China's global shopping spree

Is the World’s Future Resource Map Tilting East?

Think of it as a tale of two countries.  When it comes to procuring the resources that make industrial societies run, China is now the shopaholic of planet Earth, while the United States is staying at home.  Hard-hit by the global recession, the United States has experienced a marked decline in the consumption of oil and other key industrial materials.  Not so China.  With the recession’s crippling effects expected to linger in the U.S. for many years, analysts foresee a slow recovery when it comes to resource consumption.  Not so China.

In fact, the Chinese are already experiencing a sharp increase in the use of oil and other commodities.  More than that, anticipating the kind of voracious resource consumption that goes with anticipated future growth, and worried about the availability of adequate supplies, giant Chinese energy and manufacturing firms -- many of them state-owned -- have been on a veritable spending binge when it comes to locking down resource supplies for the twenty-first century.  They have acquired oil fields, natural gas reserves, mines, pipelines, refineries, and other resource assets in a global buying spree of almost unprecedented proportions.

Like most other countries, China suffered some ill effects from the Great Recession of 2008.  Its exports declined and previously explosive economic growth slowed from record levels.  Thanks to a well-crafted $586 billion stimulus package, however, the worst effects proved remarkably short-lived and growth soon returned to its previous high-octane pace.  Since the beginning of 2009, China has experienced significant jumps in car ownership and home construction -- along with worries about the creation of a housing bubble -- among signs of returning prosperity.  This, in turn, has generated a rising demand for oil, steel, copper, and other primary materials.

Take oil.  In the United States, oil consumption actually declined by 9% over the past two years, from 20.7 million barrels per day in 2007 to 18.8 million in 2009.  In contrast, China’s oil consumption has risen in this same period, from 7.6 to 8.5 million barrels per day.  According to the most recent projections from the U.S. Department of Energy, this is no fluke.  The Chinese demand for oil is expected to continue climbing throughout the rest of this year and 2011, even as American consumption remains nearly flat.

Like the United States, China obtains a certain amount of oil from domestic wells, but must acquire a growing share from overseas suppliers.  In 2007, the country produced 3.9 million barrels per day and imported 3.7 million barrels, but that proportion is changing rapidly.  By 2020, it is projected to produce only 3.3 million barrels, while importing 9.1 million barrels.  This situation has “strategic vulnerability” written all over it, and so leaves Chinese leaders exceedingly uneasy.  In response, like American officials in decades past, they have moved to gain control over foreign sources of energy -- and similarly many other vital materials, including natural gas, iron, copper, and uranium.

China Binging on Energy

Chinese energy companies initially started buying up foreign firms and drilling ventures (or, at least, shares in them) as the twenty-first century began.  Three large state-owned oil companies -- the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), the China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), and the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) -- took the lead.  These firms, or their partially privatized subsidiaries – PetroChina in the case of CNPC, and CNOOC International Ltd. in the case of CNOOC -- began gobbling up foreign energy assets in Angola, Iran, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Venezuela.  On the whole, these acquisitions were still dwarfed by those being made by giant Western firms like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP.  Nonetheless, they represented something new:  a growing Chinese presence in a universe once dominated by the Western “majors.”

Then along came the Great Recession.  Since 2008, Western firms have, for the most part, been reluctant to make major investments in foreign oil ventures, fearing a prolonged downturn in global sales.  The Chinese companies, however, only accelerated their buying efforts.  They were urged on by senior government officials, who saw the moment as perfect for acquiring crucial valuable resources for a potentially energy-starved future at bargain-basement prices. 

“The international financial crisis… is equally a challenge and an opportunity,” insisted Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration, at the beginning of 2009.  “The slowdown… has reduced the price of international energy resources and assets and favors our search for overseas resources.”

As a policy matter, the Chinese government has worked hard to facilitate the accelerating rush to control foreign energy resources.  Among other things, it has provided low-interest, long-term loans to major Chinese resource firms in the hunt for foreign properties, as well as to foreign governments willing to allow Chinese companies to participate in the exploitation of their natural resources.  In 2009, for example, the China Development Bank (CDB) agreed to lend CNPC $30 billion over a five-year period to support its efforts to acquire assets abroad.  Similarly, CBD has loaned $10 billion to Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, to develop deep offshore fields in return for a promise to supply China with up to 160,000 barrels of Brazilian crude per day.

Prodded in this fashion and backed with endless streams of cash, CNPC and the other giant Chinese firms have gone on a global binge, acquiring resource assets of every imaginable type in staggering profusion in Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.  A very partial list of some of the more important recent deals would include:

* In April 2009, CNPC formed a joint venture with Kazmunaigas, the state oil company of the energy-rich Central Asian state of Kazakhistan, to purchase a Kazakh energy firm, JSC Mangistaumunaigas (MMG), for $3.3 billion.  This was just the latest of a series of deals giving China control over about one-quarter of Kazakhstan’s growing oil output.  A $5 billion loan-for-oil offer from China’s Export-Import Bank made this latest deal possible.

* In October 2009, a consortium led by CNPC and the oil heavyweight BP won a contract to develop the Rumaila oil field in Iraq, potentially one of the world’s biggest oil reservoirs in a country with the third largest reserves on the planet.  Under this agreement, the consortium will invest $15 billion to boost Rumaila’s daily yield from 1.1 to 2.8 million barrels, doubling Iraq’s net output.  CNPC holds a 37% share in the consortium; BP, 38%; and the Iraqi government, the remaining 25%.  If the consortium succeeds, China will have access to one of the world’s most-promising future sources of petroleum and a base for further participation in Iraq’s underdeveloped oil industry.

