The powers-that-be, from the banksters to worried politicians, must be desperately seeking the next bubble. How else will the former get rich(er), quick? (I think we can safely rule out the idea that many of them want to get rich the old-fashioned way: slow and steady through building something of real value. Or that they think they already have ‘enough.’ Surfing the bubble is the latest way to get rich, and it is much easier if you have a hand in creating the bubble.) And the latter must be concerned that the current recession appears unwilling to end – and probably permanent thanks to high oil prices. But from what can a bubble be made? I have an uncomfortable feeling it’s going to be one or more of:

• Ethanol
• Carbon trading
• Nuclear power
• Green energy
• Railways

Any area of the economy that grows continuously is a bubble, and eventually must pop. The dotcom boom-and-bust was a prominent example, where investors poured money into marginal ideas, causing massive overvaluation – that was corrected sharply and painfully. The housing bomb that recently exploded caused a worldwide recession as prices rose to levels beyond the reach of many – but who were given mortgages anyway.

A continuous growth economy is also a bubble that must eventually burst; nothing can grow forever on a finite planet, and we are pushing the limits of what is possible given the availability of energy (peak oil) and ‘biofeedback,’ meaning the planet is about to eat us through climate change, resource depletion, and so on.

The Ethanol Bubble

Ethanol has already seen substantial investment. Despite corn-based ethanol being a net energy loser, “farmers” have received massive subsidies. (“Farmers” here generally means giant agri-businesses.) Ethanol doesn’t really have the potential to be a big bubble, because there simply isn’t enough land in the United States – or world – to grow crops for ethanol and food. Planting too many acres to ethanol crops would drive up food prices, making it a self-limiting venture.

However, agri-businesses will continue to milk the U.S. government for subsidies for as long as the people let them, and will make a few billion in the process. In this case, “make a few billion” means “waste,” because the money could have been put to far more productive use than enriching giant agri-corporations to produce a net-energy-losing product that drives up the cost of food.

Carbon Trading

Goldman Sachs and cronies are already drooling over the possibility of a trillion-dollar carbon market. And about the only thing you can count on is that such a market will benefit Goldman Sachs and a select few other banks.

I have said previously that carbon trading (and carbon taxes) will not work, not because they cannot work, but because our governments are too corrupted to implement them properly. The European implementation did not go well and has not produced the expected emissions reductions.

However, when one is talking a trillion-dollar carbon derivatives market, you can bet the banksters will be pushing hard for it. Basically, the Wall Street money boys are going to be trying to get the government to throw money at things they can swingle to their advantage, and to create rules that allow them to profit from any and all new initiatives. It will be interesting to see who has more pull in Washington: the banksters, who are all for creating a carbon market, or the fossil fuel crowd, who are against any penalty for polluting.

Nuclear Energy

Obama has already announced some funding for nuclear, though very little. By “very little,” I mean enough for one plant; it was still a big pile of cash: $8.5 billion. Well, what used to be a lot of money, anyway. Nuclear has issues, however, and not simply with image.

The link provides a good pros and cons summary, and ultimately nuclear faces certain insurmountable problems. (Which does not mean we won’t pour billions into a nuclear bubble.) Cost and cost overruns are one, leaks another. The government, meaning you and I, must provide loan guarantees to get them built and absorb all risk, literally and financially, as private insurance companies won’t touch them.

Nuclear plants run on a non-renewable resource, either uranium or thorium. (If we do build nuclear plants, they should be thorium: much safer, less waste.) Eventually the fuel will run out, although reprocessing would keep the reactors going for a long time – at the cost of producing material suitable for making nuclear bombs.

There is intense lobbying going on to get nuclear started up again, and the techno-miracle crowd is fond of saying only nuclear can save us. At the moment it seems the Obama administration is not putting enough into nuclear to create a full-blown bubble, but at some not-too-distant time in this post-peak oil world, governments will be strongly tempted to pour a lot of money into energy generation.

Green Energy

Not all bubbles are bad; they sometimes get useful things built during the expansion, and those things are left after the bubble pops. If a green energy bubble gets us a lot of green energy generation capability built, that will be a good thing. Unfortunately, there is a lot of ideological and lobbyist opposition to green energy, including from fossil fuel companies. Whether this can be overcome remains to be seen, but at the moment the United States and Canada are distantly behind Europe and China.

As mentioned earlier, at some point in the near future as the supply of oil dwindles and prices skyrocket, there will be intense pressure to find substitutes. Of course, only ethanol will keep the cars, trucks, tractors, ships, and possibly aeroplanes moving; building nuclear plants or wind turbines does not solve America’s problem with an infrastructure and economy entirely wrapped around oil.

However, that brings us to the final potential bubble, which can run on electricity.

Railways

The U.S. and Canadian rail systems are in a sadly neglected state. As rail is the most efficient means to transport goods and people, and as trains can be run on electricity rather than oil, there may well be a big move to resuscitate rail. (At one point, Warren Buffet was investing substantially in rail companies.)

