Reforestation

I don't know what exactly it is, but planting trees or just reading or thinking about reforestation makes me cheerful for a moment. Today I ran across a 1-hour documentary entitled "The man who stopped the desert". A trailer is available for free.

From this movie I followed two links to related material: "Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR): A good news story for a deforested and degraded" is a brief summary of permaculture ideas applied in Africa to help reforestation. The other reference is from China: "Lessons of the Loess Plateau" is a 52-min documentary highlighting the challenges and results from this regeneration project.

Club of Rome - 2052

The Club of Rome is an association of roughly 100 members that tries to identify the most crucial problems which will determine the future of humanity through integrated and forward-looking analysis. About once a year it releases a report. This years it has released a 400-page report (book) entitled "2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years". It was written by Jorgen Randers. It summarizes:

• While the process of adapting humanity to the planet’s limitations has started, the human response could be too slow.
• The current dominant global economies, particularly the United States, will stagnate. Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and ten leading emerging economies (referred to as ‘BRISE’ in the Report) will progress.
• But there will still be 3 billion poor in 2052.
• China will be a success story, because of its ability to act.
• Global population will peak in 2042, because of falling fertility in urban areas
• Global GDP will grow much slower than expected, because of slower productivity growth in mature economies.
• CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to grow and cause +2°C in 2052; temperatures will reach +2.8°C in 2080, which may well trigger self-reinforcing climate change.

The Report says the main cause of future problems is the excessively short-term predominant political and economic model. You can see the presentation of the book in two videos here or here and here. You can read more about this report here.

Great Pacific Garbage

The Great Pacific Garbage is bigger than ever, and deeper than ever thought. It increased 100 fold since 1970 and is the size of Texas. The wind pushes the plastic deeper into the ocean and away from the surface. Hence previous might underestimate the count of the plastic particles by a factor of 27 (that's 2700%)! Where does it all end up? Since we are all connected and the humans sit on the top of the food chain, it eventually all ends up in our food and later in our blood stream and body cells.

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day or Mother Earth Day. The official website is the Earth Day Network where ideas for personal action can be found and actions can be registered. I - in particular - favor and appreciate the Billion Trees Campaign. If you need more ideas of how to contribute and how to make each day Earth day, have a look at these action ideas.

Shale Oil

Chris Martenson wrote an excellent article entitled "Dangerous Ideas" that deals a lot with shale oil and how media uses it to downplay peak oil and play a rosy future full of unlimited energy. The US has the biggest reserves today but only a small production. Lately there are a lot of news articles published that report of new evidence showing that fracking (needed for converting oil shale into usable oil and gasoline) is safe. Example articles here and here. With both in place, a mega deposit of oil shale in North Dakota and safe extraction processes through fracturing, all is well now according to the media.

The reality is different. The world's leading shale oil producer is Estonia. The problems seem to become clear when one considers that in 2002, about 97% of air pollution, 86% of total waste and 23% of water pollution in Estonia came from the power industry, which uses oil shale as the main resource for its power production (source). This is quite a contrast to media reports in the US. Efficiency is another factor. More recent studies estimates the EROEI of oil shales to be 1–2:1 or 2–16:1 – depending when self-energy is counted as a cost or internal energy is exclude and only purchased energy is counted as input (source). That means in the very best case, with 1 gallon of external oil as input one can generate 16 gallons of oil from shale. Worst case, for 1 gallon of external oil as input one can generate 2 gallons of shale oil. If we add in all the energy from the oil shale that is also used up in the shale-to-oil conversion then the energy calculation is as follows: In the worst case, for using up 1 calorie of input we extract 1 calorie in form of oil as output. In the best case, for using up 1 calorie of input we extract 2 calorie in form of oil as output. In other words the extraction process consumes 0.5 to 1 calorie to extract 1 calorie of oil. As far as I know this calculation only covers the conversion process, it does not cover the energetic cost to produce all the equipment necessary, the energetic cost to transport the equipment to the exploration site, the energetic cost to clean up and "heal" the site after exploration is being abandoned, etc. Furthermore, extracted shale oil is not liquid at environmental temperatures. In order to pump it through pipes the pipes would have to be heated, making transport even more energy consuming. If we add all this into the equation, it is a clear loss. No doubt we can technically extract energy, but it can only be done with massive energetic input, massive current resource use and leaving the cleanup to future generations.

Pay attention to the next shale oil stories you hear in the media.

Global Restoration

This young man has voiced his vision for the Occupy Wall Street movement in his 10-min video "Global Restoration: Vision For Occupy & Earth". It has some Zeitgeist aspects to it and some "back to the land" ideas with the principal goal of global ecological restoration. He sees the industrial civilization as the root of all evil. I like his optimism and activism, but his vision is incomplete.

