June 20th, 2007 by John
For those of us worried about climate change and its effect on world food production, the news that China is now building coal fired power plants at the rate of two each week is alarming. However we should not be surprised, as the massive amount of Chinese goods being used by us in the West require lots of electricity in their manufacture.
To many people, this rapid increase in emissions from China and the rest of the developing world makes it seem that we might as well give up on our efforts to reduce emissions in the West, admit defeat, live for today and let our children starve in the future.
Instead of admitting defeat, we in the West should take radical action that will be copied in the rest of the world. Europe should base the entire tax system at local, national and federal level on a massive carbon tax replacing income tax, employment taxes and even sales tax. This would change our decision-making and cause technological innovation at the high speed that is necessary.
If Europe or any other region taxed carbon, it would be entitled to insist that goods imported from any nation that did not have the same taxes would need to be accompanied by a verifiable carbon audit showing the carbon cost. Import taxes would be levied accordingly. Alternatively, goods would be categorised according to average energy input for tax purposes. This system would mean that the tax levied on carbon would be collected by the importing country rather than by the producing country so that the producing country would be encouraged to tax carbon themselves.
I plan to write a post that explores carbon tax more fully. In the meantime, let me know if you agree with the idea.
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June 19th, 2007 by John
Before the theory of Peak Oil became well known, ordinary farmers wondered what would happen when the inevitable decline in oil production began. Despite the entire food system being dependent on oil and gas it’s a question they knew would have to be faced some time because of the finite nature of those supplies.
The change from horses and other beasts of burden began in North America in the first half of the 20th century. Tractors and other engine powered machines only really started on a big scale in Europe after 1945. In the developing world it has been slowly developing and even now there are many millions of animals still at work. In places like China and India, change is now very rapid as millions of workers leave the villages for jobs in the city.
However, a move back to animal power, especially in the West is impossible. Even if we could breed the millions of horses needed, we would also need millions of skilled men to work with them. But, in any case, productivity would go down terribly. We now have huge tractors that can deal with the toughest conditions and harvesting machines that just could not be adapted for horse power. But the biggest problem would be feeding the animals. Phasing out work horses has been one of the main factors that has allowed the earth to support so many people. Around 30% of the land was needed to grow the hay, oats and other food needed by the millions of horses used in farming, transport and the army. In the West at least, this land all became available to grow food for human consumption.
We certainly cannot go back to horses and we now know that if fossil fuels become scarce, it would be much more efficient to grow biodiesel to power machines than to grow food for horses.
It is important, though, that the production of biofuels doesn’t add to the other looming problems of human food supply. This is discussed in the book Famine in the West.
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Peak Oil is sometimes called ‘Hubbert’s Peak.’ Marrion King Hubbert, a Shell geologist predicted in 1956 that US oil production would peak around 1971. His prediction was not believed by the U.S government or even by most other prominent geologists and oil companies, but he turned out to be correct. He said that production in the U.S would follow a bell shaped curve, rising steeply, reaching a peak in 1971 and then falling.
Hubbert also predicted that world production would follow a similar pattern. Many geologists and oil experts have in the last few years concluded that he was correct in that too, and indeed in many other countries, especially high consumption countries, production is already declining, leaving us more dependent on the Middle East.
When North Sea production went in to decline in 1999, the oil companies and the UK government seemed to have been taken by surprise. They had not predicted such an early peak and were reluctant to admit it had actually happened.
There are gigantic amounts of oil left, but when world oil production reaches its highest level ever, a level never to be repeated and to be followed by a decline, a mad scramble will begin and panic will prevail simply because we cannot manage with less in the face of rapidly increasing demand from Asia, especially China and India.
There are many different estimates of when Peak Oil will happen, mainly because it is impossible to get accurate reserve figures from producing countries, especially OPEC members who are thought to have lied for years about their reserves in order to have a high production quota.
Some experts think we are at or near to peak already and point to the fact that very high prices during the last few years have not led to big production increases as would be expected. Other experts think that around 2010 is the most likely time while others think it could be more then 20 years away.
What is not in dispute is that oil and gas are finite resources and will peak at some time. We need to be urgently working on ways to allow food production to continue when the peak arrives.
The solutions section of the book, Famine in the West, describes my thoughts on how this can be done. What are your thoughts?
