Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 REPPED: "The Long Emergency," by James Howard Kunstler, is a fascinating and timely book that explores the ramifications of the dwindling supply of fossil fuels on our planet. The book begins with a discussion of the concept of "peak oil" -- a term that indicates we've nearly reached the peak production of fossil fuels for energy. After the peak oil point is reached, oil production will decline and the price of oil will naturally rise. |
| Nuclear, solar, wind, cold fusion, gas hydrates and many other areas of alternative energy are discussed in the book, and each one is shown to be inadequate in replacing the loss of fossil fuels that seems inevitable. If Kunstler is correct, we are in for a rough ride that would no doubt include a rather sharp population correction. Without inexpensive fuel resources, the world simply cannot support our current population. |
David R. Montgomery
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 While the world's population keeps growing, the amount of productive farmland began declining in the 1970s and the supply of cheap fossil fuels used to make synthetic fertilizers will run out later this century. Unless more immediate disasters do us in, how we address the twin problems of soil degradation and accelerated erosion will eventually determine the fate of modern civilization.
In exploring the fundamental role of soil in human history, the key lesson is as simple as it is clear: modern society risks repeating mistakes that hastened the demise of past civilizations. |
| In principle, intensive organic methods could even replace fertilizer-intensive agriculture once cheap fossil fuels are history.
Here is the ctux of Wes Jackson's argument that tilling the soil has been an ecological catastrophe. A genetics professor before he resigned to become president of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, Jackson says he is not advocating a return to the bow and arrow. |
| A third of the total carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution has come not from fossil fuels but from degradation of soil otganic matter.
Improvement of agricultural soils presents an opportunity to sequestet large amounts of carbon dioxide to slow global warming—and help feed a growing population. |
| Preventing a substantial decline in food production once we exhaust fossil fuels will require radically restructuring agriculture to sustain soil fertility, or developing massive new sources of cheap energy if we continue to rely on chemical fertilizers. But the future is clear if we conrinue to erode the soil itself.
Estimating how many people Earth can support involves assumptions about trade-offs between population size, quality of life, and environmental qualities such as biodiversity. |
| In so doing they will face the reality that agricultural reliance on fossil fuels and fertilizers parallels ancient practices that led to salinization in semiarid regions and soil loss with agricultural expansion from floodplains up into sloping terrain. Technology, whether in the form of new plows or genetically engineered crops, may keep the system growing for a while, but the longer this works the more difficult it becomes to sustain—especially if soil erosion continues to exceed soil production. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 What if it's an "organic" product that's been flown half-way around the world, burning up fossil fuels that contribute to global warming? How do you decide what's better: A conventional apple grown locally with chemical pesticides, or an organic apple from another continent?
This is a common conundrum among consumers: How do you decide which grocery products are best for not just your own personal health, but also the health of the planet? It's a more complex decision than it might first seem. |
Devra Davis
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 The move toward greener energy from tides and sun and wind will eventually turn the Middle East conflict into a relic of the days when the world depended on liquid fossil fuels that may become irrelevant in my grandchildren's lifetimes. Arnold Schwarzenegger played the Terminator, Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer, characters wired to end much of the world. In his latest reinvention, the wealthy, unsalaried governor of California appears as the great green giant, campaigning for a just and clean world, featured on the cover of Newsweek holding up the entire globe with one finger. |
Michael Pollan
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 In the wake of Liebig's identification of the big three macronutrients that plants need to grow—nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK)—and Fritz Haber's invention of a method for synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer from fossil fuels, agricultural soils began receiving large doses of the big three but little else. |
Dr. Sharon Moalem
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 The notion is basically this—dumping billions of tons of iron solution into the ocean will stimulate massive plant growth that will suck enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to counter the effects of all the C02 humans are releasing into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. A test of the theory in 1995 transformed a patch of ocean near the Galapagos Islands from sparkling blue to murky green overnight, as the iron triggered the growth of massive amounts of phytoplankton.)
