Perish as We Populate

Now it’s perish as we populate

By Ian Lowe

25 September 2009 Canberra Times

The latest population figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics are
alarming. New demographic figures show Australia’s population grew by
439,000 in the year to March 2009, including net overseas migration of
239,000. The growth rate of 2.1 per cent was the highest since the 1950s.

The growth rate threatens our living standards as well as worsening our
environmental problems. A responsible government would be acting now to curb
the unsustainable growth, rather than celebrating the disastrous trend.

Australia’s rate of population growth is now among the highest in the
industrialised world. Among Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development countries, only Turkey and Mexico had higher annual growth rates
in recent years. Irresponsible increases in migration have added to the
recent surge in the population.

If 2008 fertility and migration levels were to continue, Australia’s
population would triple by the end of this century and remain on a growth
trajectory. With more sensible policies, we could stabilise our population
around mid- century. That should be our goal.

Three national reports on the state of the environment have concluded that
the important trends are going in the wrong direction. Our inland rivers,
the coastal zone, rural land and our unique biodiversity are all threatened.
Australia’s greenhouse pollution is spiralling out of control, the product
of a rapidly growing population and increasing energy use per person. We
must stabilise our population and consumption at levels that can be
sustainably supported. There is a clear link between population growth and
environmental damage. Growing populations require additional energy, water
and other resources.

All our major cities are under strain from their increasing numbers. We
see pressure on water resources, loss of natural habitat on the urban
fringe, increasing greenhouse pollution from transport and other energy use,
air quality impacts and loss of the built heritage. The problems are
particularly evident in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, where there is
increasing community concern at the erosion of the quality of life. Even in
Adelaide, where the state government seems disappointed that the population
isn’t growing as rapidly as other cities, the semi-rural fringe is being
concreted over at an alarming rate. The pressure on our cities is being
compounded by smaller households. There were 3.5 people per dwelling in
1960; the figure now is 2.5 and falling. At the same time, the average house
has got larger.

Outside our major cities, there is pressure to develop resources,
intensify agricultural production, and over-extract water from natural
systems as a function of increasing urban consumption. The intense
development of many coastal areas, for holiday homes and ‘’sea change”
migrants from urban centres, is eroding the quality and resilience of
natural coastal systems.

The arguments for continued growth are not consistent or honest. We are
being told we need to bring in more migrants to fill alleged job shortages.
At the same time, it is claimed we can’t provide work for young Australians
and that government needs to work on ”jobs, jobs, jobs”. Those two claims
cannot both be true. We are also told we need to fear an ageing population,
but migrants grow old just like the rest of us.

Peter McDonald, director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research
Institute, has said the argument that migration can keep our population
young is ”demographic nonsense”. What is the alternative? Our aim should
be to stabilise our population. This means we must have a look at migration
levels.

Immigration has enriched Australia’s cultural and social life. We have
important international humanitarian responsibilities, including the need to
accept refugees. But more than 50 per cent of recent migrants arrived as
‘’skilled” people, with only 7 per cent coming on humanitarian grounds.
Overwhelmingly, migration has been serving the business community’s wish for
a pool of labour, rather than meeting our responsibility to accept refugees.
Australia can meet and increase its humanitarian obligations and continue to
accommodate family reunions, while reducing overall migration to more
sustainable levels.

Demographic studies show that if the net inward migration is about 70,000
a year or less, the population will stabilise in about the 2050s. If the net
migration figure is above 70,000 a year (it was 253,400 in 2008) the
population keeps increasing far into the future. That is a grim prospect of
continuing decline in our quality of life and the state of our environment.

There is no realistic prospect of meeting responsible targets for reduced
greenhouse pollution if we keep increasing population numbers. For the sake
of future generations, we need a serious community debate about population.

Population Delusion

From latest New Scientist population feature reinforce much of our recent discussion.

The population delusion

* 25 September 2009 by Alison George
* New Scientist Magazine issue 2727.

