Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons

Long before “sustainable” became a buzzword, intellectuals wondered how long industrial society could survive. In “The Idea of Decline in Western History,” after surveying predictions from the mid-19th century until today, the historian Arthur Herman identifies two consistently dominant schools of thought.

The first school despairs because it foresees inevitable ruin. The second school is hopeful — but only because these intellectuals foresee ruin, too, and can hardly wait for the decadent modern world to be replaced by one more to their liking. Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a simpleton. Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list. Have you read Julian Simon’s “The State of Humanity”? Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”? Gregg Easterbrook’s “Sonic Boom”?

Good books all, and so is the newest addition to this slender canon, “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley. It does much more than debunk the doomsaying. Dr. Ridley provides a grand unified theory of history from the Stone Age to the better age awaiting us in 2100.

It’s an audacious task, but he has the intellectual breadth for it. A trained zoologist and former editor at The Economist, Dr. Ridley has established himself in previous books, like “The Origins of Virtue” and “Genome,” as the supreme synthesist of lessons from anthropology, psychology, molecular genetics, economics and game theory. This time he takes on all of human history, starting with our mysteriously successful debut. What made Homo sapiens so special? Dr. Ridley argues that it wasn’t our big brain, because Neanderthals had a big brain, too. Nor was it our willingness to help one another, because apes and other social animals also had an instinct for reciprocity.

“At some point,” Dr. Ridley writes, “after millions of years of indulging in reciprocal back-scratching of gradually increasing intensity, one species, and one alone, stumbled upon an entirely different trick. Adam gave Oz an object in exchange for a different object.”

The evidence for this trick is in perforated seashells from more than 80,000 years ago that ended up far from the nearest coast, an indication that inlanders were bartering to get ornamental seashells from coastal dwellers. Unlike the contemporary Neanderthals, who apparently relied just on local resources, those modern humans could shop for imports.

“The extraordinary promise of this event was that Adam potentially now had access to objects he did not know how to make or find; and so did Oz,” Dr. Ridley writes. People traded goods, services and, most important, knowledge, creating a collective intelligence: “Ten individuals could know between them ten things, while each understanding one.”

As they specialized and exchanged, humans learned how to domesticate crops and animals and sell food to passing merchants. Traders congregated in the first cities and built ships that spread goods and ideas around the world.

The Phoenician merchants who sailed the Mediterranean were denounced by Hebrew prophets like Isaiah and Greek intellectuals like Homer. But trading networks enabled the ancient Greeks to develop their alphabet, mathematics and science, and later fostered innovation in the trading hubs of the Roman Empire, India, China, Arabia, Renaissance Italy and other European capitals.

Rulers like to take credit for the advances during their reigns, and scientists like to see their theories as the source of technological progress. But Dr. Ridley argues that they’ve both got it backward: traders’ wealth builds empires, and entrepreneurial tinkerers are more likely to inspire scientists than vice versa. From Stone Age seashells to the steam engine to the personal computer, innovation has mostly been a bottom-up process.

“Forget wars, religions, famines and poems for the moment,” Dr. Ridley writes. “This is history’s greatest theme: the metastasis of exchange, specialization and the invention it has called forth, the ‘creation’ of time.”

You can appreciate the timesaving benefits through a measure devised by the economist William D. Nordhaus: how long it takes the average worker to pay for an hour of reading light. In ancient Babylon, it took more than 50 hours to pay for that light from a sesame-oil lamp. In 1800, it took more than six hours of work to pay for it from a tallow candle. Today, thanks to the countless specialists producing electricity and compact fluorescent bulbs, it takes less than a second. That technological progress, though, was sporadic. Innovation would flourish in one trading hub for a while but then stagnate, sometimes because of external predators — roving pirates, invading barbarians — but more often because of internal parasites, as Dr. Ridley writes:

“Empires bought stability at the price of creating a parasitic court; monotheistic religions bought social cohesion at the expense of a parasitic priestly class; nationalism bought power at the expense of a parasitic military; socialism bought equality at the price of a parasitic bureaucracy; capitalism bought efficiency at the price of parasitic financiers.”