Can or should his vision be the direction of OWS? I think it can be part of OWS, it is certainly positive and worth while, but I think it is insufficient. If this is all of OWS than the men in power will remain and control and oppression will continue in one form or another. We need more than just passive rejection of the current system, moving out and away is not enough. An active stance against the controlling powers is essential.

Similarly with the back-to-the-land idea. I like it. It can bring create small tightly weaved societies, benefit us and the environment, increase our happiness as individuals, and some more. But we still need industry, under different control, but a society without industry seems unimaginable to me.

It can be a big piece in the puzzle of a solution to our problems, but as a all-encompassing vision I see it incomplete. A mathematician might say it is required but not sufficient.

Earthships

Earthships are a form of sustainable housing construction pioneered by Michael Reynolds, primarily using earth-filled used tires, old glass and water bottles as construction material. This 90-min documentary entitled Garbage Warrior outlines his personal story and shows some marvellous examples of earthships in New Mexico. It is amazing to see his vision in the houses he built more than 30 years ago.

GMO losing Effect

Monsanto's genetically modified corn no longer protects against pests. The corn bug has become resistant against the GMO plant. This is one of the first proven cases that biotech GMOs lead to superbugs and superweeds.

Instead of rethinking the issue Monsanto and other companies only take it a step further. Monsanto and Syngenta are now researching how to use a medical breakthrough called RNA interference to, among other things, make crops deadly for insects to eat. If this works, a bug munching on such a plant could ingest genetic code that turns off one of its essential genes. I guess they are creating super GMO leading to a super-super bug in the following phase.

Read the Wall Street Journal article here or here.

Artificial Photo Synthesis

MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera has researched artificial photo synthesis and already 2 years ago presented his approach as a highly distributed and highly personalized solution to the world's energy problem. In short, he wants to replace power stations of all kinds with small inexpensive photo synthesis solutions installed in your home. Here are his talks given 2 years ago: Dan Nocera: Personalized Energy (22min) and Personalized Energy for 1 (x 6 Billion): A Solution to the Global Energy Challenge (78min). The idea itself is not new, already in 1912 (no type here) -- 100 years ago -- it was suggested as a solution to our energy needs.

I am not expert enough to qualify his research, but his speech and vision are impressive. It promises democratic and clean energy, auto-sufficiency, individual independence, risk avoidance, pollution avoidance and sustainability. With such promises it is certainly worth investment, but it frightens the establishment as it would be the end of the day of utility companies and remove our energy dependency.

D. Nocera now works with the Indian Tata conglomerate to bring the research into the commercial market. There is hope after all.

Worst Emissions Ever

Mankind is not heading in the right direction. The Guardian published an article entitled "Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink". The article starts with "Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach". The recession has not helped either in reducing emissions. Kyoto, G8 meetings, political campaign promises, ... as one can see it is all just hot air, or shall I say "hot CO2 emissions".

Zeitgeist 3

The third documentary of the Zeitgeist series has been released. At the current rhythm director and activist Peter Joseph is producing one every year. Zeitgeist - Moving Forward is available freely. It is revising all the same topics of the previous Zeitgeist movies, with less emphasis on religion and spirituality. The goal remains a bias-less, science-founded, money free society that is using a resource-based economy. Certain individual freedoms will be compromised to accomplish this sustainable planet. But we have heavy restrictions on our freedoms today in the capitalistic society (and others). The 1% of the super-rich can bypass some of the restrictions on freedom, but the middle class and lower have no escape route. I belief that absolute personal freedom is illusionary and unfair. Since freedom ends where injustice begins, it is acceptable to me to seek a society that balances sustainability (isn't sustainability nothing else than the freedom of the future generations?) with current freedoms. Oversimplified, if we want to give future generations the freedom to use some oil, we have to reduce our oil consumption today. It is worth watching. Just like the in previous Zeitgeist documentaries, I remain somewhat sceptical about the dependence on high technology. I believe it to be risky and it as well needs to balances with "low technology", even if it just as an insurance policy. Placing all eggs in the same "hi-tech" basket, is not a wise choice for the basis of the whole planet. Watch it, form your own opinion.

PS: Here is a good critique, or a warning, about the Zeitgeist thoughts by James Corbett called The last Word on Utopia.