* In November 2009, Sinopec teamed up with Ecuador’s state-owned Petroecuador in a 40:60 joint venture (with Petroecuador holding the larger share) to develop two oil fields in Ecuador’s eastern Pastaza Province.  Sinopec is already a major producer in Ecuador, having joined with CNPC to acquire the Ecuadorian energy assets of Canada’s EnCana Corp. in 2005 for $1.4 billion.

* In December 2009, CNPC acquired a share of the Boyaca 3 oil block in the Orinoco Belt, a large deposit of extra-heavy oil in eastern Venezuela.  In that month, CNOOC formed a joint venture with the state-owned company Petrуleos de Venezuela S.A. to develop the Junin 8 block in the same region.  These moves are seen as part of a strategic effort by Venezuelan President Hugo Chбvez to increase his country’s oil exports to China and reduce its reliance on sales to the U.S. market.

* That same December, CNPC signed an agreement with the government of Myanmar (Burma) to build and operate an oil pipeline that will run from Maday Island in the western part of that country to Ruili, in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan.  The 460-mile pipeline will permit China-bound tankers from Africa and the Middle East to unload their cargo in Myanmar on the Indian Ocean, thereby avoiding the long voyage to China’s eastern coast via the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea, areas significantly dominated by the U.S. Navy.

* In March 2010, CNOOC International announced plans to buy 50% of Bridas Corp., a private Argentinean energy firm with oil and gas operations in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile.  CNOOC will pay $3.1 billion for its share of Bridas, which is owned by the family of Argentinean magnate Carlos Bulgheroni.

* In March, PetroChina joined oil major Shell to acquire Arrow Energy, a major Australian supplier of natural gas derived from coal-bed methane.  The two companies are paying about $1.6 billion each and will form a 50:50 joint venture to operate Arrow’s holdings.

And that’s only in the energy field.  Chinese mining and metals firms have been scouring the world for promising reserves of iron, copper, bauxite, and other key industrial minerals.  In March, for example, Aluminum Corp. of China, or Chinalco, acquired a 44.65% stake in the Simandou iron-ore project in the African country of Guinea.  Chinalco will pay Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd. $1.35 billion for this share.  Keep in mind that Chinalco already owns a 9.3% stake in Rio Tinto, and has been prevented from acquiring a larger share mainly thanks to Australian fears that China is absorbing too much of the country’s energy and minerals industries.

Shifting the World’s Resource Balance

Chinese companies like CNPC, Sinopec, and Chinalco are hardly alone in seeking control of valuable foreign resource assets.  Major Western firms as well as state-owned companies in India, Russia, Brazil, and other countries have also been shopping for such properties.  Few, however, have been as determined or single-minded as Chinese firms in taking advantage of the relatively low prices that followed the global recession, and few have the sort of deep pockets available to such companies, thanks to the willingness of the China Development Bank and other government agencies to offer munificent financial backing. 

When the United States and other Western nations finally recover from the Great Recession, therefore, they will discover that the global resource chessboard has been tilted strongly in China’s favor.  Energy and mineral producers that once directed their production -- and often their political allegiance -- to the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe now view China as a major customer and patron.  In one eye-catching sign of this shift, Saudi Arabia announced recently that it had sold more oil to China last year than to the United States, previously its largest and most pampered customer.  “We believe this is a long-term transition,” said Khalid A. al-Falih, president and chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil giant.  “Demographic and economic trends are making it clear -- the writing is on the wall.  China is the growth market for petroleum.”

For now, Chinese leaders are avoiding any hint that their recent foreign resource acquisitions entail political or military commitments that could produce friction with the United States or other Western powers.  These are just commercial transactions, they insist.  There is, however, no escaping the fact that growing Chinese resource ties with countries like Angola, Australia, Brazil, Iran, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Venezuela have geopolitical implications that are unlikely to be ignored in Washington, London, Paris, and Tokyo.  Perhaps more than any other recent developments, China’s global shopping spree reveals how the world’s balance of power is shifting from West to East.

Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.  A documentary movie version of his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation.

Copyright 2010 Michael T. Klare

Appeal filed to release TNInvestco documentsChina to develop new energy source - combustible ice

Peak oil notes - Apr 1

Prices and production

Crude has risen steadily this week, settling at a 17-month high on Wednesday at $83.76. This is the highest close since October 2008 when oil was falling from $147 a barrel. The impetus for the move was likely a falling US dollar, since the weekly stocks report showed crude stocks increasing by 2.9 million barrels and gasoline stocks increasing by 313,000 barrels.

Oil prices may be at a critical juncture. Technical analysts point out that if oil prices clear resistance levels at $84 and $85.50, the way is clear for oil to move up into the $90’s -- where many foresee increasing damage to the prospects for economic recovery. Fundamentals analysts continue to say prices are too high, when looking at adequate oil supplies and increasing stockpiles. These observers continue to insist that oil would be selling for $70 a barrel except for technical factors involving the volatility of the US dollar which closed down Wednesday at $1.35 against the Euro.

Many observers are worried about the US gasoline situation. Refiners have been increasing production in recent weeks, hence gasoline production last week was 3.5 percent higher than last year. US gasoline inventories for the last week in March are at a 17-year high and some in the industry worry that the normal increase in summer driving will not be sufficient to draw down these inventories. Nevertheless, gasoline futures on Wednesday rose 3.5 cents to settle at $2.31 a gallon.

A Bloomberg survey showed OPEC production slipping by 30,000 b/d in March as Iraqi production slumped. The other OPEC members with production quotas took advantage of the high prices and increased production by 55,000 b/d, putting them nearly 2 million b/d above the official quota.

