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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Local-regional food hubs gaining importance
“Caitlin Taylor believes that a sustainable food system needs ‘legible’ infrastructure. Architects and engineers usually strive to make infrastructure invisible. But Taylor believes that the legibility of infrastructure — making systems visible and understandable — is crucial for justice and sustainability in food production.
“Taylor said that one problem in today’s food system is ‘the missing middle’. Our goal is a food system that people can understand — what it is, how it operates, where the food is coming from. That makes it easier to see the need for real change.
“Kansas Rural Center is working to support those who are interested in developing food hubs across Kansas, particularly the counties surrounding I-135 from Wichita through Salina – a Central Food Corridor.
“Our Food Hub Working Group works with farmers to build a cooperative food hub. The food hub would assist the farmers involved with local food aggregation, marketing, and delivery so that the group could serve larger wholesale markets.
“This opens the doors to helpful collaboration that may lead to benefits such as agreeing to carry each other’s products in on-farm stores or other storefronts, sharing access to specialized equipment, knowledge sharing, combining orders to fill a refrigerated truck together or scaling up together to use their fulfillment power to open new market opportunities.” [click the links for the full articles]
Petroleum constraints — first shot across modernity’s bow
“The way of life of the vast majority of humanity is now wholly dependent on petroleum. In effect we eat it, wear it, get carried around by it, communicate through it, sit on it, and medicate ourselves with it. It is not so difficult to substitute for oil in applications such as electricity generation. It is far more difficult to do so in areas such as agriculture, shipping, aviation, and heavy freight.
“Oil is also vital for the manufacture of a huge variety of products. As it increases in cost, those products increase in cost — inorganic fertiliser, sulphur products, plastics, and pharmaceuticals.
“The Hormuz constriction gives us an insight into a far bigger problem – the constrained nature of the resources we rely on. Back in 1973, systems scientists at the MIT carried out a computer simulation of key variables over the coming decades. The modeling they produced has been uncannily prescient. The ‘standard run’ scenario (what would happen if trends then continued) indicated a civilisational collapse, starting about now.
“As more and more people achieve higher and higher levels of affluence, they consume more and more of the world’s resources. Consumption increases each year and population growth, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion all follow an exponential growth curve.
“Globally we are using the equivalent of one and a half planet’s worth of the Earth’s ability to renew its resources, and absorb human-generated matter, e.g. carbon emissions, every year. What this means is that firstly the resources supporting humanity — food, minerals, industrial output – will begin to decline. This would be followed by a collapse in population.
“Are not renewables the answer? Yes, in part, but they cannot substitute for either the scale of use, nor all the multiple uses of oil and other hydrocarbons. Large scale deployment of battery storage is not feasible for heavy freight and similar uses. The increasing scarcity of critical minerals will constrain the scale of renewable energy. The manufacture, deployment and maintenance of wind turbines, solar panels and energy storage systems, are all dependent on fossil fuels.
“To confront this reality means establishing several priorities — a public education campaign explaining the risks; a reset of expectations [such as] no more replacing cars every few years, jetting off on holiday, eating exotic foods out of season; a food security programme with much more plant-based national diet; the design of social welfare programmes; education for sufficiency, cultivation, making and repairing, and care of the earth; and above all, the dumping of the mantra of economic growth.” [click the link for the full article]
Greening the desert is possible
“In September 2024, more rain fell in the northern Algerian Sahara than the average of an entire year and a half. Roads collapsed, bridges were destroyed, several neighborhoods around Béchar were temporarily isolated. Satellite images later revealed a striking phenomenon: lakes had reappeared in desert basins that had remained dry for decades.
“Seeing these waters flow through the Oued Saoura raised a fundamental question: How can a region that prays for rain every season allow such a quantity of water to escape without being able to retain it? My commitment to rainwater harvesting and hydrological restoration originates from this long-standing question.
“In autumn 2024, another phenomenon appeared almost immediately. The desert began to turn green. Vegetation emerged in areas previously considered biologically dormant. Where soils were arid, water accumulated in basins and infiltrated the ground.
