Other resource depletion

Alan Kohler had an interesting column in The Business Spectator recently ("The cars that ate Australia") warning that as our car fleet transitions from the internal combustion to electric vehicles, local car manufacturers need to start looking to manufacture EV's or they (and all their suppliers) will end up shutting down.

Nobody knows what will happen when an oil-producing member of the global economy in the middle of the Middle East implodes into worthlessness,... and then runs out of water, but in Yemen, we are going to find out.

New information prompts another look at the global supply of lithium, used in renewable batteries, and a major choice for use in the batteries of electric vehicles, such as the Chevy Volt.

The Story of P(ee)
-Forest Carbon Scheme Gains Support, Faces Hurdles
-Warming Water Spurs U.S. to Consider ESA Protection for 82 Coral Species
-Rewilding’ the World: A Bright Spot for Biodiversity

We burn through more of it per capita than any other country; and our appetite for it can only be sated with massive imports. No, not oil--I'm talking about nitrogen fertilizer. With only 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. consumes nearly 12 percent of the globe's annual synthetic nitrogen fertilizer production. And we're producing less and less of it at home--meaning that, as with petroleum, we're increasingly dependent on other nations for this key crop nutrient.

Prof. Al Bartlett offers useful approximations for understanding exponential growth and its alarming consequences. He gives two rules of thumb for quick calculations about exponential growth but it's worth noting that these are approximations, quite accurate for small percentage growth values, but not correct for large rates of growth.

One way of looking at our current set of predicaments is that we've been on a binge, consuming energy considerably faster than it can be captured and stored by Earth's ecosystems. While fossil fuels once appeared limitless (and still do to deniers of peak oil), and though we're literally bathed in energy (in the form of sunlight), the disappearance of the fossil-fuel storehouse accumulated over millions of years isn't something that can be replaced with anything nearly as convenient as fossil fuels.

-Depletion of Key Resources: Facts at Your Fingertips
-Cities, peak oil, and sustainability
-Reconsidering Cities
-Peter Newman: The Crash, Peak Oil and Resilient Cities
-Where do we go from here?

-The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
-Who Will Build the Ark?
-Why Ecological Revolution?
-'Population Justice' — The Wrong Way to Go

Jeff Rubin, former chief economist at Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, is not your typical economist. He gets peak oil...And now, in his bestselling book Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, he argues that oil prices, temporarily dampened by the deepest post-war recession on record, will soon be vaulted to new highs as the economy begins to recover, which in turn will thrust the world into yet another recession right on the heels of this one.

The veneration of the automobile is a custom that is gradually, steadily becoming more commonplace in urban India. The global auto industry's major manufacturers are betting on it, India's central government is betting on it, and tens of thousands of new customers in India are delivering that bet.

The American West at Risk's 13 chapters examine some of the major human-caused environmental problems now threatening the 11 contiguous Western states...Citing trustworthy, peer-reviewed studies in support of its arguments, and written by three trained scientists, this book has every claim for credibility—and is an enlightening and gripping read for scientists and laypeople alike.

It was the pivotal international conference of the new century. Tens of thousands showed up, including heads of state, officials at all levels of government, representatives of environmental organizations, and ordinary citizens from nearly 200 countries. Scientists had warned that, without a strong agreement to reduce carbon emissions, the consequences for civilization and the world's ecosystems would be cataclysmic.

-Ed Miliband: China tried to hijack Copenhagen climate deal
-Carbon Supplicants on the Copenhagen Pilgrimage
-Review of the Year 2009: Climate change
-How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room
-There's No Negotiating With Nature
-BC Fossil of the Decade Awards
-Copenhagen's failure belongs to Obama
-Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees
-Doom and Gloom
-Mammals May Be Nearly Half Way Toward Mass Extinction