study also raises fears for the survival of democracy itself. Parts of the population could comprehend the upheaval trigged by peak oil "as a general systemic crisis." This would create "room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government." Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could "in extreme cases lead to open conflict."

The scenarios outlined by the Bundeswehr Transformation Center are drastic. Even more explosive, politically, are recommendations to the government that the energy experts have put forward based on these scenarios. They argue that "states dependent on oil imports" will be forced to "show more pragmatism toward oil-producing states in their foreign policy." Political priorities will have to be somewhat subordinated, they claim, to the overriding concern of securing energy supplies.

For example: Germany would have to be more flexible in relation toward Russia's foreign policy objectives. It would also have to show more restraint in its foreign policy toward Israel, to avoid alienating Arab oil-producing nations. Unconditional support for Israel and its right to exist is currently a cornerstone of German foreign policy.

The relationship with Russia, in particular, is of fundamental importance for German access to oil and gas, the study says. "For Germany, this involves a balancing act between stable and privileged relations with Russia and the sensitivities of (Germany's) eastern neighbors." In other words, Germany, if it wants to guarantee its own energy security, should be accommodating in relation to Moscow's foreign policy objectives, even if it means risking damage to its relations with Poland and other Eastern European states.

Peak oil would also have profound consequences for Berlin's posture toward the Middle East, according to the study. "A readjustment of Germany's Middle East policy … in favor of more intensive relations with producer countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have the largest conventional oil reserves in the region, might put a strain on German-Israeli relations, depending on the intensity of the policy change," the authors write.

When contacted by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Defense Ministry declined to comment on the study.'

US Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion

Reposted in full from The Onion, 16 February 2010

'WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.

What began as a routine report before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday ended with Bernanke passionately disavowing the entire concept of currency, and negating in an instant the very foundation of the world's largest economy.

"Though raising interest rates is unlikely at the moment, the Fed will of course act appropriately if we…if we…" said Bernanke, who then paused for a moment, looked down at his prepared statement, and shook his head in utter disbelief. "You know what? It doesn't matter. None of this—this so-called 'money'—really matters at all."

"It's just an illusion," a wide-eyed Bernanke added as he removed bills from his wallet and slowly spread them out before him. "Just look at it: Meaningless pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. Worthless."

According to witnesses, Finance Committee members sat in thunderstruck silence for several moments until Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) finally shouted out, "Oh my God, he's right. It's all a mirage. All of it—the money, our whole economy—it's all a lie!"

Screams then filled the Senate Chamber as lawmakers and members of the press ran for the exits, leaving in their wake aisles littered with the remains of torn currency.

As news of the nation's collectively held delusion spread, the economy ground to a halt, with dumbfounded citizens everywhere walking out on their jobs as they contemplated the little green drawings of buildings and dead white men they once used to measure their adequacy and importance as human beings.

At the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday morning's opening bell echoed across a silent floor as the few traders who arrived for work out of habit looked up blankly at the meaningless scrolling numbers on the flashing screens above.

"I've spent 25 years in this room yelling 'Buy, buy! Sell, sell!' and for what?" longtime trader Michael Palermo said. "All I've done is move arbitrary designations of wealth from one column to another, wasting my life chasing this unattainable hallucination of wealth."

"What a cruel cosmic joke," he added. "I'm going home to hug my daughter."

Sources at the White House said President Obama was "still trying to get his head around all this" and was in seclusion with his coin collection, muttering "it's just metal, it's just metal" over and over again.

"The president will be making a statement very soon," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. "At the moment, though, his mind is just too blown to comment."

A few U.S. banks have remained open, though most teller windows are unmanned due to a lack of interest in transactions involving mere scraps of paper or, worse, decimal points and computer data signifying mere scraps of paper. At a Bank of America branch in Spokane, WA, curious former customers wandered aimlessly through a large empty vault, while several would-be robbers of a Chase bank in Columbus, OH reportedly put their guns down and exited the building hand in hand with security guards, laughing over the inherent absurdity of the idea of $100 bills.

Likewise, the real estate industry has all but vanished, with mortgage lenders seeing no reason to stop people from reclaiming their foreclosed-upon homes.

"I don't even know what we were thinking in the first place," said former banker Nathan Collins of Brandon, MS, as he jimmyed open a door to allow a single mother and her five children to move back into their house. "A bunch of people sign a bunch of papers, and now this family has no place to live? That's just plain ludicrous."

The realization that money is nothing more than an elaborate head game seems to have penetrated the entire country: In Wilmington, DE, for instance, a collection agent reportedly broke down in joyful sobs when he informed a woman on the other end of the phone that he had absolutely no reason to harass her anymore, as her Discover Card debt was no longer comprehensible.

For some Americans, the fog of disbelief surrounding the nation's epiphany has begun to lift, with many building new lives free from the illusion of money.

"It's back to basics for me," Bernard Polk of Waverly, OH said. "I'm going to till the soil for my own sustenance and get anything else I need by bartering. If I want milk, I'll pay for it in tomatoes. If need a new hoe, I'll pay for it in lettuce."

When asked, hypothetically, how he would pay for complicated life-saving surgery for a loved one, Polk seemed uncertain.

"That's a lot of vegetables, isn't it?" he said.'

Crybaby Capitalists

LOVE IT!

'The big guys on Wall Street, they can't take their losses - they're crybaby capitalists, they preach capitalism for everybody but themselves!' - Gerald Celente at 23:50

'Overdose', a documentary on global financial crisis (43 mins total)

Modernising Henry George

Herman Daly, Professor of Ecological Economics, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, says nineteenth century economist Henry George has much to teach us about how to share the value of common natural resources...

Reposted in full from the new economics foundation, 19 July 2010

'Economists have traditionally considered nature to be infinite relative to the economy, and therefore not scarce, and therefore properly priced at zero. But the biosphere is now scarce, and becoming more so every day as a result of growth of its large and dependent subsystem, the macro-economy.

As the macro-economy expands into the ecosystem it displaces what was there before, namely habitat of other species (and of indigenous and poor members of our own species). Consequently, biodiversity decline is a salient index of the increasing scarcity of nature, as is involuntary resettlement of people to make way for dams, mines, soybeans, and cattle; and of course increasing depletion and pollution.

Sacrifice of nature’s scarce services constitutes an increasing opportunity cost of growth, and that in turn means that nature must be priced, either explicitly or implicitly. But to whom should this price be paid? Nature would prefer not to sell herself, but if forced to it by growth, would at least like to divide equally among her children the revenue from the forced sale of her previous gifts.

From the point of view of efficiency it does not matter who receives the price, as long as it is counted and paid by the users. But from the point of view of equity it matters a great deal who receives the price for nature’s increasingly scarce services. Such payment is the ideal source of funds with which to finance public goods, and to redistribute to the poor.

“Value added” belongs to whoever added it. But the original value of that to which further value is added by labor and capital, the value of scarce natural resources and natural services, should belong to everyone. It is the original commonwealth. These “payments to nature” should be the focus of redistributive efforts. Payment for what is now too scarce to be treated as a free gift is measured and appropriated by markets as a rent (payment in excess of necessary supply price). Rent is unearned income to the recipient, but allocative efficiency requires that it be paid by the user of the resource. Taxation of value added by labor and capital is certainly legitimate. But it is both more legitimate and less necessary after we have, as much as possible, captured natural resource rents for public revenue.