THINK of the biggest crowd you’ve ever been in – perhaps 50,000 in a sports stadium. Just 6 hours from now there will be that many more people in the world, and another 50,000 in the following 6 hours, and on and on… No wonder that the burgeoning human population is often seen as is the single biggest problem facing our world.

There are nearly 7 billion humans alive today, twice as many as there were in 1965, with 75 million more being added each year. UN predictions say there could be an extra 2 to 4 billion of us by 2050. The planet has never experienced anything like it.

Can the world sustain this growing horde? It’s a contentious question. While it is clear that the population cannot go on increasing forever, history is littered with dire but failed predictions of famine and death resulting from over-population. Most famously, Thomas Malthus warned more than two centuries ago that population would be held in check by rising mortality. What he failed to anticipate was the ability of newly industrialised societies to support large numbers of people.

Today, the “population problem” is firmly back on the agenda. Earlier this year the UK government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington predicted a population-led global crisis by 2030, and a group of influential billionaires including Bill Gates and George Soros identified overpopulation as the greatest threat facing humanity. Every time we publish an article in New Scientist detailing yet another of the planet’s environmental woes, readers respond by arguing that the real problem is overpopulation.

The population statistics are indeed staggering. Yet the raw numbers hide a multitude of complexities. Look closely, and it becomes clear that the common-sense assumption that population is the root of all evil is simplistic.

For example, while the human population is growing in absolute terms, the rate of growth is slowing – from a peak of 2 per cent in the early 1960s to around 1 per cent today. In Japan , Russia and many European countries, women are having so few children that populations are shrinking or will do so soon – an unprecedented state of affairs other than in times of war or plague. At the same time, the populations of many of the least developed nations are exploding, with women in some countries giving birth to more than five children on average.

In the articles that follow, we unpick some of these complexities. Paul Ehrlich, who reignited debate a generation ago with his best-seller The Population Bomb, is sticking to his assertion that we need to act to rein in fertility (“Paul Ehrlich: Population, development and the poor”). Conversely, Fred Pearce insists on page 40 that focusing on population is a dangerous distraction from the real issue: consumption. Then there’s the brave new world of population shrinkage that Europe is entering, as demographer Reiner Klingholz explains on page 41. Lastly, perhaps human ingenuity will solve the problem. Techno-optimist Jesse Ausubel certainly thinks so, and in our interview on page 38 he explains why.

“We are burdensome to the world, the resources are scarcely adequate for us… already nature does not sustain us.” So wrote Tertullian, an early Christian, back in the 3rd century. At that time, the world population stood at some 200 million. Eighteen centuries on and with 34 times as many people on the planet, the debate continues.

Population: Enough of us now

* 25 September 2009 by Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich
* New Scientist Magazine issue 2727

GLOBAL population growth has slowed significantly, but it hasn’t stopped. By 2050 there may be about 35 per cent more people on Earth than there are today. We are already seeing increasing shortages of food, water and other resources and growing numbers of hungry people.

Yet to embark on any discussion about limiting our numbers is to enter sensitive and controversial territory. Perhaps this is not surprising, as in the 1960s, when population growth became an issue of widespread concern, the discussions often had a racist undertone, in which the “well-off” focused on the exploding populations of “underdeveloped nations”.

Nowadays it is understood that the key population-related issue is the destructive pressure human activity is exerting on our life-support systems, posing a growing threat to the sustainability of civilisation. Of course, this is not all because of human numbers; it also has to do with how much each of us consumes. That’s why, in our view, the US with its population of over 300 million and high per capita consumption should be seen as Earth’s most overpopulated nation. It is also why the emergence of “new consumers” constitutes a major additional assault on global life-support systems. Moreover, the 2.3 billion people likely to be added to the human population by 2050 will undermine those systems much more seriously than did the previous 2.3 billion, as each additional person will, on average, have to be supported by scarcer, lower-quality resources imposing ever greater environmental costs.

Yet many people still assume that humanity will easily manage to support more than 9 billion people in 2050 and beyond. Such confidence ignores some grim possibilities. There are only two ways by which population can stop increasing: a falling birth rate or rising death rates. We have already seen a rise in death rates in southern Africa and Russia , and there may well be further increases in death rate ahead, especially as disruption to the global climate increasingly destabilises agricultural systems. Even today, more than a billion people are going hungry.

