Download or read book The Oil Depletion Protocol written by Richard Heinberg and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since oil is the primary fuel of global industrial civilization, its imminent depletion is a problem that will have profound impact on every aspect of modern life. Without international agreement on how to manage the decline of this vital resource, the world faces unprecedented risk of conflict and collapse. The Oil Depletion Protocol describes a unique accord whereby nations would voluntarily reduce their oil production and oil imports according to a consistent, sensible formula. This would enable the task of energy transition to be planned and supported over the long term, providing a context of stable energy prices and peaceful cooperation. The Protocol will be presented at international gatherings, initiating the process of country-by-country negotiation and adoption, and mobilizing public support. To this end, this book: provides an overview of the data concerning Peak Oil and its timing briefly explains the protocol and its implications for the reader and for decision makers in government and industry around the world deals with frequently asked questions and objections, and looks forward to how the protocol can be adopted and how municipalities and ordinary citizens can facilitate the process. Timely and critically important, The Oil Depletion Protocol is a must-read for policy makers and for all who seek to avert a Peak Oil collapse. Listen to an interview with Richard Heinberg from WRPI.
Download or read book written by Ellen LaConte and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LaConte's book offers a compelling answer To The now-universal question suggested by her subtitle. The global economy has gone viral. it is ravaging Earth's equivalent of an immune system the way HIV ravages the human immune system, triggering a Critical Mass of AIDS-like mutually reinforcing environmental, economic, social and political crises that are undermining the ability of human and natural communities to support, protect and heal themselves. LaConte's prognosis? Since Life rules, we don't, Life will last but Life as we know it-and a lot of us-won't. LaConte shows that Life learned two billion years ago how to deal with pathological economies: it put them out of business. it encoded in other-than-human species a set of Economic Rules for Survival that allow them to live within Earth's means long term. In accessible prose LaConte explains how those rules can work for humans too. Recommended as a tool for community transition and cultural transformation, Life Rules offers a solution to our global crisis the publishers call "authentically conserve-ative, deeply Green, and profoundly liberating."
Download or read book Eating Fossil Fuels written by Dale Allen Pfeiffer and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2006-10-01 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shocking outline of the interlinked crises in energy and agriculture — and appropriate responses The miracle of the Green Revolution was made possible by cheap fossil fuels to supply crops with artificial fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation. Estimates of the net energy balance of agriculture in the US show that ten calories of hydrocarbon energy are required to produce one calorie of food. Such an imbalance cannot continue in a world of diminishing hydrocarbon resources. Eating Fossil Fuels examines the interlinked crises of energy and agriculture and highlights some startling findings: The world-wide expansion of agriculture has appropriated fully 40% of the photosynthetic capability of this planet. The Green Revolution provided abundant food sources for many, resulting in a population explosion well in excess of the planet's carrying capacity. Studies suggest that without fossil fuel based agriculture, the US could only sustain about two thirds of its present population. For the planet as a whole, the sustainable number is estimated to be about two billion. Concluding that the effect of energy depletion will be disastrous without a transition to a sustainable, relocalized agriculture, the book draws on the experiences of North Korea and Cuba to demonstrate stories of failure and success in the transition to non-hydrocarbon-based agriculture. It urges strong grassroots activism for sustainable, localized agriculture and a natural shrinking of the world's population. Dale Allen Pfeiffer is a novelist, freelance journalist and geologist who has been writing about energy depletion for a decade. The author of The End of the Oil Age, he is also widely known for his web project: www.survivingpeakoil.com.
