Preface. Since oil and other fossils are finite and emit carbon, the plan is to electrify society with batteries. But doh! Minerals used in batteries are finite too. And dependent on fossil-fuels entirely in their life cycle, from mining trucks to ore ships to smelting facilities to fabrication & manufacturing and final delivery to the customer. These steps aren’t electrified — can’t be — and with peak oil in 2018 time is running out.
In the news:
Ghutada G (2022) The Key minerals in an EV battery. https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-key-minerals-in-an-ev-battery/
Batteries use many rare, declining, single-source country, and expensive metals. They consume more energy over their life cycle, from extraction to discharging stored energy, than they deliver. Batteries are an energy sink with negative EROI, which makes wind, solar, and other intermittent sources of electricity energy sinks as well.
Minerals used to make batteries are subject to supply chain failures (stockpiles will eventually run out).
Depletion Peaks, Including Recycling, for Battery Minerals
Mineral
Peak Year
lead
2045
nickel
2075
cobalt
2065
manganese
2050
rare-earths
2090
lithium
2075
phosphate
2030
zinc
2015
barite
2000
titanium
2045
There are four main components to a battery: the casing, chemicals, electrolytes, and internal hardware. The main minerals used are cadmium, cobalt, lead, lithium, nickel, and rare earth elements.
The U.S. has a list of 35 critical elements essential for defense and other industires
Antimony (critical). 29% of antimony in the USA is used for batteries (35% flame retardants, 16% chemicals, 12% ceramics and glass, etc).
Arsenic (critical): the grids in lead acid storage batteries are strengthened by the addition of arsenic metal
Cadmium: Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) batteries. It’s also used in photovoltaic devices. China uses it in the lead-acid batteries used by electric bicycles. In 2005 1,312,000 pounds of cadmium were used in rechargeable batteries.
Cobalt (critical): 23,800,000 pounds of cobalt were used in rechargeable batteries (2005).
Graphite (critical).
Lead-acid batteries. These consume 86% of lead production. In just the first 8 months of 2012, 81,700,000 lead-acid automotive batteries were produced.
Preface. Will cattle, sheep,goats, and horses have to be raised on feed lots in the future to prevent range land poisoning from invasive plants? Each year poisonous plants adversely affect 3-5% of the cattle, sheep, and horses that graze western range lands. There are many causes of livestock losses including (Global Rangelands 2020):
Animals graze infested range lands when plants are most toxic.
Animals are driven, trailed through, or unloaded from trucks onto range land or pasture areas infested with poisonous plants.
Animals are not watered regularly or are allowed to become hungry, making them more likely to eat lethal quantities of poisonous plants.
Animals are allowed to graze in heavy stands of plants that are highly poisonous.
Animals are grazed on range lands early in the spring when there is no other vegetation except poisonous plants.
The USDA article below suggests livestock could be fed on feedlots to prevent them from eating toxic invasive plants on rangeland, but after oil decline, the energy to transport crops to feed lots is unlikely, and growing extra crops for livestock will be difficult without pesticides (see post “Chemical industrial farming is unsustainable”).
Rangeland and pastures comprise nearly half of the total land area of the United States. There are over 300 rangeland weeds in the U.S. that reduce carrying capacity and cost over $5 billion a year to control. These species also reduce wildlife habitat and forage, deplete soil and water, the quality of meat, milk, wool, and hides, poison livestock, and reduce biodiversity (Mullin 2000, DiTomaso 2010).
In the U.S. invasive plants occupy 200,000 square miles of rangeland and are spreading at a rate of 14% a year. Invasive plant-infested areas also experience far more wildfires at greater intensity and area burned (DiTomaso 2017).
More research needs to be done on this now while there is still time to do so, such as research on how and when to get animals to graze on yellow star thistle (Voth 2016). Reduced livestock postcarbon may also reduce homo sapiens carrying capacity.
USDA. 2011. Plants Poisonous to Livestock in the Western States. United States Department of Agriculture.
Poisonous plants are a major cause of economic loss to the livestock industry. Each year these plants adversely affect 3 to 5 percent of the cattle, sheep, goats, and horses that graze western ranges.
All too often the losses to individual livestock operations are large enough to threaten the viability of that ranch. Livestock losses can be heavy if animals:
graze ranges infested with poisonous plants when plants are most toxic.
are driven, trailed through, or unloaded from trucks onto range or pasture areas infested with poisonous plants. Animals are less selective in their grazing at these times of stress.
are not watered regularly.
are allowed to become hungry. Such animals are more likely to eat lethal quantities of poi- sonous plants.
are grazed on rangelands early in spring when there is no other green vegetation except poisonous plants.
are stressed, such as when they are trucked, penned, or handled (branding, vaccination, etc.).
are not limited on how much and how fast they consume the plants
Economic Impact of Poisonous Plants on Livestock Direct losses (effects on animals) include the following: • Deaths of livestock • Abortions • Birth defects • Weight loss (due to illness or decreased feed intake • Lengthened calving interval • Decreased fertility • Decreased immune response • Decreased function (due to damage to organs such as the nervous system, lungs, liver, etc. • Loss of breeding stock due to deaths, functional inefficiency, etc.