We often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies… they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even for now, for only one billion people . The environmental deterioration resulting from ever more people consuming ever more resources will place the heaviest burdens on those least able to cope, as the great majority of those additional billions of people will be in the poorest nations, where poverty and high birth rates are inextricably linked. Uganda ’s population, for example, is predicted to almost treble by 2050, growing from around 33 million today to 91 million in the next 40 years. Rapid population growth undermines development efforts. The resulting poor education, lack of public health facilities, and inadequate infrastructure in turn foster high birth rates.

Yet the priority given to population issues has diminished compared with concerns about development. If population growth continues unabated, we fear the problems of development will be “solved” by rises in death rates. For this reason, efforts to slow population growth should be treated as a human rights issue.

The way to reduce fertility rates is well known. It involves a cultural shift towards improving the education and status of women, making family planning and safe abortion more widely available, and moving towards a world where every child is a wanted child.

Nearly all developing countries have family planning programmes, but they are badly in need of renewed support. There has to be a recognition, at the highest political level, of the importance of reducing birth rates both as a pressing human rights issue and as a proven contributor to successful development.

This has to be linked to family health and welfare programmes, to education (especially for girls) and to the opening up of opportunities for women to participate in their nations’ economies. An example of what can be achieved is provided by the Grameen bank, which offers credit to the poor people of Bangladesh, especially women, and has no doubt helped reduce birth rates there simply by boosting grassroots economic development.

Somehow, cultural attitudes toward large families everywhere need to be changed. It should be considered immoral to have excessive numbers of children – an attitude that already exists in most industrialised nations with low birth rates. Nothing is more clearly a governmental responsibility than keeping a nation’s population size sustainable by benevolent measures.

As well as curbing population growth, we shouldn’t forget the pressing issue of excessive consumption by the rich. Humanity needs to get behind a global discussion of these issues, perhaps through a framework we have devised called the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (http://mahb.stanford.edu). This is a forum for global discussion of key ethical and cultural issues related to the human predicament. A major element of that discussion must be how to end the growth of the total human population humanely and begin a slow decline similar to the one that has so fortunately started in Europe and Japan . If that can be done, then a sustainable future for civilisation might be possible.
Days when the world has shrunk

The inexorable rise of the human population has been the dominant theme of our planet for centuries. In recent history, days that we know to have ended with fewer people than they started with are extremely rare.

The most recent was 26 December 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami killed nearly 250,000 people. Another 160,000 died that day of other causes, and the day’s 370,000 births couldn’t compensate, according to environmentalist Robert Engelman in his book.

You have to go back to the 1970s to find other days of world population shrinkage, such as the Tangshan earthquake in China on 28 July 1976 and the devastating cyclone that hit Bangladesh on 12 November 1970, both of which killed at least 250,000 people. Even China ’s great famine of 1958 to 1961, which caused around 15 million deaths, dented rather than stalled world population growth.

Further back in time, the 70,000 deaths caused by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima , Japan , on 6 August 1945 outweighed the population growth of around 60,000 people that would otherwise have taken place that day. With a lower death toll, the same probably isn’t true of the bombing of Nagasaki three days later. Even a particularly bad day during the first world war, such as 1 July 1916 when the British alone lost around 20,000 men at the battle of the Somme , probably didn’t stall the world’s upward population trend. However, the flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920, which killed about 50 million people, almost certainly did.

The biggest hit to world population in (relatively) recent times is the Black Death of the 14th century, which killed perhaps 75 million people and reduced Europe ’s population by 30 per cent.

Things will be very different in the future. There will still be disasters and wars, of course, but some time after 2050 the world will enter a new era when the population will shrink on many days. We will simply be having fewer children.

Food Shortages

Food Scarcity to Bring Down World Governments, Cause Global Chaos

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Food shortages are the biggest threat to global security today, and will soon lead to the collapse of more and more states, according to a warning published in Scientific American by Lester Brown, founder the Worldwatch Institute and founder and head of the Earth Policy Institute.