Progress this century could be impeded by politics, wars, plagues or climate change, but Dr. Ridley argues that, as usual, the “apocaholics” are overstating the risks and underestimating innovative responses.

“The modern world is a history of ideas meeting, mixing, mating and mutating,” Dr. Ridley writes. “And the reason that economic growth has accelerated so in the past two centuries is down to the fact that ideas have been mixing more than ever before.”

Our progress is unsustainable, he argues, only if we stifle innovation and trade, the way China and other empires did in the past. Is that possible? Well, European countries are already banning technologies based on the precautionary principle requiring advance proof that they’re risk-free. Americans are turning more protectionist and advocating byzantine restrictions like carbon tariffs. Globalization is denounced by affluent Westerners preaching a return to self-sufficiency.

But with new hubs of innovation emerging elsewhere, and with ideas spreading faster than ever on the Internet, Dr. Ridley expects bottom-up innovators to prevail. His prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

If you’re not ready to trust an optimist, if you still fear a reckoning is at hand, you might consider the words of Thomas B. Macaulay, a British poet, historian and politician who criticized doomsayers of the mid-1800s.

“We cannot absolutely prove,” he wrote, “that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason.”

How green are the ‘childless by choice’?

by Lisa Hymas

Laura S. Scott has surveyed and interviewed more than 170 people for her Childless by Choice Project. "I'm keenly interested in the process of decision-making," she says. "How do we get from assuming parenthood for ourselves to the point where we're saying, ‘No kids, thank you!'?" She shares what she's learned in a new book, Two Is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice, and in a forthcoming documentary.

I called Scott to find out whether environmental concerns were a factor for many of the people she spoke with -- and we also got to talking about whether the feminist movement is supportive of childfree women, how a nurturing instinct is different from a maternal instinct, and why we shouldn't try to save Social Security as we know it.

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Q. How many of the people you talked to mentioned environmental issues as a reason not to have kids?

A. I was trying to find the top six most compelling motives to remain childless. The environmental motive was not among that top six, but it showed up fairly regularly in the mix of motives. In a questionnaire, I asked people an open-ended question: "I remained childless by choice because I believe ___." The motive that was most frequent was, "I don't feel the desire. I believe you shouldn't have a child unless you feel a desire to have a child." Then other frequently cited belief systems included, "The world is already overpopulated. I believe that the world does not need another child."

Even though [the environment] didn't come out as the most compelling motive for the group, it was the most compelling motive for a number of people. I interviewed people who felt very strongly that if they were going to be responsible global citizens, they needed not to have children. I talked to a couple in Canada and [the woman] said to me, "As much as I love the potentiality of a newborn, I don't think the planet needs another garbage-producing human." Her partner actually wrote himself a letter the week he was going to get a vasectomy, making a list of reasons why he got snipped. The No. 1 reason was that the world is overpopulated and Mother Earth's problems are a result of too many humans.

Q. When a person is thinking about whether or not to have a child, environmental concerns might break down in two ways: There's concern about overpopulation and that a child will cause environmental damage and use resources and worsen climate change. And then you might be concerned about bringing a child into a polluted and crowded world that's going to be a less pleasant place to live. Did you hear from people on that latter point?

A. There is that too. There was worry that we've messed up this planet so badly, is it really fair to bring this little person into it? And I think "environmental," more broadly, is not just a distressed planet, but also the social ills that might threaten the environment [in which you raise] a child, whether it be crime or drugs or sexual promiscuity.

But it was more of the former that I heard about. There was a guilt aspect. Some people said, "You know, we really messed up this planet and I feel guilty bringing a child into this place."

People who I interviewed thought long and hard about what it would be like to be a parent in this day and age, and it didn't look like a pretty picture to them. They didn't have a lot of faith that they would be the parent they really wanted to be based on the stressors that were out there for parents.