The Age of Stupid

The documentary "The Age of Stupid" has been released in 2008, but I just got to see it now. A trailer is here. The full 90-min documentary can be found here. And "The Making of The Age of Stupid" is online as well. It is a gloomy look back from 2025 to our generation, asking these questions: Why did we not see the coming environmental predicament? Why did we not change direction when we still had the possibility to do so? Why did we not change direction as a global community? For more info go to the official www.ageofstupid.net website. The most memorable scene from the film was when a woman from Nigeria had to wash a fish that she just caught at the shore with laundry detergent because it was covered with crude oil.

The One Straw Revolution

Mr. Masanobu Fukuoka is one of the key names in the creation of the permaculture movement. He himself would not see it that way. Several countries had a figure stand out in this field. They were visionaries that were decades ahead of their time. In Australia there is Bill Mollisson, in Austria Sepp Holzer and in Japan it was Masanobu Fukuoka. They are legends, rightfully so.

Already in 1975 he wrote the classic book "The One Straw Revolution" sometimes nicknamed "Zen and the Art of Farming". This book is an easy read, just some 100 pages. I had heard and read a lot about him and his techniques. I had some preconceived notion what the book would be about. But it harbored a few surprises for me. His point of view is that we cannot and will not know or understand nature. "When [we] think [we] are beginning to understand nature, [we] can be sure that [we] are on the wrong track." Basically his beliefs are that we cannot truly understand anything. Another key opinion is that he sees nature as something highly connected. Nothing can be seen in isolation. However, our world and society are too complex. He experienced that many scientists came to study his fields but each looked at it only from one very specific angle according to his research speciality. He knew that such a narrow-sighted approach would not lead to insights or results. According to his thoughts it would require scientists, researchers, politicians, artists, poets, philosophers, men of religion, and farmers to gather jointly to talk things over together.

He was on a search of effective farming that is simple. He always asked himself what can I remove from typical agriculture while still keeping it effective. Slowly and with many tries and failures he reduced agriculture to the bare minimum input while not losing and even increasing health and output. In his way of farming external energetic input is at a minimum. He says that putting "doing nothing" into practice is the one thing the farmer should strive to accomplish. The farmer is freed from useless or even countrproductive chores and free to take a midday nap or write poetry.

His method, he calls it no-method, is based on four principles.

• no cultivation: no plowing or turning of the soil
• no chemical fertilizers or prepared compost: For fertilizer Mr. Fukuoka grows a leguminous cover of white clover, returns the threshed straw to the fields, and adds a little poultry manure
• no weeding, no herbicides: Straw mulch, a ground cover of white clover interplanted with the crops, and temporary flooding provide effective weed control in his fields.
• no pesticides, no chemicals: The sensible approach to disease and insect control is to grow sturdy crops in a healthy environment (rather than weak - often laboratory made - crops optimized for size or color).

I liked this phrase a lot: "Before researchers become researchers, they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is." He certainly views farmers as philosophers. "The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings." As you can see "The One Straw Revolution" is not only a book on agriculture or permaculture, it is a book on life. "In nature, there is life and death, and nature is joyful. In human society, there is life and death, and people live in sorrow." Isn't it time we change our objectives?

PS: Just found this video "The One Straw Revolution" that brings the book in context with Larry Korn , translator of the book, who worked for the old master for a total of 2.5 years. Here I also found the reference to the web site www.onestrawrevolution.net. More videos and links are to be found there.

New Start

Today, 1-1-11, is another opportunity for a new start. A TV-like internet channel was opened today that promises to cover these topics with a daily link to a short video:

• local food production
• permaculture
• energy
• transportation
• community response
• co-housing
• enlightened simplicity
• and positive transition initiatives of all kinds

Sounds interesting, today in its first "episode" the link was to a 5-min video with Geoff Lawton on a permaculture food forest in Vietnam. The TV-like channel is called "Next World TV". If you subscribe you get one email daily with a link to a relevant video or video segment.

Religion and Sustainability

Just by chance I stumbled across this book today on Christmas Eve. After reading a few pages it dawned on me that this book is very appropriate for this religious day. The title is "Religion and agriculture: sustainability in Christianity and Buddhism" by Lindsay Falvey. It is available freely. In the introduction it states that it uses "sustainability as the meeting point of science and religion". It raises questions like "Why chose agriculture as the entry point to sustainability?" "Why even relate religion to the search for sustainability?" "What is sustainability anyway?" For 300 pages it then goes into details on western and eastern religions and how they lead and relate to sustainability. I haven't read all the way through it but if you are interested in any two of the three topics of agriculture, sustainability and religion/spirituality, then this book might be of interest to you. It certainly is spiritually motivating, a good book to start reading on December 24th.