“For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions,” Brown writes. “The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies.”

The consequences of the growing worldwide food crisis are so severe, Brown warns, that it could “bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization. … Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy — most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures — forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.”

Brown notes that demand for food has been growing at a pace that far outstrips growth in supplies. Global grain consumption has exceeded production in six of the past nine years, leading to record shortages in grain stores. At the start of the 2008 harvest, these stores were at one of their lowest levels ever, with only 62 days worth of grain. This situation contributed to a universal surge in food prices, which resulted in riots around the world.

If this situation is not remedied, Brown warns, riots will be only the beginning.

“If the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. … States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as education and health care,” he writes.

Because food shortages are driven in large part by environmental degradation, however, Brown warns that there can be no “quick fix” to the problem. Only a radically new way of looking at things — addressing, at a minimum, the problems of soil degradation, water shortage and global warming — can save the entire global system from collapse.

Sources for this story include: www.sciam.com.

http://www.naturalnews.com/z026996_food_food_scarcity_food_shortages.html

Australian population to nearly double

Australian population to nearly double to 35 million by mid-century

Article from: The Courier-Mail

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Stefanie Balogh

September 18, 2009 12:00am

THE Australian population will explode to 35 million people in a generation and we will be younger than previously thought, according to forecasts.

Our demographic surge will be driven by more women of childbearing age, higher fertility rates, and increased net overseas migration.

Treasurer Wayne Swan will today provide a glimpse into the future when he reveals key details from the much-anticipated third Intergenerational Report.

The full report, due to be released before next year’s federal Budget, is a crucial planning tool.

With Treasury Secretary Ken Henry’s review of the nation’s taxation system, the intergenerational data will guide the Rudd Government’s policies for the nation’s growing and ageing population.

Mr Swan will tell the launch of the Australian Institute For Population Ageing Research in Sydney that the proportion of people over 65 will almost double to 25 per cent of all Australians in 2049 .

But the proportion is slightly less than previously projected.

In his speech, Mr Swan will say “the population ageing story in Australia is changing”.

The updated Intergenerational report will predict Australia’s population will grow by 65 per cent to 35 million people in 2049. It was previously tipped to reach 28.5 million in 2047.

The extra 6.5 million Australians over 40 years will come from births and migration.

“Our projections suggest that Australia’s population could be larger and younger than presented in previous (intergenerational reports),” Mr Swan will say.

He says the total fertility rate of Australian women has increased to more than 1.9 births per woman in recent years – a level of fertility not seen since the 1980s.

Migration to Australia will also increase, and Mr Swan says these people “tend to be younger than the resident population, and . . . contribute to the projected larger and younger Australian population”.

But despite changes to the nation’s demographic make-up in four decades, the drain on government services including health, pensions and aged care will come from a greying population.

The proportion of the population aged 85 and over is projected to increase most rapidly, rising from 1.7 per cent of the population in 2009 to 5 per cent in 2049.

The Government has laid the groundwork to tackle the ageing population by raising the pension age to 67 from 65 at a rate of six months every two years from 2017.

Mr Swan’s Budget boost to pensions begins next week, with single pensioners on the maximum rate receiving an extra $70.83 every fortnight, and couples on the maximum rate getting $29.93 more.

“Over the next 40 years it is projected that the number of young people and the number of people of traditional working age will both increase by about 45 per cent,” the Treasurer will say.

“But here’s the thing – over the same 40-year period, the number of older people aged 65-84 years will more than double and the number of very old people aged 85 and over will increase by more than 4½ times.”

Farmed Fish

Half of the Fish Consumed Globally is Now Raised on Farms, Study Finds

Date:08 Sep 2009

Type:Business News

Source:Food Ingredients First

Sector:Meat Products, Savoury Foods & Ingredients

Summary:In 2006, aquaculture production was 51.7 million metric tons, and about 20 million metric tons of wild fish were harvested for the production of fishmeal. “It can take up to 5 pounds of wild fish to produce 1 pound of salmon, and we eat a lot of salmon.”

