Today is the 40^th anniversary of my full time work in the field of population and family planning.  Four decades of continuous work in this field has been a very interesting ride – one that becomes more interesting every day.  The challenges that come with the issue are worth putting up with, because there is no more important work to be done on the planet in order to move toward sustainability.  So, I don’t plan to stop now, nor should you.  There is no acceptable alternative.  Thanks for all you are doing for this cause… Bill Ryerson.

Thanks to Simon Nasht for this article.  See: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-idiocy-of-endless-growth-20110529-1fata.html

The idiocy of endless growth

Dick Smith

May 30, 2011

Opinion

It’s the obvious but forbidden truth: on a finite and already swollen planet, we can’t expand indefinitely.

Some time in the next few months, the world’s population clock will tick over 7 billion people. Global population has tripled in my lifetime, and is continuing to rise. The United Nations has just predicted we face a world of 10 billion in 2100. This has immense implications for all of us, and Australia will not be immune from the impacts.

No one can confidently predict where we will find the food, energy, water and resources needed to supply even the basic needs of so many people. On a finite planet, we are already using up far more than we can replenish, literally exhausting the environment on which we rely for our survival.

For decades, overpopulation has been off the international agenda. It is barely mentioned in the media, and is rarely discussed in relation to, say, climate change or the looming global refugee crisis. Yet it is the common factor that links all our global problems, and ignoring it condemns billions of people to lives of poverty and injustice.

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Thanks to Betsy Rate of WNET News for this link to the TV show they developed for World Population Day.  See http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/environment/video-standing-room-only/10477/to watch the video.  Also see http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/video-phillip-longman-and-julia-whitty-on-the-population-conversation/10478/ for a discussion with Julia Whitty of Mother Jones and Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation.

Standing Room Only

July 15th

This week marked the annual World Population Day, so we at Need to Know hope it was a good one for all the 6,948,915,000 of you out there – and the approximately 266 of you who were born in the time it took to read this. This is a momentous year to be born.

2011, after all, is the year demographers predict the world population will grow to seven billion people – just a little over two hundred years after hitting the 1 billion mark.

The United States is contributing its share; at 312 million people, this country is the fastest growing of the industrialized world and the globe’s third-most populous, behind India and China. Even though the U.S. rate of growth has slowed over the past decade, the Census Bureau predicts we’ll still reach 439 million by 2050.

Given the jumbo-sized reality show families, baby bumps on tabloid covers and headlines proclaiming “Four Kids is the New Two,” it’s hard to believe there was ever a time in our history when people worried about the size of their families and whether the world would have enough resources to support them.

But there was a moment when average Americans – Democrat and Republican alike – were engaged in a conversation about the “overpopulation problem” and what could be done about it. While the era didn’t last all that long, it’s still worth revisiting it today.

Watch the rest of the segments from this week’s episode.

Many thanks to Jack Alpert for this fascinating article, which recognizes the population issue.  See http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/9335-the-peak-oil-crisis-an-announcement.html

The Peak Oil Crisis: An Announcement

Posted Jun 2, 2011 by Tom Whipple

With little fanfare, a press release appeared last week on the website of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES). The release said that during a meeting between Chris Huhne, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and representatives of ITPOES, an agreement had been reached that Her Majesty’s Department for Energy and Climate will collaborate with ITPOES on a joint examination of concerns that global oil supply will begin to fall behind demand within as little as five years. This collaboration is seen by the British government as the first step in the development of a national peak oil contingency plan.

There are many implications buried in this seemingly innocuous announcement. First, American readers should note that the British government recognizes that energy policy and climate change are inextricably linked so that you cannot formulate policies for one without the other. The major step forward, however, is the official and semi-public recognition by a major government that global oil supplies will fall behind demand in as little as five years. After years of official denial this is indeed a breakthrough worthy of note.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/9335-the-peak-oil-crisis-an-announcement.html

Thanks to the Post Carbon Institute for this report on the reality regarding natural gas as an energy source in the future.  A scathing introduction by Richard Heinberg, found at http://www.postcarbon.org/article/330223-foreword-will-natural-gas-fuel-america is found below, with a link to download the report.

FOREWORD: Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?

Posted May 12, 2011 by Richard Heinberg

This is Richard Heinberg’s Foreward to our brand new report ‘Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?’ by Post Carbon Fellow David Hughes.

Post Carbon Institute undertook this report in order to examine three widespread assumptions about the role that natural gas can and should play in our energy future:

• Assumption #1: That, thanks to new techniques for hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling of shale, we have sufficient natural gas resources to supply the needs of our country for the next 100 years.
• Assumption #2: That the price of natural gas, which has historically been volatile, will remain consistently low for decades to come.
• Assumption #3: That natural gas is much cleaner and safer than other fossil fuels, from the standpoint of greenhouse gas emissions and public health.

Based on these assumptions, national energy officials at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) foresee a major expansion of natural gas in the coming decades. President Obama touted natural gas as a cornerstone of his Administration’s “Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future”[1] and endorsed plans for converting a sizable portion of the vehicle fleet to run on natural gas. Some environmental groups, rightfully concerned about the greenhouse gas emissions of coal, have called for large-scale replacement of coal-fired power plants with those that burn natural gas, despite increasing concern over the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing.

As this report details, all of these assumptions and recommendations need to be re-thought. What emerges from the data is a very different assessment.

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Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21^st Century has been requested by local, state and federal agencies, media and concerned citizens worldwide. Within three weeks of its release, the report has been downloaded over 11,000 times.