The Story of Electronics

It started with The Story of Stuff. Annie Leonard presents her thoughts on the sad story of the production process in a concise, yet cheerful manner. Her upbeat attitude to solve these critical issues make her educational videos nearly fun to watch. Annie Leonard made the Story of Stuff a great story. Over the last four years she has added to it, and made a number of sequels: The Story of Cosmetics, The Story of Bottled Water, etc. And now: The Story of Electronics, 7 minutes worth watching. Here is her site: The Story of Stuff, and here is her YouTube channel. Perfect for us as adults, perfect also to teach teenagers the role of corporations and the outsourcing of cost to other nations. Well done Annie.

Happiness

Nic Marks talks about happiness at the planet level, the national level and the personal level in his talk "The Happy Planet Index". The HPI (Happy Planet Index) rates all countries on their happiness, or better said on their sustainable happiness, i.e. simply put happiness in relation to the resource consumption. Which is the happiest country? Costa Rica. Why? They did away with the military all together, 99% of the electricity comes from reusable resources, they invested in social and health programs, they enjoy a 78-year life expectancy (higher than US), they have one of the highest literacy rate in the world, they were the first country committed to be carbon neutral by 2020. And they did all this while using only 25% of the resources used by Western countries. Time to get rid of the GDP as measure and replace it with the HPI. Here is the official site of the Happy Planet Index.

On a more personal level, have a look at 5 Ways to Well Being.

An inspiring talk!

Oil and Corexit

Susan Shaw has dedicated a great part of her life to the damages caused by oil disasters such as the Exxon Valdez and the BP crime in the Mexican Gulf. She is an expert on marine toxins and her brief talk "The oil spill's toxic trade-off" is an excellent summary of the dangers of Corexit and the political and big-business attitude in which it is used.

Global Dimming and Warming

This 48-minute documentary film produced in 2007 by the BBC for their Horizon series introduces the term "Global Dimming" to the general public and puts global dimming in context with global warming. While the documentary is too dramatic and too sensational for the taste of many people, it still might be a worth while film for the sake of understanding the causes and the trend of global dimming, i.e. the reduction of sunshine reaching our planet's surface due to visible air pollution.

There is a lot of data on both global dimming and global warming, and as with nearly all data, it can be interpreted in many different ways. I do not believe in the main predictions of the main stream scientists. They might be right, but they might also be wrong. Is there global warming? Maybe, probably, but maybe not. Is the global warming caused by mankind? Maybe, maybe not. Is global warming bad? Maybe, maybe not. In my opinion all this data is inconclusive because in today's world it is nearly impossible to know whom to trust.

I am even more opposed to the way greenhouse gas reduction is planned to be implemented. International auctions on CO2 emissions and similar forms scream of injustice, inefectiveness and seem to be another scheme to enrich a few CO2 emissions brokerage companies, paid for by all while not delivering on real, sustainable and just emissions reduction. In short such schemes will turn out to be expensive, ineffective and will be a hidden form of financial transfer from the masses to a few rich, similar to taxation. Emissions reduction will be misused to become a laudable and admirable front face for creating a new system inline with the current abusive banking system that will have a high maintenance cost, induce speculation, will eventually lead to an emissions market bubble, be full of negative side effects, and worse of all: it will not make people responsable for pollution and will not change the attitude of corporations on the topic of pollution. Regarding side effects: Without being able to remember the source, I read a stories that in Thailand large plots of jungle are being cleared to create monoculture palm plantations for palm oil production and that for such actions CO2 emissions bonuses are being handed out. If this story is true than it is clear that we have to expect a lot of unwanted negative side effects to the greenhouse gas emission policies.

Ignoring the data that can be interpreted either way and is only as trustworthy as the scientist who created it, it seems to me it is more appropriate to go back to common sense and basic, local thinking. In your own home, would you want to have a source of air pollution? Image for a second as a mind game, that your hot water boiler has some defect and black smoke would come out of it whenever you take a hot shower. Wouldn't you fix it? In the worst case wouldn't you replace it with a new model that does not pollute your own home with smelly smoke that stinks, makes your baby son cough and paints the walls black with time? It seems obvious. You would not put up with such a water boiler for long. You would replace or fix it. I would extrapolate from your home, to your home town, to your home planet. What is good for your home, along common sense, will also be good when applied on a global scale. Setting strict policies that force the reduction of visible pollution as well as green house gases at the source is a simpler, more transparent, more reliable solution to actually reduce emissions and to do it in a controlable and fair manner for the benefit of all and at the cost of the appropriate corresponding consumer groups.

Plastic

If you don't have time to watch "Plastic Planet" or "Addicted to Plastic" watch this different video on the same topic that is a good summary in just 7 minutes. It is entitled "World biggest garbage dump - plastic in the Ocean".