8 Sep 2009 — Aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report by an international team of researchers. And while the industry is more efficient than ever, it is also putting a significant strain on marine resources by consuming large amounts of feed made from wild fish harvested from the sea, the authors conclude. Their findings are published in the Sept. 7 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Aquaculture is set to reach a landmark in 2009, supplying half of the total fish and shellfish for human consumption,” the authors wrote. Between 1995 and 2007, global production of farmed fish nearly tripled in volume, in part because of rising consumer demand for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. Oily fish, such as salmon, are a major source of these omega-3s, which are effective in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“The huge expansion is being driven by demand,” said lead author Rosamond L. Naylor, a professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Program on Food Security and the Environment. “As long as we are a health-conscious population trying to get our most healthy oils from fish, we are going to be demanding more of aquaculture and putting a lot of pressure on marine fisheries to meet that need.”

To maximize growth and enhance flavor, aquaculture farms use large quantities of fishmeal and fish oil made from less valuable wild-caught species, including anchoveta and sardine. “With the production of farmed fish eclipsing that of wild fish, another major transition is also underway: Aquaculture’s share of global fishmeal and fish oil consumption more than doubled over the past decade to 68 percent and 88 percent, respectively,” the authors wrote.

In 2006, aquaculture production was 51.7 million metric tons, and about 20 million metric tons of wild fish were harvested for the production of fishmeal. “It can take up to 5 pounds of wild fish to produce 1 pound of salmon, and we eat a lot of salmon,” said Naylor, the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

One way to make salmon farming more environmentally sustainable is to simply lower the amount of fish oil in the salmon’s diet. According to the authors, a mere 4 percent reduction in fish oil would significantly reduce the amount of wild fish needed to produce 1 pound of salmon from 5 pounds to just 3.9 pounds. In contrast, reducing fishmeal use by 4 percent would have very little environmental impact, they said.

“Reducing the amount of fish oil in the salmon’s diet definitely gets you a lot more bang for the buck than reducing the amount of fishmeal,” Naylor said. “Our thirst for long-chain omega-3 oils will continue to put a lot of strain on marine ecosystems, unless we develop commercially viable alternatives soon.”

Naylor and her co-authors pointed to several fish-feed substitutes currently being investigated, including protein made from grain and livestock byproducts, and long-chain omega-3 oils extracted from single-cell microorganisms and genetically modified land plants. “With appropriate economic and regulatory incentives, the transition toward alternative feedstuffs could accelerate, paving the way for a consensus that aquaculture is aiding the ocean, not depleting it,” the authors wrote.

Fishmeal and fish oil are important staples at farms that produce carnivorous fish, including salmon, trout and tuna. But vegetarian species, such as Chinese carp and tilapia, can be raised on feed made from plants instead of wild-caught fish. That’s one reason why farm-raised vegetarian fish have long been considered environmentally friendly.

In the early 1990s, vegetarian fish farms began adding small amounts of fishmeal in their feed to increase yields. However, between 1995 and 2007, farmers actually reduced the share of fishmeal in carp diets by 50 percent and in tilapia diets by nearly two-thirds, according to the PNAS report. Nevertheless, in 2007, tilapia and carp farms together consumed more than 12 million metric tons of fishmeal—more than 1.5 times the amount used by shrimp and salmon farms combined.

“Our assumption about farmed tilapia and carp being environmentally friendly turns out to be wrong in aggregate, because the sheer volume is driving up the demand,” Naylor said. “Even the small amounts of fishmeal used to raise vegetarian fish add up to a lot on a global scale.” Removing fishmeal from the diet of tilapia and carp would have a very positive impact on the marine environment, she added.

On the policy front, Naylor pointed to California’s Sustainable Oceans Act and the proposed National Offshore Aquaculture Act, which call for reductions in the use of fishmeal and fish oil in feeds. She also applauded plans by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to develop a comprehensive national policy that addresses fisheries management issues posed by aquaculture. “No matter how much is done from the demand side, it is essential that there be regulation on the supply side as well,” Naylor said. “You won’t prevent the collapse of anchoveta, sardine and other wild fisheries unless those fisheries are carefully regulated.”