The above seems to be the basic insight of early American economist Henry George (1839-1897) who applied it specifically to rent on the scarcity of desirable locations of land rather than to rents on natural resource scarcity in general. Could we not extend Henry George’s logic to resources in general? For resources the necessary supply price is the cost of extraction — so any payment above cost of extraction is rent. Since land has no cost of extraction all payment for land is rent. If no rent is paid, land does not cease to exist. Neoclassical economists accept this definition of rent but resist Henry George’s ethical emphasis on rent as unearned income.

The modern form of the Georgist insight is to tax the rent from land, and by extension from natural resources and services of nature, and to use these funds for fighting poverty and for financing public goods. Or we could simply create a trust fund from these rents, and disburse the earnings from it to all citizens, as in the Alaska Permanent Fund.

Our present practice of taxing away a lot of the value added by individuals from applying their own labor and capital creates resentment, and discourages the supply of labor and capital.

Taxing away value that no one added, scarcity rents on nature’s contribution, does not create as much resentment, and the resentment it does cause is less justified. In fact, failing to tax away the scarcity rents to nature and letting them accrue as unearned income to a landlord class has long been a primary source of resentment and social conflict. Furthermore, taxing land and resource rent does not diminish their quantity. Soviet communists tried for a while to abolish the category of rent because it represented unearned income — a part of “surplus value” like profit and interest. They jumped to the conclusion that therefore resources and land must be free. But that makes it impossible to allocate resources efficiently. Better to follow Henry George and retain rent as a necessary price for measuring opportunity cost, but to then tax it away as unearned income to the landlords. The more we tax away rent the less we have to tax the value added by human labor and capital.

Charging scarcity rents on natural resources and redistributing them to the commonwealth can be effected either by ecological tax reform, or by quantitative cap-auction-trade systems. In differing ways each would limit expansion of the scale of the economy into the biosphere, thereby preserving biodiversity and also providing revenue to run the commonwealth. I will not discuss their relative merits here, but rather emphasize the advantage that both have over the currently favored strategy. The currently favored strategy might be called “efficiency first” in distinction to the “frugality first” principle embodied in each of the policies mentioned above.

“Efficiency first” sounds good, especially when referred to as “win-win” strategies, or more picturesquely as “picking the low-hanging fruit.” But the problem of “efficiency first” is with what comes second. An improvement in efficiency by itself is equivalent to having an increased supply of the resource whose efficiency increased. The price of that resource will decline. More uses for the now cheaper resource will be made. We will end up consuming perhaps as much or more of the resource than before, albeit more efficiently, as pointed out in the nineteenth century words of economist William Stanley Jevons:

“It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical [efficient] use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” (The Coal Question, 1866, p. 123)

We need frugality (diminished consumption) more than efficiency. “Frugality first” induces efficiency as a secondary consequence, an adaptation; efficiency first does not induce frugality — it makes frugality less necessary, and it does not give rise to a scarcity rent that can be redistributed. Let us put frugality first by reducing physical throughput with ecological tax reform and/or cap-auction-trade systems for basic resources, and by so doing both avoid the Jevons effect and collect the scarcity rents on nature for the commonwealth rather than the elite.

If we could directly limit population and per capita resource use (scale of the macro-economy) to a level that nature could easily sustain, then nature’s services could remain free. But if we insist that population and per capita consumption must be free to grow, then the rising cost of natural resources must indirectly limit growth, and the question of who receives the increasing rent (who owns nature) will become ever more pressing, and Henry George’s thinking ever more relevant. Alternatively, our increasing takeover of nature will, beyond some point, render moot the question of distribution of rents by eliminating all potential claimants! When an overloaded ship sinks all aboard drown — even if the overload is justly distributed and efficiently allocated!'

Calling All Future-Eaters

Confronting piece by Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Chris Hedges...

Reposted in full from TruthDig, 19 July 2010

'The human species during its brief time on Earth has exhibited a remarkable capacity to kill itself off. The Cro-Magnons dispatched the gentler Neanderthals. The conquistadors, with the help of smallpox, decimated the native populations in the Americas. Modern industrial warfare in the 20th century took at least 100 million lives, most of them civilians. And now we sit passive and dumb as corporations and the leaders of industrialized nations ensure that climate change will accelerate to levels that could mean the extinction of our species. Homo sapiens, as the biologist Tim Flannery points out, are the “future-eaters.”

In the past when civilizations went belly up through greed, mismanagement and the exhaustion of natural resources, human beings migrated somewhere else to pillage anew. But this time the game is over. There is nowhere else to go. The industrialized nations spent the last century seizing half the planet and dominating most of the other half. We giddily exhausted our natural capital, especially fossil fuel, to engage in an orgy of consumption and waste that poisoned the Earth and attacked the ecosystem on which human life depends. It was quite a party if you were a member of the industrialized elite. But it was pretty stupid.

Collapse this time around will be global. We will disintegrate together. And there is no way out. The 10,000-year experiment of settled life is about to come to a crashing halt. And humankind, which thought it was given dominion over the Earth and all living things, will be taught a painful lesson in the necessity of balance, restraint and humility. There is no human monument or city ruin that is more than 5,000 years old. Civilization, Ronald Wright notes in “A Short History of Progress,” “occupies a mere 0.2 percent of the two and a half million years since our first ancestor sharpened a stone.” Bye-bye, Paris. Bye-bye, New York. Bye-bye, Tokyo. Welcome to the new experience of human existence, in which rooting around for grubs on islands in northern latitudes is the prerequisite for survival.

We view ourselves as rational creatures. But is it rational to wait like sheep in a pen as oil and natural gas companies, coal companies, chemical industries, plastics manufacturers, the automotive industry, arms manufacturers and the leaders of the industrial world, as they did in Copenhagen, take us to mass extinction? It is too late to prevent profound climate change. But why add fuel to the fire? Why allow our ruling elite, driven by the lust for profits, to accelerate the death spiral? Why continue to obey the laws and dictates of our executioners?

The news is grim. The accelerating disintegration of Arctic Sea ice means that summer ice will probably disappear within the next decade. The open water will absorb more solar radiation, significantly increasing the rate of global warming. The Siberian permafrost will disappear, sending up plumes of methane gas from underground. The Greenland ice sheet and the Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers will melt. Jay Zwally, a NASA climate scientist, declared in December 2007: “The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming. Now, as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”

But reality is rarely an impediment to human folly. The world’s greenhouse gases have continued to grow since Zwally’s statement. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from burning fossil fuels since 2000 have increased by 3 per cent a year. At that rate annual emissions will double every 25 years. James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s foremost climate experts, has warned that if we keep warming the planet it will be “a recipe for global disaster.” The safe level of CO₂ in the atmosphere, Hansen estimates, is no more than 350 parts per million (ppm). The current level of CO₂ is 385 ppm and climbing. This already guarantees terrible consequences even if we act immediately to cut carbon emissions.