Indirect losses (management costs) include the following: • Building and maintaining fences • Increased feed requirements • Increased medical treatments • Altered grazing programs • Decreased forage availability • Decreased land values • Opportunity costs • Lost time to management • Stress to management
Hundreds of plants are poisonous to livestock. Here are a few of the toxic plants or toxic plant categories in the West:
Arrowgrass Bitterweed Bracken Fern (Western Bracken) Chokecherry Colorado Rubberweed (Pingue) Copperweed Death Camas False Hellebore (Veratrum) Greasewood Groundsel (Threadleaf and Riddell) and Houndstongue Halogeton (invasive) Hemp Dogbane Horsebrush Kochia Larkspur Locoweed Lupines Milkvetches Milkweed Nightshades Nitrate-accumulating Plants Oak Poison Hemlock Ponderosa Pine Needles Rayless Goldenrod Selenium-accumulating Plants
Snakeweed (Broom and Threadleaf) Sneezeweed Spring Parsley St Johnswort Sweet Clover Tansy Ragwort Water hemlock Yellow Star Thistle and Russian Knapweed (invasive) Yew Taxus
Other Poisonous Plants Noxious Weeds
Leafy spurge, an unpalatable European plant invading Western rangelands,andUnpalatable Eurasian plants-spotted knapweed infests 7 million acres in nine states and two Canadian provinces
Foreign weeds spread on Bureau of Land Management lands at over 2,300 acres per day and on all Western public lands at twice that rate.
Increased wildfires
The spread of fire-adapted exotic plants that burn easily increases the frequency and severity of fires, to the detriment of property, human safety, and native flora and fauna. In 1991, in the hills overlooking Oakland and Berkeley, California, a 1,700-acre fire propagated by Eucalyptus trees planted early in this century destroyed 3,400 houses and killed 23 people [including my home — now there is a group fighting removal of eucalyptus because they’re “pretty”]
Meleuca invasion in Florida: sawgrass dominates large regions of Florida Conservation Area marshes, providing habitat for unique Everglades wildlife. Although sawgrass may be more than 9 feet tall, introduced Australian melaleuca trees are typically 70 feet tall and outcompete marsh plants for sunlight. As melaleuca trees invade and form dense monospecific stands, soil elevations increase because of undecomposed leaf litter that forms tree islands and inhibits normal water flow. Wildlife associated with sawgrass marshes declines. The frequency and intensity of fires change, as do other critical ecosystem processes. The spread of melaleuca and other invasive exotic plants in southern Florida could undermine the $1.5-billion effort to return the Everglades to a more natural state
In parts of the southern Appalachians, two related insects, the hemlock woolly adelgid and the balsam woolly adelgid, defoliate and kill dominant native trees over vast tracts.
Schmitz, DC. 9 July 1997. Biological Invasions: A Growing Threat. An army of invasive plant and animal species is overrunning the United States, causing incalculable economic and ecological costs. issues in science and technology. National Academy of Sciences.
A quarter of U.S. agricultural gross national product is lost to foreign plant invaders and the costs of controlling them. Exotic species have contributed to the decline of 42 percent of U.S. endangered and threatened species.
The chestnut blight fungus, which arrived in New York City in the late 19th century from Asia, spread in less than 50 years over 225 million acres of the eastern United States, destroying virtually every chestnut tree. Because chestnut had comprised a quarter or more of the canopy of tall trees in many forests, the effects on the entire ecosystem were staggering.
References & Recommended reading
DiTomaso JM, et al. 2010. Rangeland invasive plant management. University of Arizona.
DiTomaso JM, et al. 2017. Invasive plant species and novel rangeland systems. In: Briske D. (eds) Rangeland Systems. Springer Series on Environmental Management. Springer.
McKnight BN ed. 1993. Biological Pollution. The Control and Impact of Invasive Exotic Species. Indianapolis. Ind.: Indiana Academy of Sciences.
Mullin BH, et al. 2000. Invasive plant species. Council for Agricultural Science and Technology Issue paper #13.
Sandlund OT, et al. 1996. Proceedings of the Norway/UN Conference on Alien Species. Trondheim, Norway: Directorate for Nature Management and Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. 1993. Harmful Non-Indigenous Species in the United States. Washington, D.C.
Voth K. 2016. Grazing reduces yellow starthistle. Onpasture.com
Williamson, M. 1996. Biological Invasions. London: Chapman & Hall, 1996.
USDA. April 2011. Plants Poisonous to Livestock in the Western States. United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service Agriculture Information Bulletin Number 415
Preface. Yet another danger from climate change for agriculture will be slow hurricanes and cyclones dumping a foot or more of rain over a few days such as the recent hurricanes Harvey (2017), Florence (2018), and Dorian (2019).
Hurricane Harvey caused catastrophic flooding in 2017, killing 68 people and costing $125 billion in damages. One reason it was so destructive is that it moved unusually slowly and remained over the same area for days – and as the world warms, there are going to be a lot more slow-moving tropical cyclones like Harvey, according to high-resolution climate models.
A slow-moving tropical cyclone dumps far more rain in one place than a fast-moving storm of a similar size and strength. The winds can also do more damage, because they batter structures for longer.
Harvey, for instance, dumped more than a metre of rain in parts of the Houston area. “Imagine that much water falling in one spot,” says Gan Zhang at Princeton University. “It is too much for the infrastructure to handle.”
Other recent storms, including Hurricane Florence in 2018 and Hurricane Dorian in 2019 have also been slow-moving, leading to suggestions that climate change is increasing the odds of slow-moving storms.
Now Zhang and his colleagues have run about 100 high-resolution simulations of how tropical cyclones behave in three types of conditions: those between 1950 and 2000, those similar to the present and also various future scenarios.
They saw a marked slowdown as the world warms, due to a poleward shift of the mid-latitude westerly winds. It is these prevailing winds that push cyclones along and determine how fast they travel.
This will increase the risk of storms causing extreme flooding that, among other things, could break dams and spread pollution from factories and farms, says Zhang.