During an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde published last week, Glen Sweetnam, one of the Energy Information Administration’s experts on oil, confirmed that the office understands and accepts the idea that world production of liquid fuels could experience a decline between 2011 and 2015 if there is not sufficient investment. The EIA, however, dismisses the idea that a decline in global production will be irreversible, preferring the concept of an “undulating plateau” that will continue for several years.

Even the notion that a decline in production may be imminent marks a major shift in official admissions by any US government spokesman.

Venezuela’s Power Crisis

There is increasing discussion that Caracas’s hydro-power crisis could morph into a political crisis that might bring down the Chavez government. This week Venezuela is on a Chavez-ordered week-long national holiday to save electricity and the government is busy sending troops to shopping areas to force stores to close down.

The drought continues and unless heavy rains come soon, over half the country’s generating capacity will have to be shut down somewhere around the last week in May. Even if the summer rains allow resumption of electricity generation in the summer, the water levels are so low that, unless the rains are unusually heavy, water shortages may resume in the fall or winter. It seems likely that at some point there will be a significant impact on Venezuela’s 2.2 million b/d of oil production.

Peak oil news - Mar 25Nashville gas prices drop, but decline is not expected to last long

Skills and Materials for Post-Petroleum Economies

Margot McDowell is a sail maker and seamstress in Anacortes, Washington. She has a counterpart here and there in the region, such as a woman in Port Townsend and a woman in Bellingham. Considering the number of sailboats and ongoing demand for more sails and sail repair, these sail makers barely comprise a local industry. This is because the great majority of sails are made in Taiwan -- made out of Dacron, a petroleum product.

Margot is anticipating retirement in a few years, but she works alone, in a large sail loft that formerly was a church. She has no apprentice or assistant. When she leaves the business, her customer base will have to look to other islands and towns, possibly encountering less experience or higher prices. For corporate globalists, obtaining all sails and even sail repairs from across the Pacific is fine and dandy. Tradition, local talent and community resilience have almost no value in Free Market ideology.

When the few who think about the energy-poor tomorrow to come -- after the last spasms of petroleum-fed gluttony -- wonder about maintaining a modicum of trade, substitutes for petroleum are discussed. Many practices will be ending abruptly. The illogical shipping of raw logs from the Pacific Northwest to Asia, where wood is finished and shipped back to the U.S. at value-added consumer prices, is a prime example. But there is good reason to keep using certain petroleum-based products well into the future even when they are no longer manufactured:

Dacron sails have three advantages over natural-cloth sails: Dacron is stronger, longer lasting and cheaper. Similarly, fiberglass boat hulls and decks are the prevalent material, when wood, steel, and ferro-cement are more costly and scarcer. Even masts, spreaders and booms are of petroleum, in a sense, when the massive energy going into aluminum is still cheaper than wooden spars, for example, made from increasingly rare old, large trees.

The Sail Transport Network, a small movement active since 2007, has entertained debate on the advantages and disadvantages of wood and more modern materials. Another topic is industrial hemp for rope, anticipated to become quite common in the relatively near future. But to assume the same for hemp sails is another matter. This is where the great quantity of Dacron already in existence for tomorrow's sail transport fleet means that yesteryear's sails of cotton and hemp may be many decades away from returning.

Margot McDowell says that one problem with natural-fiber sail material is that singeing the edges to partially melt the Dacron means not having to have extra seams and stitches, and thus having to use more material, if cotton or hemp are involved. Also, these latter materials stretch far more than Dacron, and are far heavier too. Nevertheless, these issues will have to be surmounted one day, just as the sewing machines will again be pedal-powered by seamstresses' legs.

Let us look into another conundrum for future versus present-potential trade that, like Dacron sails, involves current impediments thanks to subsidized petroleum. David Reid is the proprietor of Sail Transport Company, based in Seattle. It turns out that the only way sail transport can compete broadly with oil for transporting goods via trucks is for sail power to also be subsidized (as oil is): differently, mainly with volunteers, donations, and tax deductions. Niche markets or regular subscription-arrangements (Community Supported Agriculture) can be viable for sail transport today, if the topography is favorable. To give oil-free transport and commerce a leg up, perhaps ecotourism can be added.

For large-scale sail transport cargoes, the price of oil will have to get very high and remain there, followed by the permanent unavailability of petroleum fuels. When this happens, suddenly the many boats of fiberglass hulls with Dacron sails will be pressed into service, along with the few remaining clipper ships that are currently used mostly for sailing schools and "Sunset Margarita Cruises."

The future of trade and transport is going to be subject to the same contradictions and stumbling blocks that are plaguing the return of many traditional activities. Paramount are such things as the preserving of foods in the cellar, education of the young by their grandparents, cobbling together not just shoes but bicycle carts and trailers -- the list is endless. So many skills have been lost by consumer culture that their return will be painstaking and inadequate for the challenge. But the rewards are great, even if they are delayed for now. It is sad that so few people are interested or able to follow important trends, when the system we live under forces almost everyone to live for the short-term.

Upcoming Culture Change reports on saving skills for the post-fossil fuel future will revisit energy, food, transport, and materials. Promoting permaculture farming and other positive steps do not comprise a comprehensive approach for dealing with the out of control, ecocidal culture. For the great majority of modernized people on Earth are soon going to hit a wall at high speed; its name is Resource Limits, or Overpopulation. So is there something we can do?

Neither does a comprehensive approach lie in appreciating traditional skills and crafts, or even in studying them diligently. For sustainable, community living, the existing dominating system has to be discarded. When one buys corporate products, an opposite effect to the desired one is achieved. The challenge is to communicate the need for action to those who hide from it, whether at the top of the pyramid or seemingly helpless at the bottom. But as long as buying a new car is possible, little may change.