Q. Were people who cited the environment as a reason younger or older?

A. I got it across the board. I saw slightly more of the 20- to 29-year-olds expressing concerns about the environment, but only slightly. I anticipated that I would see more people concerned about the environment who were children of the '70s, when we had that zero-population-growth movement. There was a time, in the '70s and even in the early '80s, when it was totally cool to be childfree, particularly if you were in environmental-activist circles. But I think this next generation, anyone born after 1980, is going to be much more aware of environmental concerns because we're doing a better job of educating children about global sustainability.

I was influenced after the fact. I made the decision not to have children in my late teens, early 20s, and environmental motives were not among my primary motives. However, as I grew to be an adult, I became much more conscious about environmental concerns. I read Bill McKibben's book Maybe One and was incredibly influenced by it, to the point where I felt myself nodding on every page, saying, "This guy is so right!" and thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if everyone had a chance to read this book and really think long and hard about how many children they bring into the world?"

Q. In your book, you mention meeting an older woman who asks you whether you have kids, and you tell her you've chosen not to, and she responds, "Back in my day we didn't have a choice."

A. The choice to remain childless didn't really exist even 50 or 60 years ago. Birth control methods were really dodgy and not particularly safe or accessible or widely available to most people. And there were laws on the books against using contraceptives if you were married, even until the 1960s in the United States and Canada. The fact that you can as a couple choose to remain childless and you can take the steps to ensure that you do not have children and you can do it safely and you can do it legally -- this is new!

Q. Maybe the culture hasn't caught up with this dramatic shift?

A. That's very true. The assumption that everyone will have a child at some point in their life and it will all be good and happy -- that still has a lot of power. People who make the alternate choice are really swimming against the tide, and their decision-making is not endorsed or understood or accepted in a lot of communities.

It used to be that you went from high school to marriage to children and the question was, "How many children are we going to have?" And that question has morphed into, "Should we have children?" As you delay marriage and child-rearing into your 30s and perhaps even your 40s, you come to appreciate a childfree life. Then that fertility deadline hits, particularly for women, and you go, "OK, gosh, if I'm going to have kids, I really need to think about it. Do I need to look at my partner as a possible father for my children? Am I going to find a new house that I can raise a family in? Or am I going to refill that birth-control prescription?" And then you are a decision-maker -- you're no longer assuming kids for yourself.

Q. Do you think there's more pressure on women than on men to become parents? Or do women feel it more acutely?

A. I think females do feel it more acutely, and the reason is that having children, being a mother, is so tied to the female identity, more so than to the male identity. People I interview will say, "People don't think you're a real woman unless you have a child." There's that sense that others are thinking, "Well, she's not really going to be fulfilled as a woman, or empowered as a woman, or empathetic as a woman if she doesn't experience parenthood."

Studies have clearly shown that voluntarily childless women do experience incredibly good well-being and do have a great quality of life and are experiencing the full range of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- that self-actualization that we all hope and pray for. But then there's that niggling suspicion, especially from women who have children, that this can't be legit, that childfree women are in denial and are going to regret it and are going to feel lonely and isolated and have a very poor quality of life. I think there's a sense that a man in the world will do fine without children, but a woman in the world without children is going to face some tragic end.

Q. Do you feel like the feminist movement -- not that there's some monolithic movement that you can pin down -- but do you feel like it's supportive of the choice not to have children? Or is it really focused on helping women balance work and children?

A. Women who choose to remain childless really haven't been embraced in that umbrella of modern feminism. Maybe earlier, in the '70s, when we did have a very strong environmentalist movement, the childfree choice would have been embraced within the feminist movement. But I don't see that in this sort of neo-feminist movement that we have now. The focus really is on working moms. I think that will change as the numbers of women who remain childless increase. Now, in 2010, close to 20 percent of women don't have children and will never have children.

Q. A number of the people you interviewed in your book work with or volunteer with kids. Do you think it's a disproportionately high number compared with the rest of the population?

A. Maybe, because we have time. Frankly, I don't think I would have mentored had I been a parent -- I just wouldn't have had the time nor the interest. When you parent, your focus is justifiably on your own children; they tend to consume a large portion of your disposable income and discretionary time. The reason why I think so many of the childfree are engaged in volunteerism, and especially volunteering with youth, is because they can. Many of the people I've interviewed emphasize that just because we're childless by choice doesn't mean that we're without children in our lives. Our choice is to have nieces and nephews in our lives, to be able to mentor and to be able to volunteer in the community with children.