The natural carbon cycle for 3 million years has ensured that the atmosphere contained less than 300 ppm of CO₂, which sustained the wide variety of life on the planet. The idea now championed by our corporate elite, at least those in contact with the reality of global warming, is that we will intentionally overshoot 350 ppm and then return to a safer climate through rapid and dramatic emission cuts. This, of course, is a theory designed to absolve the elite from doing anything now. But as Clive Hamilton in his book “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” writes, even “if carbon dioxide concentrations reach 550 ppm, after which emissions fell to zero, the global temperatures would continue to rise for at least another century.”

Copenhagen was perhaps the last chance to save ourselves. Barack Obama and the other leaders of the industrialized nations blew it. Radical climate change is certain. It is only a question now of how bad it will become. The engines of climate change will, climate scientists have warned, soon create a domino effect that could thrust the Earth into a chaotic state for thousands of years before it regains equilibrium. “Whether human beings would still be a force on the planet, or even survive, is a moot point,” Hamilton writes. “One thing is certain: there will be far fewer of us.”

We have fallen prey to the illusion that we can modify and control our environment, that human ingenuity ensures the inevitability of human progress and that our secular god of science will save us. The “intoxicating belief that we can conquer all has come up against a greater force, the Earth itself,” Hamilton writes. “The prospect of runaway climate change challenges our technological hubris, our Enlightenment faith in reason and the whole modernist project. The Earth may soon demonstrate that, ultimately, it cannot be tamed and that the human urge to master nature has only roused a slumbering beast.”

We face a terrible political truth. Those who hold power will not act with the urgency required to protect human life and the ecosystem. Decisions about the fate of the planet and human civilization are in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls such as BP’s Tony Hayward. These political and corporate masters are driven by a craven desire to accumulate wealth at the expense of human life. They do this in the Gulf of Mexico. They do this in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where the export-oriented industry is booming. China’s transformation into totalitarian capitalism, done so world markets can be flooded with cheap consumer goods, is contributing to a dramatic rise in carbon dioxide emissions, which in China are expected to more than double by 2030, from a little over 5 billion metric tons to just under 12 billion.

This degradation of the planet by corporations is accompanied by a degradation of human beings. In the factories in Guangdong we see the face of our adversaries. The sociologist Ching Kwan Lee found “satanic mills” in China’s industrial southeast that run “at such a nerve-racking pace that worker’s physical limits and bodily strength are put to the test on a daily basis.” Some employees put in workdays of 14 to 16 hours with no rest day during the month until payday. In these factories it is normal for an employee to work 400 hours or more a month, especially those in the garment industry. Most workers, Lee found, endure unpaid wages, illegal deductions and substandard wage rates. They are often physically abused at work and do not receive compensation if they are injured on the job. Every year a dozen or more workers die from overwork in the city of Shenzhen alone. In Lee’s words, the working conditions “go beyond the Marxist notions of exploitation and alienation.” A survey published in 2003 by the official China News Agency, cited in Lee’s book “Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt,” found that three in four migrant workers had trouble collecting their pay. Each year scores of workers threaten to commit suicide, Lee writes, by jumping off high-rises or setting themselves on fire over unpaid wages. “If getting paid for one’s labor is a fundamental feature of capitalist employment relations, strictly speaking many Chinese workers are not yet laborers,” Lee writes.

The leaders of these corporations now determine our fate. They are not endowed with human decency or compassion. Yet their lobbyists make the laws. Their public relations firms craft the propaganda and trivia pumped out through systems of mass communication. Their money determines elections. Their greed turns workers into global serfs and our planet into a wasteland.

As climate change advances, we will face a choice between obeying the rules put in place by corporations or rebellion. Those who work human beings to death in overcrowded factories in China and turn the Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone are the enemy. They serve systems of death. They cannot be reformed or trusted.

The climate crisis is a political crisis. We will either defy the corporate elite, which will mean civil disobedience, a rejection of traditional politics for a new radicalism and the systematic breaking of laws, or see ourselves consumed. Time is not on our side. The longer we wait, the more assured our destruction becomes. The future, if we remain passive, will be wrested from us by events. Our moral obligation is not to structures of power, but life.'

Chris Hedges '...spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism.'

Cup of Cold Undies?

...surely one of the more ridiculous examples of unnecessary consumption and packaging!



Sourced from Business Unusual, 23 August 2010

'In reaction to one of the longest heat waves in Japan’s history stores everywhere have been stocking ice cold panties in disposable cups.

Is this some fetish or just a gimmick…how much relief can one get from cold panties?

I wonder, do stores provide a booth to put on your newly purchased, cold panties?

What about ice padded bras? Or ice packed boxers?'

Chinese Traffic Jam Extends 60 Miles and Nine Days

Excerpt from The Australian, 25 August 2010

'China's hellish 10-day-old traffic jam now stretches 100km and could last another three weeks.

Triggered by road construction, the snarl-up reaches almost to the outskirts of Beijing, traffic still creeps along in fits and starts and villages along the route are making a killing providing supplies for stranded drivers.

It's a metaphor for a nation that sometimes chokes on its own breakneck growth.

In the worst-hit stretches of the road in northern China, drivers pass the time sitting in the shade of their immobilised trucks, playing cards, sleeping on the asphalt or bargaining with price-gouging food vendors. Many of the trucks that carry fruit and vegetables are unrefrigerated and the cargoes are assumed to be rotting.

On Sunday, the eighth day of the near-standstill, trucks moved just a kilometre on the worst section, said Zhang Minghai, a traffic director in Zhangjiakou, a city about 150km northwest of Beijing.

China Central Television reported that some vehicles had been stuck for five days.

No portable toilets were set up along the highway, leaving only two apparent options - hike to a service area or into the fields...

The traffic jam built up on the Beijing-Tibet highway, on a section that links the capital to the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia. The main reason traffic has increased on this partially four-lane highway is the opening of coal mines in the northwest, vital for the booming economy that this month surpassed Japan's in size and is now second only to the US...

The car invasion is widely felt. Guo Jifu, head of the Beijing Transportation Research Centre, told a symposium on Monday that vehicles on Beijing's roads multiplied by 1900 per day on average in the first half of this year.

The immediate cause of the traffic jam that began August 14 is construction on one of three southbound highways feeding into Beijing.'

Stop Wasting Food, Save The World's Energy

Excerpt from the New Scientist, 18 August 2010

'...we could save an enormous amount of energy by tackling the huge problem of food waste. Doing so is likely to be quicker than many of the other options on the table, while also saving money and reducing emissions.

The energy footprint of food is enormous. Consider the US, where just 5 per cent of the global population consumes one-fifth of the world's energy. Around 15 per cent of the energy used in the US is swallowed up by food production and distribution. Most of that comes from farming with mechanised equipment, fertilisers and pesticides, irrigation and so on. Then there's the energy cost of sorting, processing and packaging.

On top of that, each item of food on an American plate has made an average trip of over 2400 kilometres by boat, plane, train or automobile. Then there's unloading, stocking grocery stores and meal preparation. By the time all of these steps are accounted for, food takes a significant bite out of the US's total annual energy budget of about 100 million terajoules.