Regardless of our best efforts, rapid and massive change is inevitable -- akin to a house of cards coming down -- for modernized, non-traditional, urban people. The collapse will happen partly because of our dependence on complex technology for so many daily functions, coinciding with recent decades' loss of many skills along with the minimizing of close collaboration within the community. These factors, apart from climate disaster, will speed petrocollapse-induced wipe out of the present economy. In the process the oil industry will lose the ability to serve, relegating it to history (thankfully, except for its food-system failure). Enter the new age now.

* * * * *

David Reid's Sail Transport Company website: www.sailtransportcompany.com

The Sail Transport Network website: http://www.sailtransportnetwork.com

Nissan, Suzuki, Daihatsu announce recalls in JapanIt’s time to deal with Peak Oil

Say it loud: I’m childfree and I’m proud

In 1969, graduating college senior Stephanie Mills made national headlines with a commencement address exclaiming that, in the face of impending ecological devastation, she was choosing to forgo parenthood. "I am terribly saddened by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is to have no children at all," she told her classmates.

I come here before you today to make the same proclamation— with a twist. I am thoroughly delighted by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is to have no children at all. 

Making the green choice too often feels like a sacrifice or a hassle or an expense.  In this case, it feels like a luxurious indulgence that just so happens to cost a lot less for me and weigh a lot less on the carbon-bloated atmosphere. 

I call myself a GINK: green inclinations, no kids.

First, a word for you parents

Let me get this out of the way up front: I like kids—many of them, anyway. Some of my best friends, as they say, are parents. I bear no ill will to procreators, past, present, and prospective. I claim no moral or ethical high ground.

If being a parent is something you've longed and planned for, or already embarked upon, I respect your choice and I wish you luck. Go forth and raise happy, healthy kids. May they bring you joy and fulfillment, and may they become productive members of society who faithfully pay their Social Security taxes.

Of course, you parents and parent wannabes don't need my encouragement—our society supports your decision overwhelmingly. OK, yes, the U.S. lacks paid family leave and universal childcare, not to mention many basic rights for same-sex couples with children—and we should remedy these shortcomings. But from the tax breaks to the discounted airline seats, from the eager grandparents urging you on to the friends, cousins, and complete strangers who ask when the first or next kid is coming, from the "What to Expect ..." empire to the proliferating mommy and daddy blogs, our culture constantly affirms your choice—in many ways, almost demands it. And, no small matter, our biology does too.

So this post isn't for you. It's for the childfree and childfree-curious, who don't get a lot of encouragement in our society. Parents, keep reading if you like, but you have to promise not to tell the rest of us that we'd feel differently if we just had our own!

OK, down to business

Here's the dirty little secret that we're never supposed to say in mixed company: There are a lot of perks to childfree living, not to mention a lot of green good that comes from bringing fewer beings onto a polluted and crowded planet.

Yes, as a childfree person, I'll miss out on a lot: The miracle of childbirth (though, truth be told, I don't feel so bad about skipping that one). The hilariously perceptive things that only kids say. A respectable excuse for rereading the Harry Potter series. The hope that my kid will be smarter and cooler and better looking than I ever was. More boisterous holiday celebrations. Someone to carry on the family name (assuming I won the arm-wrestling match with my partner over whose name the kid would actually get). Maybe even the satisfaction of helping a child grow into a well-educated, well-adjusted adult, and the peace of mind of knowing there's someone to take care of me in my old age.

But parents miss out on a lot too (as some will be the first to tell you): Time and emotional energy to invest in friendships and a romantic partnership. Space to focus on a career or education or avocation. Uninterrupted "grown-up" conversations. Travel that's truly impulsive or leisurely or adventurous (and never involves zoos). Unpremeditated Saturday nights on the town and Sunday brunches out. Opportunities for political or community engagement. Stretches of quiet for reading or writing or relaxing. A non-child-proofed, non-toy-strewn, non-goldfish-cracker-crumb-riddled home. Eight peaceful, uninterrupted hours of sleep a night. All without any guilt that one should be spending more quality time with the kid.

A childfree life also means a lot more financial freedom. How expensive are kids? Try $291,570 for a child born in 2008 to parents bringing home between $57,000 and $98,000 a year, according to figures from the USDA. That's for the first 18 years, so it doesn't include college. If you make more, you're likely to spend more. Couples bringing in upwards of $98,000 a year can expect to spend an average of $483,750 on a child's first 18 years. (Dig into the numbers yourself [PDF] for all the caveats and conditions.)

Opting out of childrearing might leave you richer in happiness too, as Harvard psychology professor and happiness expert Daniel Gilbert recently told NPR:

[I]t probably is true that without children, your marriage might be happier in the sense that you would report more daily satisfaction.  People are surprised to find this, because they value and love their children above all things.  How can my children not be a source of great happiness?

Well, one reason is that although children are a source of happiness, they tend to crowd out other sources of happiness.  So people who have a first child often find in the first year or two that they're not doing many of the other things that used to make them happy.  They don't go to the movies or the theater.  They don't go out with their friends.  hey don't make love with their spouse.

In his 2006 book Stumbling on Happiness, Gilbert offers more on this topic:

Careful studies of how women feel as they go about their daily activities show that they are less happy when taking care of their children than when eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television.  Indeed looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework.

None of this should surprise us.  Every parent knows that children are a lot of work -- a lot of really hard work -- and although parenting has many rewarding moments, the vast majority of its moments involve dull and selfless service to people who will take decades to become even begrudgingly grateful for what we are doing. 

