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Coal fuels about 50 percent of US electricity production and provides a quarter of the country's total energy. China and India's ferocious economic growth is based almost entirely on coal-generated electricity. Coal currently looks like a solution to many of our fast-growing energy problems. However, while coal advocates are urging full steam ahead, increasing reliance on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels has crucial implications for the global climate, energy policy, the world economy, and geopolitics. Drawbacks to a coal-based energy strategy include: Scarcity – new studies suggest that the peak of world coal production may actually be less than two decades away. Cost – the quality of p...
First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
This book brings together geological, biological, radical economic, technological, historical and social perspectives on peak oil and other scarce resources. The contributors to this volume argue that these scarcities will put an end to the capitalist system as we know it and alternatives must be created. The book combines natural science with emancipatory thinking, focusing on bottom up alternatives and social struggles to change the world by taking action. The volume introduces original contributions to the debates on peak oil, land grabbing and social alternatives, thus creating a synthesis to gain an overview of the multiple crises of our times. The book sets out to analyse how crises of...
Why does humanity seem unable to step off its unsustainable path, even with so many direct symptoms - from climate change to ecological destruction and peak resources - becoming more and more apparent? Striving to answer this question, The Schizophrenic Society marshals many different insights from such areas as history, sociology, politics, philosophy, psychology, economics, and anthropology. The resulting story is an important one that exposes both human and societal shortcomings when grappling with the fundamental issue that we’re faced with: the continued growth in humanity’s claims upon Earth’s finite resources. In plain language, the author takes us on a journey, back to the dawn...
Renewable energy has enjoyed relatively good - and sometimes extraordinary - growth in recent years, in particular photovoltaics and wind; but it will be difficult to sustain such rates of diffusion on a global basis. A more complete transition to renewable energy is required on a demanding timescale set by climate change and fossil fuel depletion. This book analyses strategies for promoting renewable energy within the context of a rapid energy transition, using case studies from different countries over the past 30 years. Having described the global context in detail, covering oil and gas depletion, climate change, third world development and the potential for renewable energy, the authors ...
A history of the mining industry, starting with its humble beginning when our early ancestors started digging underground to find the stones they needed for their tools. Ugo Bardi traces the links between mineral riches and empires, wars, and civilizations, and shows how mining in its various forms came to be one of the largest global industries. He also illustrates how the gigantic mining machine is now starting to show signs of difficulties.
The year 2007 could perhaps accurately be described as the year when climate change finally received the attention that this challenge deserves globally. Much of the information and knowledge that was created in this field during the year was the result of the findings of the Fourth - sessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which were disseminated on a large scale and reported extensively by the media. This was the result not only of a heightened interest on the part of the public on various aspects of climate change, but also because the IPCC itself proactively attempted to spread the findings of its AR4 to the public at large. The interest generated on the scientific realities of climate change was further enhanced by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC and former Vice President of the US, Al Gore. By taking this decision in favour of a leader who has done a great deal to create awareness on c- mate change, and a body that assesses all scientific aspects of climate change and disseminates the result of its findings, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has clearly drawn the link between climate change and peace in the world.
Projecting win-win situations, new economic opportunities, green growth and innovative partnerships, the green economy discourse has quickly gained centre stage in international environmental governance and policymaking. Its underlying message is attractive and optimistic: if the market can become the tool for tackling climate change and other major ecological crises, the fight against these crises can also be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. But how ‘green’ is the green economy? And how social or democratic can it be? This book examines how the emergence of this new discourse has fundamentally modified the terms of the environmental debate. Interpreting the rise of ...
This book examines the physical and economic characteristics of the global oil resource to explain why peak oil has been so poorly understood. The author draws on information held in oil industry datasets that are not widely available outside of the specialist literature, and describes a number of methods that have been successfully used to predict oil peaks. In contrast to the widely-held view that ‘all oil forecasts are wrong’, these methods correctly predicted the current peak in global conventional oil production. Current oil forecasts are then compared to evaluate the expected dates for regional and global oil peaks for conventional oil, all-oils, and all-liquids. The dates of globa...
The background This volume contains the proceedings of the first International symposium on "Non-C0 Greenhouse Gases: Why and How to 2 Control?" held in Maastricht, The Netherlands from 13-15 Decem ber 1993. Of the known greenhouse gases, political attention to date has been primarily focused on carbon dioxide (C0 ) and the 2 CFCs - the latter because of their interaction with stratospheric ozone. The other greenhouse gases, notably methane (CH ), nitrous 4 oxide (N 0), HCFCs, HFCs and tropospheric ozone and its precur 2 sors nitrogen oxides (NO), carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), may appear collectively to be of equal importance for global warming but have attracte...