Growing non-bubbles

Green energy and rail are examples of areas of potential growth that may not necessarily turn into bubbles, as we do need to grow both areas. We could easily increase wind manufacturing and generation capability by a few thousand percent, for example, without overshooting our needs.

Almost everyone wants to ‘get the economy growing’ again. (I think a move to a stable economy would be wiser.) However, there are the Wall Street wizards to content with. They want growth, and lots of it. So do politicians, who want to put people back to work so those same people will turn around and vote for them.

Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to make money shuffling paper than by actually building useful things; guess which the banksters have much more experience with? This means that we are more likely to end up with another bubble that bursts than with useful infrastructure.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

The books below discuss in much more detail some of the ideas mentioned in this post.

The first and last books (from left-to-right) deal with economic bubbles and the problems they cause.

The second book is by Herman Daly, the father of the steady-state economy.

The third book covers green energy and ‘green tech’ solutions that are likely to be hot investment opportunities.

Oil has been discovered in the waters around the Falklands. This has revived the decades-old conflict between Argentina and the United Kingdom, both of which claim the islands – and this time the rest of Latin America is united behind Argentina. Will we see the developed world unite behind England?

Given the realities of peak oil, finding more is a good thing. However, as oil becomes more and more precious as the supply dwindles – and as foolish Western governments have failed to prepare – the potential for conflict becomes very high indeed. The United States has a massive military presence in the Middle East to protect its “national interests” there, and the United Kingdom is likely to take the same view of any oil discovered anywhere they can make any sort of claim to.

In the first Falklands War, the U.K. handily prevailed, although not without some losses. This time, Argentina has the pledged support of many Latin nations, including Brazil, a heavyweight contender. The supply line from the U.K. to the Falklands is very long indeed, and the British would need a continuous and very costly naval presence to keep any oil flowing from the Falklands to the U.K.

If Britain were to attempt to secure the Falklands by force and drain them dry of oil – a very long straw – this could easily unite Latin America against Britain and her allies. As a Canadian, it is entirely possible that our ‘conservative’ Prime Minister, who would have sent Canadian troops into Iraq had he been in power, or the main opposition leader, who would also have put Canadians in Iraq, would support Britain. This would be disastrous for Canada and for the developed world.

What will the United States do? It certainly puts Mr. Obama in a tough spot. How could he not support his longest and biggest allies in Iraq in the U.S. war for oil? Now we have the former and current reigning imperial powers (I hope not supported by Canada and others) extracting resources from a faraway land that the locals lay claim to – this time with the support of the entire region.

Imagine that the Arab nations had united behind Iraq; the United States would quite possibly now be a destitute country, starved for oil, while the Arabs shipped oil to the new rising power: China. The last two times the Arab nations restricted the supply of oil, the U.S. was plunged into recession.

It seems a safe bet that any American support for Britain would include a promise to share in the booty…which if the war wasn’t enough, might well be the last straw required to unite Latin America against the United States. (For those who don’t know, the U.S. has a long history of overthrowing democratically-elected Latin American governments and supporting murderous dictators.)

This is a predicament, not a problem. The difference between the two is that the latter has a solution, the former may not. It is such because of the nature of peak oil, itself a predicament from which there is not necessarily any escape. Oil is becoming progressively more valuable, not just in dollars, but in terms of sustaining civilisation. As the supply tightens – oil prices are four times what they were just a few years ago, despite a worldwide recession – it becomes increasingly clear to all just how critical oil is and will be. Without it, severe hardship will result, and few governments will long stand if their people are freezing in the dark, if food and transportation prices double.

The British squandered their North Sea oil on continuing to live the high life, rather than using it to power a transition to conservation and renewable energy. Now they are stuck, and may well attempt to take this new supply – with the help of much of the developed world.

[Disclaimer: I've said before and repeat here: Predicting when a major event like a collapse will happen is for mugs. One can look at current trends and extrapolate, but one cannot know how humans will respond to changing circumstances. That said, one can make educated guesses.]

We face ‘converging catastrophes,’ driven by pollution and resource depletion, and made worse by overpopulation. The two most visible and clearly dangerous are climate change and peak oil.

The Climate Change Social Tipping Point

At current rates of sea-level rise, tens of millions of people will be displaced within 25 years. If you think all those people, and the countries they live in, are going to go quietly into the night…well, would you?

Current projections suggest a sea level rise of at least one metre this century is now likely. A one-metre rise will displace at least 56 million people, and possibly double that.

From Bangladesh to the Maldives, from Vietnam to Pakistan to Alexandria to Venice, millions upon millions of people will be driven from their homes and livelihoods. And where are they to go? Into ever-more crowded areas of their own – and neighbouring – countries. Rising sea levels will produce a tide of climate refugees that will make the chaos in Darfur look mild.

Many of those refugees, and the people whose lands they attempt to crowd into, are going to be angry. Combine that with nothing left to lose, and we have a recipe for human-caused Armageddon .