PCI has now released three supplements to the report that they hope you’ll find of interest and value:

“Agriculture and Natural Gas” by PCI Fellow Michael Bomford

“Problems and Opportunities with Natural Gas as a Transportation Fuel” by PCI Adviser Richard Gilbert and PCI Fellow Anthony Perl

“Public Health Concerns of Shale Gas Production” by PCI Fellows Brian Schwartz, MD, and Cindy Parker, MD.

Download all three reports in one volume at http://www.postcarbon.org/reports/NatGasSupplements.pdf

Continue Reading »

Thanks to the Post Carbon Institute for this report.  See http://www.postcarbon.org/report/331901-will-natural-gas-fuel-america-in. To download the report, see http://www.postcarbon.org/reports/PCI-report-nat-gas-future.pdf,

A detailed new energy report argues that the natural gas industry has propagated dangerously false claims about natural gas production supply, cost and environmental impact. The report, “Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century” is authored by leading geoscientist and Post Carbon Institute Fellow J. David Hughes.

REPORT: Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?

David Hughes

Published May 29, 2011

In this groundbreaking report, geoscientist David Hughes (formerly of Geological Survey of Canada) shatters the myth that U.S. natural gas can be a “bridge fuel” from high-carbon sources of energy like coal and oil to a renewable energy future.

Abstract

Natural gas has increasingly been touted as a “bridge fuel” from high-carbon sources of energy like coal and oil to a renewable energy future. This is based on renewed optimism on the ability of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to access natural gas from previously inaccessible shale gas deposits. A review of the latest outlook (2011) of the U.S. Energy Information Administration(EIA) reveals that all eggs have been placed in the shale gas basket in terms of future growth in U.S.gas production. Without shale gas, U.S. domestic gas production is projected to fall by 20% through 2035.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.postcarbon.org/report/331901-will-natural-gas-fuel-america-in

Thanks to Jan Steinman for this article.  See http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2011/05/peak-coal-this-year.html, where you can watch a 20-minute talk on coal supply constraints in the U.S.

05/12/2011 Peak Coal This Year?

In August last year, the journal Energy published A global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert cycle analysis by Tadeusz W. Patzek and Gregory D. Croft. I’ll let National Geographic introduce the findings.

A new study seeks to shake up the assumption that use of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is bound to continue its inexorable rise. In fact, the authors predict that world coal production may reach its peak as early as next year, and then begin a permanent decline.

The study, led by Tad Patzek, chairman of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and published in the August issue of Energy, predicts that by mid-century, the world’s coal mining will supply only half as much energy as today.

The idea that the world will face “peak coal” as soon as 2011 flies in the face of most earlier estimates and analysis.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2011/05/peak-coal-this-year.html

Thanks to Emily Spence for this article.  See  http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

The Imminent Crash Of Oil Supply: Be Afraid

By Nicholas C. Arguimbau

23 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org

What is going to happen and how it came to pass that we weren’t forewarned

Look at this graph and be afraid. It does not come from Earth First. It does not come from the Sierra Club. It was not drawn by Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it does not come from a progressive Democrat. And vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy, and the United States military’s Joint Forces Command concurs with the overall picture.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

Thanks to Nate Hagens for his article, which appears in the book, Fleeing Vesuvius. See  http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7901 for the full table of contents of the book, which has such sections as Energy Availability; Innovation in Business, Money and Finance; New Ways of Using the Land; Dealing with Climate Change; Changing the Way We Live; Changing the Way We Think; and Ideas for Action.

Following is Nate’s introduction, followed by his article.

Fleeing Vesuvius: The psychological roots of resource over-consumption

Posted by Nate Hagens on May 11, 2011 – 10:50am

The essay below is an updated and edited version of a post I wrote here a few years ago, I’m Human, I’m American and I’m Addicted to Oil. Richard Douthwaite, Irish economist and activist, (and a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute), invited me to contribute it as a chapter in the just released book Fleeing Vesuvius, which is a collection of articles generally addressing “how can we bring the world out of the mess it finds itself in”? My article dealt with the evolutionary underpinnings of our aggregate behavior – neural habituation to increasingly available stimuli, and our penchant to compete for status given the environmental (cultural) cues of our day. And how, after we make it through the likely upcoming currency/claims bottleneck, we would be wise to adhere to an evolutionary perspective in considering a future (more) sustainable society.

The psychological roots of resource over-consumption

Humans have an innate need for status and for novelty in their lives. Unfortunately, the modern world has adopted very energy- and resource-intensive ways of meeting those needs. Other ways are going to have to be found as part of the move to a more sustainable world.

Most people associate the word “sustainability” with changes to the supply side of our modern way of life such as using energy from solar flows rather than fossil fuels, recycling, green tech and greater efficiency. In this essay, however, I will focus on the demand-side drivers that explain why we continue to seek and consume more stuff.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7901

Thanks to Nick Rust for this very important article. See: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110728123059.htm

For the full report, visit http://www.int-res.com/articles/theme/m434p251.pdf

Ongoing Global Biodiversity Loss Unstoppable With Protected Areas Alone

ScienceDaily (July 29, 2011) – Continued reliance on a strategy of setting aside land and marine territories as “protected areas” is insufficient to stem global biodiversity loss, according to a comprehensive assessment published July 28 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.

Despite impressively rapid growth of protected land and marine areas worldwide — today totalling over 100,000 in number and covering 17 million square kilometers of land and 2 million square kilometers of oceans — biodiversity is in steep decline.

Expected scenarios of human population growth and consumption levels indicate that cumulative human demands will impose an unsustainable toll on Earth’s ecological resources and services accelerating the rate at which biodiversity is being lost.

Current and future human requirements will also exacerbate the challenge of effectively implementing protected areas while suggesting that effective biodiversity conservation requires new approaches that address underlying causes of biodiversity loss — including the growth of both human population and resource consumption.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110728123059.htm