Steve Savage has written a very interesting analysis, complete with very helpful charts and tables and such, explaining clearly Why Most Food Could Never Be “Local”. This should scare the hell out of anyone aware of peak oil concerns and everyone who likes to eat. Let me briefly and grossly oversimplify Steve’s analysis:

• Most areas cannot grow everything locally; this applies not only to avocados and oranges, which require a certain climate, but also to wheat and many other crops for various reasons. (Read Steve’s article.)

Let me add the peak oil problem:

• Given that much food cannot be grown locally, an advanced transportation system is required to bring prairie wheat, Florida oranges, and California-everything-else to New York.
• Our entire transportation system runs on oil. All of it. We have no electric trains or trucks, no hydrogen-powered tractors and combines.
• Given that we appear to be in or very near peak oil, how exactly is food getting from farm to table?

Some will say, No problem, as the price of oil goes up alternative transportation methods will be devised. I say, How’s that working so far? The price of oil has gone up, considerably, including a very worrisome spike last year to $147 per barrel, and still no push to rebuild the rail system, no serious effort to figure out how to move essentials like food without diesel-powered trucks. Continue reading →

Some years ago, the famous scientist James Lovelock proposed the Gaia Theory, which states that the Earth acts as a single organism, maintaining temperatures, oxygen levels, and so on within limits that support life – that allow life to flourish, in fact. He said that Earth acts as any living organism does to maintain homeostasis. This has caused considerable controversy, as how can the Earth ‘do’ anything? Many people claimed Lovelock was suggesting that a god of some sort existed to provide this control.

However, Lovelock used a very simple example to show that, whether or not God exists, s/he is not necessary to maintain Earth’s homeostasis: Daisyworld. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

I have had it with groups that supposedly want to save the planet. They are run by highly intelligent, clueless idiots. Perhaps the best indictment of their effectiveness is simply to look at the state of the planet they are allegedly trying to save: No honest person could say the Earth is in better shape now than it was when the eco-groups started more than 30 years ago.

The planet is more polluted, populated, deforested, desertified, fished-out, and generally raped and pillaged than ever, to the point that we are on the verge of civilisational collapse. Climate change is near terminal, and if that doesn’t get us (it will) we are running into Peak Everything.

And you want me to send you a cheque for how much? Continue reading →