Even firebrand valedictorian Stephanie Mills, who initially considered her decision not to have children a sacrifice, now writes:

... it proved to be a good personal choice. I am cussedly independent and I love my solitude and freedom. ... Other women, I know, have been able to combine demanding vocations with motherhood.  Given my particular nature, the responsibility and distraction of childrearing most likely would have prevented me from pursuing my work as a writer, which has been immensely rewarding ...

Which isn't to say she never wonders about her decision: 

Now that I'm old enough to be a grandmother, I sometimes wish that I had a granddaughter to commune with, but I am friends with some spectacular young people and can learn from them as well as pass along whatever wisdom I've developed.  That will have to do.

Ultimately, as Mills suggests, life is a series of tradeoffs.  By choosing not to have kids, some doors are closed to you, but others are open—and they don't have sticky doorknobs. 

The green angle

Beyond the undisturbed sleep and the gleaming doorknobs, consider the environmental benefits to the childfree life. 

We're on track to hit a global population of 7 billion people next year or the year after—3 billion more than when Mills got all riled up four decades ago.  We've spewed enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to push it past the safe point, which many climate scientists agree is 350 parts carbon dioxide per million; we're already at about 390 and rising fast.  And Americans are among the most carbon-intensive people on earth. 

The average American generates about 66 times more CO2 each year than the average Bangladeshi—20 tons versus 0.3 ons.

If you consider not just the carbon impact of your own kids but of your kids' kids and so on, the numbers get even starker.  According to a 2009 study in Global Environmental Change [PDF] that took into account the long-term impact of Americans' descendants, each child adds an estimated 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to a parent's carbon legacy—that's about 5.7 timeshis or her direct lifetime emissions.

"Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth," said study coauthor Paul Murtaugh, a professor of statistics at Oregon State University.  "Future growth amplifies the consequences of people's reproductive choices today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance."  (To take an extreme example, compare childfree me with Yitta Schwartz of Monroe, N.Y., who died this year at the age of 93, leaving behind an estimated 2,000 descendants.) 

A person who cares about preserving a livable environment has lots of options for doing her bit, and you've heard all about them: live in an energy-efficient home in a walkable neighborhood; bike or walk or take public transit when possible; drive an efficient car if you drive one at all; fly less; go veg; buy organic and local; limit purchases of consumer goods; switch to CFLs or LEDs; slay your vampires; offset carbon emissions; vote for climate-concerned candidates, and hold them accountable for their campaign promises.

But even in aggregate, all of these moves don't come close to the impact of not bringing new human beings—particularly new Americans—into the world. 

Here's a simple truth:  For an average person like me—someone who doesn't have the ability of an Al Gore to reach millions, or of a Nancy Pelosi to advance (if not actually enact) landmark environmental legislation, or of a Van Jones to inspire (and piss off) whole new audiences—the single most meaningful contribution I can make to a cleaner, greener world is to not have children.

Just say it

Why does it feel almost audacious to articulate all of this? 

Those of us who are childfree by choice are in the minority, but if you judged by the public discourse about our lifestyle, you'd think we were practically nonexistent. 

Parents talk all the time about the delights and challenges of raising kids, to other parents and to all the rest of us, and I don't begrudge them that. 

We childfree people rarely discuss in public the upsides and downsides of life without kids—and that's what needs to change. 

If you're intentionally childfree, how many times have you been asked, "So, when are you going to have children?" and mumbled a less-than-candid reply: "Oh, I'm not sure," or "Well, it just might not happen for us," or "Maybe someday ..." when what you really mean is "Never."

Childfree people tread too gingerly around parents, as though we might wound their feelings if we told the truth about why we've made different decisions than they have.  But we insult them by thinking they're so fragile or insecure about their family choices—and we shortchange ourselves and society at large by not speaking openly about the legitimate choice to not have a child. 

What would happen if you answered the kid question honestly?  "No, I'm happy with my life as is," or "A child doesn't fit into our life plans," or "Kids aren't really my thing," or "I think there are plenty of people on the planet already." 

If we said what we really think, I suspect we would actually find a lot of kindred or at least sympathetic spirits out there, GINKs and otherwise.  We might have some refreshingly frank and gratifying conversations with the parents in our lives.  And we could give those who are undecided about parenthood the understanding that the choice to be childfree is completely valid, and not completely lonely.

Little bundles of (j)oy aren't for everyone—and it's timewe said so out loud. 

Also just posted by Post Carbon Institute:

Stephanie Mills: On (Not) Having Children & Living Sustainably/b>

Consumers cut back, but are marketers mindful?If it does matter where CO2 is released, cities are in trouble

World facing oil pricing uncertainty - "triple digit" oil predicted

The world’s energy ministers and oil producers are trying to agree on ways to prevent oil price spikes in the immediate future – although at least one economist is predicting “triple-digit” oil later this year.

The elite group is today (Wednesday, March 31) concluding their three-day International Energy Forum meeting in Cancun, Mexico. According to papers published ahead of the event, participants considered “demand and supply uncertainties,” having to balance Opec’s claim of spare oil capacity “exceeding 6 million barrels per day” against the claims of neutral strategic advisors PFC Energy that oil will be “peaking between 2020-2025 around 95.0 mmb/d.”

The majority of oil consuming nations are siding with Opec, according to press reports, agreeing that producers and consumers should work together to avoid a repeat of 2008’s market volatility. According to the UK Financial Times:

The change in attitude marks a significant shift in political relations between Opec, other producers and the world’s biggest oil-consuming countries. Opec’s efforts to control the market once made it the enemy of the US and many European nations.

