Biodevastation

Smil’s approximation of how much of the US land area it would take to replace all fossil fuel use (at the 2012 level) with wind and solar power: 25%. The way to control power density is to lower our demands for energy.

There are several areas where we are facing big challenges in India’s big cities. I suppose similar challenges are faced in other countries too, but for now, I am using Hyderabad as a reference point. The principal cause is the availability of a cheap energy source to capitalism. First it was coal, and in the 20th century it became petroleum. The invention of converting heat into motion – ‘the heat engine’ – coupled with this easily available source of heat, took the exploitation of the earth’s resources and exploitation of labour to another level. Today, we are facing a poly crisis of global warming, ecological degradation, extreme climate events and social unrest. We have reached a tipping point where all life on earth is endangered. Several species have already become extinct.

Clouds of red dust rise into the sky and hang in the air as the truck roars past. It’s impossible to breathe as the dust gathers in the folds of villagers’ clothes, settles on rooftops, and coats the forest’s green leaves. The next truck goes by, and another cloud rises up in its wake. They carry massive tree trunks felled in the rainforests of the Congo Basin. The Baka people struggle to breathe every day, as logging companies from China, France, Italy, and Lebanon descend on the tropical forests and cut everything in their path. Fortress conservation has pushed the Baka people from the rainforests of the Congo Basin into villages bordering the national parks of southern Cameroon, while the logging that truly threatens the forest continues.

The colonial idea of solar-paneling the Sahara for Europe’s benefit is only deemed necessary because European leaders are unwilling to countenance a shift away from energy-intensive industry and capitalist systems of endless production.

My gut reaction 15 years ago to Vilsack’s manure digester panacea to global climate change remains true today—why pay to fix a problem that doesn’t even need to exist? Countless studies have shown that the most cost effective, eco-friendly, and often quite profitable form of animal husbandry—including dairying—is managed rotational grazing. If animals are just allowed to enjoy pasture outside (as they prefer and are meant to do by mother nature) and then also allowed to deposit their manure in a healthy perennial ecosystem, one does not end up with a methane crisis. It is only when one decides to confine thousands of animals in a warehouse, offer them nothing but TMR to consume (with dubious components like feather meal and ethanol leftovers), liquefy millions of gallons of their manure, and then store it in massive anaerobic lagoons, that one creates a pollutant 80+ times worse than carbon dioxide. Sure, one can always capture and burn the methane that doesn’t leak from a CAFO digester to make electricity or run a vehicle (which means more greenhouse gas pollution), but you still have the leftover sludge (aka digestate) to deal with. This is loaded with nitrates, phosphorous, and—depending upon what other

Excellent update of nuclear vs. renewables potential, based mainly on IEA data, which has skewed pronuclear in the past but seems to be shifting. From an Australian ’new economy’ site.

Looking through the lens of climate change, Jason Hickel’s 2020 book is a powerful indictment of capitalism.  Finished in 2019, and after quickly reviewing the deleterious changes taking place across the planet, he writes, “the only rational response is to do everything possible to keep warming to 1.5 degrees (Celsius).  And that means cutting global [greenhouse gas] emissions to zero, much faster than anyone is currently planning.”  It is a sign of clarity and the need for action:  “What’s ultimately at stake is the economic system that has come to dominate more or less the entire planet over the past […]

The use of enhanced surveillance techniques in support of fossil fuel infrastructure expansions has particular relevance to the artificial intelligence industrial complex, because that complex has a fierce appetite for stupendous quantities of energy. IBM was not alone in finding paying customers for nascent AI among fossil fuel companies. In 2018 Google welcomed oil companies to its Cloud Next conference, and in 2019 Microsoft hosted the Oil and Gas Leadership Summit in Houston. Not to be outdone, Amazon has eagerly courted petroleum prospectors for its cloud infrastructure. “Utility projections for the amount of power they will need over the next five years have nearly doubled and are expected to grow,” Evan Halper reported in the Washington Post earlier this month. Why the sudden spike? “A major factor behind the skyrocketing demand is the rapid innovation in artificial intelligence, which is driving the construction of large warehouses of computing infrastructure that require exponentially more power than traditional data centers. AI is also part of a huge scale-up of cloud computing.”

Sun shines, winds blow Plants grow, waters flow They’re all sunshine in the end Sunshine is the one great flow   Electricity’s a flow Use it now or it will go Save some in a battery You’ve only moved a piece of flow   We’ve been told but it’s not so The economy can always grow The black stuff in the ground Is fossils of an ancient flow   300 million years ago Plants locked in an age’s flow Then it slumbered underground Until a drill burrowed below   Men pulled it from its rest In its buried treasure chest […]