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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
An agrarian society — fossil fuel lite
“In remembrance of Richard Heinberg, we are returning to a lecture Richard delivered for the Schumacher Center in October 2006. Written in the context of the peak-oil debates of the early 2000s, the lecture analyzes four converging pressures on the prevailing food system: fossil-fuel depletion, the declining number of farmers, freshwater scarcity, and an increasingly unstable climate.
“Modern industrial agriculture uses soil to turn petroleum and gas into food — natural gas to make fertilizer, and oil to fuel farm machinery, power irrigation pumps, as a feedstock for pesticides and herbicides, and for transportation of farm inputs and outputs.
I believe we must and can de-industrialize agriculture by a radical reduction of fossil-fuel inputs to agriculture. Millions more people than today will live in the countryside growing food, with production devoted primarily to local consumption.
“One way or another, re-ruralization will be the dominant social trend of the twenty-first century. Thirty or forty years from now we will see a more historically normal ratio of rural to urban population. More food will be produced in cities than is the case today, but cities will be smaller.
“The lecture culminated with ‘Let us accept the next great energy transition as an opportunity to re-imagine human culture from the ground up, using our intelligence and our passion for the welfare of coming generations, and for the integrity of nature’s web as our primary guides’.” [click the links for the full articles]
Peak oil in the current milieu
“Gen Z is a generation born into a world full of anxieties — from school shootings to climate Armageddon. A high-stakes debate about the timing of peak oil has been simmering for decades. Although few of today’s Gen Z members know much about it, their lives will be impacted profoundly by the waning of the petroleum era.
“Overview: Peak oil refers to the maximum rate of global oil extraction prior to its inevitable decline. We live on a finite planet. When we extract nonrenewable natural resources today, we reduce the amount that can be extracted in the future.
“Typically, in an oil-producing region, extraction starts slow, builds up to a peak as more wells are drilled, and then declines as the cost of accessing what’s left inevitably rises. In all older oil wells and oilfields, oil is left in the ground after drilling, and pumping cease simply because extracting more of it would take too much money and energy.
“The peak oil discussion is not about completely ‘running out’ of oil; that will never happen. But global society currently burns through over 83 million barrels of crude per day, and that can’t go on forever.
“The modern industrial world was built with cheap fossil energy, primarily oil. Oil plays a pivotal role in modern society, providing over 90% of all transport energy. Peak oil could mean the end of growth-based economics and consumerism. Humanity will have to adapt to using much less energy.
“Since the start of the fossil fuel era two centuries ago, human population has exploded 800% and so has global per capita energy usage. Modernity would never have happened without an unprecedented abundance of energy. In fact, modernity may be unsustainable.
“During the early years of this century, conventional oil flow rates flatlined and almost all growth has come from unconventional oil, mostly U.S. tight oil from fracking.
“Tight oil extraction requires high rates of drilling, because individual wells deplete quickly. Government and industry sources say that tight oil extraction in the U.S. will peak soon. If it does, there are few options left to keep the global extraction rate from falling.” [click the link for the full article]
Energy descent — use less overall, not build more
“Deployment of so-called renewable energies largely depend on petroleum. So without putting the brakes on the growth of fossil fuel consumption, will renewables massive installation really help reduce our dependence on oil?
“The current sharp spike in diesel fuel prices is likely to be a significant drag on the construction and installation of renewables. People tend to forget that, despite all the solar panels and wind turbines, the heavy work of the global economy is still mostly being done by diesel fuel.
“Our current way of life cannot survive the end of fossil fuels, but our current way of life is a huge problem anyway. We need to envision other ways of living on the planet, ones that acknowledge limits and the vital importance of all other species.
“A real energy transition plan would address the question of scale. Regardless of the energy sources we choose, we will not be able to continue using as much energy as we do now for more than a few more years. A hypothetical solar or nuclear future, at current energy usage rates, would require more minerals or uranium than can realistically be extracted.
“In the end, the main solution to our energy and climate problems must be to find a way to use less, but to do so in a way that enables humanity to gradually adjust. That’s what the Oil Depletion Protocol would do.
“We do need to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, but also to reduce energy usage. In the end, the renewable energy that we will rely on may not be high-tech; it may be low-tech, just because that’s what’s possible over the long run.” [click the link for the full article]
Severe to extreme drought in Europe
“The Romanian Navy is blasting out the Danube River bed to maintain the flow of cooling water in an effort to divert the course of Europe’s second largest river toward the Cernavodǎ Nuclear Power Plant. The plant’s operator, Nuclearelectrica, warned that, without intervention, ‘Unit 2 will be shut down in a controlled manner due to the extremely low, unprecedented level of the Danube, caused by severe drought’.
“Officials in the Netherlands announced the lowest levels ever measured on Europe’s third largest river, the Rhine. The Dutch national government said drought was disrupting commercial traffic on the river and causing intrusion of salty seawater into water supplies meant for crop irrigation.