“But when territories lose their organic capacity to slow down and infiltrate rainfall, when rapid drainage becomes the dominant planning principle, floods and droughts become two expressions of the same broken cycle.
“To generate life, water must meet the soil, infiltrate it, remain long enough to nourish vegetation, recharge lands, and reactivate living cycles. We must prepare territories capable of retaining water, rather than merely suffering or evacuating it.” [click the link for the full article]
Copenhagen’s bikeability means an 8-to-80 mobility choice
“I had high expectations for bicycling in Copenhagen, and they were largely met. Bike parking everywhere — abundant complete streets — bike share easy to access and affordable — enough space in the bike lane for people to pass easily. Over half of its residents regularly bicycle to work and school.
“One afternoon, I rented a bicycle with no destination in mind. I easily crisscrossed the city in separated bike lanes and slower side streets (where separation was not needed). I was experiencing legitimate 8-to-80 infrastructure, where people aged 8-to-80, with different abilities, feel comfortable and safe biking and rolling.
“Daily life has become less and less defined by in-person connection to our physical surroundings. Full sensory experiences are increasingly being pushed out of our lives as our time behind screens, windshields, and walls grows.
“Regular biking is a powerful antidote to this growing disconnectedness. We yearn for connection. It’s deep in our DNA and essential to our well-being. Connecting to nature and community around us through all our senses engages us emotionally, cognitively, and physically.” [click the link for the full article]
Fire fighting jet fuel — costing more and in short supply
“While the U.S. government is in charge of fighting most big wildfires, nearly all the 500 or so aircraft they use are privately owned by contractors. Last year, those planes burned through about $50 million worth of jet fuel.
“If this year is the same as last season, that fuel bill would almost double to nearly $100 million. That’s because the price of jet fuel has skyrocketed since the war in Iran began in late February. Ultimately, taxpayers will be the ones to shell out tens of millions of dollars more to fight summer wildfires this year.
“Brett L’Esperance of Dauntless Air said he’s less worried about fuel prices than the potential for shortages of jet fuel. L’Esperance has his eye on oil imports heading into California, where most of the jet fuel used across the West is refined. The California Energy Commission is reporting the lowest stock of jet fuel at refineries in more than two years.” [click the link for the full article]
Can modernity innovate quickly enough to avoid collapse?
“Dave Murphy: “The population of the Earth was roughly 300 million in 1000 AD. One thousand years later, it is 26 times greater, at 7,800 million. I doubt that the planet’s population will be 26 times greater in 1000 years, reaching 202,800 million.
“I agree that we are now in a precarious position with a society built on stocks that are running low, but we are also transitioning to inexhaustible flows. The system we are moving towards is also much more efficient. But I get the impression that the doomer’s perspective leaves less doubt. There is little room for anything unknown when the fate of modernity is ‘basically guaranteed’.
“We need to think about civilization today and in the future, and hold them both equally. Just because it is hard to predict what might happen in the ‘messy decades-scale’ view, doesn’t mean we should abandon hope for people today. Aren’t decisions made today civilization-relevant as well?
Ben McCall: “Dave has suggested that ‘the scale and duration at which modernity can continue in the future based upon renewable energy’ is a known-unknown. Tom, I sense that you would disagree with that suggestion, or at least say there are known-known constraints on that scale/duration.
Tom Murphy: “Right — I think we can say more about what is likely to succeed or fail. Even centuries ago we were already ecologically unsustainable, as accumulating declines became apparent. The trends are now alarmingly steep, decidedly unsustainable.
“I wish I could share optimism for inexhaustible flows and continued efficiency improvements. If any element critical to modernity is exhaustible, then it won’t matter if another is inexhaustible. For instance, even tireless energy flows like sunlight, wind, and the hydrological cycle are diffuse, and require an enormous amount of ‘stuff’ in the form of non-renewable materials to capture, convert, and store the energy.
“Beyond the confines of energy, modernity relies upon rapidly declining stocks and overtaxed flows — sadly resulting in permanent, accelerating species loss. Meanwhile, enormous waste and pollution streams (beyond CO2) overwhelm the assimilative capacity of the ecosphere.