The embattled governments will be driven to extreme actions to try and maintain control, and one proven method is to distract the people with an external enemy. Now, Bangladesh isn’t about to attack the world’s largest contributor to climate change to date, the United States. However, they might consider charging climate deniers like Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, which continues to this day to fund climate denial – to bankroll, in effect, the dispossession and death of millions – with crimes against humanity and demand reparations.

That might be interpreted as an indirect attack on the United States and one the G77 would consider as a last resort, I’m sure. However, faced with insurrection, what choice will they have but to take extreme measures?

Long before the sea rises one metre by 2100, many millions will have been displaced and many hundreds of millions will see their future clearly – they will lose everything: Their land and farms, their businesses, their livelihoods – virtually everything of any value. This is almost certain to be a social tipping point; when sufficient people realise that climate change is real and will affect them quite adversely.

The Peak Oil Tipping Point

Even if we avoid mass violence caused by rising seas, spreading deserts, water shortages, and other effects of climate change, there is still the very real problem of peak oil. Put simply, a limited supply of oil existed on the earth and we appear to be at or very near the point at which half of it has been extracted. That means the supply of oil will henceforth begin to decline and the cheapest-to-extract oil is gone. Given how massively dependent our entire economy is upon oil, this is not good.

The effects of peak oil could well hit much sooner than those due to climate change. At the moment, most oil-producing countries are pumping about as fast as they can. Any increase in demand or decrease in supply will cause a price spike. Remember the 70s? There were long, long lines to get rationed gas in the United States. The U.S. has become far more dependent upon oil since then, as have many other countries.

Because oil is in virtually everything, any increase in price or decrease in supply is potentially devastating. Most agricultural fertilisers and pesticides are petroleum-based, and of course tractors and trucks run on diesel. If the price of oil goes up, it has a ripple effect through all these points and many more, and the price of the end product – your food – goes up significantly.

The price of commuting also goes up, and given the number of Americans who live in suburbs only accessible by car, that is a real problem. Heating bills will go up. The price of plastic will increase, and plastic is in everything. The cost of transportation will rise, making importing and exporting more costly. This would hit big exporters like China hard.

Predictions on the effects of peak oil range from immediate collapse to a long decline. It depends how it happens and how we react. A sudden collapse in oil supply, say from terrorists bombing the Saudi oil fields or another hurricane wiping out much of U.S. refining capability, would have a serious and immediate impact on the U.S. economy. The U.S. does maintain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) – which contains a 34-day supply of oil. Thirty four days.

We could mobilise the economy and redirect all resources to converting to solar, wind, and other power sources, as well as drastically cutting energy use through conservation. A little insulation would go a long way. Suburbs could be abandoned and reverted to fields, while the former inhabitants move to more densely populated, walkable areas. However, this kind of mobilisation likely won’t be politically acceptable until ‘things’ are quite bad, and by then it may be too late because the remaining supply of oil is so limited and expensive. And honestly, the U.S. government is so corrupt at this point that they will probably screw up any mobilisation.

How Long Have We Got?

I give us a maximum of 25 years before riots begin, and probably wars. Within 25 years, sufficient millions will have been dispossessed or drowned by sea level rise alone – not considering other impacts of climate change like stronger storm surges, desertification, the spread of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and so on and on – that everyone else will know the bell tolls for them, too. And in 25 years, the price of oil is going to be much, much higher. Food prices will go up, especially for meat, suburbs will become uninhabitable, and there will be a lot of newly poor people looking for someone to blame.

The world will become a more hostile place. No longer will Americans slap Canadian flags on their luggage when touring the world, because all developed countries will be reviled. Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom will be especially loathed, as we are the countries that have spewed the most greenhouse gases, that continue to do so, and that refuse to change because we are too greedy.

Another very likely outcome of climate change will be the end of American-style capitalism and a rise in religious fundamentalism, as people return to values that recognize greed as a sin, not as a virtue. Rightly or wrongly, there is likely to be a backlash.

You have, at best, 25 years to see the world, to experience different cultures, to remember the world as it is and could have been. After that, if you have a home, it will be safest to spend the remainder of your days there.

Originally published as a shorter article on Celsias.com as You Have 25 Years. It did not mention peak oil.

How far behind are Canada and the United States? How about these for eye-opening statistics:

• A solar water heater in China costs less than $200. Without one, a family wanting hot water would have to buy an electric water heater for about the same price and pay up to $120 per year for electricity. The payback is almost instantaneous.
• By relying on the sun, the citizens of Rizhao have cut carbon dioxide emissions by almost 53 thousand tons per year. Air quality has remained much better than in most urban areas of China, luring foreign investors and increasing tourism.
• Experts project that by 2010 the number of solar water heaters installed in China will equal the thermal equivalent of the electrical capacity of 40 large nuclear power plants. Globally, solar water heaters have the capacity to produce as much energy as more than 140 nukes.

These stunning solar statistics and many more fascinating facts can be found here.