Other studies suggest that warming will lead to tropical cyclones becoming stronger, producing more rainfall, intensifying faster – giving people less time to prepare – and forming in and affecting a wider area than they have previously.
Preface. The 2015 Paris climate change agreement states that burning biomass is carbon neutral.
Not true.
Over 800 scientists have written the European Parliament to tell them that burning wood for heat or electricity emits 1.5 x more CO2 than coal and 3 x more than natural gas. It puts forests all over the globe in danger and destroys biodiversity.
On top of that, although trees grow faster in warmer conditions — which should lessen global heating and reduce carbon dioxide, a new study finds that the faster trees grow, the sooner they die – and therefore stop storing carbon. Trees that grow more quickly may be more vulnerable to drought, disease and pests. When trees die, they give up their stored carbon gradually, in the form of methane, a greenhouse gas. This means that many standard climate change models of how we can use forests as carbon sinks, to absorb the carbon dioxide we produce from fossil fuel burning, are likely to overestimate the benefits (Brienen 2020).
Excerpts below (tables and other references left out).
Abstract. This comment raises concerns regarding the way in which a new European directive, aimed at reaching higher renewable energy targets, treats wood harvested directly for bioenergy use as a carbon-free fuel. The result could consume quantities of wood equal to all Europe’s wood harvests, greatly increase carbon in the air for decades, and set a dangerous global example.
In January of this year, he Parliament of the European Union voted to allow countries, power plants and factories to claim that cutting down trees just to burn them for energy fully qualifies as low-carbon, renewable energy. It did so against the written advice of almost 800 scientists that this policy would accelerate climate change. Because meeting a small quantity of Europe’s energy use requires a large quantity of wood, and because of the example it sets for the world, the Renewable Energy Directive profoundly threatens the world’s forests.
Makers of wood products have for decades generated electricity and heat from wood process wastes, which still supply the bulk of Europe’s forest-based bioenergy. Although burning these wastes emits carbon dioxide, it benefits the climate because the wastes would quickly decompose and release their carbon anyway. Yet nearly all such wastes have long been used.
Over the last decade, however, Europe has expanded its use of wood harvested to burn directly for energy, much from U.S. and Canadian forests in the form of wood pellets. Contrary to repeated claims, almost 90% of these wood pellets come from the main stems of trees, mostly of pulpwood quality, or from sawdust otherwise used for wood products.
Greenhouse gas effects of burning wood
Unlike wood wastes, harvesting additional wood just for burning is likely to increase carbon in the atmosphere for decades to centuries. This effect results from the fact that wood is a carbon-based fuel whose harvest and use are inefficient from a greenhouse gas (GHG) perspective. Typically, around one third or more of each harvested tree is contained in roots and small branches that are properly left in the forest to protect soils but that decompose and release carbon. Wood that reaches a power plant can displace fossil emissions but per kWh of electricity typically emits 1.5x the CO2 of coal and 3x the CO2 of natural gas because of wood’s carbon bonds, water content and lower burning temperature (and pelletizing wood provides no net advantages).
Allowing trees to regrow can reabsorb the carbon, but for some years a regrowing forest typically absorbs less carbon than if the forest were left unharvested, increasing the carbon debt. Eventually, the regrowing forest grows faster and the additional carbon it then absorbs plus the reduction in fossil fuels can together pay back the carbon debt on the first stand harvested. But even then, carbon debt remains on the additional stands harvested in succeeding years, and it takes more years for more stands to regrow before there is just carbon parity between use of wood and fossil fuels. It then takes many more years of forest regrowth to achieve substantial GHG reductions.
The renewability of trees, unlike fossil fuels, helps explain why biomass can eventually reduce GHGs but only over long periods. The amount of increase in GHGs by 2050 depends on which and how forests are ultimately harvested, how the energy is used and whether wood replaces coal, oil or natural gas. Yet overall, replacing fossil fuels with wood will likely result in 2-3x more carbon in the atmosphere in 2050 per gigajoule of final energy. Because the likely renewable alternative would be truly low carbon solar or wind, the plausible, net effect of the biomass provisions could be to turn a ~5% decrease in energy emissions by 2050 into increases of ~5–10% or even more.
Consequences for forests
The implications for forests and carbon are large because even though Europe harvests almost as much wood as the US and Canada combined, these harvests could only supply ~5.5% of its primary energy and ~4% of its final energy. If wood were to supply 40% of the additional renewable energy the wood volumes required would equal all of Europe’s wood harvest. In fact, the Renewable Energy Directive sets a goal to increase by 10% renewable energy for heat, sourced overwhelmingly from wood, which would likely by itself use ~50% of Europe’s present annual wood harvest. European Commission planning documents projected somewhat smaller roles for bioenergy based on lower renewable energy targets, but they scale up to ~55–85% of Europe’s wood harvest at the larger target ultimately adopted. Supplying this level of wood will probably require expanding harvests in forests all over the world.
The global signal may have even greater effects on climate and biodiversity. At the last global climate conference, tropical forest countries and others, including Indonesia and Brazil, jointly declared goals “to increase the use of wood … to generate energy as part of efforts to limit climate change”. Once countries and powerful private companies become invested in such efforts, further expansion will become harder to stop. The effect can already be seen in the United States, where Congress in both 2017 and 2018 added provisions to annual spending bills declaring nearly all forest biomass carbon free—although environmentalists have so far fought to limit the legal effects to a single year. If the world met just an additional 2% of global primary energy with wood, it would need to double its industrial wood harvests.