However, nothing from the meeting has yet indicated how this will be achieved, or at what price Opec should endeavour to maintain oil.

In the first place, the US is reportedly pushing for a free-market approach. Again from the Financial Times:

But there was at least one important dissenter this week. At least publicly, the US insisted at the discussions that markets needed to be left to determine the oil price.

Daniel Poneman, US deputy energy secretary, said: “The goal of the US is a clear and long-standing one and that is to let the laws of supply and demand set prices.”

Meanwhile, delegates are quoted by Reuters agreeing that oil at $70-80 per barrel “was good for both sides,” maintaining producers’ revenues and consumers’ economies. It continues:

But there was no sign of a clear consensus by OPEC members at what price they would ramp up production if prices broke above the band Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi this week called "most appropriate".

"Prices above $85 for a sustained period of time could well be harmful. We have to be aware that the economic recovery is still fragile," an OPEC delegate told Reuters on the sidelines of the forum, which is aimed at promoting dialog between oil consumers and producers.

Naimi did not respond to questions about whether $85 a barrel would mean a rise in output. Asked the same question, a person familiar with Saudi thinking said simply: "No."

US crude is currently up to around $82 a barrel, with Reuters citing analysts suggesting “it could push even higher as demand from the United States and other industrialized nations rebounds as their economies recover.”

One such analyst is economist Jeff Rubin, writing in today’s Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper. He has long predicted rising oil prices.

In his column, Expect a new peak for oil next year, he wonders how come, all of a sudden, analysts are no longer deeply concerned about $80-per-barrel oil. He asks:
But how much longer can the world pretend that it won’t soon be facing another energy shock, one every bit as challenging as the one it faced two years ago?

Does anyone still believe the reassuring forecasts from discredited feel-good organizations like the International Energy Agency about new sources of cheap supply, like those that once flowed from places like Prudhoe Bay in Alaska or the North Sea? If so, where is that supply of new affordable oil coming from? Surely not from tar sands or from ultra-deep water fields six miles below the ocean’s floor.

He goes on to predict further price shocks in the immediate future:
By the fourth quarter of this year, oil prices will be back in triple-digit range, and by next year oil prices will rise to record highs, taking out the high-water mark of $147 per barrel set back before the recession began in 2008.

We’re barely out of the recession, and already we face prices that, just a few years ago, our government, our oil industry and our economists toldus we would never see.

The issue, then is at what point will Opec increase oil output to keep prices down - or even, is this possible?

Price drop means low interest ratesZero Sum Game

Pitching Manure

From GENE LOGSDON

About this time of year, I unload the finished compost from the “hot box,” as we call our concrete block compost bin and refill it with fresh sheep manure from the barn. It will heat up gloriously in a few days and when the highest heat and ammonia subside, we can transfer plants started in the house safely to this hot bed, with a plastic cover at night if necessary. This job means I am back to pitching manure, a task otherwise reserved for July and August after the manure has aged in the barn for four or five months.

As a boy and younger man, I rejoiced when tractor front end loaders and skid loaders came into vogue to lift the manure and relieve us of long hours of manual labor. But there is something to be said for forking manure by hand. For some reason, it inspires philosophical meditation if you are alone, and philosophical conversation if you have company. I don’t know why. Following Buddhism, perhaps this menial, repetitious task empties the mind of all worldly care and a kind of Nirvana enfolds. The mind becomes centered on the job instead of flitting restlessly from one distraction to another. This concentration somehow (ask Buddha) allows the mind to enter a sort of transcendental peace. Then comes a chance for deep thought.

Or it may just be that the ammonia emanating from the manure produces a kind of chemical high that causes the mind to reverberate with impassioned thought processes and/or talkativeness. Coffee, not to mention bourbon, will set me off the same way.

At any rate, to enjoy forking manure, one must be in good physical shape and understand the principles of leverage. You can’t just jab the fork deep into the manure pack and lift up a forkful. That’s a good way to get a slipped disc or a hernia. The manure and bedding have been trampled down solidly by the livestock and is easier to pry out in somewhat thin layers. Start along the wall of the stall not out in the middle of the pack. Right next to the wall, the manure and bedding will lift away more easily. Slide the fork under only a few inches worth and push down on the fork handle. The curve of the fork tines will act as a fulcrum to lever the forkful looser from the pack. Next, if you normally grasp the middle of the fork handle with your left hand (right hand out on the end of the fork), set your left knee under your left hand and push further down on the fork handle with your right hand, using your left knee as a fulcrum. (If you normally grasp the fork handle in the middle with your right hand, use your right knee as the fulcrum.) The forkful will come loose much more easily than if you just try to muscle it out of the pack. Proceed to remove the manure in layers that way.

Some of my most treasured memories are of long talks while forking manure. Once in the seminary, where I led a rather eerie, lopsided life (you can read about it in my novel, The Lords of Folly), studying philosophy in the morning and forking manure in the afternoon for example, a conversation I remember fondly went something like this:

“I don’t get that metaphysics stuff, do you?” a fellow forker asks.

“Not really.” (In fact I almost flunked the course.)

“Well, what do you think it is.”

I puffed up, proud to have been asked. “Far as I can figure, it is sort of like, well, you can look at a particular object just as it appears in nature. An oak tree, for example, rather than just any tree. That’s the first degree of abstraction. In the second degree of abstraction which is mathematics, you can count the number of trees in the woods, for instance. Or how many board feet of lumber is growing there. In the third degree of abstraction, you contemplate sheer treeness, that which makes you recognize a tree every time you see one no matter how different trees are from each other. That’s metaphysics, learning what the idea of tree is all about.” I had no idea what I was talking about.

