The Myth of a Fossil Fuel Phase-Out

BRUSSELS — How the world uses energy is a hot topic for a warming planet, and fears of pollution and resource strain have produced a virtual arms race of energy-efficiency strategies. From the European Union to China, economies are vowing to reduce their energy intensity with the help of technological innovations and legislative changes.

Rumaila natural gas powerstation, north of the southern Iraqi port of Basra. 

Yet, despite these promises, consumer demand for energy is forecast by the International Energy Agency to rise until at least 2040. With the world’s energy needs growing, how can policymakers guarantee supply?

To put it bluntly, the world has nothing to worry about when it comes to reserves. After 40 years of fearing energy shortages, we have entered an era of abundance. We need to guard against false narratives, not scarce resources.

The culprit of this storyline is the Club of Rome, a global think-tank that, in the 1970s, spurred energy anxiety with its absurd prophecies derived from questionable models. As devoted followers of Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich, the club argued that bad things come from exponential growth, and good things from linear growth. This idea fueled the prediction that the world would run out of oil by 2000.

Read the Medium story by Samuele Furfari - “The Myth of a Fossil Fuel Phase-Out.”

BP claims an oil spill off Australia's coast would be a 'welcome boost' to local economies

Coastal towns would benefit from an oil spill in the pristine Great Australian Bight because the clean up would boost their economies, energy giant BP has claimed as part of its controversial bid to drill in the sensitive marine zone.

Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. BP said local economies
would be boosted by clean up activities if its plan to drill
for oil caused a spill.

BP, which has since withdrawn the drilling plan, also told a federal government agency that a diesel spill would be considered “socially acceptable”.

BP made the statements in an environment plan submitted to the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority in March 2016.

The company had been seeking to drill two wells off the South Australian coast, raising fears of an environmental disaster akin to BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Read Nicole Hasham’s story from The Sydney Morning Herald - “BP claims an oil spill off Australia's coast would be a 'welcome boost' to local economies.”

(Only the brutal madness of a neo-liberal economist devoid of an sense of feeling for our environment could see the sense of such an argument - Robert McLean)

The End of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One of Many Ecological Crises Threatening to Collapse the Biosphere

Human industrial growth is systematically dismantling the natural ecosystems which constitute our life support system. Rightly so, there has been an enormous amount of attention given to climate change (though action to rapidly reduce emissions still lags far beyond what is required). Climate change  is becoming abrupt and runaway; and threatens just by itself to collapse societies, economies, and ultimately the biosphere.

At least 10 planetary boundaries exist that
 threaten to make the biosphere uninhabitable

Yet climate change is only one of at least ten global ecological catastrophes which threaten to destroy the global ecological system and portend an end to human beings, and perhaps all life. Ranging from nitrogen deposition to ocean acidification, and including such basics as soil, water, and air; virtually every ecological system upon which life depends is failing. Gaia is dying.

The threat to global ecological sustainability goes well beyond climate change, and represents a more systematic failing of current political and economic models. Namely, the commodification of natural ecosystems – that are our and all life’s habitat – and their unsustainable industrial clearance for short-term profit, is sheer ecocidal madness.

Read the essay by Dr Glen Barry on EcoInternet - “The End of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One of Many Ecological Crises Threatening to Collapse the Biosphere.”

Things fall apart: why do the ecosystems we depend on collapse?

Everything collapses, eventually.

People collapse, buildings collapse, economies collapse and even entire human civilizations collapse. Collapse is also common in the natural world – animal populations and ecosystems collapse. These collapses have the greatest impact on us when they affect resources our industries depend on, leaving ecosystems in tatters and sometimes ruining local economies.

In a new paper, I look at two natural resource industries – fisheries and forestry – that are highly susceptible to collapse.

From the infamous 1980s collapse of the Canadian cod industry to the apparent imminent collapse of the Heyfield sawmill in southern Victoria, we can see a recurring pattern. And by getting better at predicting this pattern, we might be able to avoid collapse in the future.

Read the thoughts of a professor from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University, David Lindenmayer, on The Conversation -  “Things fall apart: why do the ecosystems we depend on collapse?”