|
 Another excellent article from the folks over at TreeHugger.com
about various resources being depleted around the world and some of the
root causes. Here's a brief summary of these scarcities. Be sure to
visit this page and the additional :More links for each to get more details about each
Peak Resource.
Blame Earl Butz. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford's Secretary of
Agriculture brought in the Farm Bill that dramatically increased the
amount of corn produced in America. He encouraged farmers to "get big
or get out," and to plant crops like corn "from fence row to fence
row." Further billions in subsidies to farmers encouraged production,
and soon America was awash in cheap grain, and with it cheap meat. Food
costs as a portion of the American diet dropped to the lowest level in
history; we became corn. Michael Pollan writes: "If you eat
industrially, you are made of corn. It holds together your McNuggets,
it sweetens your soda pop, it fattens your meat, it is everywhere. It
is fed to us in many forms, because it is cheap- a dollar buys you 875
calories in soda pop but only 170 in fruit juice. A McDonalds meal was
analyzed as almost entirely corn."
In 1956, American geophysicist M. King Hubbert calculated that the
rate of production of fossil fuels would peak in the United States in
about 1970 and then start declining. He was laughed out of the
conference room. However, ultimately he was proven correct; now we are
probably at the worldwide Hubbert's Peak. A hundred years ago you just
stuck a pipe in the ground and the oil rushed out; now it is not so
easy, and America's oil comes from deep under the ocean, is cooked out
of rocks in Alberta, or is purchased from nations with security issues.
Now the United States, Canada, Norway, and the United Kingdom are well
past their peak, while Saudi Arabia and Russia are approaching it. Oil
is still being found (there was a recent big hit in Brazil, and there
are thought to be big reserves in the Arctic.) but it harder to get at
and a lot more expensive.
Really, Peak Soil - the world is losing soil 10 to 20 times faster
than it is replenishing it. Drake Bennett in the Boston Globe tells us
that dirt is complicated stuff, made from sand or silt, then years of
plants adding nutrition, bugs and worms adding their excrement, dying
and rotting.
"The resulting organic matter feeds a whole underground ecology that
aerates the soil, fixes nutrients, and makes it more hospitable for
plant life, and over time the process feeds back on itself. If the soil
does not wash away or get parched by drought, it very gradually
thickens. It takes tens of thousands of years to make 15 centimeters of
topsoil, about 6 inches' worth."
Blame the price of oil. Everyone knows that the price of oil
is way up, but it is an international commodity. Natural gas, on the
other hand, usually is subject to more local rules of supply and demand
in North America alone. However it does follow the market. Director of
Energy Policy Malini Giridhar of Enbridge Gas told the Star: "Oil
trades between 6 to 12 times the price of natural gas,The price ratio
is now 11 times, which is close to the upper end of the range."
Commodities markets are pushing up natural gas in reaction to higher
oil prices, she said, rather than to gas supply and demand.
Blame Willis Carrier. Before he invented air conditioning,not
many people lived in the American Southwest, it was just too hot for
much of the year. It was only after World War II, when air conditioning
became common and affordable, that the mass migration of people and
industry could happen from cooler Northern states to California, Nevada
and Arizona. Without AC, Atlanta and Florida are almost uninhabitable.
Blame air conditioning. It is the biggest draw on the grid,
and as the climate warms, the demand is only going to get higher. Coal
is the quickest and easiest solution, but also the dirtiest; burning a
ton of coal generates 3.7 tons of carbon dioxide. Coal plants also spit
out mercury and acid. Our politicians are promising millions to develop
"clean coal", but that is unlikely to kick in before 2030.
Blame rats. First of all, most of the rice in America is sold
to Asians for whom it is a staple; it really doesn't take much of a
panic to run out of Basmati rice over here. Most rice is eaten in the
country where it is grown, and only 6 percent of the rice crop is
traded around the world. In some countries, as much as 17 percent of
the crop is eaten by rats; so good secure rice storage might be the
first place to start.
Blame China. They can't get enough of the stuff and they
don't care where it comes from- in Shanghai, 24,000 manhole covers were
stolen in 2006. The United States now exports $61 Billion in scrap to china each year, now the second biggest export. India and Russia are also net importers now. Blame Growth.
Demand for products made from metals is exceeding production capacity;
copper mines are expensive and environmentally controversial and
consumption is outstripping supply. Blame M. King Hubbert. He was talking about oil, but the Hubbert's Peak theory
applies to any resource- as supply gets scarce it gets more expensive
to get it out, and in some cases the resources are running out. Lester
Brown predicts that there is less than a 25 year supply of copper.
Chile, which produces 1/3 of the world's copper, should see production
declines starting this year.
|
News 
