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September 15, 2006
Tom Whipple comments
Tom Whipple, the editor of Peak Oil Review and member of the advisory board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil - USA http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php made the keynote presentation at the Richard Alsina Fulton Conference on Sustainability and the Environment at Wilson College in Chambersburg, PA. He started with some statistics:
* The world average petroleum consumption is 190 gallons per capita per year (gpcy)
* US petroleum consumption is 1000 gpcy
* Western Europe consumes about 500 gpcy; eastern Europe somewhat less
A few other numbers:
* It takes about 10 calories of energy to put one calorie of food on our plate
* The world uses 85 million barrels of oil a day, and 31 billion barrels a year
* The world is using 30 barrels for every 4 barrels newly discovered
Whipple predicts that between 2008 and 2012 the US will experience a sufficiently large supply perturbation to impose a significant impact on our economy (and our habits).
The greatest impact, of course, will be on our transportation choices. We will have to drive less. All other areas of our lives will be affected, since petroleum is pervasive in our society.
It is not too soon to be thinking about the far-reaching impact of decreasing petroleum availability. More to the point, petroleum will become increasingly expensive, and therefore less 'available' for many of its current uses. Personal transportation is relatively easy to envision (remember air transport -- it won't take too great a rise in fuel cost to put most of the airlines out of business). Then there is the transportation of our 'stuff'. All of the things we buy, which come from great distance via supply chains fueled by cheap petroleum. Stuff will become more expensive, since the subsidy of cheap oil will decrease.
Our infrastructure will deteriorate, because it will become increasingly costly to maintain. Highways and bridges, water and sewer lines, electric power distribution systems. These systems are already degraded. It will get worse. I am most concerned for the electric power system. The blackout of August 2003 was aggravated by maintenance lapses over the years since deregulation.
Posted by aquacura.com at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2006
Local or organic
This question has been getting a lot of attention in the green media lately, particularly as large agricultural interests (and large retailing interests) have entered the organic food market. I find myself more inclined toward local, if I have to make a choice.
Here's an article from the Green Guide on the topic (I hope the link works; Green Guide is a subscription service)http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc.mhtml?i=116&s=local
My reasoning is that 'local' is probably 'small' and that small is less likely to be highly dependent on petrochemicals. I think this point of view is tending to be how many people who think about the subject feel.
Posted by aquacura.com at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)