Anyhow, here are also some random thoughts of the day that I thought are good to write up about:

Ready for another recession? And gas prices of 2 euros per liter?

There is an important topic that has been sorely missing from mainstream media; once we get out of this recession and oil demand rises, so will the prices since supply cannot – and never again will – keep up. However, most of the world cannot afford prices of $150 or $200 per barrel, so the increasing energy costs will drag the world economy into another recession. And so it will continue until alternative energy supplies will be scaled up to make some meaningful impact; let’s say 20 years minimum.

As a consumer in Finland, this means gas prices (and the prices of everything else, too, for that matter) will rise soon enough. They may even hit 2 euros per liter or even higher, whereas in many other parts of the world the relative impact will be even greater “thanks” to our tax structure. Now would be a good time to start tracking and comparing prices at the pump with crude prices as the general feeling is that companies always hike prices when crude prices go up but “never” lower them. Might make for an interesting graph in a few years’ time.

Elsewhere, this and related topics have been covered nicely lately. I recommend at least:
• The Oil Drum: The trouble with energy
• Resource Insights: Which matters most? The size of the tap or the tank?
• Peak Oil News: Peak Oil Crisis: stifling a rebound

Swine flu making its rounds

So it seems swine flu is quickly becoming established pretty much everywhere. Even here in the remote Northern parts of the world, there has been the first confirmed “local” infection. The good news, of course, is that the strain is proving to be a very mild one indeed – reportedly even milder than “normal” influenza, which is great. But the worry remains that it might mutate into something significantly worse while it’s making its rounds.. so perhaps it’d be better to catch it now and be done with it? Maybe a swine flu infection now would offer immunity even against the potential new mutations? Or not.

Another thing I wondered was whether there have ever been studies on whether people using public transport get more (or less) influenza infections than people driving private cars? It might seem that people on a bus are in a greater risk, but they might also have better resistance to bugs in general due to broad exposure of all kinds of viruses. Anyone know of any studies to this regard?

According to the NAS report, a severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people. From that moment, the clock is ticking for America.

First to go – immediately for some people – is drinkable water. Anyone living in a high-rise apartment, where water has to be pumped to reach them, would be cut off straight away. For the rest, drinking water will still come through the taps for maybe half a day. With no electricity to pump water from reservoirs, there is no more after that.

There is simply no electrically powered transport: no trains, underground or overground. Our just-in-time culture for delivery networks may represent the pinnacle of efficiency, but it means that supermarket shelves would empty very quickly – delivery trucks could only keep running until their tanks ran out of fuel, and there is no electricity to pump any more from the underground tanks at filling stations.

Back-up generators would run at pivotal sites – but only until their fuel ran out. For hospitals, that would mean about 72 hours of running a bare-bones, essential care only, service. After that, no more modern healthcare.

The truly shocking finding is that this whole situation would not improve for months, maybe years: melted transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced. “From the surveys I’ve done, you might have a few spare transformers around, but installing a new one takes a well-trained crew a week or more,” says Kappenman. “A major electrical utility might have one suitably trained crew, maybe two.”

Within a month, then, the handful of spare transformers would be used up. The rest will have to be built to order, something that can take up to 12 months.

Even when some systems are capable of receiving power again, there is no guarantee there will be any to deliver. Almost all natural gas and fuel pipelines require electricity to operate. Coal-fired power stations usually keep reserves to last 30 days, but with no transport systems running to bring more fuel, there will be no electricity in the second month.

Read the article and the report for more. But all this provides some serious food for thought; isn’t a society that could collapse within days or weeks just a little bit too reliant on electricity? Shouldn’t we be better prepared for events like these?

You bet – and I bet we aren’t even thinking about it in the right places.

Resources / further reading

• New Scientist article: Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe
• Space Studies Board of National Academy of Sciences (NAS): Severe Space Weather Events–Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts (read online for free!)
• A semi-related book: Electric Universe (my review here)

However, I think the main point is more appropriately captured by this photo, the original author of which I unfortunately don’t know:

Just think about that next time you fill up and whine about the gas prices. Or if you represent a company in the biofuels business, you may want to think again whether promoting 1st generation biofuels is all that great after all, as I pointed out just a couple of posts ago.

Of course, none of this is news to those keeping an eye of what’s been happening. It has for years been known that 1st generation biofuels compete with food production. In essence it puts the person filling up the tank of his or her car in direct competition with some of the poor people in the world buying food to feed themselves.