We have to eat, of course, but what about the food that we produce but do not eat?

Between one-quarter and one-third of the food produced in the US gets wasted, for a variety of reasons. A great deal spoils or is discarded before even reaching consumers, on farms, in fisheries and during processing. Buyers often reject perfectly edible produce because of minor blemishes. Food gets tossed in the trash in the home just because we bought or served too much, or let food spoil. Over a year, the average American family of four spends almost $600 on food that they do not eat.

Between one-quarter and one-third of all the food produced in the US gets wasted Whatever the reason, food waste has a large cumulative impact. A recent analysis by one of us (Michael Webber) and Amanda Cuéllar at the University of Texas at Austin found that close to 2.2 million terajoules embedded in food waste was discarded in the US in 2007 - the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil (Environmental Science & Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es100310d).

This means that at least 2 per cent of the total US energy budget is literally thrown in the trash. For comparison, 350 million barrels of oil is nearly double Switzerland's total annual energy consumption. Only a small fraction of what is wasted is ever recovered.

Global energy consumption is projected to increase by close to 50 per cent between 2006 and 2030. That makes reducing our dependency on fossil fuels even more challenging.

Tackling food waste should be added to the toolbox of policy options because its relative impact is on the same scale as more popular measures such as biofuel production and offshore drilling...'

The (Climate) Elephant in The Room

...need some comic relief now and then...the Australian Youth Climate Coalition oblige in the lead up to the Australian Federal Election on 21 August 2010

...listen to the news anchor start giggling when the reporter begins to interview 'the elephant'!!

Overdraft Notice Served on Earth: 21 August 2010

(OAKLAND, CA, USA) – It has taken humanity less than nine months to exhaust its ecological budget for the year, according to data from Global Footprint Network, a California-based environmental research organization.

Global Footprint Network calculates nature's supply in the form of biocapacity, the amount of resources the planet regenerates each year, and compares that to human demand: the amount it takes to produce all the living resources we consume and absorb our carbon dioxide emissions.

Its data reveal that, as of August 21, humanity will have demanded all the ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food – that nature can provide this year.

From now until the end of the year, we will meet our ecological demand by depleting resource stocks and accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.



"If you spent your entire annual income in nine months, you would probably be extremely concerned," said Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel.

"The situation is no less dire when it comes to our ecological budget. Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water and food shortages - these are all clear signs that we can no longer finance our consumption on credit. Nature is foreclosing."

Learn more: www.footprintnetwork.org/earthovershootday



What is Overshoot?

For most of human history, humanity has been able to live off of nature's interest - consuming resources and producing carbon dioxide at a rate lower than what the planet was able to regenerate and reabsorb each year.

But approximately three decades ago, we crossed a critical threshold, and the rate of human demand for ecological services began to outpace the rate at which nature could provide them.

This gap between demand and supply - known as ecological overshoot - has grown steadily each year. It now takes one year and six months to regenerate the resources that humanity requires in one year.

Addressing Carbon Key to Balancing the Budget

Climate change is perhaps the most prominent sign of our ecological overspending. Our carbon Footprint (as calculated by Global Footprint Network, the amount of land and sea area it would take to absorb all the CO2 we emit) is the biggest part of humanity's Ecological Footprint, and is by far the fastest-growing. Our carbon Footprint has more than doubled since 1970.

During that time, it has increased at a rate more than three-times faster than the next-fastest growing portion of humanity's Footprint, built-up land. Carbon dioxide emissions now account for over half of human demand on nature. We are now emitting much more carbon dioxide than the natural ecosystems of the planet can absorb; thus it is building up in the atmosphere and contributing to climate change.

Earth Overshoot Day

Every year, Global Footprint Network calculates humanity’s Ecological Footprint – the amount of productive land and sea area required to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, including CO2 emissions – and compares that with biocapacity, the ability of ecosystems to regenerate resources.

Earth Overshoot Day, a concept devised by U.K.-based new economics foundation, is calculated from 2007 data (the most recent year for which data are available) and projections based on historical rates of growth in population and consumption, as well as the historical link between world GDP and resource demand.

Last year, Earth Overshoot Day was observed on September 25, 2009. This year, overshoot day is estimated to come more than a month earlier in the year. This is not due to a sudden change in human demand, but rather to improvements in the calculation methodology that enable us to more adequately capture the extent of overshoot. (For example, our latest data show the world has less biocapacity available, primarily in the area of grazing land, than previously estimated.)

"We would expect our estimates of overshoot to be, if anything, conservative." Wackernagel said.

"We know we are far from living within the means of one planet. The good news is, much of the technology we have to begin to address this problem is available and it is open source: things like compact urban design, energy-efficient housing, ecological tax reform, removal of resource subsidies, safe and affordable family planning, bicycles, low-meat diets, and life-cycle costing."

To calculate your own personal Ecological Footprint, and learn what you can do to reduce it, go to www.footprintnetwork.org/calculator.

About Global Footprint Network

Global Footprint Network (www.footprintnetwork.org) is an environmental research organization working to advance sustainability through use of the Ecological Footprint, a resource accounting tool that measures how much nature we have, how much we use and who uses what.

Global Footprint Network and its international partner network is focused on solving the problem of overshoot, working with businesses and government leaders around the world to make ecological limits a central part of decision-making everywhere.

To learn more about Earth Overshoot Day, visit www.footprintnetwork.org/earthovershootday
Pati Poblete
pati@footprintnetwork.org
+(510) 839-8879, ext. 320 (-0800 GMT)
Cell: +1 707-315-8431

Nicole Freeling
nicole@footprintnetwork.org
+(510) 839-8879, ext. 302 (-0800 GMT)
Cell: +(415) 577-9282


ECOLOGICAL LIMITS

While economies, populations and resource demands grow, the size of the planet remains the same. Since the 1980s, when global ecological overshoot became a consistent reality, we have been drawing down the biosphere's principal rather than living off its annual interest. To support our consumption, we have been liquidating resource stocks and allowing carbon dioxide to accumulate in the atmosphere.

Ecological overshoot is possible only for a limited time before ecosystems begin to degrade and possibly collapse. This can already be seen in water shortages, desertification, erosion, reduced cropland productivity, overgrazing, deforestation, rapid extinction of species, collapse of fisheries and global climate change. New consequences of overshoot are regularly being discovered, and others may only become apparent long into the future.

FAST FACTS

All data from Global Footprint Network’s 2009 National Footprint Accounts

• As of 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, the biologically productive area available on this planet was 1.8 hectares/person (4.5 acres), with no area set aside for wild species. Meanwhile, the average per capita Ecological Footprint was 2.6 global hectares/person (6.5 global acres).
  
  
• The amount of ecological resources and services that humanity requires has increased from slightly more than half of planet Earth’s biocapacity in 1961 to that of almost one and a half planets in 2006. (Note that biocapacity represents the rate at which the world's ecosystems are able to regenerate renewable resources, not the total stocks of these resources on Earth.)
  
  
• Moderate United Nations projections suggest that demand will grow significantly faster than biocapacity and that by the 2030s, the capacity of two Earths will be needed to keep up with our consumption. Staying on this course would quickly diminish our room to maneuver, and would put the well-being of many of the planet's residents increasingly at risk.
  
