Water

Food & water - Feb 7

Staff, Energy Bulletin

- Vandana Shiva: The Seed Emergency
- Bloomberg: Farmers Can Grow Food for All, as Long as Ecosystems Hold
- Peak Water: The Rise and Fall of Cheap, Clean H2O

archived February 7, 2012

“Sewer mining” – efficient water recycling coming to a community near you

Sandra Postel, National Geographic

It sounds yucky at best, but mining sewage is growing in popularity, especially in Sydney, Australia, where a decade of drought forced some creative thinking about how to get, use and manage water.

archived January 30, 2012

Shale shocked: Fracking gets its own Occupy movement

Ellen Cantarow, TomDispatch

This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains...But for once, this story isn't about tragedy. It's about a resistance movement that has arisen to challenge some of the most powerful corporations in history.

archived January 23, 2012

Transition and solutions - Jan 14

Staff, Energy Bulletin

- The Small-Mart Revolution and Localism (Michael Shuman and Stephanie Mills interview) - video
- Water - pump your own
- Peak oil can fuel a change for the better

archived January 14, 2012

Shale gas - Jan 5 updated

Staff, Energy Bulletin

-Josh Fox, Director of Gasland, on the Lies of Hydrofracking
-What the Frack?
-Ohio earthquake was not a natural event, expert says
-Ohio Quake Spurs Action on 5 Wells, Won’t Stop Oil and Gas Work
-Fracking Rules Show Obama on ‘Wrong Track,’ Oil Group Says

archived January 5, 2012

Water - Dec 27

Staff, Energy Bulletin

- Private Water Companies Come to Texas Bringing Soaring Rates, Little Recourse for Consumers
- Portraits of the Southwest in the Shadow of Drought
- No Time Left to Adapt to Melting Glaciers

archived December 27, 2011

How much dam energy can we get?

Tom Murphy, Do the Math

Having now sorted solar, wind, and tidal power into three "boxes," let's keep going and investigate another source of non-fossil energy and put it in a box. Today we'll look at hydroelectricity. As one of the earliest renewable energy resources to be exploited, hydroelectricity is the low-hanging fruit of the renewable world. It's steady, self-storing, highly efficient, cost-effective, low-carbon, low-tech, and offers a serious boon to water skiers. I'm sold! Let's have more of that! How much might we expect to get from hydro, and how important will its role be compared to other renewable resources?

archived December 21, 2011

Shale gas - Dec 12

Staff, Energy Bulletin

-E.P.A. Links Tainted Water in Wyoming to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas
-Shale gas drilling's dirty secret is out
-Encana throws cold water on EPA report
-Ex-oil worker blasts shale gas industry
-No U.S.-style shale gas boom in EU: E&Y
-Petrochina says new shale gas find tough to develop

archived December 12, 2011

The Parching of the West

William deBuys, TomDispatch.com

And here’s the bad news in a nutshell: if you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization. No kidding.

archived December 5, 2011

What we are for

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

Every activist engaged in combating human-caused climate change or specific elements of the current energy economy knows that the work is primarily oppositional. It could hardly be otherwise; for citizens who care about ecological integrity, a sustainable economy, and the health of nature and people, there is plenty to oppose...

These and many other fights against destructive energy projects are crucial, but they can be draining and tend to focus the conversation in negative terms. Sometimes it’s useful to reframe the discourse about ecological limits and economic restructuring in positive terms, that is, about what we’re for...

archived November 18, 2011

Occupy Wall Street: The most important thing in the world now

Naomi Klein, Occupied Wall Street Journal via The Nation

We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.

archived October 7, 2011

ODAC Newsletter - Sep 30

Staff, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre

The debt crisis and the war in Libya continued their push and pull on the oil price this week with the outlook currently weakening over fears of a Eurozone recession. Despite this Brent continues to trade at over $100/barrel - around double the price at which any previous economic recovery has occurred. The rising cost of energy is playing out in a number of ways...

archived September 30, 2011

Water, oil and food – a crisis for Saudi Arabia and the world

Lakis Polycarpou, Water Matters: News From the Columbia Water Center

A water crisis is unfolding in Saudi Arabia that could have profound implications for both the Saudi people and for the rest of the world.

archived September 14, 2011

Have frackers pushed their luck too far?

Steve LeVine, Foreign Policy

Over the past week, I've heard from serious observers of the U.S. shale gas industry -- from investment analysts, think-tank scholars and others -- that we seem near a tipping point in the heated debate over the companies' drilling methods: If there is another serious accident or two in which shale gas drillers appear to have polluted a water aquifer, look for significant regulatory curtailment of the industry, as one investment analyst put it.

archived September 13, 2011

Water - Sep 12

Staff, Energy Bulletin

-As Texas Withers, Gas Industry Guzzles
-Saudi Arabia's water needs eating into oil wealth
-Sandra Postel: Water World, Uncut

archived September 12, 2011