I was quite surprised when I was doing the research for the book how many people I came across who were teachers. These were people who had chosen careers that would put them in daily contact with children, and they loved their jobs. But on the other side, they're saying, "I'm so glad I'm childless by choice, because I don't know how, after spending eight hours with 30 kids, I could come home to a houseful of children. I would be overwhelmed."

I think there's an understanding among the childfree that if you choose, you can have children in your life, and if you don't choose, you don't have to. There's that incredible freedom to create a family of affinity versus a family of blood -- what we call the tribe. The childfree are very adept at creating tribes because they know that if they want to have a good quality of life surrounded with people who love them and who they love, they need to seek out people who can function as a de facto family, and some of those people might be little people.

Just because you're childless by choice doesn't mean you don't have a sense of nurturing. I've had a lot of people tell me, "I don't think I have a maternal instinct, but I have a nurturing instinct." That nurturing instinct could be expressed by nurturing my community or nurturing my pets or nurturing my spouse. I think there's an assumption that if you don't have children, you must be this cold-hearted, isolated, curmudgeonly person. I don't see evidence of that with the people that I've interviewed.

Q. How do you respond when someone says it's selfish not to have kids?

A. I question how they define selfishness, because to me, selfishness implies a victim. So who am I victimizing if I don't have a child? Unless my parents anticipated a grandchild and didn't get one, I don't see that my choice not to have a child negatively impacts anyone else.

I think people see a lifestyle that maybe involves travel or time alone and hobbies, and parents might look upon that and go, "Well, you're self-indulgent or you're selfish because your activities are more self-oriented." And that might be true. Some people think it's a bad thing to take that time for yourself in isolation or go on a hike.

But I don't see selfishness played out in the sense of, "I'm childless by choice because I want to go out to clubs until 3:00 in the morning," or "I want to save every penny I make and not have to spend it on anyone else." In fact, I see a lot of volunteerism, I see a lot of people donating time and money to charitable organizations, and I see a lot of people chipping in to help their nephew go to college. That selfish label just really doesn't stick.

Q. There's an argument that we need to have kids in order to keep Social Security going, that we need more young people to support all the older people. There's all this worry about demographic shifts in Europe, that they don't have enough children being born.

A. It's like breeding workers. That kind of thing [is] a very scary assumption, that we can breed our way into well-being as a nation. I don't think the evidence supports that. To save Social Security, we would have to have, according to Bill McKibben, at least three kids on average, which would, in a few generations, produce a population approaching China's. From all I've read, it just doesn't make any sense.

It's ridiculous that we've been able to double the [world] population in such a short span of time. But certainly we can't afford to double the population again. I don't think the earth will support that. I think it's in everyone's best interest if we find a way to plateau our population so that we do have a good quality of life. It may not include Social Security benefits. But it will be a world in which we might be able to feed ourselves and might have enough fresh water on the planet for everyone. That would be a nice world to live in.

MCR tänane riim: Kollaps lükkub edasi

Collapsenet Launch Delayed - Collapse Proceeding

If I were a part of the old paradigm I'd put spin on it. But I hate the old paradigm. I hate spin. The bottom line is that we thought we had our s--t together for a launch on Wednesday May 12 but we missed a few things. All in all, the 12 people who are part of CollapseNet (seven of them unpaid volunteers) have achieved miracles. But these are tough times for a group of wonderful people from four countries and four states to come together and make something like this happen. Except for me and my attorney Wes Miller (our Chief of Staff), and Chantelle Noelle (our CFO), none of us knew each other or how each other worked, or talked or thought before attempting this. Yet what we've put together is something really... useful right now; a rare thing. Some of you are helping us beta test and that input is also making a difference. Thank you. We have developed our own software, purchased services, Incorporated, established accounts and invested many hundreds of hours to make CollapseNet come to life. It will soon. And the next time I give a launch date it will be a good one.