My companion, not wanting to seem any stupider than I, nodded as if in comprehension. “I’ve always wondered about what tractors are really all about. Metaphysically, I mean. The idea of tractor must be all about tread. Right?”

Buddha would have been pleased. I think. And in the process, one more field got fertilized the right way.

~

Image Credit: Ten Apple Farm

~~

Flyswatters: Don’t Try Homesteading Without One01/21/2010: Nissan’s all-electric Leaf creates buzz among fans during Nashville stopover

Courtship, Cooperation & Negotiation: What Darwin Got Wrong about Human Emotions

Many social critics in the Peak Oil community are fond of saying “Men do what they do driven by the desire to please women.” But what if that notion is just plain wrong? Is there power in the narrative that redirects our energies away from helpful pursuits believing that such strivings are “against the laws of nature?”

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. Charles Darwin

Most of us in the Western world have accepted a story about sexual selection, and by extension ‘human nature,’ that goes something like this: Men are aggressive, and fight each other in order to win the chance to mate with desirable females. For the love of hot babes and Babettes, they burn a lot of fossil fuel, build a lot of corporations, rape and pillage other nations and destroy the planet in order to be powerful and desirable to us gals.

This, as the story goes, is for very specific biological reasons: They have small sperm, and lots of them, (making them “cheap”) so they can throw them around with very little “invested” in an attempt to impregnate females. From an evolutionary standpoint, this horn-dog behavior promotes their own gene pool, beating out some other guy’s gene pool. Men (and all males in general, to use Darwin’s terms) are “passionate” and women are less eager or “coy.”

Women are “coy,” because they have large eggs, and a whole lot fewer of them, and becoming pregnant requires a large investment of energy and time dealing with pregnancy and caring for the offspring that result. Their eggs are “expensive” to them, in evolutionary terms. Therefore, evolution demands that they carefully look over their choice of males and choose the “fittest” one for mating. Women do the choosing. So, as the theory goes, men compete with each other for females’ attention, and women have innate preferences about which males they choose to mate with…and may the best man win.

“The female is less eager than the male,” Darwin wrote, “She is coy,” and when she takes part in choosing a mate, she chooses “not the male which is most attractive to her, but the one which is least distasteful.” (1)

Darwin’s World

Charles Darwin was a man who once lamented that his own fragile physical state would clearly prevent him from producing great works. He had multiple psychosomatic ailments that kept him from socializing without great cost to his health. “Darwin worked alone at home, leading the life of an independent scientist.”

His decision to marry was an intellectual one, as he weighed the pros and cons:

“After drawing up lists of the benefits and drawbacks of marriage, he proposed to his first cousin Emma Wedgwood, whom he married on Jan. 29, 1839. She brought fortune, devotion, and considerable housewifely skills that enabled him to work in peace for the next 40 years.”

Together they had 10 children.

He needed quiet during the day in order to work. She dutifully brought him meals and tea in his office, at which time she might request to borrow the key to the drawer where he kept all of the keys to the rest of the household pantries.

Although he considered all young people immature like adult females, at 39 years old, he considered his own wife “always the mother, never the child, Darwin always the child, never the father.” Darwin gave his wife the nickname “mammy”, writing, “My dearest old Mammy … Without you, when sick I feel most desolate .. Oh Mammy, I do long to be with you and under your protection for then I feel safe.” (2)

While Darwin began to write down his theories of evolution in the early 1840’s he was reluctant to make them public. “He was a beneficiary of this conservative English society, and his fear of ostracism was one of the forces that prevented him from publishing his theory sooner.“(3) The world was evolving and the political climate was welcoming to evolutionary notions. While still reluctant, on June 18, 1858, he received a paper that summarized his own twenty years of work, written by Alfred Russel Wallace. He shortly afterward presented a paper jointly with Wallace.

In 1871, Darwin elaborated upon the theory of sexual selection. Darwin observed that in some species males battle other males for access to certain females (“aggression”). But in other species, such as peacocks, there is a social system in which the females select males according to such qualities as strength or beauty, like a fabulous tail.

Beyond “He” and “She”

Darwin lived in a binary world of males and females, but today’s science tells us that these represent a minority of the Earth’s living things. We live in a complicated world of uni-gendered, bi-gendered, and even cross-gendered living species. You’ve got remarkable creatures like Clownfish (4) that are born male and turn female (called sequential hermaphrodites); you’ve got hermaphroditic fish. The world is full of homosexual, asexual or autosexual creatures, and gender behavior of all descriptions.

These aren’t just the exceptions to the rule, this IS the rule.

We can’t put labels like “coy” or “passionate” on these things. It doesn’t fit the vast majority of living things.

Beyond the Dating Game

Darwin’s analysis appeared to stop at mate selection. However, mating is the start, not the end of the genetic path to reproductive success. The “passionate” (later labeled “promiscuous”) male isn’t an example of evolutionary success, if most of those offspring die before they, too, get the chance to reproduce. The male who can raise the larges number of children successfully and brings them effectively into the next generation is the real genetic winner.

The male, to be maximally successful, is proactive in assuring that his offspring grow up and make it into the next generation.

The Peacock Boy’s Club

Even the species that were suppose to be perfect examples of sexual selections, like peacocks, aren’t, according to evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden. They are “failed poster-child species.” Take pea hens. They are supposed to prefer the highly ornamented tail of males, the larger the better, which, supposedly, indicated “good genes.” However, in a 2008 study that actually looked at this in the wild; (a) there wasn’t much difference between tails and (b) the females showed no real preference. They ignored the tails, when selecting mates.