Mass Inflation

There is cultural enantiodromia in our manic-depressive society that over-emphasizes the outer. now the manic inflationary bubble has burst the ‘depression’ is here in both senses. we’re all to blame – all possessed by the rolling zeitgeist. inflated leaders like Bush are a clue -

Our struggle is to assimilate the collective psyche – freeing our egos from contamination with the unconscious — without succumbing to inflation or identification. Inflation is always self-destructive, catastrophic. Jung equates it with possession. Was it an inflationary grip of an archetype that compelled Tavistock’s machinations, destructively acting out the shadow side of the collective through their rationale? Torquing the field wreaks havoc on the field.

“An inflated consciousness] is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably doom itself to calamities that must strike it [and others within its sphere of influence] dead.. “…an unknown ‘something’ has taken possession of a smaller or greater portion of the psyche and asserts its hateful and harmful existence undeterred by all our insight, reason, and energy, thereby proclaiming the power of the unconscious over the conscious mind, the sovereign power of possession.” (Jung)

Billion reasons to go green

One billion reasons to go green. Sun Microsystems co-founder and current venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, has launched a $1.1 billion fund meant to spur on the development of clean technologies. The Los Angeles Times reports that Khosla’s $1.1 billion fund is split into two parts: $800 million will be used to invest in early- to mid-stage clean energy and information technology companies. The remaining $275 million will finance what Khosla calls “science experiments,” high-risk projects that may only exist in university laboratories at this point. The interesting thing is that Khosla is hoping to reach out beyond just traditional wind farm technologies and solar-cell manufacturers. As he puts it, “We’re doing bioplastics, lighting, engines, water and air conditioning–almost anything that can be made renewable, sustainable, more efficient and cheaper.”

Clunkers V’s Spankers – saving energy? or just greenwash – a bushy’s view

A case study in greenwash – an Australian bushies view –
—-US The Spanker for a Clunker scheme uses more energy that it saves—-
Clunkers V’s Spankers NEA (Net Energy Analysis for similar vehicle but newer basis) Calculations viz. replacing Clunkers with Spankers (S4C scheme) [US terms and scheme (also similar schemes are operational in the UK and Japan)]

Aspect The Clunker
TEE (Total Embodied Energy Units) 10
Reuse Energy *
Net Recycle Energy (NRE) 01***
Operational Energy Saving (OES) 01****
Total (∑) lost

Aspect Your new Spanker
TEE (Total Embodied Energy) 10
Reuse Energy **
Net Recycle Energy (NRE)
Operational Energy Saving (OES)
Total (∑) 10 cost

Grand Total (∑∑) Energy Used in one Clunker – Spanker swap over = 19.4 energy units
Source: P Wildman 10-08-2009:

NB: * at least 70% of the car is reusable at least once indicate this potential will not be harvested because the motors are destroyed as part of the C4C US program.** less of the mechanical and electrical systems are field reusable – deliberate design parameter. *** In the US the motors are destroyed so that the vehicle is unsuitable then for the wreckers/reuse/second hand car parts market. A clunker is a vehicle most of which are operating effectively with 95%+ of their parts functioning, that can be field repaired, being replaced by more recent model with marginally better fuel efficiency yet vastly less field serviceability and reusability (shifts costs from the manufacturer to owner – greenwashing) + net energy indicates the energy going into the recycling process inc. transport, heat, equipment, labour, parts separation (generally does not occur) etc. cp. that coming out. My standpoint guesstimate is that recycling takes more energy than it replaces. **** net efficacious OES – relative small as petrol use over life differential 4cyl cp. 4cyl is minimal and field maintenance cannot occur the owner must pay higher garage per hour costs for proprietary maintenance etc.