We have come this far on about $15,000 in donations and $6,000 I have raised from speaking engagements over the last three months. -- We have to launch so I can have a job and make some money. Still no income from the film for me so, like all too many people these days, I'm (still) living on the edge. You get used to it.

Tomorrow I leave for a seven-day tour of Vermont with my publisher Chelsea Green and am going to meet some wonderful people there who are thinking about leaving the Union. I'll have five appearances and a bunch of media interviews. Am I for secession? Against it? -- I am resigned to it... either as a voluntary act or an ad hoc reality as collapse proceeds. The next stage that's coming is political collapse which I believe will be triggered here when the nation realizes how bad the Deepwater Horizon leak really is and how it has been misled. As one commentator noted "Deepwater Horizon is the Three Mile Island of deep water oil exploration". No more deepwater drilling and oil prices will spike for sure. -- Or, it might come when Freddie and Fannie ask for another $50-100 billion, even as the Gulf coast's foreclosure rate goes exponential and banks continue to fail. It might come in a massive cyber attack. Name your poison. It might come with an attack on Iran. There's plenty of crisis around and we all know it. Pity the poor fools who are looking to buy houses now when they'll be worth half as much in a year. It's Darwinian deselection now. I can guarantee that the Pacific Northwest and California will balk at having their resources sent to bail out an unrecoverable Gulf Coast. I predicted that regional stress right after Katrina and Rita when I only saw another big hurricane hitting as a result of climate change. Deepwater Horizon is much, much worse.

I do not have to tell you all that we're out of time. With the leak from Deepwater Horizon spewing at least 25,000 bpd and out of control -- and with the EU's "nuclear" bailout move having shot its wad in just one day, the writing is clear. It's as clear as Japan's near-to-imploding economy behind a debt that's worse than Greece, with no IMF or EU to fall back on. It's as clear as the explosives residue from a North Korean torpedo found on a sunken South Korean warship. It's as clear as the tail-wagging-the-dog bs propaganda about Times Square terrorists from Pakistan. It's as clear as China's superheated, about-to-implode bubble coupled with its tectonic social problems. It's as clear as the mass of forward-hedged oil purchases from a few weeks ago that blasted through the record of June 2008. My guess is that the actual depletion rate may be as high as 12% I do not know if we have days or weeks until the wheels come off. There can be no more bailouts. Oh, governments in Europe and the US might have to try and sell them, but I agree with the IMF assessment from a few months ago that said another round of bailouts would trigger massive civil unrest. And what we're seeing now is new bailouts cutting into the banking system and bond spreads triggering a rise in rates and... inflation... Inflation.

Like I said in a scene that didn't make the final cut of Collapse, The final blow to industrial civilization "will happen no later than the summer of 2010."

Today I got down on my knees and I prayed to my God. Mankind tends to pray at times like these to whatever God they know. I pray a lot anyway, for strength, guidance, balls and wisdom. All I asked for this time was that we have enough time to launch CollapseNet and to see it take hold. I asked that the winds be at our back and for every possible blessing. I did that because not a one of us is doing this out of a purely selfish motive.

A long time ago (the 1970s) I met LAPD's top bomb expert, a guy named Arleigh Mcree. I had been invited to a training day with SWAT and the bomb squad. Arleigh was always a jovial guy who could booby trap a toilet seat pretty well. He was wearing a T-shirt which said, "If you see me running, follow me."

I think I speak for all of us at the moment. I'm scared but I'm not running. You are my lifeboat, the only one I have.

CollapseNet Launches!

Maapõuest leitakse uusi triljoneid

Maapõuest leitakse uusi triljoneid

Kristjan Kaar

11. mai 2010, 10:49

Ilmselt tuleb paljudele uudisena, et erinevate maavarade maapõuest kaevandamine on paljastanud hiigelsuured maagaasivarud kiltkivis. Toetudes sektori prognoosidele võib ainuüksi Põhja-Ameerikas leiduda ca 1,000 triljonit kuupjalga puurimisvalmis maagaasi – enam kui riigi nõudlus järgmiseks 45 aastaks. Euroopa maagaasi varudeks hinnatakse 200 triljonit kuupjalga.