It will not be – and is not – a pretty situation for the poorer counterpart.

And it’s the way things are going to be, too. Fuel prices will continue to rise, despite of and actually especially in the face of lunatic energy policies globally until significant demand destruction takes place. Of course, there are different degrees of lunacy; in many (or most) countries consumers cry for easing fuel taxes or any way of bringing down the fuel costs. The fact that some governments are caving in is bad enough, but then there’s one country that’s contemplating suing OPEC for limiting oil production. They won’t, of,course, but the mere gesture is so outrageously ridiculous it’s hard to understand. Peak Oil, anyone? Hello? Doesn’t ring a bell?

The era of cheap oil is OVER. Permanently, irrevocably over. Just how difficult can that be to understand? Just get over it. Does it hurt to fill up so often? Drive less. You “have to” drive since your commute is 50km each way with no access to public transport? Move. Who told you to live far out in the proverbial suburbia anyway? At least pressure your county/town/city to build some public transport infrastructure. Life’s full of choices and the rising energy price is hopefully forcing people, corporations and governments alike to choose a bit more environmentally friendly options in all walks of life.

Check out this great post by Richard Heinberg. In the end, it really does come down to this:

We will drive less, we will fly less, and we will grow our food more locally with fewer inputs. But these changes will go far more smoothly if we plan for them, rather than being forced into them at the nozzle of an empty gas pump. There is a cliché in action films: “We can do this the hard way, or we can do it the easy way.” Blaming OPEC while doing nothing to rein in our domestic demand for petroleum only ensures that we will be adapting to Peak Oil the hard way.

Indeed. Calling for tax cuts and whining about fuel prices while doing nothing to conserve fuel, failing to look for alternatives with any serious effort and neglecting to improve the public transit infrastructure are also ways of insuring we do it the hard way.

Links

• The Market Traders: Foreign Oil Dependency and Political Lunacy
• Peak Oil News / Richard Heinberg: Have we really hit peak oil?
• An example of just how wrong analysts can be; CNNMoney.com on “Why oil won’t hit $100″ from less than a year ago.
• Energy Bulletin: The illusion of vast undeveloped U.S. oil resources
• The Oil Drum: Countdown to $200 oil
• Jamais Cascio: The suburban question
• The Economist: Double, oil and trouble
• The Oil Drum: Why oil costs over $120 per barrel (excellent overview)

Ps. As a sidenote, it’s generally agreed that there is only one oil-producing country in the world that is not (or may not be) pumping flat out as it is – Saudi Arabia. And contrary to popular opinion, them not taking into use the modest reserve capacity they have or may have is a very good thing. If even they pumped at full capacity, the world oil supplies would be even less resistant to disruptions and Peak Oil itself would come that much sooner. What we really need is to implement a controlled, predictable decline of global oil production.

You have to hand it to Google, they’re not lacking in ambition. Check out the press release from yesterday:

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as RE<c , will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies. RE<C is hiring engineers and energy experts to lead its research and development work, which will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas. In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy. As part of its capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.

Full press release here. Can you imagine any other ICT-company sending out such a press release and surviving the ridicule and skepticism?

I hope they pull it off and that RE<C will be wildly successful.

The article cited, among other things, rising costs and shortage of labor and equipment for causing delays to new projects, but also mentions there are not enough new projects in the pipeline. Whatever the reasons, 9% fall in oil production is a pretty significant amount. I don’t doubt that production will recover from those numbers somewhat, but any recovery in the output will inevitably be temporary as even the optimistic estimates put peak oil only about 15 years into the future.

Given the amount of time it takes to wean a country of its oil addiction – or even start reducing the dependency – it’s high time we did something else than build new highways and parking garages.

So it would appear that these “win-win-win” cases are the actions that we should take immediately without any hesitation – the result is so clear that of course these things are already being done, right? Right?!

I wish. Stuff like lighting improvements and better insulation pays themselves back in remarkably short times, yet almost nobody cares about doing anything about it. Again quoting the Economist article:

People find their electricity bills too boring to think about [..] people clearly do not care enough about cost.

How incredibly sad.

For more information, see the resources below. I would recommend checking out at least the Vattenfall PDF presentation and the short Economist article.