Why the RED sustainability criteria are insufficient
Unfortunately, various sustainability conditions would have little consequence. For example, one repeated instruction is that harvesting trees should occur sustainably, but sustainable does not equal low carbon. Perhaps the strictest version of sustainability, often defended as a landscape approach, claims GHG reductions so long as harvest of trees in a country (or just one forest) does not exceed the forest’s incremental growth. Yet, by definition, this incremental growth would otherwise add biomass, and therefore carbon storage to the forest, holding down climate change. This carbon sink, in large part due to climate change itself, is already factored into climate projections and is not disposable. Harvesting and burning this biomass reduces the sink and adds carbon to the air just like burning any other carbon fuel. The directive only requires forests to maintain existing carbon stocks in limited circumstances, but given the size of the global forest sink, even applying such a rule everywhere would still allow global industrial wood harvests to more than triple.
The directive also repeatedly cites a goal to preserve biodiversity, but its provisions will afford little protection. Prohibitions on harvesting wood directly for bioenergy apply only to primary forests—a small share of global forests. In addition, any forests could be cut to replace the vast quantities of wood diverted from existing managed forests to bioenergy.
Some argue that increasing carbon in the atmosphere for decades is fine so long as reductions eventually occur, but timely mitigation matters. More carbon in the atmosphere for decades means more damages for decades, and more permanent damages due to more rapid melting of permafrost, glaciers and ice-sheets, and more packing of heat and acidity into the world’s oceans. Recognizing this need, the EU otherwise requires that GHG reductions occur over 20-years, but that timing does not apply to forest biomass.
Instead, the directive incorporates the view that forest biomass is inherently carbon neutral if harvested sustainably. Although the directive requires that bioenergy generate large greenhouse gas reductions, its accounting rules ignore the carbon emitted by burning biomass itself. They only count GHGs from trace gases and use of fossil fuels to produce the bioenergy, which is like counting the GHGs from coal-mining machinery but not from burning the coal.
The main new Commission thinking, reflected in the sustainability provisions, is that bioenergy rules do not need to count plant carbon so long as countries that supply the wood have commitments related to land use emissions under European rules or the Paris accord. But this thinking repeats the confusion that occurred at the time of the Kyoto Protocol between rules designed only to count global emissions and laws designed to shape national or private incentives. Under accounting rules for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries that burn biomass can ignore the resulting energy emissions because the countries that cut down the trees used for the biomass must count the carbon lost from the forest. Switching from coal to biomass allows a country to ignore real energy emissions that physically occur there, but the country supplying the wood must report higher land use emissions (at least compared to the no-bioenergy alternative). The combination does not make bioenergy carbon free because it balances out global accounting, the limited goal of national reporting.
But this accounting system does not work for national energy laws. If a country’s laws give its power plants strong financial incentives to switch from coal to wood on the theory that wood is carbon-neutral, those power plants have incentives to burn wood regardless of the real carbon consequences. Even if a country supplying the wood reports higher land use emissions through the UNFCCC, that carbon is not the power plant’s problem. Only if all potential wood-supplying countries imposed a carbon fee on the harvest of wood, and this fee equaled Europe’s financial incentive to burn it, would European power plants have a financial reason to properly factor the carbon into their decisions. No country has done that or seems likely to do so.
In fact, few countries have any obligation to compensate for reduced carbon in their forests because few countries have adopted quantitative goals in the land use sector as part of the Paris accord. Even if countries did try to make up for reduced forest carbon due to bioenergy with additional mitigation of some kind, all Europe would achieve is a requirement that its consumers pay more to do something harmful for the climate so that other countries could then spend additional money to compensate.
Europe has also created a kind of reverse strategy by treating forest and all other biomass as carbon neutral in its Emissions Trading System, which limits emissions from power plants and factories. While the not yet realized hope is to reward countries for preserving carbon in forests, this bioenergy policy means forest owners can be rewarded for the carbon in their trees—so long as they cut them down and sell them for energy. The higher the price of carbon rises, the more valuable cutting down trees will become. Strangely, this policy also undermines years of efforts to save trees by recycling used paper instead of burning it for energy. Even as recycling polices push consumers to save trees, this policy will encourage others to burn them.
Although some scientists support this use of forests, and the IPCC has found it difficult to speak clearly about biomass in the face of different views, the fact that ~800 scientists came forward provides hope of a clearer and stronger message from the scientific community. The fate of the biosphere appears at stake. Individual European countries still have discretion to pursue alternatives to forest biomass. Whatever their fields, all scientists who care should educate themselves, overcome a natural reluctance to venture into a separate and controversial field, speak with great clarity and hold public institutions to account.
References
Brienen RJW, et al (2020) Forest carbon sink neutralized by pervasive growth-lifespan trade-offs. Nature Communications.
Preface. At current rates of deforestation, forests will be gone in 100-200 years. Long before that, in 20-40 years, the effects will be felt, with a 90% chance of civilization collapse likely. Below “deforestation in the news” are excerpts from an article by Nafeez Ahmed, who is summarizes the findings of Bologna (2020) about why deforestation could cause collapse in just a few decades.
Deforestation in the news:
Gross A et al (2020) Global deforestation accelerates during pandemic. Tree cover losses increase 77% as collapse in economies pushes exploitation of resources. Financial Times. Forests have been razed at an alarming rate across Asia, Africa and Latin America during the coronavirus pandemic. Even more sinister are those parts of the world where we’re seeing deliberate attempts to use the cover of the pandemic to deforest. Deforestation releases large stores of carbon into the air and warms the atmosphere. The coronavirus pandemic has made law enforcement of illegal logging difficult as well.