Kiltkivis leiduva gaasi potentsiaalidest on investorid teadlikud juba pikemat aega. Lihtsalt välja ei olnud saadaval madalahinnalist tehnoloogiat, millega sellest kasu lõigata. Esimene teadaolev horisontaalne puurauk tehti kiltkivisse 1929. aastal Texases, kuid kasumlikuks muutus uuenduslik lahendus alles vahemikul 2005 – 2008, kui fossiilsete kütuste kibekiire hinnatõus põhjustas puurimisseadmete ülepakkumise. Tänu kaasaeglsele tehnoloogiale ning selle mõistlikule hinnale võib täna USAs paiknevast The Haynesville kiltkivist saadava kildagaasi ekstraheerimise hind ulatuda $3 ühe Btu (British thermal unit) kohta. Võrdluseks võib tuua, et 1990ndatel oli Barnetti kiltkivis leiduva gaasi puurimise kulu aga ca $5 Btu kohta. Analüütikud on aga optimistlikud ning prognoosivad, et paari aastaga võib see langeda vaid paarile dollarile Btu kohta.

Vaatamata vähenevale, praegust tehnoloogiat arvestades puuritavatele USA maagaasivarudele on IEA (International Energy Agency) veendunud, et ameeriklased on võimelised oma maagaasi tootmist kahekordistama, kui ebakonventsionaalsed (eriti kildagaasi) varud võetaks efektiivselt kasutusele. Nimelt on kildagaasi tootmine vaid paari aastaga näidanud hämmastavat kasvu ning täna räägime me sellest, kui riigi kõige olulisemast nii-öelda ebakonventsionaalsest maavarast – seda tänu kildagaasi varude suurusele kui ka hüppelise sammu teinud tehnoloogia tõttu, mis parandab ligipääsetavust kiltkivile. IEA prognoosib, et USA kildagaasi varud võivad aastaks 2030 moodustada koguni 60% tervest riigi gaasivarust ja 15% terve maailma gaasivarudest (teadaolevatest varudest moodustad kildagaas täna vaid 3%).

USA maagaasi tootmine (triljonit kuuplajga)

Allikas: Standard & Poor's

Texase A&M Ülikool avaldas 2007. aastal arvamust, et uue kildagaasi puurimistehnoloogia kasutuselevõtt ainuüksi USAs võib tõsta maailma gaasivarusid 9x ehk 16,000 triljonile kuupjalale, mis on ümardatult 450 triljonit kuupmeetrit. The U.S. Federal Regulator Comission on samuti veendumusel, et tänu kildagaasile ei vajata USAs enam ühtegi uut kivisöe ega ka tuumaelektrijaama. The U.S. Energy Deparmentil on veidi realistlikum prognoos – kildagaas võib vähemalt 20 aasta pärast rahldada pool Ameerika energianõudlusest.

Mis on ebakonventsionaalne maagaas?

Ebakonventsionaalseks maagaasiks kutsutakse sisuliselt maapõuest raskesti kättesaadavaid süsivesinikke, mida on viimastel aastatel hakatud puurima tänu uuenduslikule puurimistehnoloogiale ja kõrgele toornafta hinnale, mis pakub mõistlikku kasumimarginaali. Ebakonventsionaalse maagaasi hulka liigitatakse tahke gaas (leidub vähese läbilaskmisvõimega kivimite sees olevates nii-öelda õhuaukudes), kivisöekihi metaan (gaas, mis on peidus kivisöe pragudes) ja kildagaas (selline gaas pärineb kiltkivist, või argilliidist, mis asuvad settebasseinis).

Kildagaasi ekstraheerimine kiltkivist on aga keerukas protsess, mis sisaldab endas hüdraulilist purustamist ja maasügavustes horisontaalset puurumist. Nii-öelda purustamine näeb välja selliselt, et kiltkivisse pumbatakse kõrgsurve vett, liiva, ja erinevaid kemikaale. Nii purustatakse kiltkivi, mille tagajärjel eraldub maagaas. Kiltkivi leidub maapõues nii-öelda ribadena ning horisontaalne puurimine võimaldab tekitada üle 3 kilomeetri pikkuse puuraugu, mis tõstab aga oluliselt kaevude tootmisvõimet.