Observations:(1) To replace a clunker with a spanker will cost 19.4 units of embodied energy cp. 0.3 units to repair the motor of the clunker if that was necessary.
(2) At least as much energy can be saved on the clunker by correct tyre inflations and proper driving behaviour as can be saved by driving the slightly more fuel efficient spanker.
(3) Another approach is to check car exhausts and proscribe changes necessary to meet certain emission standards
(4) The S4C scheme is nothing other than using taxpayers’ dollars (a car owner gets several thousand dollars per clunker ‘recycled’ in this program) to prop up the auto industry a form of tariff that discriminates against the poor and has a massive net environmental loss – often sold as an environmental program – this is a case in unethical behaviour a particularly nasty example of greenwashing.
(5) The issue isn’t the marginal improvement in efficiency (but drop in efficacy) it is the fact both are still petrol – nor does electricity solve anything unless it is solar. The whole shemozzle just distracts us from the main game getting an alternative to petrol that bypasses the petrol cartel and empowers us to reuse and repair as our g’parents did.

Paul Wildman
paul@kalgrove.com
V4 @ 01-09-2009 comm. 10-08-2009: 500 words

Toxic plastics degrade ocean

Bad News about Plastic: Degrading Poisons into Ocean Water
by Jan Lundberg / Steve Connor
21 August 2009
ImageToday’s world requires as never before that we all accept change and be part of it proactively. Mounting evidence shows there is no time to wait for people to decide to catch on in their own time. No better example of this exists than the plastic plague. Until we stop participating in trashing the planet and ourselves we are slashing away at our planetary wrists in ecocide.

Is it so hard to make sure a vendor does not provide a plastic straw in our drink, and is it so hard to avoid buying a new handy gadget? The right choices are easy much of the time, but nearly impossible sometimes. This demonstrates the strangle-hold industrial culture has on our lives, as long as the economy continues to provide goods and set the tone for lifestyle.

Since the Northern Pacific Garbage Patch — a plastic soup twice the size of Texas — was discovered in 1997, and from subsequent research, it was thought that plastic did not degrade except for breaking down into smaller pieces. It was known that plastic leached poisonous petrochemicals and heavy metals into the environment and into animals and humans.

Now the story unfolds some more, most alarmingly, as the article below shows. Plastics in the ocean and on land seemed static enough, although they were known to be in part ingested and passed up the food chain — bioaccumulating. But sea water with bisphenol-A as a constituent? This new discovery ought to ratchet up the agenda to fight the plastic disaster. The old model of educating consumers bit by bit year after year, and passing compromise-based legislation, has failed — time is now too short.

Clearly it is time to shut down the plastics industries because the mess only grows. The petroleum industry will continue to spew plastics and greenhouse-gas emissions, among other pollutants, as long as people buy these products and believe that such corporations have a right to do this. Belief in our present form of government as protector of the people and of the environment is mislaid.

Trying to live sustainably and being the change we want to see is laudable but only goes so far in the present circumstances. Therefore, collapse of the industrial system will have to take place before significant changes, such as the termination of more plastics into the environment, can happen.

Charles Moore, the sailor who discovered the Northern Pacific Garbage Patch and who has dedicated his life’s work to fighting the plastic plague, warns that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade. (Feb. 4, 2008, The Independent – UK)

This was a shocking, radical statement at the time. As the picture gets worse as it comes into focus, it is time to boycott petroleum and starve the corporate state of any material or moral support. How much worse can it be if we have to reinvent human relations with a sane value system, where caring for the Earth is not secondary to economic growth?

Scientists uncover new ocean threat from plastics
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
The Independent – UK
20 August 2009

Plastic pollution is not just unsightly but it could be to toxic to humans and animals

Scientists have identified a new source of chemical pollution released by the huge amounts of plastic rubbish found floating in the oceans of the world. A study has found that as plastics break down in the sea they release potentially toxic substances not found in nature and which could affect the growth and development of marine organisms.

Until now it was thought that plastic rubbish is relatively stable chemically and, apart from being unsightly, its principle threat to living creatures came from its ability to choke or strangle any animals that either got caught in it or ingested it thinking it was food.