Ellis-Petersen H (2020) India plans to fell ancient forest to create 40 new coalfields. The Guardian. Among them are four huge blocks of Hasdeo Arand’s 420,000 acres of forest in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, which sit above an estimated 5bn tonnes of coal. At least seven of the coal blocks up for auction were previously deemed “no go” areas for mining due to their environmentally valuable status and about 80% of the blocks are home to indigenous communities and thick forest cover. With its 45% ash content, making it some of the most polluting coal in the world, there is unlikely to be an international market for Indian coal. In addition, many major factories in India cannot run on “dirty” domestic coal, meaning they will still need to import it from abroad.
Two theoretical physicists specializing in complex systems conclude that global deforestation due to human activities is on track to trigger the “irreversible collapse” of human civilization within the next two to four decades.
If we continue destroying and degrading the world’s forests, Earth will no longer be able to sustain a large human population, according to Bologna (2020). They say that if the rate of deforestation continues, “all the forests would disappear approximately in 100–200 years.”
“Clearly it is unrealistic to imagine that the human society would start to be affected by the deforestation only when the last tree would be cut down,” they write.
This trajectory would make the collapse of human civilization take place much earlier due to the escalating impacts of deforestation on the planetary life-support systems necessary for human survival—including carbon storage, oxygen production, soil conservation, water cycle regulation, support for natural and human food systems, and homes for countless species.
In the absence of these critical services, “it is highly unlikely to imagine the survival of many species, including ours, on Earth without [forests]” the study points out. “The progressive degradation of the environment due to deforestation would heavily affect human society and consequently the human collapse would start much earlier.”
Tracking the current rate of population growth against the rate of deforestation, the authors found that “statistically the probability to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse, is very low.” Its best case scenario is that we have a less than 10 percent chance of avoiding collapse.
The underlying driver of the current collapse trajectory is that “consumption of the planetary resources may be not perceived as strongly as a mortal danger for the human civilization”, because it is “driven by Economy”. Such a civilization “privileges the interest of its components with less or no concern for the whole ecosystem that hosts them.”
The most effective way to increase our chances of survival is to shift focus from extreme self-interest to a sense of stewardship for each other, other species, and the ecosystems in which we find ourselves.
There are no signs that the annual rate of forest loss is slowing.
Only 8% of 250 “powerbroker” corporations—and less than 1% of the 150 leading lenders and investors in agricultural companies—have polices in place to eliminate or reduce deforestation.
The declaration was signed in September 2014 by 52 companies—including Unilever, Walmart and General Mills—as well as more than 30 countries and 100-plus subnational governments, indigenous groups and non-governmental organizations. They committed to 10 goals, meant to cut the world’s forest loss in half by 2020 and end it by 2030. The declaration was notable for its ambitious targets and rare collaboration among countries and corporations, and for tackling the root causes of deforestation, primarily corporate agriculture practices. The majority of tropical forest loss and degradation is driven by the production of only six commodities: palm oil, soy, beef, leather, timber, and pulp and paper.
Cutting the rate of deforestation in half, the goal of the New York declaration, would require $20 to $30 billion a year, significantly more than current pledges, which remain less than $10 billion a year, according to Boucher of the UCS.
Preface. Humans have basically taken over the best land on the planet, the places where we aren’t ruining it are really cold, high or dry areas of land, such as arctic landscapes, mountainous areas or deserts.
Humans inhabit most of the planet with just 20% of ice-free land free of our influence.
A team of researchers led by Jason Riggio at the University of California, Davis, analyzed four maps showing global human influence around the world at different times between 2009 and 2015, and created a single global map highlighting areas where people have the least influence.
Very low human influence of land is either not occupied or used by people, or has low density populations of indigenous peoples. These are primarily wilderness areas where humans are visitors, not residents.
After excluding the estimated 10 per cent of Earth that is ice-covered such as Antarctica and most of Greenland, or glaciers elsewhere in the world, and calculating the level of agreement between the four maps, they found that 21% of the remaining land on Earth has very low human influence.
Most of the low human influence areas on the planet are really cold, high or dry areas of land, such as arctic landscapes, montane areas or deserts. In contrast, only about 10% of grass lands and dry forests have low human influence.
The analysis suggests “the overall trend is that we continue to lose natural landscapes and overall human influence is increasing globally”, says Riggio.
“A global human influence map is critical to understand the extent and intensity of human pressures on Earth’s ecosystems,” says Riggio. Highlighting the few remaining areas on Earth with little human impact could also help governments and organisations to plan and prioritise which areas of the world to protect.
Preface. Build your own sustainable floating compound. At Freedom Cove, food preparation takes up a large part of the day. Without a refrigerator or freezer, the couple catch fish and grow almost all the food they consume in a large garden as well as four green houses packed tightly together with tomatoes, peppers, swiss chard, apples and corn.
To see even more pictures of this wonderful island, go here.
As stay-at-home orders due to the ongoing pandemic have forced many of us to learn to love solitude and become reacquainted with our homes, one couple’s life has remained virtually unchanged. Ten miles north of Tofino, British Columbia, off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Catherine King and Wayne Adams live on a sustainable, floating compound. It’s called “Freedom Cove,” a labor of love, hand-built using recycled and salvaged materials. It’s been their home for the past 29 years. Freedom Cove is a 25-minute boat ride away from the closest town, and don’t even think about hopping in a car. “The only option to get here is by water,” Adams says. “There are no road accesses. The water is our highway.”
Welcome to Freedom Cove, a sustainable island fortress floating off the coast of Vancouver Island.While there are lines that tether the compound back to the shore, it is not anchored to the ocean floor. When you arrive, you’re immediately greeted by bright magenta buildings with dark turquoise trim. An archway of whale bones welcomes you in. The compound has everything you could possibly think of and more: a dance floor, an art gallery, a candle factory, four greenhouses, six solar panels, and access to a small waterfall that provides constant running water.
