Shale-gas drilling involving hydraulic fracturing has been increasingly used in the United States and Canada.
A new documentary called Gasland focuses on the impact that the natural gas extraction process has on communities and the environment.
The world’s worst underground coal fires are in Inner Mongolia. Some have been burning for 50 years. The amount of coal being burned is estimated to be about 20 million tonnes a year.
The Inner Mongolia regional government has now announced plans and financing of 200 million yuan ($au36 million) to begin extinguishing the fires.
According to the plan, half of the fires could be extinguished by 2012 simply by digging coal out of the path of the fires and covering the fires with sand.
The government said that the fires were caused by "improper mining practices" and "dry weather" but did not explain why it has taken 50 years to produce a plan to put them out.
Collapsing coal seam burning in an open pit mine in the Rujigou coalfield in China.
In an interview with Time magazine, Christophe de Margerie, CEO of the French oil giant Total, has commented that "what will happen very soon is that oil supplies will not cover demand. That won’t mean there is no oil. There are oil reserves, but you will need to invest billions and billions to get it."
In 2007, Mr de Margerie, told a London conference of oil executives that the industry would be unlikely to be able to produce more than 100 million barrels of oil a day and would not be able to produce the 120 million barrels a day which the International Energy Agency says will be needed by 2030. Mr de Margerie now says that producing even 90 millioin barrels a day is "optimistic".
Even present levels of production require the company to operate in difficult conditioins. For example, Total’s operations in Burma and on the Canadian tar sands and its plans to begin gas production in Iran have sparked strong protest. Last year the company opened a gas pipeline in Yemen. Total employees in Yemen can’t leave the capital and travel with armed escorts.
The Friends of the Earth have published a report on a study of various ways in which the world’s projected population of 9.16 billion in 2050 could be fed. The key finding was that feeding the world in 2050 is possible without the most intensive forms of animal and crop production and without a massive expansion of agricultural land.
The study focused on four possible dietary scenarios:
The study found that providing a Western High Meat diet to 9.16 million people is "probably feasible" but only with intensive farming methods replacing subsistence farming and massive land use change.
Providing the Current Trend diet is feasible but would require either the adoption of intensive farming or massive land use change.
Providing the Less Meat diet is feasible using humane (free range) farming and without massive land use change.
Providing the Fair Less Meat diet is highly feasible with humane, or possibly even organic, farming mathods. There is already 20% more crop land than would be needed.
The study points out that the Fair Less Meat diet would not only provide good nutrition for those who have insufficient food (currently about a billion people) but would tackle the problem of obesity (also currently about a billion people).
The International Energy Agency, which provides energy statistics and projections to 28 industrialised countries, has issued a report warning that every year of inaction in cutting carbon emissions will cost the world an additional $US500 billion.
The IEA estimates that in order to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees, non-fossil fuels will need to provide at least 32 percent of total energy and the share of new cars with internal combustion engines will have to fall to less than 40% by 2030.
The IEA says that to achieve this the world needs to spend a total of $US10,500 billion between 2010 and 2030 on energy efficiency and renewable energy. Each year of delay will increase that figure by $US500 billion.
The IEA estimates that world primary energy demand will rise by an average of 1.5 percent per year over the next two decades and that oil demand, excluding biofuels, will increase by 1 percent per annum to 105 million barrels per day by 2030 from 85 million barels per day in 2008.
While the IEA says that fossil fuel supplies are ample, the Guardian newspaper has quoted two "whistleblowers" who have questioned this claim.
One of the sources was quoted as saying "Many inside the organization believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 million to 95 million barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further."
The paper quoted a second senior IEA source as saying that a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added.
Robert and Brenda Vale, two architects who specialise in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, have given a new meaning to the term "pet food" in their new book, "Time to Eat the Dog".
The book compares the ecological footprints of popular pets with those of various other lifestyle choices. New Scientist have added to the debate with research from John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Englend and David Mackay, the UK government’s energy adviser.
So what are the results?
The land required to feed the pet cat population of the top ten cat-owning countries is about one and a half times the area of New Zealand. And the land needed to feed the dogs in the top ten dog-owning countries is five times the area of New Zealand.
To put all this into perspective, the eco-footprint of a British human is about fifty times that of a cat.
We wouldn’t dare suggest what you should conclude from this but this is the Vale’s advice:
The recent G8 meeting in in Italy unveiled a plan to commit $US 20 billion over three years to funding the development of agriculture to tackle persistent food shortages particularly in Africa.
One of the most promising areas of reserch is the use of "fertilser trees". These are varieties of shrubs that capture nitrogen from the air and transfer it to the soil - restoring nutrients and potentially doubling or trebling harvests.
According to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN Millennium Project, "fertiliser trees" are among the most promising means for achieving the goal of halving global hunger by 2015.
A major project to evaluate the use of fertiliser tress was begun in Malawi and other southern African countries in 2007. Some 200,000 farmers in Malawi are involved in the project.
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Two reports from world bodies have been published week saying that the world has ample capaicty to feed its projected increased population.
The first report, from the OECD and the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, projects ten years from the food price increases of 2008. It concludes that "Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added to the current 1.4 billion hectares of crop land [in the world], and over half of the additionally available land is found in Africa and Latin America."
The second report, from the UN Food & Agriculture Organization and the World Bank, concludes that 400 million hectares, spread across 25 African nations are suitable for farming.
The report cites Thailand as a model for agricultural development. In Thailand, land originally deemed agriculturally unpromising, due to irrigation problems and infertile soil, has been "transformed into a cornucopia" by smallholder farmers.
The report says that, as in Thailand, future success will come by using agriculture to lift Africa’s smallholder farmers out of poverty, aided by strong government measures to guarantee their rights to land, say both reports.
Treehugger has published a post which points out that, when all of the factors such as transport and production of the container, are taken into account, it takes 200 litres of water to produce a take-away latté.
So, how much water do some of the other "necessities" of modern life consume?
A pair of jeans - 6,800 litresIt seem like french fries are our best option!
(Based on data from the US Geological Survey)
World Water Day video