Resources:

• Economist: Irrational incandescence
• Vattenfall: curbing climate change
• Vattenfall: Global Mapping of Greenhouse Gas Abatement Opportunities
• Australian Government Greenhouse Gas Abatement Programme
• Compact fluorescent bulbs from bulbs.com (for 110V only)

Which is why this post is not about climate change. This is about pointing out that there are plenty of other things that are wrong with our global environment in addition to climate change. As is the case with climate change, we have the technology to solve these other issues also – what we lack is political will. The first problem on the way to solving these things is awareness. While global action is needed to get things done, not many people are aware of the other issues in locations where they’re not acute. To solve this on a personal level (and personal level is where it has to start), there are both light and heavy methods. On the lighter end of the scale is watching a movie, and one could start with the 11th Hour. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but from what I’ve heard and seen it looks promising. Here’s the trailer:

The other, heavier, route is to read some books. To get started on this path I wholeheartedly recommend reading Plan B 2.0, of which I wrote a review last year. One could also take a look at Jared Diamond’s Collapse (review here).

In any case, both routes take to one very important message that needs to be heeded. Quoting 11th Hour, we “face the convergence of crisis, all of which are a concern for life”. At least in Finland, all the other crisis are woefully missed as people have just recently “discovered” climate change. But in reality, in addition to climate change, we’re also facing peak oil (or as can be convincingly argued, peak energy), global freshwater shortages, pollution, deforestation, soil loss and collapsing fisheries – and those are just some of the big issues. Each of these could have a more imminent impact on the state of the world than climate change with consequences just about as dire.

Amidst all of these impending and imminent disasters, it’s all too easy to just throw your hands in the air and give up in the face of a hopeless situation. But is the situation completely hopeless? No, it’s not. But that doesn’t mean it’s “somebody else’s problem” either – we all need to get our facts straight and put some serious pressure on the economic and political systems that have so far miserably failed to ensure the long-term survivability of the planet.

To many people in the so-called western countries, many of the points can be difficult to drive home. If you don’t see the pollution, it can’t be so bad, right? If you still find fish from the supermarket, we must still have plenty in the sea, no?

Unfortunately those are all fallacies, and lethal ones at that. Reading up on the topics will help, but nothing beats seeing the impact first hand. Something that we can all do, regardless of where we live, is to understand the impact of trash – take a tour of your local dumping ground. In bigger cities, these vast areas of trash are a good way to drive home the impact of our consumption-oriented culture and the damage that disposable items create. And if you’re lucky enough to live in Australia, you surely already know about the serious water shortages, soil salination and other issues that country is facing.

Finally, here are some practical tips as to what each and every one of us can do to help lessen our ecological footprint. I’ve specifically avoided things that, while beneficial for the environment, could by some be interpreted as lowering their quality of life (such as not traveling) – instead, all of the below are not only good for the environment, but are likely to improve your quality of life also. Maybe if we start from these win-wins, it’ll be easier to move on to the things that require some sacrifice from our part:

• Change to high-efficiency light bulbs. By consuming a lot less electricity and lasting much longer, they pay themselves back in no time. To be honest, the companies have some way to go here: the form factor of high-efficiency bulbs leaves a lot to be desired and some company ought to bring more LED-based lights to our market as they would be the best solution.
• Buy good-quality stuff but more rarely. It doesn’t make sense to buy a number of new shoes every summer or new coats every winter. Buy things that are good enough to last you a long time – not only will they actually be better in use, you save resources.
• Buy local food whenever possible – not the stuff shipped from halfway across the planet. Usually it’ll taste better, too, provided it’s been picked / harvested at the right time (which is easier when you don’t need to transport things far away).
• Use public transportation when you can, not your own car. This not only eases traffic jams and saves the environment, but it also frees your time to do whatever you want. Read, write, work, even sleep – especially the latter is difficult to do safely if driving.
• Whenever you can, bike or walk instead of using some assisted means of transport. From stairs vs elevators to walking vs driving, exercising will inevitably make you feel better in the long term. There are more opportunities for this than you may think – contrary to what many people think, half a mile is walking distance.
• Work closer to where you live – or vice versa. If you commute 45mins each way every day, just count how many hours and hours you’re wasting every month. By working closer to where you live you cut down on unnecessary transportation and you also gain more of the most precious commodity we have – time.

You can find more detailed practical tips and a list of “green” products from http://www.wecanlivegreen.com/.