The real question is, why aren’t we also leaders in this area? Where is our Made-at-Home solution? Perhaps the answer is contained in a study from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which points out that “many barriers and fossil-fuel subsidies” are hampering the switch to a green economy. Here in my province, so-called ‘green’ British Columbia, for example, a recent budget containing a revenue-neutral carbon tax also gave over three hundred million dollars to the oil and gas industries annually.

Suppose that same money had gone to solar water heaters? (Which can also be used to provide radiant heating for homes.) Even at $1,000 per heater, that’s 300,000 solar hot water heaters per year that the government could be giving to people. If the government just subsidised them to an extent, far more would be available at a price that would make oil, gas, or electric heating look just foolish and wasteful. And that’s just BC, population about four million. Every household could have a free solar hot water heater in no time!

Are we going to shift to a new green economy? Are our governments serious about about reducing costs and increasing energy independence for all of us? Judge them by their actions, but I think it’s clear: If they were, they’d be promoting Made-Here solar hot water heaters.

Note: I originally wrote this when I was a Green Party politician in Canada, and I am no longer affiliated with any political party. I went Green because of my disgust and complete lack of faith in the mainstream parties to do the right thing. I still think that only the Greens ‘get’ the seriousness of climate change, but whether they would be able to do much even if they formed government is doubtful. They also suffer from internal politics as much as any other political party.

My goal now is to create a social tipping point so that a very large number of people ‘get’ the danger we face from peak oil, climate change, economic corruption, and other ills that will bring our society down unless we stop them. All parties should be ‘green’; so should the economy.

A dirty little secret of free markets is that you can have free trade or food security, not both. In a perfect world, food security might not be a concern. This world is far from perfect, and given recent scares about food supply in many countries, it is highly possible that fears over food security – or actual food shortages – will bring a very sudden end to so-called “free trade” agreements and globalisation. Nothing will bring a government down faster than hungry people, and even the most corrupt government will be very reluctant to honour a trade agreement that leaves its people starving – and rioting.¹

There has been much hullabaloo about the developed countries (especially the United States and Canada) losing manufacturing capability to developing countries like China, but this is nothing compared to the loss of food security. Free trade theory holds that it is more efficient for each nation to specialise in producing certain goods (including food) that it then trades with other nations, and all benefit. The idea is that specialisation produces a comparative advantage.

It may be true that comparative advantage is more efficient, but it is less secure. (I would even dispute the efficiency in some cases, because transportation costs must be included. How can it be more efficient to produce cheese in France and fly it to the United States, than for the U.S. to produce cheese locally? I smell a subsidy.) Less secure means that any disruptions can lead to shortages, and food shortages are never a good thing.

Food Shortages and Panic

And in recent years there have been some food shortage scares. The first link in this article is to a chilling summary of worldwide food production declines in 2009, many due to droughts likely exacerbated by global warming. Australia, China – even the United States is in trouble.

I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen…. We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going, either.
– Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Feb. 4, 2009, LA Times

Several countries imposed food export restrictions in 2008. It has often been said that there is plenty of food to go around, that the problem is one of distribution. This may or may not be true, but that is cold comfort to starving people. They won’t care about the wonders of free trade – they will want food, now. It will be very easy for a panic to start, and then food protectionism will occur virtually everywhere overnight.

This is frightening, or should be. For example, I live on Vancouver Island, where we once produced ~85% of our food locally. This is a secure food supply situation. Now over 90% of our food is imported. That is a scary-as-hell situation. Here’s the thing about food: you can’t do without it, even for a short time, and you also can’t magically make more when you need it. Crops grow during certain seasons and they take months to be ready. If a food panic sets in this fall, then you could be living on scraps until next summer. Or not living.

Market Fundamentalism versus Reality

The dominant political-economic ideology today is Market Fundamentalism, which includes the need for completely unrestricted trade between nations. Adhering religiously to any ideology, economic or otherwise, in the face of contradictory reality is dangerous. Trade is without question beneficial. Unrestricted trade is not, for several reasons, but when it comes to the necessities of life it is downright dangerous. Look at the danger the United States has put itself in by becoming dependent upon foreign oil; it necessitates a strong military presence in the Middle East, including a war in Iraq, to ensure that the oil keeps flowing. If someone bombed the Saudi oil fields, the United States would be plunged into crisis almost overnight.

Energy is a necessity, and our modern civilisation is utterly dependent upon it. Food is an even more immediate necessity, and ‘outsourcing’ food production to other nations puts a country in a very precarious – and dependent – position.

A far more sensible approach to trade would have been trade agreements for luxuries only. If trade is interrupted for any reason – due to protectionism, shortages, oil price increases, war, acts of God, etc – people can live without a new big screen TV for awhile. They cannot and will not live without the necessities of life like food and energy. All necessities should be produced in the home country, even if it is less efficient in the short-term, because a secure food supply is more important than efficiency.

As the Canadian, American, and British governments are dominated by market fundamentalists, you would be wise to start seeking out local sources of food, including growing your own if possible. The boys at the top are not going to roll back trade agreements willingly; free trade is a point of faith with them, and will only be overthrown by undeniable reality. And you can bet they will not suffer from food shortages.