  
• The carbon Footprint, which accounts for the emissions from use of fossil fuels, is more than half of humanity’s total Ecological Footprint. Since 1970, our total carbon Footprint has more than tripled, from 2.9 to 9 billion global hectares. In that time carbon has also gone from being a smaller part of humanity’s total Footprint than cropland, to outstripping every other area of demand by a significant margin.

HOW EARTH OVERSHOOT DAY IS CALCULATED

Every year, Global Footprint Network determines global biocapacity - or the amount of resources nature is able to generate each year - and compares that with Ecological Footprint, the amount that humanity requires.

Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by comparing our demand (as calculated by the Ecological Footprint) against nature's supply (as calculated by biocapacity.) [world biocapacity / world Ecological Footprint ] x 365 = Earth Overshoot Day

This ratio shows that in just 233 days, we demand the biosphere’s entire capacity for the year 2009. The 233rd day of the year is August 21.

Note: 2010 Earth Overshoot Day is projected from preliminary assessments of 2007 data, and projections forward to 2010 of that data as follows:

• Biocapacity projections are based upon historical rates of biocapacity growth over the last five years.
  
  
• Ecological Footprint projections are derived by calculating the historical correlation between GDP growth and growth in the various Footprint components, and applying this to expected GDP growth in 2010 (as estimated by the International Monetary Fund).

HOW NATIONS COMPARE

Nations vary widely in their level of demand for ecological services. In some countries, the per capita Ecological Footprint is many times higher than the global average. In others, it is much lower - in some cases too low on average to provide for basic needs.

The average Ecological Footprint per person in the United States is 9 global hectares (22.5 global acres), the equivalent of about eight full-sized soccer fields.

The average Ecological Footprint per person in Germany is 4.03 global hectares (10 global acres).

On the other end of the spectrum are countries such as Pakistan, Congo and Haiti, which have an average Ecological Footprint of slightly more than one global hectare (half a global acre).

To view a bar graph of 150 countries, see www.footprintnetwork.org/EF_by_nation.

TERMS DEFINED

Ecological overshoot occurs when human demand exceeds the regenerative capacity of a natural ecosystem. Global overshoot occurs when humanity demands more resources and produces more waste, such as CO2, than the biosphere can regenerate and reabsorb.

The Ecological Footprint measures the amount of productive land and sea area it takes to produce all the resources a population consumes and absorb its waste, using prevailing technology.

Biocapacity is shorthand for biological capacity, which is the ability of an ecosystem to regenerate useful biological materials (resources) and to absorb wastes generated by humans.

Earth Overshoot Day, a concept devised by the U.K-based new economics foundation, (www.neweconomics.org), marks the day when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what the Earth can regenerate in that year. We maintain this deficit by liquidating stocks of resources and accumulating waste, primarily CO2 in the atmosphere.

Global hectares (acres) are hectares (acres) of land at world-average productivity.

Wilberforce Award

Reposted from the Wilberforce Award website

'Dick Smith is one of Australia’s most recognised individuals. After a successful business career in retailing and publishing, Dick has become well known as a restless adventurer, making many pioneering and record breaking flights by helicopter, aeroplane and balloon.

He has also been active in public service having served as Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority and later as chair of the Civil Aviation Safety Board. He led the National Council for the Centenary of Federation and served as an Ambassador for the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.

Dick is a passionate supporter of environmental and conservation efforts and since 1995 has been Chairman of the Australian Geographic Society. Less well known is his work as a philanthropist. He is a supporter of many charities and individuals in need. In recognition of this he was honoured as Australian of the Year in 1986.

Dick has never been shy to take on controversial issues, from aviation safety to support for refugees and the campaign to return David Hicks to Australia.

Recently he has involved himself in another contentious issue- Australia’s population future. Concerned about our expected rapid population increase, Dick is calling for a national debate on what he considers to be the most important issue facing the nation.

It has become obvious to me that my generation has over exploited our wonderful world – and it’s younger people who will pay the price. Like many people my age, I’ve benefited from a long period of constant economic and population growth – we are addicted to it. But sooner or later this consumption growth will have an end. We appear to be already bumping against the limits of what our planet can sustain and the evidence is everywhere to see.

Right now I believe we could be sleepwalking to catastrophe because we are failing to both acknowledge that there are limits to growth in a finite world and to prepare for a more sustainable way of organising our economy. In the 19th Century, empires were built on the labour of slaves, and it was believed economies would collapse if slavery was abolished. But brave people like William Wilberforce fought to end the slave trade – and economies still flourished. We need brave people like Wilberforce today, and I want to encourage a new generation of clear-thinking and inspiring young leaders.

So today I am announcing Dick Smith’s Wilberforce Award – $1 million to go to a young person under 30 who can impress me by becoming famous through his or her ability to show leadership in communicating an alternative to our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy. I will be looking for candidates whose actions over the next year show that they have what it takes to be among the next generation of leaders our incredible planet so badly needs.

Candidates will need to have a firm belief that we can have a viable and strong world economy that is no longer obsessed with growth for its own sake, but instead encourages both a stable population and sustainable consumption of energy and resources. They must be able to communicate that we cannot continue to squander the resources that will be needed by future generations, and they must also be able to communicate a plan that offers an alternative to our growth addiction.

Like the Nobel Prize, you will not apply for the Wilberforce Award. Over the next twelve months I will be following the media throughout the world to see who is the most outstanding individual in not only making a significant contribution to this important issue, but who also becomes famous through his or her contribution to the debate.

One year from now I will announce the winner of the $1 Million Wilberforce Award. The Award will go towards advancing the momentum the winner will have already achieved.'

Peak Population: Thoughts for Dick Smith

Sharon also blogs at Post Growth, along with Josha Nelson and Scott Gast, both of Seattle

With his documentary 'The Population Puzzle', Australian entrepreneur and adventurer Dick Smith has done something very brave, and very important, in working to break the taboo on speaking about population.

It is taboo because raises many sensitive issues around immigration, fertility - and of course, because it challenges the growth consensus.

In Australia, the population issue has often been emotionally charged, because of the role of immigration in Australia's population growth. The debate is thus easily hijacked from being a discussion about exactly what a sustainable population for Australia would be, and instead becomes mired in blame games and fuels the agenda of racist elements.

In relation to fertility, there is a high likelihood that any attempt to discuss the issue will be taken personally, or will be turned back on the person who dared intrude in one of the most personal and intimate areas of the human experience. If you have kids, you are a hypocrite. If you don't have kids, you won't know what you are talking about, or you're 'anti-children'.

Anything to shoot the messenger and keep the taboo in place.

Anything to avoid the discomfort of acknowledging the issue, its implications and what can fairly and humanely be done about it.

It is a highly emotive topic, but in fact addressing population is important precisely so we can ensure that everyone's kids – now and in the future – can have the best life possible.

And the growth consensus...

One of the main concerns underpinning the fuelling of growth in industrialised societies is how are we going to take care of an ageing population demographic – we need more people of working age to support the increasing ranks of elders who live longer, who often require more [and more expensive] health care, and often end up in high levels of dependent care.