Because iron is so important, most medical research has focused on populations who don't get enough iron. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| The book begins with a discussion of the concept of "peak oil" -- a term that indicates we've nearly reached the peak production of fossil fuels for energy. After the peak oil point is reached, oil production will decline and the price of oil will naturally rise.
Kunstler points out that not only has oil likely reached a peak in terms of global production that may have occurred in the last two or three years, but at the same time the demand for oil is sharply rising around the world, especially as nations like China demonstrate an increasing appetite for energy consumption. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 In fact, the whole process uses no fossil fuels either, except in the transportation of the product to the western world (which is efficiently accomplished by ship).
It is this outer shell -- rich in natural saponins which act as water surfactants -- that the native families in India have used for centuries to wash their own clothes. They toss 2-3 shells into a small burlap bag and work it in with their laundry (which is usually washed by hand, by the way). |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Do we want to continue polluting our world and destroying our environment through the burning of fossil fuels? Driving an electric car helps eliminates such destructive dynamics, and the Tesla Roadster seems to be taking us all in the right direction.
Let's hope Toyota is paying attention, too, and is working on its own all-electric vehicle that we can all afford. |
David Steinman
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 When scientists mention the first link to have been established between fossil fuels and cancer, they went back to 1775, when Sir Percival Pott determined that scrotal cancers among England's chimney sweeps were likely being induced by their exposure to soot, a rich source of PAHs.11 Today, we know that where there are combustion engines, either in harbors or on roads, we are likely to find PAHs. |
Craig Pepin-Donat
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 The vehicles we drive burn fossil fuels, which give off carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide. Our driving habits contribute to global warming, which is cooking the planet; acid rain, which is killing our forests and polluting the water supply; and dramatic increases in cases of asthma and allergies among all segments of the population. Our children and our elders are especially susceptible to the effects of driving cars and trucks that run on petroleum products.
As stated earlier in the food addiction section, the very food we eat has been poisoned for years in the name of profit. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Developing renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels. The most promising are wind, CSP and solar power.
So grab a bicycle. Turn in your old gas banger for a hybrid vehicle or, better yet, a plug-in electric when they become available. And stop driving five miles to the video store to return a DVD that weighs 4 ounces. Go solar! |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| The existence of that apple is based on numerous inputs that may be highly detrimental to the health of the planet as a whole: The burning of fossil fuels for farming and transportation, the use of chemical pesticides that wash downstream and poison aquatic ecosystems, the use of artificial fertilizers that lack real soil nutrition, the destruction of microbial life in agricultural soils, the loss of biodiversity and the subsequent decline in wildlife populations, and so on. |
David Steinman
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| And as far as continued use of fossil fuels is concerned, BP is part of a major effort to find ways to reduce emissions and reduce consumption. For example, research at Princeton University, supported by BP and Ford, has produced several scenarios in transportation where, using existing technologies, emissions could be cut by as much as 3.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. These scenarios include doubling the fuel economy of 2 million cars and creating conventional biofuels from crops and trees. www.bp. |
| This is a great because instead of using fossil fuels to create plastics as has been done in the past, Nature-Works is developing new applications and improving the technology for making plastics from renewable resources.
And as you might expect, Cargill's commitment to the environment spans beyond developing renewable plastics. Cargill is working steadily at meeting long-term goals of increasing energy efficiency and reducing waste. Cargill is also involved in Water Matters, an international partnership focusing on issues of water quality and sustainability. |
| In this case, the Austin Energy GreenChoice program, with which AMD is working, utilizes local wind power and landfill methane gas to provide carbon-neutral energy, improving air quality by lowering power plant emissions and reducing reliance on nonreplaceable fossil fuels. Turbines at three West Texas wind farms harness the wind to supply pollution-free energy. Two landfills, one located just outside Austin and the other located near San Antonio, collect methane produced by decay to generate electricity. It fulfills every idea of what it is to stop being toxic. www.amd. |
| The world is going to increase its consumption of fossil fuels in the next few decades; the rate of increase should be tempered. Coming up with carbon-neutral solutions will protect our future and address many key environmental issues such as the buildup of poisons in the environment and in the tissues of wildlife and human beings. Doing so will also help us to raise a generation of children who will be born with their full intellectual capacities, instead of being harmed during pregnancy and before conception, at the stages of life when so much chemical toxicity has such a sharp, cutting edge. |
| This conflict is exacerbated by the problem of the finite nature of fossil fuels and their pollution. BMW is facing up to these challenges.