Food Security and Oil

A final word on oil: food production and imports are entirely dependent upon it. Most pesticides and fertilizers are based on fossil fuels, and all tractors and transportation are oil-fueled. If (when) the price of oil goes up, so will the price of food. If oil shortages return, food shortages will also occur.

We must choose between unrestricted free trade and food security.

We cannot have both. Personally, I choose a secure food supply, and would advise readers to do the same. Perhaps my thinking is influenced by living on an island that now produces ~7% of the food requirements of its inhabitants. People living in the U.S. Sunbelt should also be very concerned. In reality, most of us in the developed world get our food from places far away and would be wise to look into closer alternatives now – before there are shortages or price hikes.

Let the market fundamentalists go hungry if and when food shortages occur. There is no need for you to.

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¹The only way a government can stand when its people are starving is if totalitarian control is exercised and the government is willing to brutally let large portions of the population starve. Stalin did this to Ukraine; the federal government took the harvest and left millions of Ukrainians to starve to death. Anyone who protested went to a gulag, which was often a death sentence. It is very doubtful most governments could get away with this today.

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Useful Resources for Readers

The first two books (from left to right) are about growing and preserving your own food and are highly rated. The third book is by the author of The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age and the website The Archdruid Report. He has written extensively and well about peak oil and the decline of industrial civilisation as a result. The final book looks at lessons from Cuba, and contrary to popular belief, the author found that Cubans do not grow all their food in organic urban gardens. Much food is grown in rural areas and requires significant fossil fuel inputs; Cuba has encountered challenges in going all organic and small-scale that we would be well-advised to learn from.

Yes, and none of the above. I am a Realist. That means any economic system must:

• Work within the ecology, meaning be sustainable. Attempting to operate the economy as if it were not part of nature results in pollution, drawdown of natural capital like topsoil and oil, and ultimately, collapse. The economy is part of the ecology, not the other way around.
• Humans are part of the ecology. There is no point designing idealistic systems that do not respect human nature; people will find ways around such rules.

I don’t know what such an economy is called, because it has some capitalist and some socialist aspects; I call it a green economy.

The two major economic systems tried in recent eras have failed. The communist empires of the U.S.S.R. and China, same as the capitalist empires of Great Britain and the U.S.A, created vastly polluted and degraded areas. Neither ideology respects Nature’s rules, and a price was paid – and will be paid.

Both capitalism and communism also disrespect human nature. Communism expected endless self-sacrifice for the greater good – in reality for the enrichment of those at the top – while capitalism expects endless consumption for the greater good – again, in reality, for the enrichment of the CEOs at the head of the gravy train.

Both systems are run by greedy men who care only for themselves. Libertarianism is unregulated capitalism, and is a disaster because humans require some regulation to live in a society. Left unregulated, the predators will naturally rise to the top, as we have seen in the United States. The CEOs care only for the size of their paycheque, and actively lobby to enhance their pay and prestige at the expense of their country. The government becomes corrupted and serves the corporate leaders rather than the citizens.

Excessive government combined with secrecy is also an excellent route to the top for those of predatory morality, and thus the disaster of the Soviet Union, and its ultimate collapse.

The best economic solution appears to have the following features:

• No mega-corporations; companies will always seek to grow, thus eliminating competition and controlling the government. This must be prevented; break them up long before they get “too big to fail”. Only with many small businesses will there be a competitive market.
• No mega-rich people; they will seek to pervert government for their own benefit. Set maximum wealth taxes.
• Strict government regulation on pollution, worker safety, and so forth
• Cooperative unions or no unions
• Significant employee ownership of their company
• Cooperatives rather than corporations for many current businesses, such as wind farms
• Open government – nothing is hidden

Some governments are close to this, such as the Scandinavian countries, and their standard of living reflects it. Further evidence comes from the great leaps forward in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States; millions of people achieved a secure, middle class lifestyle as corporations were held in check by government and unions. Most of that has been piddled away now, thanks to the actions of those listed in the first two bullets above. But during that time, taxes on the rich were up to 90%, economic growth was tremendous, and everyone was getting into the middle class. We should be learning from prior times when things went well.

Capitalism and Communism have both failed. What’s next? It must be the green economy: work within the ecology, including human nature.

Will these schemes enrich a connected few and leave the planet worse off? Like many other things about climate change, yes, no, and it’s complicated.

These things have to be very transparent, or there is enormous potential for gaming the system or fraud. Given that enormous potential, you can bet that certain groups have been exerting pressure since the idea of carbon credits and offsets was first floated seriously. And they ain’t pushing for openness and fairness.

This is what set the European Union cap-and-trade system back years; the polluters wangled for so many carbon credits to be issued that their value plummeted. They then ceased to be much of an incentive to stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere.

In general, should polluters be allowed to pay for doing something that harms us all? Well, not really. Keep your waste to yourself. However, we have allowed large corporations to pollute in the past, to continue to do so, and our entire economy requires them to do so. How convenient for the polluters.