Until the 20th century, when improved sanitation and medical care enabled us to live longer lives than any of our ancestors, humanity did not have this problem at this scale. It is a real issue. But is this grow-more-young-to-support-the old approach – a population Ponzi scheme – simply deferring, rather than tackling, the problem?

Alex Steffen of Worldchanging expressed this in his 2008 article on 'Peak Population':

www.worldchanging.com/archives/009107.html:

1) The longer population growth rates remain high, the more total people there will be on the planet when we reach peak population, so one of our biggest goals ought to be seeing to it by every ethical means possible that the wave of population growth crests sooner rather than later.

2) If we are successful in reaching peak population sooner, at a lower number of people, rather than later with more people, we will be much more able to confront the myriad interlocking crises we face – a comparatively less crowded planet is an easier planet on which to build a bright green future.

When that population wave eventually crests – and it will – how high do we want the wave to be?

We need to think more creatively about how to address this genuine social concern – how to care for our elders with dignity – but not by encouraging more population growth to defer an even bigger problem that will need to be addressed.

Let's not fool ourselves that 'Ponzi Demography' is the basis for the future of Australia - because it is absolutely not. It's a house of cards.

Ultimately tackling population means facing our addiction to growth.

Climate change is merely a symptom of the biggest conundrum facing humanity: the assumption that we can sustain the current 6.5 billion people on the planet on western industrial lifestyles when the planet – according to every source from the IPCC to Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – is saying its not coping now.

The 21st century question is not whether we can sustain more than six billion people on a western industrial model of development, but how to sustain the projected global population so that everyone has a good quality of life – of which material living standards are only a part - within the biophysical limits of one planet.

The problem is that the discussion of limits challenges the policy position of all governments – economic growth. It would be tantamount to political suicide right now to question this consensus. People need to understand the conundrum before decision makers (not just politicians) will have the legitimacy to address it, before people will demand it.

We need to be able to have an open and honest debate about this issue.

Dick Smith has used his personal 'currency' to help bring this issue into the mainstream of debate.

There is one thing I would offer to Dick Smith to strengthen his case, and that is to reframe his question:

'How many people can Australia support?'

A critical question, HOWEVER seeking an answer to the question will lead only to an endless spiral of further debate, because the answer can only ever be - 'it depends'.

How do Australians want to live? Because this will determine our demands on nature - how much water and energy we use, how much greenhouse gas and waste we generate, how much and what kind of food do we want to eat? What kind of houses do we want, how will we get around?

It is a hot air question.

It is also not helpful in an era of global economic trade, where our resources are exported to, and imported from, around the globe.

What is needed is a scientific approach. In the early 1990s, Bill Rees of Canada's University of British Colombia and his then-PhD student Mathis Wackernagel created the Ecological Footprint.

Ecological Footprint accounting compares human demand on nature with the biosphere's ability to regenerate resources and provide services. It does this by assessing the biologically productive land and marine area required to produce the resources a population consumes and absorb the corresponding waste, using prevailing technology.

This metric inverts the 'hot air' question and instead asks 'how much nature does it take to support Australians at current levels of consumption?'

It's measurable.

In the mid-2000s, Wackernagel founded the Global Footprint Network (GFN), a non profit based in California, whose objective is to:

'Supporting creation of a sustainable economy by advancing the scientific rigour and practical application of the Ecological Footprint as a measurement and policy tool, with the goal of making ecological limits central to decision making.'

GFN maintains a series of biophysical accounts for most nations, which track whether they are running an ecological deficit. These are published in the Living Planet Reports:

www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/publications

GFN's accounts - which use a conservative accounting approach, and are therefore an underestimate - show that humanity as a whole is already in overshoot (when demand on nature exceeds available supply):

www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day

GFN are inviting national governments to work with them on strengthening the data for each nation's account through their Ten in Ten Program, designed to get 10 countries using the Ecological Footprint as a complement to GDP in decision making within ten years.

GFN work with national governments to use the Footprint to:

• Assess the value of their country's ecological assets
• Monitor and manage their assets
• Identify the risks associated with ecological deficits
• Set policy that is informed by ecological reality and makes safeguarding resources a top priority
• Measure progress toward their goals

Dick, can you encourage a partnership with these accountants of natural capital and our decision makers?!!

Here is the man you need to speak with:

Mathis Wackernagel
President
Global Footprint Network

email: info@footprintnetwork.org
web: www.footprintnetwork.org

You could also talk to Brian Czech and Rob Dietz of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy for assistance with communication approaches, framing debates and technical questions on transitioning from a growth economy.

email: info@steadystate.org
web: www.steadystate.org

Turning Estates into Villages

Reposted in full from Monbiot, 9 August 2010

'How good planning can make us slimmer, fitter, safer and less lonely.

It took me a while to recognise what I was seeing. It was an ordinary campsite in Pembrokeshire: a square field with tents around the perimeter. But it had a curious effect on the children staying there. Young people who had seldom experienced daylight slowly emerged from their tents and were drawn towards the centre of the field. Bats and balls left on the grass mysteriously appeared in their hands. Children with no prior interest in sport started playing football, cricket and rounders. Little kids ran around with older ones. As children of all classes played together, their parents started talking to each other. It hit me with some force: we had reinvented the village green.

We are, to a surprising extent, what the built environment makes us. Academic papers show that many of the problems we blame on individual behaviour are caused in part by the places in which we live. People are more likely to help their neighbours in quiet areas, for example, than in noisy ones (1). A long series of studies across several countries, beginning in San Francisco in 1969, shows unequivocally that communities become weaker as the volume of traffic on their streets increases (2,3).

Other papers show that people’s use of shared spaces is strongly influenced by the presence of trees: the more trees there are, the more time people spend there and the larger the groups in which they gather (4,5). A further study shows that, partly as a result, vegetation in common spaces strengthens the neighbourhood’s social ties (6). In greener places, people know more of their neighbours, are more likely to help each other and have stronger feelings of belonging. Social isolation is strongly associated with an absence of green spaces (7).

One fascinating paper shows that crime rates are also strongly affected by vegetation. In housing projects in Chicago with equal levels of poverty, taking account of factors such as the size of the buildings and the vacancy rate, there’s a clear association between the absence of greenery and both property crime and violent crime (8).

Another set of studies demonstrates a relationship between urban planning and body mass index. Where settlements are dense (and therefore able to support public transport) and close to shops, work places and recreation places, people are more likely to walk and cycle and less likely to be fat (9). One paper shows that women living in mixed places (where houses and amenities are close together) have a risk of coronary heart disease 20% lower than women living in areas which contain only houses (10). Suburban sprawl is partly to blame for obesity.

Build loose suburbs carved up by busy roads and without green spaces and you help to create a population of fat, lonely people plagued by criminals. Build dense, leafy settlements with mixed uses, protected from traffic, and you help to create safe, fit and friendly communities.