BMW aims to make pioneering contributions to ensure "sustainable mobility" including "CleanEnergy," involving use of hydrogen obtained from renewable sources. To this end, BMW produced the world's first fleet of hydrogen-powered combustion engines (BMW 750hLs). BMW also embraces two additional concepts?Design for Recycling" and "Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)" for the integration of environmental and recycling requirements. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Other reported potential causes for CCD are extremely diverse and include the introduction of genetically modified crops, changing weather patterns, an increase in global warming, a proliferation in the use of pesticides and airborne chemicals, immune suppression triggered by stress, high-voltage transmission lines, environmental pollution, cheap sugar substitutes, burning fossil fuels, foreign fungi, parasites, and tracheal or varroa mites.
"There are a lot less bees than we used to have and we don't know why," said Brent Halsall, president of the Ontario Beekeepers' Association. |
David R. Montgomery
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| This might work on small-scale, labor-intensive farms, but it cannot feed the wotld from large operations without huge continuous inputs of fossil fuels and nutrients mined from somewhere else.
Finally, in all likelihood the easiest—and greatest—increases in crop yields from plant breeding have already been achieved. Given a fixed gene pool already subjected to intensive natural selection over millions of years, further major gains in crop yields would require working around morphological and physiological constraints imposed by evolution. |
Tori Hudson, N.D.
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 Lipotropic supplements are usually a combination vitamin and herbal formulation and sometimes an animal liver extract designed to support the liver's function in removing fat, detoxifying the body's wastes, detoxifying external harmful substances (pesticides, fossil fuels, etc.), and metabolizing and excreting estrogens. These lipotropic products vary in their formulations depending on the manufacturer, but they are all similar and have the same uses in mind. |
Andreas Moritz
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 Given the current shortage of fossil fuels on the planet, meat production may soon become unaffordable.
• The world's livestock now produces at least 10 percent of all the greenhouse gases. In other words, emissions from livestock have become a significant source of atmospheric methane. As of 1990, domestic animals currently account for about 15 percent of the annual anthropogenic methane emissions, and the number has been steadily increasing ever since.
• Eighty-five percent of the topsoil lost in the USA each year is directly associated with the raising of livestock. |
Mark Lynas
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 Peak oil
We may not have the luxury of choosing whether to give up fossil fuels voluntarily, however. In the last few years an increasing number of knowledgeable people have come to the conclusion that world oil supplies are close to peaking, raising the spectre of an energy crunch which would cause untold hardship. There are good reasons why they could be right. The discovery of new oil reserves has been on a steady downward trend since the mid-1960s. In 1980 the production and discovery lines on the graph crossed over - since then we have consumed more oil every year than we have discovered. |
| This illustrates in minuscule how dependent we have become on fossil fuels, but the same problem can also be seen at the macro level. Jeffrey Dukes of the University of Utah is one of the few people to have done the maths, and his figures are startling. Dukes calculates that an average US gallon of gasoline required approximately 90 tonnes of precursor plant material in the process of its formation in ancient oceans (think of that every time you fill your tank). |
| Looking further forwards, the IEA projects that world energy demand will rise by more than half by 2030, with 80 per cent of the increase coming from fossil fuels rather than clean energy sources. Worryingly, this 'business as usual' scenario sees renewables increasing rapidly, but still accounting for only 2 per cent of total energy generation in 2030 because of the sheer scale of growth. Consequently, C02 emissions will rise by a frightening 52 per cent by the same date, according to this projection. |
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