Kildagaas on tekitanud huvi ka USA riigiisade seas. Riigi kildagaasi varud moodustavad 75% terve maailam kildagaasi varudest, mistõttu ei ole ka ime, miks Barack Obama poolt juhitav valitsus otsustas riigile kuuluvad maalapid kildagaasi varude uurimiseks ja uue tehnoloogia arendamiseks taas välja rentida. Tänu seadusemuudatustele ja soodsale energiahindade keskkonnale moodustab täna kildagaasi tootmine 10% tervest USA maagaasi tootmisest. Veel 2000. aastal oli numbriks vaid 1%. Seega on USAs praegust tarbimisintensiivsust arvestades 100 aasta jagu maagaasi varusid. Standard & Poor’s on oma klientidele andnud selgelt mõista, et eriti OECD väliste riikide üha kasvav energianõudlus ja üha suurenev maagaasi pakkumine võib pakkuda suurepärast investeerimisvõimalust just kildagaasi tootjatesse. Eriti peetakse silmas aga USA ettevõtteid, kuna kohalike energiatootjate tehnoloogilised lahendused on läbinud kiire arenguprotsessi ning riigi käsutuses on maailma suurimad seni avastatud kildagaasi varud. Investeerimisteesi toetamiseks võime tuua ka lihtsa näite: 2009. aastal omandas Exxon Mobil uudset tehnoloogiat kasutava ebakonventsionaalse maagaasi tootja XTO Energy.

Millised on väljavaated rahvusvahelistel turgudel?

Tõepoolest, eelpool mainitut lugedes võib jääda mulje, et gaasi on lademetes ja maavara jätkub igaveseks. Paraku vaatamata rikkalikule varubaasile on IEA tõdenud, et toetudes 600 gaasivälja põhjalikule tootmisvõime ning ammendamise (eelmainitud gaasiväljad moodustavad 55% praegusest maagaasi tootmisest) analüüsile on pooled praegustest maagaasiväljadest vaja 2030. aastaks väja vahetada, et rahuldada maailmanõudlust.

Selge on see, et kildagaas on kogumas hoogsasti populaarsust vähemasti Ameerikas. Mujal maailmas on olukord aga kardinaalselt teine ning ainuke Euroopa riik, mis on suutnud piltlikult öeldes USA jalajälgedesse astuda on Norra, kus kildagaasi tootmine on riigi oluline sissetulekuallikas ja tootmismahud on kasvanud igal aastal. Kohalike sõnul võib Norras kildagaasi tootmine ajavahemikul 2015 – 2025 kasvada koguni 8% aastas. Hoopis teistsugune näeb olukord välja Suurbritannias, kus maagaasi tootmise väheneb 2015. aastaks 40% võrra ning 2030. aastaks koguni 55% võrra. Teise juhtiva Euroopa maagaasitootja Hollandi tootmismahud vähenevad 2030. aastaks 49% võrra.

Riskid keskkonnale

Kildagaasi ekstraheerimiseks on maapõue vaja pumbata miljonite liitrite kaupa benseeniga leotatud liiva, mis segatakse hüdrokloriidhappega ja toksiliste kemikaalidega. Selline protseduur ohustab selgelt põhjavett. Näiteks 2009. aasta lõpul peatas The Department of Environmental Protection Pennsylvania osariigis sealse ettevõtte Cabot Oil & Gas tegevuse, kuna põhjavette lekkis ca 4,000 liitri jagu reostatud vett.

http://www.lhv.ee/news/index.cfm?id=1212570

Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe

The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

• Alison Benjamin on the prospect of a bee-less world
• In pictures: Why the decline in bees matters

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• Alison Benjamin
• The Observer, Sunday 2 May 2010
• Article history

Honey bees are vital insect pollinators, responsible for the healthy development of many of the world’s major food crops. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty Images

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."

Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. "It's getting worse," he said. "The AIA survey doesn't give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be."

Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers," he said, adding that a solution may be years away. "Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are complex organisms."