It has its own waste management system
The couple has even figured out their own waste management system. “It’s the most common question we’re asked,” Adams says. They installed a floating tank to, in Adams’ words, “deal with the affluence.” If they wanted to, King and Adams could completely self-sustain on Freedom Cove without ever needing to go into the city.
It was inspired by nature
As artists, King and Adams always drew inspiration from nature. Visitors are greeted by two large whale ribs that form the entrance. Artists Catherine King and Wayne Adams have called Freedom Cove home since 1992.Adams is a carver, using found elements in nature – like feathers and bones – to create his works. King is an artist, dancer and a natural healer, having studied homeopathy. But why live off the grid?”I wanted to be a successful, wealthy artist, live in Tofino and have a studio in the wilderness, like all good rich artists should,” Adams says. “I was hoping to make a lot more money as an artist. We could never buy real estate, so we had to make our own.”A call from nature pushed them to make their dreams a reality.
It was the result of an accident
After staying in a friend’s cabin in Cypress Bay, a large storm blew wood onto the property. King and Adams gathered the wood and used it to build the bones of what would become their future home.”I guess we were being given a sign that this is the time to begin,” Adams recalls. As they continued to further grow their home, the couple followed with their precedent of only using recycled and salvaged materials. Thanks to a piece of Plexiglass in their living room, Adams is able to fish from the comfort of his couch. Many parts were gathered from loggers and fishermen in town. Adams would trade them art for whatever they had in their backyard, whether that was old fish farms or floats. A piece of Plexiglass scrounged up from the Victoria Hockey Rink forms a clear glass floor in their living room, which Adams can lift up to fish from the comfort of his couch.
It began as a sort of ‘downsizing’
Prior to Freedom Cove, the couple lived in an apartment in Tofino. They call their move into nature a “deceleration process.” “We had all kinds of things like food processors and items that would require a lot of electricity,” King remembers. “We gave them away to people and unloaded a lot of things in preparation.” They had no choice. The first iteration of their floating home had no running water and no power.Today, their day-to-day is quite a bit different to what it was in Tofino. “Living out here, you can’t just get instant anything,” King says. “We can’t just order a pizza … we can’t just go to the corner store … You have to do the work to get what you want, if you want it.”
It’s more than just home, they say
Doing that work is an ongoing process of learning, changing and growing. King starts her day by sweeping and shaking out the carpets. “In the wilderness, there’s always a lot of dirt and dust,” she says. The floating compound houses a dance floor, an art gallery, a candle factory, four greenhouses, six solar panels, and a small waterfall that provides constant running water. She then waters her thousands of plants and vegetable gardens – all germinated from seeds – and rows out in her canoe to gather seaweed for compost. Adams begins by gathering firewood and starting a fire to make sure the house is heated.They both work on building new components for their home. “It is a project,” King says. “It is a project in growing food to provide for the family. It is an art project … It is a project to have a space to move, to dance, to play music, to do things spontaneously that you couldn’t just do in the same way if you were in the city.”
Their neighbors are … unusual
And while they may not have any human neighbors for miles, the couple still has plenty of company. “We have some resident crows here who are part of the family,” Adams says. “We know all the birds here.””We have named Harry the heron, Sylvie the seal,” King adds. “Gertrude and Heathcliff the seagulls.””I had lived in the big city, I knew what that was like,” King says. “I really needed the peace of the wilderness.” Twenty-nine years later, that’s still the greatest draw of their home. “Going into a city is just shocking in the sound department,” King says. “I get kind of jangled up inside … the noise starts to get to me, I find it’s easy for me to lose my center.””We have carved a piece of the world out for ourselves here,” King says. “We can live uniquely, differently than anyone else on the planet.”But, how about seasickness?”I don’t get seasick,” Adams says. “When I go to town, I get land-sick.”
Preface. You’d need 100,000 metric tons of batteries taking 40% of cargo space to go from Asia to Europe in 31 days on an 18,000 TEU container ship, and it is hard to imagine how or how long it would take to recharge these batteries. In comparison, the same ship just needs 4,650 metric tons of diesel fuel.
At some point of oil decline, wooden sailing vessels will come back in style. It’s well past time to plant more forests in anticipation, since trees take decades to grow, and world oil production probably peaked in 2018. Forests also remove CO2, probably more than batteries when their full life cycle of mining, fabrication, and so on are considered.
Just about everything you wear or use around the house once sat in steel boxes on ships whose diesel engines propel them from Asia, emitting particulates and carbon dioxide. Surely, you would think, we can do better.
After all, we’ve had electric locomotives for more than a century and high-speed electric trains for more than half a century, and recently we have been expanding the global fleet of electric cars. Why not get electric container ships? Actually, the first one should begin to operate this year: the Yara Birkeland, built by Marin Teknikk, in Norway, is not only the world’s first electric-powered, zero-emissions container ship but also the first autonomous commercial vessel.
But don’t write off giant diesel-powered container ships and their critical role in a globalized economy just yet. Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation that explains why.
Containers come in different sizes, but most are the standard twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU)—rectangular prisms 6.1 meters (20 feet) long and 2.4 meters wide. The first small container ships of the 1960s carried mere hundreds of TEUs; now Maersk’s Triple-E class ships load 18,000 TEUs, and OOCL Hong Kong holds the record, at 21,413. At the “super slow steaming,” fuel-saving speed of 16 knots, these ships can make the journey from Hong Kong to Hamburg in 31 days.