In Sunday’s Observer the doctor Steve Field blamed public health problems squarely and solely on sufferers and their parents (11). It’s true that we must take as much responsibility as we can for our health. But Field, like most conservatives, ignores the social and political context, condemning people for problems they cannot tackle alone. He lambasts us for eating junk food, for example, while saying nothing about manufacturers who ensure that it’s as addictive as the regulations allow (12). He suggests that we should encourage children to get outside and play games. Of course we should, but if there is no safe place nearby in which they can do so we’re wasting our breath.

Here’s one picture of what a fit, safe and functional community might look like. There’s nothing either radical or new about it: similar developments have been built for centuries (and most have now been monopolised by the rich). Houses or apartment blocks are built densely around a square of shared green space. It is big enough for playing ball games, but without fixed goal posts, allowing both children and adults to define the space for themselves. It could contain trees; perhaps some rocks or logs to climb on. There might be a corner of uncut meadow, or flowerbeds or fruit bushes: the space will work best when it is designed and managed by the people who live there.

Most importantly, the houses face inwards, and no cars are allowed inside the square: the roads serve only the backs of the buildings. The square is overlooked by everyone, which means that children can run in and out of their houses unsupervised, create their own tribes and learn their own rules, without fear of traffic accidents or molesters. They have a place in which to run wild without collecting ASBOs.

There’s a council estate a bit like this across the road from my house. Whenever I pass through it on a dry day in the holidays, I see dozens of children playing there. On the other estates here you seldom see children out of doors, for the obvious reason that there is nowhere to play. Proximity is everything: if a park is far away, most families won’t go there (13). Walking across a city with a small child is no one’s idea of entertainment.

Those who need such spaces most are the socially excluded. Because of poverty, unemployment and poorer health, they leave their neighbourhoods less often than the affluent (14). But they tend to have the least access to green spaces. A study of Greater Manchester, for example, shows that wealthy parts of the city have tree cover of around ten per cent, the poor neighbourhoods just two per cent (15). Housing built around village greens need be no more expensive and no less dense: just better planned and better regulated.

Instead, whenever I visit a new estate, I see only lost opportunities: houses that turn their backs on each other; spaces that should be dedicated to playing reserved instead for parking; loneliness and exclusion built into the plan. We have allowed property developers and weak planning to define who we are and what we shall become. As the government launches a new scheme for ensuring that more houses are built (16), we must demand that it recognises a truth all these studies point to: that there is such a thing as society.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. This was first documented by S Cohen and A Lezak, 1977. Noise and inattentiveness to social cues. Environment and Behavior, 9, 559-572.

2. D Appleyard, 1969. The Environmental Quality of City Streets: The Residents’ Viewpoint. Journal of the American Planning Association, 35, pp. 84-101.

3. Subsequent work on this issue is summarised and reviewed here:

Joshua Hart, April 2008. Driven to Excess: impacts of motor vehicle traffic on residential quality of life in Bristol, UK. www.livingstreets.org.uk/news/uk/-/driven-to-excess

4. RL Coley, FE Kuo and WC Sullivan, 1997. Where does community grow? The social context created by nature in urban public housing. Environment and Behavior, 29, 468-492.

5. S DePooter, 1997. Nature and neighbors: Green spaces and social interactions in the inner city. Unpublished master thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Cited by FE Kuo et al (see below).

6. FE Kuo et al, 1998. Fertile Ground for Community: Inner-CityNeighborhood Common Spaces. American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 6.

7. ibid.

8. FE Kuo and WC Sullivan, May 2001. Environment and Crime in the Inner City: Does Vegetation Reduce Crime? Environment and Behavior vol. 33 no. 3 343-367doi: 10.1177/0013916501333002

9. Andrew Rundle et al, 2007. The Urban Built Environment and Obesity in NewYork City: A Multilevel Analysis. American Journal of Health Promotion, pp 326-334

This paper also summarises several similar studies.

10. Lee R Mobley et al, April 2006. Environment, Obesity, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Low-Income Women. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 30, Issue 4, Pages 327-332.e1. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2005.12.001

11. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/08/steve-field-patient-responsibility-health

12. See David A. Kessler, 2009. The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Rodale Press.

13. AE Kazmierczak and P James, 2007 cite research which suggests that ” for most people the distance between 500m and 1km is the furthest they would walk to a park”.
The Role of Urban Green Spaces in Improving Social Inclusion. www.els.salford.ac.uk/urbannature/outputs/papers/kazmierczak_BuHu07.pdf

14. A.E. Kazmierczak, P. James, ibid.

15. B Rudlin, and N Falk, 1999. Building the 21st century home, Architectural Press, Oxford, cited by A.E. Kazmierczak, P. James, ibid.

16. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10910048'

Heading for a Cliff With Thelma & Louise

Who do you know who can help support the production, funding & distribution of this film?

Reposted in full from Growthbusters, 9 August 2010

'That’s my line in the opening tease for this recent conversation on Peak Moment TV. If I do say so myself, this is a good metaphor to explain how we’re fiddling around at the margins while we fail to recognize we’re participants in a growth-seeking system that has us locked on a collision course with limits to growth.

Janaia Donaldson interviews Dave Gardner on Peak Moment

I’m happy to share this interview produced by Janaia Donaldson and Robin Mallgren of Peak Moment TV. They gave me an outstanding opportunity to explain the what and why of my upcoming documentary, Hooked on Growth. If you want to understand what the non-profit GrowthBusters film project is all about, watch this interview.

Back to my Thelma and Louise metaphor: To elaborate, it’s as if we’re in a convertible roaring toward a cliff. The cliff is far enough in the distance we can’t make it out clearly. It doesn’t seem like an immediate danger. But as we get closer and begin to realize where we’re heading, what do we do? Instead of stopping or turning the car, we fiddle with the radio – change the volume, tune to a different station. We roll down the windows, dust off the dash, clean the mirror. But we don’t slam on the brakes or do a James Bond J-turn to quickly head in another direction. Heck, we don’t even gently change course.

Of course, I’m referring to modern society’s irrational, growth-addicted response to mounting evidence we have hit the limits of Earth’s ability to meet our needs and wants. We’re experiencing peak oil, peak water and peak food. We’ve passed peak soil, peak fish, peak biodiversity, and optimum climate. You get the picture.

NO, you don’t! None of us do. We are not behaving as if facing an emergency. I count myself among the irrational here. Trust me, I’m working on it, but I’m still navigating, living and working within the system that all evidence demands we leave behind. I still get in a car and drive several times each week. I still board a jet airliner from time to time. I confess! I even enjoy the occasional cheeseburger! At our best, mainstream environmentalists give away compact flourescent light bulbs, fight sprawl, and promote composting, carpooling and permaculture. While these are all good moves, at this stage of the game they will make about as much difference to the outcome as cleaning the mirror of Thelma & Louise’s convertible. They are not enough if we don’t change course. Why do so few of us address the systemic problems?

As I explain to Janaia in this episode of Peak Moment, my documentary Hooked on Growth attempts to answer that question.

A growing grassroots support network is helping produce, fund and distribute the film. With their help, and yours, Hooked on Growth will hit screens the first half of 2011. Check out the complete interview, and explore other episodes of Peak Moment. I love what Janaia and Robin are doing. And join us at GrowthBusters. Become part of a groundbreaking film project that will deliver a much-needed wake-up call. It was sad to see Thelma and Louise drive off that cliff. Let’s not join them.'

