Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It gives me the greatest pleasure this morning to launch the Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan website. The site makes the full version of the UK’s first EDAP freely available, invites comments and discussion, and will act as a dynamic portal for people to discuss the Plan and reshape subsequent revisions.
This post was inspired by single bicycle holiday: an Easter cycling adventure around the Spanish Pyrenees. While the experience proved that cycle holidays can be fun (its primary purpose), it soon became clear that the single case study could provide a basis for practical advice and broader discussion. The former (stuff, planning, safety, money) may be of use to aspiring low-energy holidaymakers. The latter (energy analysis, viability) may be of interest to those who want to think about low energy futures.
Oil demand was down this week — as were most European flight schedules. The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano wrought further damage to the airline industry,which is already on its heels as a result of high fuel prices and recession…
A weekly review including:
– Production and prices
– The volcano
– Update on the droughts
The bottom line of the last few weeks is that there will be many more factors shaping the end of the oil age than a simple geologic reduction in the amount of oil that can be pumped. We already know about “above ground factors” such as wars, nationalism, lack of investment, and their affect on global oil production and the price of oil products. It is now becoming apparent that Mother Nature in the form of droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes and erupting volcanoes is likely to have a significant voice in how the oil age ends too.
As the skies remain quiet here, we are reminded how much we rely on air travel, not just for business meetings and holidays but to keep the supermarket stocked. According to the Guardian newspaper, Ireland and England might experience a temporary shortage of fruit, which is grown in Australia, New Zealand and other distant lands and transported to the other side of the planet every day to be eaten in huge quantities in Europe.
– Inside Cuba’s urban agriculture revolution (video)
– Flight ban could leave UK short of fruit and veg
– Beating obesity
– The trouble with Brazil’s much-celebrated ethanol ‘miracle’
– ‘Biggest problem you’ve never heard of’: Peak phosphorus
– Phosphorus famine: The threat to our food supply (Scientific American)
The volcanic eruption is also of interest to environmental researchers who can, now that the air-traffic has been stopped, measure how the atmosphere changes when it is released from the burden of aviation’s emissions: “This is a huge experiment with the environment that we could never afford to do otherwise…”, says Kjell Aleklett, professor in global energy systems at Uppsala University.
U. S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood may soon be nominated for heresy-of-the-year award for an impromptu speech at the 2010 National Bike Summit last month. In that speech he said federal transportation policy will no longer favor automobiles over bicyclists and walkers. As anyone who regularly rides a bicycle knows, this change is big precisely because automobiles and bicycles share much of the same infrastructure. But this very fact may bode ill for the bicycle in a post-oil future.
In this final installment of the Minimum EROI series we calculate the minimum EROI required from our energy sources to support the current transportation infrastructure of the U.S.
Peak oil – arriving or already arrived – is placing a tremendous strain on the world’s economy. Because of this strain, the kind of money used for maintaining roads is quickly disappearing and the result is the return of unpaved roads. … in the coming years we’ll see more and more roads returning to gravel, as it was commonplace in the Western World up to about 50 years ago.
A Bloomberg poll of leading US economists found that 79% were “shocked” or “dismayed” by the recently-readjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that labor productivity in the United States plunged by 13.8% in 2010. Asked how they felt about the corresponding sharp decline in U3 unemployment – from 10.1% to 6.3% – 31% of these economists said improved employment numbers were “welcome”, but 88% considered the correlation (between falling productivity and falling unemployment) “counterintuitive” or “irrelevant”. All agreed that the top priority must be to return to increased productivity and healthy economic growth as rapidly as possible.