Now look at the Yara Birkeland. It will carry just 120 TEU, its service speed will be 6 knots, its longest intended operation will be 30 nautical miles—between Herøya and Larvik, in Norway—and its batteries will deliver 7 to 9 megawatt hours. Today’s state-of-the-art diesel container vessels thus carry 150 times as many boxes over distances 400 times as long at speeds three to four times as fast as the pioneering electric ship can handle.
What would it take to make an electric ship that can carry 18,000 TEUs? In a 31-day trip, today’s efficient diesel vessel burns 4,650 metric tons of fuel (bunker or diesel), each ton packing 42 gigajoules. That’s an energy density of about 11,700 watt-hours per kilogram, versus 300 Wh/kg for today’s lithium-ion batteries, a nearly 40-fold difference.
The total fuel demand for the trip is about 195 terajoules, or 54 gigawatt-hours. Large diesels (and those in the ships are the largest we have) are about 50 percent efficient, hence their useful propulsive energy demand is about 27 GWh. To match that demand, large electric motors operating at 90 percent efficiency would need about 30 GWh of electricity.
Load the ship with today’s best commercial Li-ion batteries (300 Wh/kg) and still it would have to carry about 100,000 metric tons of them to go nonstop from Asia to Europe in 31 days. Those batteries alone would take up about 40 percent of maximum cargo capacity, an economically ruinous proposition, never mind the difficulties involved in charging and operating the ship. And even if we push batteries to an energy density of 500 Wh/kg sooner than might be expected, an 18,000-TEU vessel would still need nearly 60,000 metric tons of them for a long intercontinental voyage at a relatively slow speed.
The conclusion is obvious. To have an electric ship whose batteries and motors weighed no more than the fuel (about 5,000 metric tons) and the diesel engine (about 2,000 metric tons) in today’s large container vessels, we would need batteries with an energy density more than 10 times as high as today’s best Li-ion units.
That’s a tall order indeed: In the past 70 years the energy density of the best commercial batteries hasn’t even quadrupled.
Preface. Mother Nature has had enough and is biting us back. Climate change will increase the chance of a Southwest megadrought that lasts longer than those in the past.
The drought in nine U.S. states, from Oregon and Montana down through California to New Mexico, lasted from 2000 to 2018 and was among the most severe to strike the region in the last 1,200 years, a new study finds. In the past megadroughts lasted from 50 to 90 years, and the hotter temperatures of today could make this and future droughts even worse.
Tree ring–based reconstructions of past climate from 1586 sites in the Western U.S. reveal just one drier 19-year period: a powerful “megadrought” from 1575 to 1593 that may have contributed to the abandonment of Anasazi from their settlements in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. Plus caused a faster, more devasting spread of disease brought by Spanish conquistadors.
The 16th century megadrought coincided with a powerful La Niña event. And in the last two decades there’ve been more La Nina than El nino years.
But we can’t blame it entirely on La Nina.
It’s up to half due to climate change and rising temperatures. Hot air holds more moisture which it absorbs from shrubs, trees and the ground, drying them out. It also reduces snowpack and river flows, and increases wildfire seasons. Climate change makes the difference between a manageable drought and severe consequences, and makes it more likely this megadrought will continue.
If this turns into a long megadrought it would be catastrophic for California’s 40 million people, farm production cut in half, and ecosystems suffer the most of all.
And the population of the Southwest continues to grow exponentially.
***
Likely future consequences:
Escobar, H. Feb 20, 2015. Drought triggers alarms in Brazil’s biggest metropolis. Science 347: 812. Driven by a mysterious atmospheric anomaly, a 2-year-long drought has triggered a crippling water crisis in southeast Brazil, a region of 85 million people that includes the nation’s biggest metropolis, São Paulo. The São Paulo government has reduced the water pressure in its mains, which regularly leaves faucets running dry. And it is now taking a carrot-and-stick approach to water usage, financially rewarding those who conserve and fining those who waste. Barring a sudden reversal of meteorological misfortune, officials are contemplating drastic rationing that would deprive millions of households of water for up to 5 days a week. “We are talking about the possible collapse of our most important water supplies.” Some are bracing for rioting. “There is a real risk of social convulsion,” warns José Galizia Tundisi, a hydrologist with the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
A ‘megadrought’ will grip U.S. in the coming decades, NASA researchers say. Researchers from NASA and Cornell and Columbia universities warned of an 80% chance of mega-droughts lasting up to 40 years in the southwest and central USA, with major water shortages. This dries out vegetation, which can lead to monster wildfires in like recent fires in southern Arizona and parts of California.
If you’d like to know how to fund these measures, then go here. To take action, go here.
Since what I write is such devastating news to people who stumbled on this on a search, or who recently lost their energy blindness, I feel obligated to have a “What To Do” category. I was devastated for months after reading about Hubbert’s Curve in 2000 on top of already having read “Limits to Growth” and “Overshoot” decades earlier. There are actions to be taken to get through the bottleneck, and you will meet interesting and wonderful people along your journey while you learn new skills.
The “Real Green New Deal” site describes itself as “a top-down and bottom-up approach to the energy descent transformation, covering actions that governments and individuals can take. We focus predominantly on policy recommendations for government since creating change from within the system would be the most effectual and since individual behavior is constrained to such a large degree by the current system.
But we simultaneously recognize that it is the actions of everyday people that influence the governments we institute, whether through who we vote for, what information or rhetoric we chose to accept and act upon, what we do or don’t push back against, or how we respond on an individual level to the chronic psychological afflictions imposed by today’s dysfunctional world.