“It is true that biology has figured out how to make indefinite use of inexhaustible flows. But artificial systems are nowhere close to achieving such a feat in energy or any other domain. We are utterly incapable of running a controlled artificial ecosystem that can support human life, even for months, let alone indefinitely.
Dave: “I am sorry to disappoint, but Tom’s perspective leaves little room for agreement. First, energy and technology are neutral. The existence of donuts doesn’t drive weight gain; the decision to consume them does. The availability of large amounts of energy may enable destructive trends, but it does not drive them.
“The point is this: the economy is evolutionary and adaptive; an element that is critical today might not be critical in 30 years. This ability to shift resources has been shown time and time again over the past centuries. Why do people keep ignoring the ability of the economy and human society to adapt to constraints?” [click the link for the full article]
EU data centers banking on off-grid gas-turbine electricity
“As the UK and EU debate how to source the vast quantities of electricity they’ll need to power their grand visions of home-grown artificial intelligence (AI), the gas turbine sector is confident that governments will soon follow the lead of the United States – by clearing the way for Big Tech to embrace natural gas.
“San Francisco-based Global Energy Monitor, a research and advocacy group that tracks global fossil fuel developments tied to data centres, says that Mitsubishi Power Aero is a major provider of turbines for the AI boom in the U.S. Tech companies including Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, and xAI, are planning or building fleets of gas turbines that will generate at least 23 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, roughly twice as much as New York City uses.
“The EU and UK are due to unveil new regulations that will dictate to what extent new AI data centres can construct off-grid gas plants to power their operations – and gas turbine manufacturers report global order backlogs running to 2030. ‘We have to face the reality – there is a real risk of gasification for data centres’, said Nicolás González Casares, a member of the European Parliament. ‘We cannot gassify this sector. Data centres must become an enabler of the green transition’.
“However, years-long wait times to connect new AI data centre projects to electricity grids have pushed many developers to try to skip the queue by requesting direct hookups to gas. In 2024, Ireland’s data centres consumed 6,969 gigawatt-hours (GWh), 22 percent of the country’s total electricity consumption. Off-grid gas power is now rolling in to alleviate this energy crunch.” [click the link for the full article]
Spike in US fossil fuel use driven by AI data centers
“A rapid expansion of data centres across the nation is at the heart of the US tech sector’s plans to continue ‘dominat[ing]’ the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry. High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.
“Chinese investment in coal- and gas-fired power is expected to drop this year, amid domestic policy changes and the Iran war sending gas prices spiralling. Together, these trends mean the IEA expects US investment in fossil-fuelled power plants to overtake China’s in 2026.
“This is leading to what the IEA calls an ‘AI-driven push’ to build new gas-power plants in the US, the world’s largest data-centre market and largest gas producer. Much of the demand is coming from tech companies in the US seeking to bypass grid connection queues by building ‘captive’ gas-power plants.” [click the links for the full articles]
World Cup record climate pollution — all for fun and games
“The 2026 World Cup, the most popular sporting event on the planet, is not only the most politically combustible tournament in modern history, but it is also on track to be the ‘most polluting’ World Cup ever, with total greenhouse gas emissions hitting nearly two times the historical average. Scientists conservatively project that the tournament will generate around 9m tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
“Some may point out that the 2026 World Cup’s estimated 9m tons of CO2 pales in comparison to the 5.9 billion tons of CO2 that the US spewed into the air in 2025 alone. While that is true, it’s equally true that to passively allow Fifa to willfully trash the environment is to succumb to greenwashing.
“The Qatar 2022 World Cup was a carbon bomb in sporty form. It necessitated more than 1,000 daily inbound and outbound flights, used an energy-intensive desalination system to purify water and relied on largely bogus carbon-offset schemes.
“Jaw-dropping absurdities abound. At the 2022 World Cup, stadiums were located relatively close together. At the 2026 World Cup, the Bosnia and Herzegovina squad will have to travel more than 5,000km (3,144mi) from Toronto to Los Angeles to Seattle. Algeria will rack up about 4,800 km (2,972 mi) journeying from Kansas City to San Francisco and back. Czechia start in Guadalajara before heading to Atlanta and then Mexico City.” [click the links for the full articles]
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