Download or read book Confronting Collapse written by Michael C. Ruppert and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that inspired the movie Collapse. The world is running short of energy-especially cheap, easy-to-find oil. Shortages, along with resulting price increases, threaten industrialized civilization, the global economy, and our entire way of life. In Confronting Collapse, author Michael C. Ruppert, a former LAPD narcotics officer turned investigative journalist, details the intricate connections between money and energy, including the ways in which oil shortages and price spikes triggered the economic crash that began in September 2008. Given the 96 percent correlation between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions and the unlikelihood of economic growth without a spike in energy use, Ruppert argues that we are not, in fact, on the verge of economic recovery, but on the verge of complete collapse. Ruppert's truth is not merely inconvenient. It is utterly devastating. But there is still hope. Ruppert outlines a 25-point plan of action, including the creation of a second strategic petroleum reserve for the use of state and local governments, the immediate implementation of a national Feed-in Tariff mandating that electric utilities pay 3 percent above market rates for all surplus electricity generated from renewable sources, a thorough assessment of soil conditions nationwide, and an emergency action plan for soil restoration and sustainable agriculture.
Download or read book Transport Revolutions written by Richard Gilbert and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2012 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil sets out the challenges to our growing dependence on transport fuelled by low-priced oil. These challenges include an early peak in world oil production and profound climate change resulting in part from oil use. It proposes responses to ensure effective, secure movement of people and goods in ways that make the best use of renewable sources of energy while minimizing environmental impacts.Transport Revolutions synthesizes engineering, economics, environment, organization, policy and technology, and draws extensively on current data to present important conclusions. The authors argue that land transport in the first half of the 21st century will feature at least two revolutions. One will involve the use of electric drives rather than internal combustion engines. Another will involve powering many of these drives directly from the electric grid - as trains and trolley buses are powered today - rather than from on-board fuel. They go on to discuss marine transport, whose future is less clear, and aviation, which could see the most dramatic breaks from current practice.With its expert analysis of the politics and business of transport, Transport Revolutions is essential reading for professionals and students in transport, energy, town planning and public policy.
Download or read book The Three Sustainabilities written by Allan Stoekl and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing the word sustainability back from the brink of cliché—to a substantive, truly sustainable future Is sustainability a hopelessly vague word, with meager purpose aside from a feel-good appeal to the consumer? In The Three Sustainabilities, Allan Stoekl seeks to (re)valorize the word, for a simple reason: it is useful. Sustainability designates objects in time, their birth or genesis, their consistency, their survival, their demise. And it raises the question, as no other word does, of the role of humans in the survival of a world that is quickly disappearing—and perhaps in the genesis of another world. Stoekl considers a range of possibilities for the word, touching upon questions of object ontology, psychoanalysis, urban critique, technocracy, and religion. He argues that there are three varieties of sustainability, seen from philosophical, cultural, and economic perspectives. One involves the self-sustaining world “without us”; another, the world under our control, which can run the political spectrum from corporatism to Marxism to the Green New Deal; and a third that carries a social and communitarian charge, an energy of the “universe” affirmed through, among other things, meditation and gifting. Each of these carves out a different space in the relations between objects, humans, and their survival and degradation. Each is necessary, unavoidable, and intimately bound with, and infinitely distant from, the others. Along the way, Stoekl cites a wide range of authors, from philosophers to social thinkers, literary theorists to criminologists, anthropologists to novelists. This beautifully written, compelling, and nuanced book is a must for anyone interested in questions of ecology, energy, the environmental humanities, contemporary theories of the object, postmodern and posthuman aesthetics, or religion and the sacred in relation to community.
Download or read book Peak Oil Prep written by Mick Winter and published by Westsong Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How you can help your family, neighborhood and community prepare for Peak Oil, climate change, and economic collapse and live a more sustainable, money-saving lifestyle. A practical handbook of ideas, suggestions, and book and Internet resources.