We suggest an initial set of recommendations – along with how to pay for them – to be pursued now, ahead of the more specific and likely radically transformative recommendations contained in the final Action Plan. Some echo those that have grown in recent popularity while others are less common or perhaps novel.”
Enact a national one-child policy, encouraging the global community to do the same
Make all forms of birth control (including those for men) free, and in the case of non-surgical forms, available over the counter
Make abortion free and widely available
Pay women/couples a significant financial incentive to have one child or none
Educate children and adults alike about the harmful impacts of overpopulation and its central role in our overshoot crisis, shifting from a human-centric view of the world to an inclusive view that honors and respects all life
Replace the taboo surrounding population with a moral imperative to make it a front-and-center social topic
Given our moral responsibility for global restitution, provide financial assistance to countries who seek it in order to help enact similar policies
Empire
Close all overseas military bases
Cease all overseas military operations
Stop military funding and arms sales to foreign countries
Close unnecessary domestic military bases
Reduce the size of our armed forces
Abandon the use of Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs) in exchange for official declarations of war by Congress, as is its constitutional responsibility
Dissolve NATO
End contracting of military and defense-related products and services to private companies
Democracy
GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS and establish 100% publicly funded elections at all levels of government
Enact ranked-choice-voting
End voter discrimination laws and constitutional eviscerations
Undo gerrymandering
Increase voting access (e.g. Automatic Voter Registration in every state, mail-in ballots in every state, national holidays for elections)
Ban electronic voting machines
Eliminate the Electoral College
Establish 100% public funding for the media
Equality of Treatment & Opportunity
Make corporations actually pay their taxes, potentially increasing their rates
Shut down overseas tax havens
End subsidies to harmful industries
Break up monopolies
Enact a fairer tax code in which average people pay less and the very wealthy pay more
Increase the minimum wage to $25/hour
Enact Medicare-for-All
Forgive all student loans and make higher education free
End the war on drugs, pardon all drug-related offenders in prison, and decriminalize low-level possession of all illegal drugs
Issue financial reparations to the African American and Native American communities
Money and Finance
Put an end to interest-bearing debt
Ban the financial markets that “Wall Street” has become a symbol for, allowing instead for community-level capital raising
Abolish the Federal Reserve (a private corporation accountable to no one) and absorb its functions back into Congress, as dictated by the Constitution
Infrastructure
Place a moratorium on major infrastructure projects in light of:
The significant drawbacks of so-called renewable technologies
The need to re-design infrastructure in a highly decentralized, self-sufficient way with all life cycle needs (energy production, water acquisition, and waste treatment) handled on-site
The likelihood that many technologies and conveniences we enjoy today will not be possible in the energy and resource constrained future we imminently face
Consumption & pollution
Nationalize fossil fuel companies and establish a plan for phase-out
Ban the exploration of new fossil fuel reserves (i.e. oil, shale, gas) and the development of new extraction sites
Fine heavily toxic industrial processes
Ban factory farming
Offer significant financial incentives for the conversion of monoculture operations to polyculture regimes that are small-scale, humane, free of fossil fuel inputs, and implement rigorous water conservation methods
Provide legal and financial incentives to ensure seed conservation and ban activities that threaten it
Offer financial incentives for the expansion of hemp farming
Offer financial incentives to businesses that source local products
Fine major businesses that don’t make easily repairable products
Place a tax on companies that extract metals and water
Terminate so-called free trade agreements
Invest in sailing ship companies and financially incentivize their use for international transportation
Ecosystem health
Endorse and begin implementing the Nature Needs Half proposal, which calls for protecting 50% of the planet by 2030 using an ecoregion approach
Significantly increase funding for ecosystem restoration projects
Individual Action
Engage in the inner transformation that goes hand-in-hand with transforming the outer world, for example
Cultivate critical, independent thinking that inoculates against propaganda and manufactured consent
Question and examine your mental models and change them when confronted with compelling information
Spend as much time in nature and connecting with the non-human world as possible
Develop practices that help you slow down, relax, and connect with the stillness and wisdom within
Learn as many self-sufficiency skills as possible and do whatever you can to be as fossil fuel free as possible, whether on a household or community level
Engage in strategic, direct action to impel system change
Visitors are greeted by two large whale ribs that form the entrance. Artists Catherine King and Wayne Adams have called Freedom Cove home since 1992.Adams is a carver, using found elements in nature – like feathers and bones – to create his works. King is an artist, dancer and a natural healer, having studied homeopathy. But why live off the grid?”I wanted to be a successful, wealthy artist, live in Tofino and have a studio in the wilderness, like all good rich artists should,” Adams says. “I was hoping to make a lot more money as an artist. We could never buy real estate, so we had to make our own.”A call from nature pushed them to make their dreams a reality.
Thanks to a piece of Plexiglass in their living room, Adams is able to fish from the comfort of his couch. Many parts were gathered from loggers and fishermen in town. Adams would trade them art for whatever they had in their backyard, whether that was old fish farms or floats. A piece of Plexiglass scrounged up from the Victoria Hockey Rink forms a clear glass floor in their living room, which Adams can lift up to fish from the comfort of his couch.
The floating compound houses a dance floor, an art gallery, a candle factory, four greenhouses, six solar panels, and a small waterfall that provides constant running water. She then waters her thousands of plants and vegetable gardens – all germinated from seeds – and rows out in her canoe to gather seaweed for compost. Adams begins by gathering firewood and starting a fire to make sure the house is heated.They both work on building new components for their home. “It is a project,” King says. “It is a project in growing food to provide for the family. It is an art project … It is a project to have a space to move, to dance, to play music, to do things spontaneously that you couldn’t just do in the same way if you were in the city.”
