Peak Everything?

I've just read an interesting article about to come out in American Scientist. Revisiting the limits to growth after peak oil links oil to the cost of other resources from metals and minerals through to food. The authors point out that:

• commodity prices have fallen despite the fact that they have become increasingly difficult to produce because oil prices dropped. This drop hid the effect of the increased energy needed for production.
• For every calorie of food produced in the world, 10 calories of energy to into producing, processing and transporting that food.
• The maximum energy return on investment for oil was 100:1 in 1930 but between 20:1 and 30:1 in 2005. That is the amount of energy balance of energy out to energy in has dropped significantly and continues to do so.
• The "limits to growth" model developed in the 60s and 70s is actually predicting very closely the changes that we are currently seeing.
  
• Oil effectively currently provides each person in Europe and the States with "on average some 30 to 60 or more "energy slaves," machines to "hew their wood and haul their water," each slave being equal to a strong, fit person.
• Our new sources of green energy do not provide very high return on energy investment and certainly will not be able to replace oil any time soon as a source of cheap energy.
• Few scientists are working on the issues associated with human population approaching the limits to growth since there has been no funding for that work. Over the last 20-30 years. this means that there are no obvious intellectual leaders debating these issues today and governments do not appear to be taking them seriously in any way, perhaps as a result of this.

Biofuels, oil and food security

I've just been looking at an interesting world bank report from the Guardian Website.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Environment/documents/2008/07/10/Biofuels.PDF

There are many claims and counterclaims about the effects of biofuels on food prices and availability which highlights the need to do some serious thinking about our direction.

I continue to be amazed at the ongoing head-in-the-sand idea that biofuels are going to allow us to continue with life as usual in the west. As I see it, there is simply no way we can keep consuming energy at the same rate as we currently do (let alone a faster rate, as we seem to bve heading towards) using a renewable resource.

I guess I have a bit of a bias here but when I look hard at the technological solutions that many people are suggesting I"m left thinking ... actually we need to be working on fostering social change and helping people live within the limits. most technological solutions seem to be offered as a way for us to keep mindlessly consuming which in turn seems to making us even more intent on consuming more in search of some kind of elusive satisfaction. This seems like a bit of a vicious cycle to me!

C