Download or read book The Climate Challenge written by Guy Dauncey and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the urgency of global climate change. But when author Guy Dauncey assembles the world's best solutions in one place, as he does in The Climate Challenge, a vision emerges of a sustainable energy revolution. He opens the door to a century of exciting change, characterized by renewable energy, sustainable farming, carbon-rich forestry, green cities, electric vehicles, high-speed trains, a blossoming of innovation, and a host of new "green collar" jobs. The Climate Challenge draws on working solutions from around the world, and lays out the best actions for students and scientists, musicians and mayors, policy-makers and presidents, showing how it is possible to reduce our carbon footprint to almost zero by 2040. Each solution describes steps that are already being used in homes, schools, businesses, cities, and governments around the world - with full scientific references to help the reader dig deeper and push farther. If you worry about climate change, whether you are an enquiring teenager, a concerned householder, a farmer, forester, business leader, city mayor, or global policy-maker, this book will help you join the movement to help restore the planet's climate and build a new green economy.
Download or read book Extracted written by Ugo Bardi and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-09 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we dig, drill, and excavate to unearth the planet’s mineral bounty, the resources we exploit from ores, veins, seams, and wells are gradually becoming exhausted. Mineral treasures that took millions, or even billions, of years to form are now being squandered in just centuries–or sometimes just decades. Will there come a time when we actually run out of minerals? Debates already soar over how we are going to obtain energy without oil, coal, and gas. But what about the other mineral losses we face? Without metals, and semiconductors, how are we going to keep our industrial system running? Without mineral fertilizers and fuels, how are we going to produce the food we need? Ugo Bardi delivers a sweeping history of the mining industry, starting with its humble beginning when our early ancestors started digging underground to find the stones they needed for their tools. He traces the links between mineral riches and empires, wars, and civilizations, and shows how mining in its various forms came to be one of the largest global industries. He also illustrates how the gigantic mining machine is now starting to show signs of difficulties. The easy mineral resources, the least expensive to extract and process, have been mostly exploited and depleted. There are plenty of minerals left to extract, but at higher costs and with increasing difficulties. The effects of depletion take different forms and one may be the economic crisis that is gripping the world system. And depletion is not the only problem. Mining has a dark side–pollution–that takes many forms and delivers many consequences, including climate change. The world we have been accustomed to, so far, was based on cheap mineral resources and on the ability of the ecosystem to absorb pollution without generating damage to human beings. Both conditions are rapidly disappearing. Having thoroughly plundered planet Earth, we are entering a new world. Bardi draws upon the world’s leading minerals experts to offer a compelling glimpse into that new world ahead.
Download or read book Planning After Petroleum written by Jago Dodson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past decade has been one of the most volatile periods in global petroleum markets in living memory, and future oil supply security and price levels remain highly uncertain. This poses many questions for the professional activities of planners and urbanists because contemporary cities are highly dependent on petroleum as a transport fuel. How will oil dependent cities respond, and adapt to, the changing pattern of petroleum supplies? What key strategies should planners and policy makers implement in petroleum vulnerable cities to address the challenges of moving beyond oil? How might a shift away from petroleum provide opportunities to improve or remake cities for the economic, social and environmental imperatives of twenty-first-century sustainability? Such questions are the focus of contributors to this book with perspectives ranging across the planning challenge: overarching petroleum futures, governance, transition and climate change questions, the role of various urban transport nodes and household responses, ways of measuring oil vulnerability, and the effects on telecommunications, ports and other urban infrastructure. This comprehensive volume – with contributions from and focusing on cities in Australia, the UK, the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands and South Korea – provides key insights to enable cities to plan for the age beyond petroleum.
Download or read book Energy The Environment And Climate Change written by Peter E Hodgson and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010-03-24 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive account of all significant energy sources, evaluated according to their capacity, reliability, cost, safety and effects on the environment. Non-renewable sources (for example, coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel) together with renewable sources like wood, hydro, biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, and tidal; are considered. Also, nuclear radiations and the disposal of nuclear waste and the future of nuclear power are assessed, as well as pollution and acid rain, the greenhouse effects and climate change. Its social, political and moral problems are discussed, with a special mention of the opposition to nuclear power.
