Terra Preta

Perhaps 100 million people lived in the Americas before Columbus and before contact. What on earth were all those people doing? In the Amazon, they created soil. Soil in the Amazon is typically orange bauxite - incapable of supporting crops - terrible stuff if you are a farmer silly enough to clear the land. (The nutrients in a rain forest are held in the vegetation.) Some anomalies exist though - large patches of something called terra preta show up where indigenous populations had their cities. Those black soils are prized by farmers as they are highly productive. When archaeologists analysed terra preta they discovered it is full of pre-Columbian ceramics, charcoal, and lots and lots of microbes. In other words, terra preta was created hundreds of years ago - and has maintained its productivity over that huge length of time.

This is good news. For one thing, we can learn from "los indios" how to create soil instead of destroying it. (Agribiz tends to "mine" soil and therefore destroy it.)  Secondly, bio char soils sequester carbon.

The charcoal, acting a lot like humus, had been colonized by myriad microbes, fungi, earthworms, and other creatures; these soil organisms produced carbon-based molecules that stuck to the charcoal, gradually increasing the soil's carbon content. ... Crops have been shown to grow 45 per cent greater biomass on unfertilized terra preta soil versus poor soil fertilized with chemical fertilizers. Page 70, Organic Gardening, Dec/Jan 2011

So if we create bio char from organic waste that goes to landfills now, we help sequester carbon while we farm organically and increase crop yields.  A triple win!  And a solution to one of the problems created by peak oil.  Chemical fertilizers are made from oil - and now we don't need them!

“The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side.”

Wikileaks has exposed all kinds of interesting things - including US worries about oil reserves.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/08/saudi-oil-reserves-overstated-wikileaks

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show. The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to choke off demand. However, Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, met the US consul general in Riyadh in November 2007 and told the US diplomat that Aramco's 12.5m barrel-a-day capacity needed to keep a lid on prices could not be reached.….The US consul then told Washington: "While al-Husseini fundamentally contradicts the Aramco company line, he is no doomsday theorist. His pedigree, experience and outlook demand that his predictions be thoughtfully considered."

That consular officer's fears appear to be well founded:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-international-energy-agency

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

Looks like those peak oil theorists were correct - except they haven't been crying  "the doom has come upon us!"

Richard Heinberg on Peak Oil

The End of (Cheap ) Oil

The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrates that we are:

a. addicted to oil, and
b. are willing to do anything to get it.

But the consequences are dire, as Richard Heinberg points out.

http://www.straight.com/article-325613/vancouver/richard-heinberg-what-end-oil-age-looks

This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet.The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner, what we will end up doing anyway as a result of resource depletion and economic, environmental, and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff. Everybody knows we must do this. Even a recent American president (an oil man, it should be noted) admitted that “America is addicted to oil.” Will we let this addiction destroy us, or will we overcome it?

So why don't our governments invest in alternatives to oil? 

Peak Oil

http://www.rabble.ca/columnists/2010/05/drilling-oil-cost-needing-our-fix

When the Gulf of Mexico oil rig blew, there was probably not a fisherman or fish plant operator in western Nova Scotia, where I live, who didn't have the same cold flash: an oil rig blows on Georges Bank; the enormous tides of the Bay of Fundy suck half the oil up and down twice a day, polluting everything from Cape Cod to Lockeport and right up to Moncton; while the other half is locked in the "gyre" of currents that goes round and round over one of the world's best fishing grounds.   Nova Scotia Fisheries and Environment Minister Sterling Belliveau, picking up on several years of low-key oil company pressure on the issue, mused a couple of weeks ago about fish and oil being able to co-exist as the deadline to review the Georges Bank moratorium on drilling loomed. That went around the coast here like political oil slick. Belliveau, MLA for Shelburne, had championed the no-drilling-on-Georges campaign. Now, he had "become a politician," and broken his word....You might expect a disaster of this scale would get us thinking.

You might expect that  - if we weren't dealing with an addiction.  Wonder what the bottom looks like?

Peak Oil - Again

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/jeff-rubins-smaller-world/drilling-and-spilling-for-all-the-oil-thats-left/article1548522/

Most forms of unconventional oil and gas (including, by the way, shale gas) are invariably very hard on the environment. Although tar sands production draws most of the world’s criticism, we are quickly discovering that deep-water wells and the pressure surges they engender run the risk of wreaking even greater ecological and environmental devastation. ...Why is this so potentially devastating to America’s oil future? The Gulf of Mexico was the only area of the country where there was any reasonable hope of expanding domestic supply. Production in the lower 48 states peaked in the early 1970s....If you’re wondering why we’re risking catastrophic environmental consequences by drilling wells miles below the ocean floor, the answer is simple enough. It’s the same answer to the question of why we’re pouring billions of dollars into the tar sands.

It’s all that’s left.

Addicts usually deny they have a problem.  When an individual persists in use of alcohol or other drugs despite problems related to use of the substance, substance dependence may be diagnosed.  As a society, we're addicted to oil. We don't care that our use of fossil fuels destroys the environment - or the freedom of whole peoples.  (If you don't believe me, do some research on the Ogoni in Nigeria.  Or on Ken Saro Wiwa ring a bell.)   We don't care that we're running out - we don't wnat to plan an energy descent.   We just want to continue doing what we're doing......consequences be damned.

We're addicted to oil.

Peak Oil Explained (Left Click on the Video for a Larger Version)

Listen carefully: one of the men interviewed states that our God is petroleum.   It is hard to disagree....