The next best thing is to tax them on their pollution, and combine that with a steadily reducing cap. Allowing them to trade under their cap creates double incentive for sellers to exaggerate their wares and buyers to underplay theirs. In fact, it creates pressure to collude to either delude the government (i.e. taxpayers) into paying something for nothing, or worse, to pay for pollution.

That said, something has to be done. Ideally, it would be carbon tax and cap, no trade, and with completely open oversight. Meaning, inspections are random and, if necessary, recorded live on YouTube. This makes it quite difficult for conscienceless polluters to hide or for collusion between inspector and polluter to occur.

Types of offsets or credits

Note that there is an underlying assumption that the offset or credit money actually goes to planting trees or green technology and so forth. It does not get siphoned off by crooks anywhere along the way.

Planting trees where something would grow anyway: Scam…maybe

• British Columbia, where I live, was once covered with rainforest, which we have cut almost all of at least once. In other words, logging was a major industry here, and is still substantial. So why should we get paid for planting trees? If we did nothing, forest would grow here.
• It’s complicated elsewhere. Many areas of the world are being clearcut, often illegally. Paying to prevent this or to reforest is worthwhile if the locals can then sustain that forest, and if the money actually goes to that. Deforestation is one of the largest contributors to global warming, and reforestation adds us a double bonus because it pulls carbon out of the atmosphere indefinitely.

Planting trees where none would grow: Depending upon the location, a very good idea

• It is in everyone’s interest that the deserts of the world don’t expand; planting trees along the edges is one of the best ways to stop desertification
• Greening the desert using methods that don’t rely on irrigation, like permaculture, is a also very valuable to locals and the rest of us.

Buying green technology for developing countries: Maybe ok

• If the polluter replaces a diesel generator with solar panels, and after subtracting the carbon footprint of the solar panels and their installation, this seems an excellent carbon credit/offset.
• Building new capacity where none existed…hmm. If green technology is not supplied, then will dirty technology be used? If the greentech is free, then of course that is what will be used. Carbon credits could be used to subsidise the greentech so that its price was comparable to dirtytech.

If the recipient is a very poor developing nation, they may not have money to industrialise in any way; they may be just scraping by. In that case, industrialisation is hardly the first priority, so their carbon credits should go to reforestation, organic farming techniques that can feed the nation securely (thus also eliminating fossil fuel inputs for fertilizer and pesticides, and pulling carbon out of the atmosphere), and carbon-sequestering housing. Build them up with the basics before putting up solar-powered shoe factories.

Unfortunately, Nike is much more interested in the cheap labour and lack of regulation for things like pollution in a third world country, than is Nike in paying locals to reclaim their land. The same goes for every large corporation. Monsanto is not in Africa and India to help farmers becomes independent; Monsanto is there to make money. Mining companies want ore; building up the community is not their concern. And so forth. So there will be a strong effort to game the system to allow paying carbon credits, essentially, to the payer. That is, Nike will buy credits or pay offsets to build themselves a factory in the Congo.

In summary, there are many ways and much incentive to game any system of carbon credits or offsets. Given the lack of transparency and level of honesty of our governments, gaming will certainly occur. At the same time, something must be done. We cannot continue dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; we should have stopped some time ago, in fact, and are now facing a climate emergency.

Will the crisis be exploited by a connected few to enrich themselves on carbon booty? Likely. Will it also produce agreements that reduce carbon? Copenhagen did not, but almost everyone knows we must. The pressure is building. There will have to be caps, and almost certainly there are going to be trading and carbon taxes. Will these schemes all be scams? How much effort are you willing to invest to keep your government honest?

The government of Canada and many Canadians currently have a difference of opinion on climate change. Most of us think we should be doing our part and are embarrassed, even ashamed by the government of Canada’s obstruction at Copenhagen and elsewhere. That said, we’re clearly not sufficiently motivated to make our government do our bidding; we are, sadly, complacent.

And, unfortunately, not all Canadians are honourable; there are those who put profit and prestige before all else, and they oppose any changes to the status quo. They will fight, and have been fighting, dirty. These people have been funding climate denial – they have no problem with lying, with attacking scientist, and even blaming India. They operate from a Predator Morality, which has the foundational principle: Might Makes Right. They have fought to maintain their privileged, taxpayer-subsidised positions for years with lies and smear campaigns – they will not fight fair now.

We need to see millions of you in the streets – tens of millions – sending a personal message to Canadians of conscience, the types of Canadians who fought in WWII and who created the United Nations Peacekeeping Force to prevent such slaughter, such waste, ever again. You must be the medium and the message. You must make real to us where you stand on climate change, and why. The land you will lose. The millions displaced, bankrupted, bereft.

Forget the monetary cost – show us the personal cost. Make it real; make us understand what you will go through.

Then tell us you expect us to rise above our politicians and vested interests and do the right thing, whatever it takes. To be again those brave Canadians of World War II who charged the machine gun nests, who died by the thousands to secure a free world, and the wise Canadians who created Peacekeeping. Call upon us to again do the right thing, to do what must be done.