In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated 250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers' Association, said: "Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and others losing none." Results from a survey of the association's 15,000 members are expected this month.

John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives across the capital did not survive. "There are still a lot of mysterious disappearances," he said. "We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them."

Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores.

The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop bees foraging for food.

In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to honeybees' survival and called for the National Bee Unit to carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential cross-party public accounts committee called on the government to fund more research into what it called the "alarming" decline of honeybees.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of this funding to be "ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which research projects to back are expected this month.

WHY BEES MATTER

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.

Leaked report: Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

'The following is not public' document states

"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28. "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

Asked Friday to comment on the document, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said that the additional leaks described were reported to the public late Wednesday night. Regarding the possibility of the spill becoming an order of magnitude larger, Smullen said, "I'm letting the document you have speak for itself."

In scientific circles, an order of magnitude means something is 10 times larger. In this case, an order of magnitude higher would mean the volume of oil coming from the well could be 10 times higher than the 5,000 barrels a day coming out now. That would mean 50,000 barrels a day, or 2.1 million gallons a day. It appears the new leaks mentioned in the Wednesday release are the leaks reported to the public late Wednesday night.

"There is no official change in the volume released but the USCG is no longer stating that the release rate is 1,000 barrels a day," continues the document, referred to as report No. 12. "Instead they are saying that they are preparing for a worst-case release and bringing all assets to bear."

The emergency document also states that the spill has grown in size so quickly that only 1 to 2 percent of it has been sprayed with dispersants.

The Press-Register obtained the emergency report from a government official. The White House, NOAA, the Coast Guard and BP Plc did not immediately return calls for comment made early this morning.

The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead and kinked piping currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels -- or 210,000 gallons -- per day.

If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate.

"Typically, a very good well in the Gulf can produce 30,000 barrels a day, but that's under control. I have no idea what an uncontrolled release could be," said Stephen Sears, chairman of the petroleum engineering department at Louisiana State University.

On Thursday, federal officials said they were preparing for the worst-case scenario but didn't elaborate.

Kinks in the piping created as the rig sank to the seafloor may be all that is preventing the Deepwater Horizon well from releasing its maximum flow. BP is now drilling a relief well as the ultimate fix. The company said Thursday that process would take up to 3 months.

Gulf oil spill

See continuing coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010 on al.com and GulfLive.com.

To keep track of the Gulf of Mexico oil slick, visit www.skytruth.org or follow its Twitter feed.

To see updated projection maps related to the oil spill in the Gulf, visit the Deepwater Horizon Response Web site established by government officials.

How to help: Volunteers eager to help cope with the spill and lessen its impact on the Gulf Coast environment and economy.

"I'm not sure what's happening down there right now. I have heard there is a kink in what's called the riser. The riser is a long pipe that connects the wellhead to the rig. I really don't know if that kink is a big restriction. Is that really a big restriction? There could be another restriction further down," said LSU's Sears.

"An analogy would be if you have a kink in a garden hose. You suspect that kink is restricting the flow, but there could be another restriction or kink somewhere else closer to the faucet.

BP Plc executive Doug Suttles said Thursday the company was worried about "erosion" of the pipe at the wellhead.

Sand is an integral part of the formations that hold oil under the Gulf. That sand, carried in the oil as it shoots through the piping, is blamed for the ongoing erosion described by BP.

"The pipe could disintegrate. You've got sand getting into the pipe, it's eroding the pipe all the time, like a sandblaster," said Ron Gouget, a former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Gouget said the loss of a wellhead is totally unprecedented.

"How bad it could get from that, you will have a tremendous volume of oil that is going to be offgassing on the coast. Depending on how much wind is there, and how those gases build up, that's a significant health concern," he said.

The formation that was being drilled by Deepwater Horizon when it exploded and sank last week is reported to have tens of millions of barrels of oil. A barrel contains 42 gallons.

Smullen described the NOAA document as a regular daily briefing. "Your report makes it sound pretty dire. It's a scenario," he said, "It's a regular daily briefing sheet that considered different scenarios much like any first responder would."