Population control is not a new idea, but it has recently been discussed in the context of the environment, some articles with tact and some not. China’s one child policy was instituted in 1979 to address social, economical and environmental issues. While the policies of the Chinese government were not because they were green, and I don’t condone them, they illustrate the reality of scarce resources. Because of the population density, more people led to poverty, poor living conditions, disease and famine. There simply were not enough resources in some areas to sustain the population. Fortunately, the world is not to the point where we cannot sustain its current population. However, we may be soon.
One article with good coverage of some of these issues is in a recent Scientific American Earth 3.0. The article discusses Malthusian limits, where population growth outpace the growth in agriculture. Since the Industrial Revolution, where production of all types increased, world population has exploded. Most people are aware of issues caused by increased energy consumption, like climate change. Climate change can have various effects on agricultural output, changing weather patterns make areas previously suitable to grow crops completely desolate. Many people are also aware of fresh water issues, especially if you live somewhere like Australia. Fewer people are aware that peak phosphorus could limit fertilizer production, severely reducing agricultural output.
There is not a question of if these issues will limit the growth of the population, it is a matter of when they will limit growth. Whether population control is mandated and enforced or not, environmental factors will limit the population. If sustainable practices are adopted, and resources are used wisely, maybe we can avoid another Malthusian catastrophe.
A company called EFuel has released two waste to ethanol products meant for home use. The MicroFuel, meant for use in cars that can run on gas-ethanol mixes, and the GridBuster for electricity generation, both take liquid organic waste and convert it to ethanol. Unfortunately, the product is limited to liquid waste, like beer, wine, or liquid with waste sugar. It does work with “cellulosic material” and algae, but may require “additional processing outside of the MicroFueler.” Translation, you need to process it first.
The products were first launched for industrial customers, like brewers and vineyards with large amounts of liquid waste, high in sugar content. Homes are not likely to have enough liquid waste to make full use of the products, but it’s a step towards energy independence and clean power generation.
The book “Without Hot Air” by David JC MacKay, was featured on NPR’s Science Friday list of summer books. It discusses some of the challenges for the future in Sustainable Energy and supposedly provides good non-technical explanations for technical concepts. Rather than killing a tree to get the physical book, you can download it in PDF form on the books website:
I have not read it yet, but it appears to be getting decent reviews on Amazon. I’ll write my own review if I get a chance to read it, but I thought I’d tell everyone about the free book.
American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, US Airways, Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and UPS Airlines have signed deals to use 1.5 Million gallons per year of biodiesel from plant waste. The deal was with Rentech Inc, for ground service at LA International Airport (LAX).
Motivations for deals like this not only include environmental benefits, but also fuel price increase hedges. Record losses and bankruptcies in the airline industry have been in part due to high oil prices, and price fluctuation. In some cases, airlines have lost money because of fuel price hedging, rather than just high prices. If airlines using biofuels can prevent $390MM losses, like Delta Airlines in Q2 09, then going green can also be better for the bottom line.
Aurora Biofuels, a California startup, has engineered a strain of algae that could absorb twice as much CO2 as strains found in nature. The increases come by boosting the algae’s built in mechanisms to still be effective in low light conditions. Aurora has built a pilot facility near Melbourne, Florida, but soon hopes to expand to larger sizes.
“The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records. That was 1.1 degree higher than the 20th century average, and beat the previous high set in 1998 by a couple hundredths of a degree. The coolest recorded ocean temperature was 59.3 degrees in December 1909.”
Astroturfing: a word in English describing formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.
Greenpeace has exposed the tactics of the American Petroleum Institute (API), a lobbyist organizations paid by oil companies, to create fake grassroots campaigns against the Climate Bill. A leaked API memo has been posted on the Greenpeace website here, which urges employees to go to climate action rallies to masquerade as “concerned citizens.”
This video is mostly political, but it recaps some of the recent reports about the falsified letters from lobbyists to Congress. These lobbyists are funded by the coal industry to try to derail climate legislation.
Who would have thought making a plastic disc, packing it in plastic, and shipping via air freight and truck would emit CO2? While most people did know that everything involved in getting a CD to a consumer emits CO2, one important thing to note from this article that people often overlook is that Internet usage does emit CO2 because the computers required to host and transmit the data still consume energy.
Large companies like Amazon, Apple, and non-music related services like Google and Microsoft are comparatively energy efficient. Data centers consume mass amounts of energy because there are literally thousands of computers tightly packed into buildings. It’s in the best interest of these companies to save energy, not just to be green, but to save money. Over the life of a server, its energy use can cost more than the hardware itself. When computers run, they emit heat, which is wasted power. That heat also needs to be removed, typically by air conditioning, which also consumes more energy.
Of the major Internet companies, Google has stepped up and made its energy savings methods public. Hopefully other data centers can follow suit and implement some of the measures to reduce energy consumption.