What is to be Done?

No KXL, no tar sands extraction. Most definitely, most absolutely.

Houston, we have a problem.

The problem is, we're running out of "easy oil". And energy consumption is, in the big picture, rising. In 2012 world energy consumption rose by 3.7%  over 2011 while world energy producton rose by 2.1%. "The International Energy Outlook 2013 projects that world energy consumption will grow by 56% between 2010 and 2040." (www.eiu.gov) Although the U.S. is still the largest consumer of energy, the fastest growth is among people who haven't had access to what we in rich countries do, and we can hardly tell someone that high consumption is acceptable for me but not for you. The problem is, for everyone to consume as much as we do (not just energy this time but everything), we would need 5 earths. Plus, we are not the only species on the planet.

So, no tar sands extraction. Instead, fracking? Nukes? Coal...mountaintop removal? Um, no.

Alternative energy? I just finished a book, Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy is Undermining the Environmental Revolution by Heather Rogers. She devotes a chapter to biofuels from, in her example, palm oil. The use of palm oil as a biofuel contributes to deforestration in Indonesia (and, not incidently, to climate change).

Since one of the demands of the Chevron action on August 3 was that they switch to renewables, I searched their website to find out what they're working on now. They discussed two projects, neither of which uses foodstock, which they're trying to avoid. One is a 50/50 partnership with the Weyerhauser Corporation (Catchlight Energy) to interplant tree farms with "perennials, short rotation trees, understory and residuals". Weyerhauser compared cellulose based biofuels with cellulose based paper, though I wasn't sure if they were using the same plants for both. Chevron's other project involves the use a certain type of algae. This has potential, for small businesses as well, as a more sustainable source of energy, though it's not practical yet. Industrial algae (also a source of human nutrition, i.e. a food) is at this point grown most efficiently in the desert in ponds and is a heavy user of water. Need I say more?

Electric cars don't emit carbon directly but they use electricity, which comes primarily from coal. They also require heavy batteries, which requires extra light bodies to offset the extra weight, which requires the use of metals such as aluminum, which is destructively mined in open pits...

The bottom line is that there are a lot of humans on this planet who are locked into the use a lot of energy,  and without sharply reducing both population and consumption, when we demand and end to tar sands extraction and all other unsustainable energy sources, we're putting the governments of the world in a terrible bind. The fact that we're encouraged to use the energy needs to be addressed, but doesn't negate the problem. It's yang and yin,  production and consumption.

Hydrogen escaping from hydrogen fuel cells into the atmosphere could make the ozone hole larger.

Some of these or other alternatives could mitigate some of our impact but none of them are cure-alls and they're sure not sustainable substitutes for tar sands now.

The bottom line is, to keep the carbon in the ground we need to not depend on that carbon.

It's that simple. And that complex.

Possum

The Life of the Planet

Dave here. I am writing on an aspect of the Tar Sands issue which is very personal to me: the potential and current climate effects.

Most of us have noted the news about climate effects of fossil fuel use and overuse; that we've been using the atmosphere as a sewer for the last 150-plus years and that we are now seeing the effects of this. I did not altogether see this personally until this year. But it is very clear that some things have changed: now my boysenberries are ripening in May (which they never did, earliest had been around June 7); my apple trees are blossoming in late March/ early April, which they never did until this year.

We now know that mining and using more gigatons of fossil fuels - at the rate we're going, up to 500-plus gigatons in the next 15 years - means a global rise of 2 degrees Celcius in overall global temperature. This means the severe effects we've seen already will greatly increase. In the Boreal forest, migrating birds won't find their food sources of insects at the right or normal times, with potentially devastating effects. The forest will - and is already - suffering.