Peak Oil

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/markets/streetwise/where-china-sees-oil-prices/article1532555/

“In our minds, the Sinopec deal reflects the appetite and lower cost of capital of eager Chinese buyers,” said a report from energy analyst Greg Pardy at RBC Dominion Securities.
After running the numbers, with an 8.5 per cent tax discount rate, Mr. Pardy concluded the $4.65-billion price tag on this deal imples a long-term oil price of $95 a barrel.
At Peters & Co., analyst Jeff Martin used a 10 per cent tax discount rate for his projections, and concluded the Sinopec purchase is based on a $106-a-barrel expectation on oil.

Chinese purchasers seem to think that light sweet crude prices are headed up.  Think of the impacts high oil prices will have on our unsustainable way of life.  

Peak Oil

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.  The energy crisis outlined in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, comes as the price of petrol in Britain reaches record levels and the cost of crude is predicted to soon top $100 a barrel. 
"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day," says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.

http://www.jeffrubinssmallerworld.com/2010/03/31/new-price-peak-by-next-year/

Does anyone still believe the reassuring forecasts from discredited feel-good organizations like the International Energy Agency about new sources of cheap supply, like those that once flowed from places like Prudhoe Bay in Alaska or the North Sea? If so, where is that supply of new affordable oil coming from? Surely not from tar sands or from ultra-deep water fields six miles below the ocean’s floor.  By the fourth quarter of this year, oil prices will be back in triple-digit range, and by next year oil prices will rise to record highs, taking out the high-water mark of $147 per barrel that was set back before the recession began in 2008.

Shouldn't we be using the cheap energy aka oil remaining to build a more sustainable way of life?  Obviously, cheap oil isn't going to last forever:  why not use what we've got left to create light rapid transit, local food supplies, alternate sources of electricity, and a happier way of life?
 
Moreover, we'd be working to solve the problem of climate change instead of playing of  "Last One Standing."    Why live in denial until disaster strikes?

Transistion Town Totnes

Peak Oil and Climate Change

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8563985.stm

China's demand for oil jumped by an "astonishing" 28% in January compared with the same month a year earlier, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says. The body added that demand for oil in 2010 would be underpinned by rising demand from emerging markets, with half of all growth coming from Asia.

http://www.jeffrubinssmallerworld.com/2010/03/10/looking-for-oil-demand-in-all-the-wrong-places/

It’s Wednesday, and the week’s US oil inventories numbers will soon be out. I have no clue what they will say, nor much interest, either. But others do. Exactly why oil traders and speculators think the data has anything to do with the state of world oil demand is beyond me. .... It certainly wasn’t US fuel demand that took oil prices over $100 in the first place, and it won’t be US fuel demand that will push them back into that range anytime soon. US oil consumption is almost 3 million barrels per day short of its pre-recession peak.

Looks suspicioulsy like peak oil  is almost here.....Peak oil and climate change are intertwined problems: the solution to both is transitioning to a low carbon economy. Subsidising  tar sands porducer is not a lotng term solution: please let our Prime Minsiter know thaat we want Canada to invest in  clean energy and green technology. We want Canada to plan for a low carbon future - because we're going to get one whether we like it or not. 

Transition Towns

Two of us attended a Transition Towns Workshop this weekend in Vernon, BC:  it was unlike most workshops I've ever been to.  I was astonished, energized, strengthened, and inspired - you could have knocked me over with a typewriter!   Transition Towns are places that, led by an initiating committee,  are working to solve the problems of peak oil and climate change locally.   That sentence sounds impossible, doesn't it?  It isn't - the city that I have raved about previously, Portland, Oregon - is a Transition Town.  ( Portland's greenhouse gas emissions will be 10 % below 1990 levels this year! )

But it isn't just the successes that make the Transition Model so cool: coolness is implicit in its philosophy.  It is best describeds by the phrase "Transition is a party, not a protest!"  The model is democratic and inclusive; focuses on both exterior results and inner transformations, creates social connections and fun, and embraces uncertainty.  In fact, their UK website states:

We truly don't know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale. What we are convinced of is this:
■if we wait for the governments, it'll be too little, too late
■if we act as individuals, it'll be too little
■but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

Check out their website at http://www.transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionNetwork
 Or research a Canadian city  - Victoria, BC, and Vancouver, BC are both transition towns. Or go to a Transition Towns workshop with your friends.  And start a party!
(Yes, the reference to "obsolete" technology was deliberate. )

Meanwhile In California

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/14/oil-sands-ban-legal-challenge

A lobby group that includes BP and Shell in its membership has launched a legal challenge against low-carbon legislation in California that in effect rules out the use of oil from Canadian tar sands. The action by the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA) comes amid growing political, investor and consumer pressure on US oil companies not to participate in the carbon-intensive tar sands of Alberta.

The good news is that pressure is growing on oil companies not to participate in mining the tar sands.  The bad news is that oil companies are fighting to continue business as usual.  Business as usual is not viable for two reasons.  We should be curbing greenhouse gas emissions (just ask the Bangladeshis) to mitigate the effects of climate change - and we should be using our remaining oil wisely to build a sustainable way of life.  Peak oil is gonna hit hard - and wouldn't it be prudent to plan for the  coming crisis? 

Peak Oil?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-international-energy-agency

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

Coincidentally, I bought Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future (edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon) today.  The authors of the various essays agree that humanity's future is going to be drastically unlike our experience during the Age of Oil.  Thomas Homer-Dixon winds up the book by stating that " a carbon shift - either voluntary or involuntary - is now unavoidable."  And, if the whistleblower at the IEA is correct, the involuntary carbon shift is much closer than previously thought.  Perhaps we, as a country, and humanity as a whole,  should ration carbon fuels and use what we still have left to build a way of life that isn't so dependent upon hydrocarbons? Sweden is planning exactly that..... why can't the rest of the world?