LifeItself

In 2015, about 100,000 forest and peat fires were started in Indonesia to clear land for oil palm plantations. Palm oil is a valuable commodity used as an automotive fuel, for cooking, in shampoos, creams, lipsticks, mascaras, ice cream, chocolate, and so on.  We consume ever more palm oil.

The Indonesian fires blanketed the entire region with haze and emitted more carbon dioxide than the U.S. Here is a good summary.  I know you are busy and you probably will not devote 31 minutes of your time to watching something that might impact negatively your country and you. Please look at least at the first 10 minutes of this hard-hitting Coconut TV program.  At nine minutes and 41 seconds you will hear about personal threats and thugs sent to dissuade activists from ever mentioning the criminals who run the largest Indonesian racket and pay off the government officials. These criminals work for several large corporations controlled by other nations, mostly rich Western democracies. In many w…

I could start from telling you about my own impressions of human delusions, but I could not possibly introduce the subject better than the ENCYCLICAL LETTER, LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME.  Here is a short fragment of the Preamble pertinent to what I want to say later:

1. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.
“Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs.” 2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence presen…

Yesterday, my wife and I went to see "One night with Janis Joplin" at the Zach Theater in Austin.  Kacee Claton looks and sings eerily like Joplin.  Janis Joplin was a bright comet that lit up the skies decades ago and combusted in front of our eyes wide-shut.  Fifty years later, we continue to bask in Joplin's light and wipe off tears when she touches us with her raw emotions and makes love to all of us.  The timeless Janis Joplin, who tragically died when she was barely 27, is the essence of what a human can give to others, including her loneliness and drug addiction.

For decades, Joplin's Cry Baby, has echoed in my head whenever I think about the wounds humans have been inflicting on this Earth of ours.  But why are we stumbling down a slippery path of environmental destruction that must lead to an inevitable collapse of modern civilization?  My explanation is that most people have a wrong frame of reference.  For example, what is the essence of agriculture? As Ma…

Before I discuss the logic behind negating a peak of production of anything, let me sum up where we are in the U.S. in terms of crude oil production.  According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA):

"The United States consumed 18.8 million barrels per day (MMbd) of petroleum products during 2011, making us the world's largest petroleum consumer. The United States was third in crude oil production at 5.7 MMbd. But crude oil alone does not constitute all U.S. petroleum supplies. Significant gains occur, because crude oil expands in the refining process, liquid fuel is captured in the processing of natural gas, and we have other sources of liquid fuel, including biofuels. These additional supplies totaled 4.6 MMbd in 2011."


Let me parse this quote.  First, let's look at the history of oil production in the U.S., shown in the chart below.  The vertical axis is scaled with a unit of power, exajoules (EJ) per year, very close to quadrillion BTUs (quads) p…