But the latest research suggests that plastic is also a source of dissolved substances that can easily become widely dispersed in the marine environment. Many of these chemicals are believed to toxic to humans and animals, the scientists said.

The scale of plastic pollution in the sea has only been widely recognised in recent years when sailing yachts reported vast areas of ocean, such as an area estimated to be twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific, that seem to be permanently covered in a layer of floating marine litter caught up in swirling ocean currents or gyres.

Some of the items were found to be many decades old, suggesting that the plastic took a long time to degrade. However, a study by Katsuhiko Saido at Nihon University in Chiba, Japan, has found that plastics degrade relatively quickly in the conditions and temperatures that were designed to simulate the environment of the open ocean.

“Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable. We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future,” Dr Saido said.

“To date, no studies have been conducted on plastic decomposition at low temperature in the environment owing to the mistaken conception that plastic does not decompose. The present study was conducted to clarify that drift plastic does indeed decompose to give rise to hazardous chemicals in the ocean,” he said.

The scientists found that when plastics decompose in the ocean they release a range of chemicals, such as bisphenol A and substances known as polystyrene-based (PS) oligomers, which are not found naturally. Bisphenol A has been implicated in disrupting the hormonal system of animals.

A common form of plastic rubbish is styrofoam, which soon gets crushed into small pieces in the sea. However, it also releases substantial quantities of a toxic substances called styrene monomer, which is known to cause cancer, as well as styrene dimers and trimer, which are suspected of being carcinogenic. The trimer also breaks down into the toxic monomer form.

Findings from the study were released yesterday at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington. Dr Saido said that samples of seawater collected from the Pacific Ocean were found to be contaminated with up to 150 parts per million of some of these components of plastic decomposition.

“This study clearly shows new micro-pollution by compounds generated by plastic decomposition to be taking place out of sight in the ocean. Thus, marine debris plastics in the ocean will certainly give rise to new sources of global contamination that will persist long into the future,” he said.

It is estimated that there could be hundreds of millions of tons of plastic rubbish floating in the world’s oceans. In Japan alone, it is calculated that 150,000 tons of plastic is washed up on its shores each year.

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Related article:
The world’s rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

Big Box Agriculture

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/08/19/big-box-agriculture/

Inhabitat
August 19, 2009
Big Box Agriculture Transforms Grocers Into Growers
by Bridgette Meinhold

big box farm, suburban garden, suburban farm, big box retailer, redevelopment, reburbia, reburbia design competition, forrest fulton

Results are in for the ReBurbia competition to re-envision the suburbs, and we’re thrilled to count Forrest Fulton among the top three winners for his Big Box Agriculture proposal! This creative and adaptive design takes advantage of empty big-box retail stores and turns them into suburban organic farms, complete with in-house chefs, restaurants, and renewable energy generation.

big box farm, suburban garden, suburban farm, big box retailer, redevelopment, reburbia, reburbia design competition, forrest fulton

The very fabric of suburbia is changing as new areas develop and older areas are vacated, leaving behind empty buildings and cracking asphalt parking lots. This needn’t be the case – according to Fulton, big-box retail stores and strip malls can provide the opportunity for new growth in the form of suburban gardens and farms. Instead of just tearing everything down he proposes transforming these sites into organic farms and cutting out the middle-man retailer. Consumers can walk among the rows of produce and pick their fruit and vegetables right from the vine.

The asphalt parking lot would become an outdoor farm by layering soil and compost inside of containers placed directly on the lot, while solar trees spread throughout the fields generate power and pump it back into the grid. The roof of the big box store would partially be replaced with glass to create a greenhouse. After picking your produce, you could take it directly to an in-house chef who would prepare you a meal, or take it home with you. Imagine the gains the local food movement would face if Wal-Mart took a look at this idea and retrofitted their stores!

Big Box Agriculture’s innovative approach towards local food production netted it third place in the ReBurbia competition – be sure to check out the other winning designs selected by our judges in addition to the top 20 finalists and our favorite notable mentions.

+ Big Box Agriculture