This message must be large enough and clear enough to be unmistakable, to be visible through the smokescreen your enemies have thrown up to blind Canadians. Thus the need for tens of millions of you to turn out and say the same thing to Canada:

“Be true”

It must be massive; any fewer and your enemies will say it was a tiny fraction of the population. How you send the message is up to you; here are some suggestions:

• Send actual letters to every Canadian. Not emails. There are approximately 11 million households in Canada. Have an Indian write a personal, handwritten letter to each Canadian.
• Arrange with Google to map Indians across your country turning out and waving white sheets.
• YouTube it
• Get creative…

Tell us to “be true.”

We will get the rest. According to our national anthem, we must “stand on guard for the True North strong and free.”

And we will. We just need something to jolt us out of our complacency.

__________

Wake us up. Because if this doesn’t work, you’re going to have to take it to the next level.

…what if there was a type of nuclear power that:

• Was radioactive for a few hundred years, not millennia
• Could not meltdown
• Could not be used to make weapons-grade materials
• Burns up existing high-level radioactive waste and weapons material?

There is. Or may be, if the current research versions of Thorium reactors pan out. I still don’t think nuclear is the way to go, and I still think that conservation should be the number one priority, but if this technology could be made to work, I could get behind it as a temporary measure.

The problem always comes, of course, when vested interests get their hooks into the government and arrange subsidies and favourable regulations for their industry, thus eliminating both competition and more efficient ways of doing things. And this type of nuclear power would be no different unless we make our governments much more transparent and accountable – and unless we prioritise sustainable power generation.

Keep in mind that there are no perfectly clean electricity generation options. Dams destroy habitat and use enormous amounts of concrete – with the corresponding vast amounts of CO2 that are released during its manufacture. Solar panels use all kinds of exotic and toxic materials and chemicals to make. Wind turbines are made of metal that must be mined and smelted.

Even direct solar, or passive, requires glass, and it is not adequate in our climate. Active combined with passive solar can do the trick, but again this requires mined and manufactured materials like copper and glass.

The most attractive feature of these new types of reactors is that they degrade current highly radioactive and extremely long-lived wastes into much less radioactive and relatively short-lived wastes. If we get stuck for energy because of governments that have dithered too long, and if it looks like nuclear is going to be pushed down our throats, let’s at least make it Thorium.

For a very thorough article and easy-to-comprehend article, check out Cosmos Magazine.

Originally posted Sun, Mar 30, 2008 to Environmental Graffiti.

UPDATE Dec. 16, 2009: India has announced it is going with thorium reactors for its own use, and will also be exporting the reactors. India has approximately 25% of the world’s thorium. It should be noted that thorium reactors are currently in the prototype stage, and have not yet been commercialised.

In a previous post, I listed mostly illegal things that individuals are likely to do unless serious action is taken on climate change – very soon. The actions listed here are things we all need to be doing to prevent getting to the stage where people are desperate or angry enough to become destructive or dangerous.

Here are useful, worthwhile things you can do right now to be the difference we need.

1. Set an example

Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” and “My life is my message.” Both are still true, and this is the most important thing you can do. We are social animals, and your example will push us toward a social tipping point.

Before the tipping point, there is much resistance and it seems change is impossible, or at best far away. Afterward, when everyone is doing it and a new social norm has been set, it seems impossible we would ever go back to the old way. Think recycling: Now it is shameful not to recycle in Canada and some parts of the United States. Or single-payer health care: there is enormous and well-funded resistance to it in the United States, yet nobody in their right mind in Canada or Europe would consider moving to a U.S.-style private-only system.

When it comes to setting an example, go as far as you can within your circumstances – then push a bit further.  Use some of the ideas below to expand yourself and be a better example.

2.  Get to know climate change and Peak Everything

Many people simply are not aware of how dangerous – and real – climate change and other threats are. Once you know, anyone with a grain of a conscience (this excludes those with the predator morality) will feel compelled to take action.

I have listed some sources to educate yourself on these issues under Resources, which describes the stages I went through and the books, movies, websites, and people who helped me. Most newspapers, television, and radio are not trustworthy. There is some reliable information there, but there is also disinformation. The Guardian has an excellent Environment section, and the BBC is also decent.

3. Go meatless on Mondays

It doesn’t have to be Mondays, but one of the best things you can do for the planet right now is eat less meat. The meat industry generates anywhere from 18% (more than the entire transportation sector) to 51% of greenhouse gases. Excess consumption of animal products is also blamed for most heart disease, so do yourself and the planet a favour and learn a few good vegetarian dishes. I recommend How It All Vegan!: Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet and The Vegetarian Kitchen.

Note: If your meat is venison or free-range, hormone and antibiotic-free, and local, then it may actually be greenhouse gas-neutral. Unfortunately, very little meat meets these criteria.

4. Take an Earth Institute course

The Canadian Earth Institute and the Northwest Earth Institute (U.S.) offer several excellent and simple courses, including: Choices for Sustainable Living, Voluntary Simplicity, Discovering a Sense of Place, Exploring Deep Ecology, Globalization and its Critics, Healthy Children, Healthy Planet and Global Warming: Changing CO2urse. If you’re not sure about global warming, take the last course.