“In Italy, the Po River Basin Authority reported on Thursday that 101 municipalities faced medium-to-high threats to drinking water supplies. It said 24 municipalities were already receiving water supplies by tanker trucks.” [click the link for the full article]
Self-censorship by corporate media
“From late June through July, successive heat waves swept across large portions of the United States, breaking temperature records and placing more than 100 million people at a time under heat alerts. ABC, CBS, and NBC closely tracked the extreme heat, repeatedly reporting threatened or broken records.
“ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 194 segments about the three major heat events — ABC aired 80 such segments, NBC aired 75, and CBS aired 39 — but none mentioned climate change.
“Extreme heat has one of the clearest established links to human-caused climate change. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver of observed changes in extreme temperatures, and heat waves have become more frequent and intense across most land regions since the 1950s.” [click the link for the full article]
Wheat harvest halved by drought and frost
“Kansas is on course for its smallest winter wheat harvest since the 1950s, with a July report showing the state’s farmers are expected to produce almost half the number of bushels they did at the same time last year. A July 10 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected 196 million bushels for the Kansas winter wheat harvest, down from nearly 347 million last year.
“Nationally, winter wheat production is expected to be 471 million bushels, compared with last year’s 804 million. Kansas farmers were affected primarily by drought, and there were also freezes early in the season that damaged crops.
“Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union, said bad years like this one, with weather challenges and input price increases, as well as geopolitical difficulties, are likely to affect whether farmers continue to farm or how they choose to do so. Some farmers may decide to park their tractors permanently.” [click the link for the full article]
A tale of two huge Amazon data centers
“Hamlet, N.C. — A $10 billion Amazon data center is touted as the largest economic development project in State of North Carolina history. Richmond County officials secretly crafted the deal, which includes significant tax breaks for Amazon, then sprung it on an area already encumbered by pollution.
“The Amazon project will include 21 buildings, each of them 200,000 square feet, each with its own 12,000-gallon bulk storage tank to hold low-sulfur diesel fuel to power 592 emergency generators.
“An Amazon spokesperson said ‘We rely on the utility grid to power our data centers. To ensure uninterrupted service, our data centers include backup generators in case of rare power disruptions’.
“Pecos County, TX — Amazon is backing what could be the largest natural gas power plant ever built in the United States — an AI data center campus powered by on-site natural gas generation, using 35 turbines to generate up to 7.65 gigawatts of power.
“An Amazon spokesperson said ‘Our new Pecos County data center is powered by on-site generation’. It would be entirely disconnected from the Texas electricity grid — at least initially.
“Amazon’s ‘GW Ranch’ received a permit allowing the gas power plant to emit 33 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That much CO2 would be the largest single source of pollution in the United States — emitting more greenhouse gases than the country’s largest coal plant.” [click the links for the full articles]
Anti-fracking activist, Yuvelis Morales Blanco, receives Goldman Prize
“As a child growing up along the banks of Colombia’s Magdalena River, Yuvelis Morales Blanco learned that oil slicks killed thousands of animals and forced hundreds of residents to relocate in 2018. That included people in Puerto Wilches, a tropical river town located in one of Colombia’s most biodiverse regions.
“Now 24, Morales Blanco has been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize — often called the ‘Green Nobel’ — for her role in helping halt hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Colombia.
“Her work, part of the growing rights of nature movement, has centered on protecting her hometown from fracking projects proposed in Puerto Wilches. Morales Blanco co-founded Aguawil, a youth-led anti-fracking organization, that organized protests and went door-to-door, translating complex technical information about fracking.
“One resident warned Morales Blanco she would get herself killed. In 2022, after a peaceful protest she helped organize, armed men arrived at her home. Morales Blanco fled, temporarily relocating to France.
“Soon after, newly elected president Gustavo Petro imposed a nationwide moratorium on fracking. But on May 31, Colombians elected Abelardo Gabriel de la Espriella who supports laissez-faire economic policies, and favors closer alignment with President Donald Trump.
“Morales Blanco is one of six recipients of this year’s Goldman Prize and part of the first all-women cohort in the award’s 37-year history, underscoring the central role women play in frontline environmental struggles worldwide.” [click the links for the full articles]
Ambitious marine wildlife corridor on Florida coast
“No other state’s marine life faces the magnitude of climate-related challenges that Florida’s does. Now, wildlife authorities are attempting to bring some cohesion to tackling the diverse slate of issues.
“The Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC) announced the creation of an ambitious “coastal corridor”, an interconnected chain of ocean-based projects. It replicates to a significant degree the state’s wildlife corridor, an 18 million acre project established in 2021 to provide a safe, contiguous, land-based habitat spanning much of Florida.
“Said Nick Wiley, the former head of FWC, ‘It’s like the wildlife corridor’s sister on the coast that shows how you connect our estuaries all the way out through the grass flats into the deeper water’.” [click the link for the full article]
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