Download or read book Preparing for Peak Oil in South Africa written by Jeremy J. Wakeford and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oil is the lifeblood of modern industrial economies. Petroleum powers virtually all motorized transport, which in turn enables most economic activities and provides mobility for citizens. But oil is a finite resource that is steadily depleting. In the past decade, the phenomenon of global peak oil – the fact that annual world oil production must at some point reach a maximum and then decline – has emerged as one of the twenty-first century’s greatest challenges. South Africa imports over two-thirds of its petroleum fuels, and history has shown that oil price shocks generally translate into a weakening currency, rising consumer prices, increasing joblessness and a slow-down in economic activity. This book examines the implications of peak oil for socioeconomic welfare in South Africa and proposes a wide range of strategies and policies for mitigating and adapting to the likely impacts. It contains a wealth of data in tables and figures that illustrate South Africa’s oil dependencies and vulnerabilities to oil shocks. The material is presented from a systems perspective and is organized in key thematic areas including energy, transport, agriculture, macro-economy and society. The study highlights the risks, uncertainties and difficult choices South Africa faces if it is to tackle its oil addiction, and thereby serves as an example for researchers, planners and policy-makers in the developing world who will sooner or later confront similar challenges. This case study brings a fresh southern perspective to an issue of global importance, and shows how the era of flattening and then declining global oil supplies may be a pivotal period in which either the project of industrialization progressively runs out of steam, or societies are able to undertake a proactive transition to a more sustainable future.
Download or read book Oil Crisis written by Colin John Campbell and published by multi-science publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Colin Campbell is renowned for his lucid earlier work, 'The coming oil crisis'. Eight years on, events have proved his analysis right. Now, he argues that the oil crisis has come. The familiar technical explanation of the crisis is carefully made again : essentially, that there is no more oil to be found. That fact is beginning to manifest itself in heightened competition for the remaining resource ; which is why America invaded Iraq ; why Central Asia is in turmoil ; why oil is persistently priced above $50/barrel (and why Goldman Sachs think $100 a barrel is not too unlikely in the near future). The problem - of an oil-less world - is beyond the grasp of politicians. They can fiddle with ideas about renewables or hydrogen but they, along with most of humanity, have not really grasped that it is the oil economy that enables about a 7 billion world population to be sustained. A wholly new world is imminent. It is not likely to be very pleasant. Dr Campbell outlines our grim future." -- book cover.
Download or read book Global Energy Transformation written by M. Larsson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-06-10 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the next few years political and financial power will move in the direction of individuals, companies and nations that are able to use energy in a more efficient way. This book describes this challenge and presents a way forward by which we may achieve the goal of increased energy efficiency in the different areas that need to change.
Download or read book Peak Everything written by Richard Heinberg and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transitioning gracefully from the Age of Excess to the Era of Modesty.
Download or read book The Transition Handbook written by Rob Hopkins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2008-02-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Move from feeling anxious about the oil crisis to developing a positive visions and taking traction action to create a more self-reliant existence with this ground-breaking book. We live in an oil-dependent world, and have become reliant in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process – and without planning for when the supply is not so plentiful. Most of us avoid thinking about what happens when the oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive), but the reality may not be as bad as we think. The Transition Handbook shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead could have a positive effect. Written by permaculture expert Rob Hopkins, he discusses the possibility of a rebirth of local communities, which will generate their own fuel, food and housing. These will encourage the development of local currencies, to keep money in the local area, and unleash a local 'skilling-up', so that people have more control over their lives. The growth in interest in the Transition model continues to be exponential. There are now more than 35 formal Transition Initiatives in the UK, including towns, cities, islands, villages and peninsulas, with more joining as the idea takes off. With little proactivity at government level, communities are taking matters into their own hands and acting locally. If your community has not yet become a Transition Initiative, this upbeat guide, filled with beautiful black and white photographs, offers you the tools to get started. The Transition Handbook is the perfect manual to guide communities, as they begin this 'energy descent' journey.
Download or read book Renewable Energy Technologies research Directions Investment Opportunities and Challenges to Commercial Application in the United States and the Developing World written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Science. Subcommittee on Energy and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