All courses are done in small groups and self-paced. There are no tests, and the only cost is for the workbook. It’s the best way to gain knowledge.

5. Organize an Earth Institute course

Host a course in your house with family or friends. Talk to your minister/preacher/rabbi/religious leader about the church/temple/whatever hosting the courses. Religious leaders are like you: they want to do something constructive but are often not sure what. The Earth Institute courses are a great idea, simple to do, and religious leaders generally love ‘em. You could also start a meetup to get people together for a course. Run a singles course.

6. Host a documentary

Organize a showing of An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car?, or one of the other great documentaries related to our current crises. Many are available from local libraries.

7. Arrange a live presentation of An Inconvenient Truth

These presentations are free, and most presenters have updated the original Gore slideshow to include the latest science, local impacts of climate change, and more solutions. The presenters are ordinary people doing an extraordinary thing. Canada, U.S., Australia, India, Spain, or the U.K. All presenters are volunteers, including me. I also have a presentation entitled The Way Home, not free, which describes how to get back to living sanely.

8. Arrange a speaker

There are many other speakers/presenters who are well worth bringing to your town if you have the wherewithal to organize it. Beware, though; the deniers also go around speaking. Some speakers I recommend (the books noted are also well worth reading):

• James Howard Kunstler (author of The Long Emergency
  The Geography of Nowhere, and more) on Peak Oil
• Ray Anderson (CEO of Interface Carpets and author of Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose–Doing Business by Respecting the Earth) and speaker on Sustainable Development
• Paul Hawken (author of The Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism and, Blessed Unrest) on ecology/economy
• David Korten (author of The Great Turning, When Corporations Rule the World, and more) on the end of empire

9. Get active

If any of the speakers listed above comes anywhere near you, go see them! If a local group is bringing a speaker to town or organizing a showing of a documentary, GO! I saw David Korten thanks to a local business group, and the premiere of The Age of Stupid thanks to a local eco-group.

Note: I have not recommended joining eco-groups like The Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, or Greenpeace.  Although some of these groups do great things, right now they are all working in silos. There is no synergy among them; they all have their own agendas, and often egos keep them isolated. United we stand, divided we fall is as true as it ever was, and I cannot recommend joining these groups until they start acting in concert on climate change. In addition, many people join a group, send off a cheque, and think they’ve done enough. Anyone can do more and better.

10. Go to local vegetarian potlucks

Most cities have a vegetarian group, and most of those groups have monthly or even weekly potlucks. It is worth going at least once or twice; most are populated by very nice people and you’ll get to try some great food. They are generally very gentle with newbies, so you can take a salad to the first one to see what it’s all about. Raw food groups and potlucks are booming, and are often organized by the veggie group.

11. Listen to real scientists

There are a lot of disreputable people claiming to be climate experts. Tim Ball, for example, is often welcomed as a speaker at Chambers of Commerce because he tells the local business people there is nothing to worry about, the world is actually cooling, and business-as-usual can continue. None of these are true, but all are very tempting to believe.

Scientists are speaking out more frequently now as the urgency of the danger becomes more obvious. Go listen to your local university scientists if you can. Many people wake up when they hear from a real person with real experience.

12. Support the sinking countries

The Maldives, Tuvalu, and other Pacific nations will cease to exist due to rising seas and stronger storms, probably this century. China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam and many other countries will have to relocate millions of their citizens inland for the same reasons. The least you can do is sign the petition saying you support strong action on climate change, including charging Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil and long-time funder of climate denial PR groups, with crimes against humanity. That will get his attention.

If you want to participate in rallies, candlelight vigils, and so forth, go ahead. People like Rex Tillerson and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper are not paying attention to them, but if it makes you feel good…just make sure you are doing something constructive, too, like the other actions listed here.

I am also not recommending civil disobedience unless it is en masse. Divided we fall, so individuals or small groups make easy targets – and are easily discredited. If there is a march of millions – legal or illegal – get in there. If there is a national strike – strike.  But small actions allow you to be picked off by the authorities and discredited on the news as a lone nut.

13. Sharpen the saw

This expression comes from Stephen Covey, famous for his excellent books and courses entitled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  It means that once you have a new and better  habit, keep it sharp by exercising it constantly. Get in the habit of raising your awareness on climate change. Find reliable sources of information.

14. Torch a Hummer

I’m kidding. One of the reasons for this list of useful things to do is to prevent things like Hummers being torched. If climate change is not addressed – soon – then desperate and angry people are going to do desperate and angry things. Fat-cats and their Hummers will become targets unless we take other actions, soon.

Disclaimer: If you purchase a book or video by clicking one of the links above, Amazon pays me a small commission. I do not make any money from the speakers, courses, or other resources listed.

And one more thing…

And, of course, you can donate to support what I do.

UPDATE – I am pleased to report that this post will be featured in the All Things Eco Blog Carnival.