Dave Gardner is producing the non-profit documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity.'

The Secret Life of Things: Eric Sun Undergoes Past Life Regression Therapy

Sourced from You Tube - animation by EcoInnovators

''Life Pscycle-ology' a humorous look at the life story of an unhappy mobile phone, who seeks therapy after his owner dumps him in favour of a new model. Free learning resources available at http://www.thesecretlifeofthings.com/

Nature Deficit Disorder

Sourced from The Word Spy, 5 August 2010

'nature-deficit disorder n. A yearning for nature, or an ignorance of the natural world, caused by a lack of time spent outdoors, particularly in rural settings. Also: nature deficit disorder...

Revealing the inspiration behind his latest epic, Avatar, legendary filmmaker James Cameron recently described himself as a "nature geek", and said modern humans were suffering a degree of "nature deficit disorder". It may not be a medically recognised condition, but "nature deficit disorder" is a concept gaining traction with childhood and behavioural experts around the world. —Peter Ker, "More fertile imagination," The Age, March 20, 2010...'

Dick's Population Puzzle

Excerpt from The Age, 5 August 2010

'...[Dick Smith' isn't one of the usual suspects; he's from the mainstream, a political agnostic, a poster boy for middle-Australian values and capitalism who could just as well serve as host on The Apprentice. Millionaire businessman and entrepreneur Dick Smith is an unlikely dissenter but on the evidence of Dick Smith's Population Puzzle, he's not a reluctant one.

His concern is that Australian and global population growth carries enormous risks, dangers that none of our political parties is prepared to address.

As Smith sees it, population growth is the thread that links myriad issues that the Australian public - if not its policymakers - has grave concerns about: urban growth, housing affordability, a stretched health system, environmental destruction and the impact that has on food and water supply and border protection.

Filmed over six months, Dick Smith's Population Puzzle follows Smith knocking on the doors of Australia's rich and powerful, attempting to get the issue on the agenda.

Some of those he petitions are pleased to see him; some aren't. Many disagree with his arguments but in raising the issue, he also teases out some sensitive matters that few are willing to embrace.

The documentary's maker, Simon Nasht, knows why the topic gets under the skin.

''We don't seem to be able to talk about immigration without getting sidetracked into a discussion about refugees, which is so tiny in the scheme of things as to be irrelevant,'' he says.

In the year to last December, overseas migration contributed 277,700 people, or 64 per cent, of Australia's 432,600-person population increase (the rest comes from ''natural increase'', which is births over deaths).

Nearly half of that increase came from short-term, non-permanent visa categories, mainly workers who are brought in to fill jobs where there are shortages.

Less than 10 per cent of the increase is the result of refugees but as Nasht contends: ''If you want to discuss immigration levels you are anti-immigrant.''

In any case, Smith argues for an increase in the refugee intake at the expense of other immigrants. He questions Australia's responsibility as an ethical global citizen when it recruits doctors from developing countries that have paid for their training and need them more than us. He wonders why we import workers while millions of Australians remain undertrained, under-skilled and undereducated.

More troubling for Nasht is that the discussion about population growth ''has been run through the vested interests of property developers, media companies who have a vested interest in more people, as do retailers, as does business in general.

''As Dick says, it's the easiest profit to make because you don't have to fight for more market, the market just gets bigger.

''Politicians love the idea of more taxpayers and Treasury estimates that half of our economic growth is just based on having more people. There's been a blind acceptance that Australia can keep growing forever.''

It's a massive social experiment and there's been no discussion about it, Nasht says. What makes the immigration debate so vexatious, Nasht says, is that it cuts across social and political lines and that for every benefactor of a ''big Australia'' there are just as many who will suffer.

Though many of Smith's arguments can be construed in alternative ways and some smack of exaggeration, his provocations have value and merit, Nasht says.

Smith's claim that Australia will run out of food and water should not be dismissed as alarmist, he says. Will we remain a net food exporter if our population increases and good farming land adjacent to Sydney and Melbourne is given over to housing, he asks. ''Some people believe these are serious issues that can't be ignored.''...'

EU to Step Up Raw Materials 'Diplomacy'

'Materials diplomacy?' That sounds ominous...seems a resource constrained world is sneaking up on us faster than we think...

Reposted in full from EurActiv, 18 June 2010

'An EU expert group has identified 14 raw materials seen as "critical" for EU high-tech and eco-industries and suggested that the European Union's global diplomacy should be geared up to ensure that companies gain easier access to them in future.

"It is our aim to make sure that Europe's industry will be able to continue to play a leading role in new technologies and innovation and we have to ensure that we have the necessary elements to do so," said Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani, presenting the group's final report on 17 June.

The supply risks identified for the 14 critical raw materials highlighted in the report primarily relate to the fact that global production is concentrated in a handful of countries: China, Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Brazil.

The low recycling rates of these materials and the difficulty of substituting them with others add to their "criticality", the report said.

To guarantee that industry can access these essential raw materials, "we need fair play on external markets," said Tajani. Encouraging supply from EU sources, improving resource efficiency and increasing efforts to recycle were also highlighted in the report as ways forward.

Of the 41 minerals and metals analysed, the expert group listed the following 14 raw materials as critical for the EU: antimony, beryllium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, magnesium, niobium, PGMs (Platinum Group Metals), rare earths, tantalum and tungsten.

The group cites forecasts indicating that demand for some of them might more than triple by 2030 compared to 2006 levels.

These materials are an essential part of both high-tech products and every-day consumer items, such as mobile phones, thin-layer photovoltaics, lithium-ion batteries, fibre-optic cables and synthetic fuels.

They also suggested that the list be updated every five years.

Promoting exploration within the EU and beyond

The experts recommend a number of policy measures to improve access to primary resources and stress the need to increase recycling and promote research into substituting and improving the efficiency of materials.

Policy measures to improve access to primary resources should cover "fair treatment of extraction with other competing land uses", promote exploration and extraction within and outside the EU and "ensure that exploration by companies is regarded as a research activity," the report says.

It also advises the EU to promote good governance, capacity-building and transparency in relation to the extraction industry in developing countries.

The European Commission and the African Union Commission agreed on 8 June to develop bilateral cooperation in the field of raw materials and work together on issues such as governance, infrastructure, investment and geological knowledge and skills.

Regarding trade and investment, the group advises the EU to consider shaping a new EU-wide policy on foreign investment agreements to "better protect EU investments in raw materials abroad".

The bloc should also consider the merits of pursuing dispute settlement initiatives at World Trade Organisation (WTO) level "to include in such initiatives more raw materials important for EU industry".

The EU filed a joint complaint with the United States against China at the WTO in June last year, accusing Beijing of unfairly favouring its industries by restricting access to nine types of key raw materials (EurActiv 24/06/09).

China, which is responsible for 95% of global 'rare earth' production (one of the 14 materials listed as critical to EU industry), plans to ban exports of some of them as of 2015. Beijing's plans are a cause for concern among manufacturers of high-tech products ranging from computers to electric car batteries and wind turbines (EurActiv 09/06/10).'