I have spent many months of my life in the Boreal forests in our mountain ranges here in the western U.S.; they have a number of commonalities with similar forests in Canada and Siberia: besides offering feeding and nesting to millions of migratory birds, they protect the skin of the earth. They absorb solar radiation in their tree bodies and convert it to cellulose, sequestering carbon for decades or even hundreds of years. The forests cool the earth also by by keeping snow from melting rapidly in the Spring, rather letting it melt slowly and gradually to fill the rivers and lakes of the North and the mountain heights and providing vital water sources for people and wildlife. The water held, for example in the Sierra Nevada range as snow and ice, is of far more ecological and money value than anything else the Sierra produces; our multibillion farm business as well as water for major cities comes from there, and the water also feeds wetlands necessary to waterfowl and other wildlife.

 Climate disruption is largely about water in addition to season change; but it is all of a piece. And the Boreal forest is a major component of the systems which keep the climate stable, keep the rivers flowing, keep the seasons predictable for agriculture and for the wild creatures among us. These forests cover more surface area than any other forests do, and are less disturbed as a whole than any other forest type. But with Tar Sands exploitation and other industrial-scale projects, this is changing.

 We cannot know what all the effect of our actions are. But we do know the extreme kinds of fossil fuel exploitation now being employed are harming the Earth in ways not seen before. Thousands of us are waking up to these facts and are acting, to push back against the energy status quo and take personal responsibility. I hope it's enough!

In solidarity,
 Dave

The New Blog of the Lorax Affinity Group

On the Fourth of July I took a bus to the Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco. I spent much of the day hanging out by the lagoon, taking advantage of the opportunity to observe, up close, a Snowy Egret foraging for lunch. I mused that when I'm hungry, I have the opportunity to buy a snack somewhere pretty easily, but the egret, no matter how hungry it is, has to wait until it can catch something. No corner store. I further mused that wild animals, especially wild predators, don't have food security in the sense that most American humans conceptualize it. When the world functions as it should this works. It certainly seemed to be working for my buddy the egret, who regularly broke out in a short run followed by a sudden dip of mouth to water. I left with a renewed respect for the life of the wild and a new resolve to do my part to ensure that our wild kin have a fair chance at feeding themselves.

 

That egret was among the lucky ones. We humans have taken over so much of the world's habitat, hardly aware of the toll this takes on the ability of the others, the wild ones, to meet their needs. Everyday we take more and more to satisfy our wants.

 

We have choices. One choice is to admit our addictions, to take stock of how we got to this point, of how we can free ourselves of our unhealthy habits and take the painfully difficult steps needed for our currently industrial culture to live clean and sober in terms of how we interact with the larger world. Another, infinitely easier in the short term but ultimately a murder/suicide, is to hide under a pillow about the consequences of our past choices and do whatever is necessary to maintain the status quo. This is where expensive, environmentally devastating energy sources come in. Gas and oil from fracking, coal from mountain-top removal, oil from tar sands are at once shining examples of human inventiveness in the face of strong incentives, and admissions that we've sunk to the level of someone who steals from their mother in order to get their next cocaine fix.

 

Some of us are choosing the first option, or at least attempting to create space for it. We actively oppose actions that further destroy the earth, including tar sands extraction. We have a tangle of reasons for doing so. For many the deal breaker is the increase in climate-changing CO2 that results from tar sands oil extraction. Other major reasons include the destruction of cultures, and individual bodies, of the First Nation peoples living where the tar sands are being mined. For others it's the sacrifice of individual autonomy of people who live along the proposed Keystone pipeline to the needs of the pipeline. There is also the very real danger of pipeline ruptures, as has been experienced in Michigan, Arkansas, and other places.

 

This blog extracts one thread from the tangle, the attacks on wildlife from the old-growth boreal forest the Canadian tar sands is located in, and along the proposed pipeline. The blog is an outgrowth of an affinity group formed to educate ourselves and others about the threats to wildlife from tar sands extraction. In order to present a variety of perspectives, we will take turns writing blog posts. We invite your feedback, activism, an most of all, your engagement in protecting other species from the effects of human excesses.

 

For the wild ones, and the wild in us all,

 

Possum