What researchers found, instead, was that the tails were sort of a вЂticket into the boy’s club’ of other male peacocks. In fact, it turned out that a lot of stuff Darwin thought was for the benefit of the female was actually a show for other males of the same species.

Mommy Dearest

What about the notion that can be summarized as “females almost always invest more energy into producing offspring than males, and therefore in most species, females are a limiting resource over which the males will compete”? This theory, called the “Bateman Principle” was the work of British geneticist Angus John Bateman – and it turns out to be wrong. His research was fraudulent in all sorts of ways, even down to basic arithmetic mistakes.

Roughgarden (4) asks: if females keep choosing males who are the fittest, why do bad genes still exist in nature? Aren’t females supposed to be eliminating them through partner choice? After twenty generations, the choice for bad genes should disappear. Why isn’t that happening? Darwin says, “Nature needs to keep renewing bad genes all the time.” Why is that? So females can continue to choose the best mate? What are the best genes in an ever-changing environment? “Most theorists don’t appreciate how great this problem is for the theory of sexual selection.” according to Roughgarden.

Family of Tarzan

Cooperation and Negotiation

Through courtship (perhaps too strong a word for some species), the male and female, negotiate the cooperative relationship through which to raise children. Their cooperation allows them to act as a unit, in a вЂtwo heads are better than one’ sort of arrangement. The fitness is assessed in terms of a “couple team” who are able to place a large number of offspring into the next generation. The mating couples have a common evolutionary bank account and an overlap of interest. This model suggests that cooperation, not competition is the cornerstone of reproductive success. Conflict happens when they don’t strike an effective bargain with each other or they have different opinions about “what’s good.”

“A family like a ‘firm’ Roughgarden says ‘and the produce of the “firm” is offspring.’ The paradigm is “family as cooperative system” rather than “family as a cauldron of conflict.”

Joy in Your Company

But it’s not all вЂlove and happiness,” as a quick glance at the front pages of newspapers or time spent at a family holiday dinner will tell you. Nevertheless, we aren’t living in a world of competitive stand-offs, like John Nash’s (“A Beautiful Mind”) theory of Competitive Equilibrium – but more like his notion of “Cooperative Game theory.” Here the sexes “negotiate from a position of strength,” and establishes a “threat point.”

Taking his lead from labor negotiation, a crucial aspect of effective negotiation is that each has to believe that the other is willing to suffer and see the other suffer, before they are willing to hash out a deal. They also, however, have to see the other has having “utility,” and a “position of strength.” They have to believe that each of them has something the other person wants, and is willing to give up something else to get it, and they have to realize the point beyond which the other person is unwilling to bargain.

If either player increases their demand beyond this limit, both players receive nothing. If either reduces their demands too greatly, they will receive less than if they had demanded more.

What is the “position of strength” in reproductive politics? It is the mechanism where the animals can experience pleasure in each other’s company-friendship and physical intimacy (including sex).

Contextualizing an Idea

“Survival of the Fittest” were not Darwin’s terms, but those of Herbert Spenser. It first appeared in 1864, in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin’s biological ones.

There is a political danger in who takes control of the narrative. It turns out that this narrative of a nasty, competitive selfish world is based on partial recollections of the data. It doesn’t tell the whole story. But it presents a political (power) explanation for oppression using biology to justify it. “Nature is selfish so I can be selfish.” It is a narrative of genetic classism. It is also a narrative of domination and imperialism.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin

It is time the world abandoned that narrative and launch a new one. Our very survival may well depend on it. A high fitness requires working together in teams. It requires us to choose to invest our collective energies carefully and cooperatively, and that includes our reproductive decision-making in an age of overpopulation.

What we are learning about emotions is helping us to see that selfish and destructive tendencies in humans, so lauded as “natural” and “normal,” are the extreme subset of sociopathic individuals who lack a capacity for several basic emotions that are intrinsic in humans as social animals. And we’ve modeled corporate institutions, in this image, with disastrous ends.

The theory of sexual selection put forth by Darwin fit well with a culture that told us that the “best man” was white, Western, upper-class, and, so obvious a fact as to be overlooked, “male.” The theory of sexual selection fit that current dominant paradigm of the 1860’s. At a time when the industrial revolution was wiping out the entrepreneur, the independent farmer, the home craft producer, it became “natural” for men to aggressively eliminate one another’s livelihoods, push them off their native lands, and participate in genocide in order to push forward their aspirations for genetic empire-building. The вЂlosers’ lost the chance to mate and reproduce offspring because, after all, they weren’t the вЂfittest.’ It was all quite “natural.” It wasn’t “evil” or “good” in any moral sense. It was simply “how things are.”

Gone were notions of cooperative and collaboration as “natural” to humans and animals alike. Even actions that could be viewed as “altruistic” had to be framed as “deviant” or discussed away as ultimately benefiting selfish ends.

People made all sorts of extrapolations from this, including the notion that being blind to suffering was also “natural.”

Genial Gene vs. Selfish Gene

So, Roughgarden (5) proposes, the metaphor of the “selfish gene” isn’t accurate anymore. The theory worked in the early 70’s, but now we know more. Notions of “survival of the fittest” and “savage competition” is replaced by the empirical argument of cooperation in nature.

Less than the Ape

While Darwin argued that human ancestry descended from the ape, others argued that human evolution caused our social behavior to depart from that of other primates. Edgar Rice Burroughs was fond of using the phrase, “the thin veneer of civilization” to describe mankind’s condition in relation to his more fundamental savage makeup. The phrase was repeated in The Return of Tarzan, which he wrote in 1912.

However, in his book “Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved” Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal used the term “Veneer Theory” to argue that the view that human morality as “a cultural overlay, a thin veneer hiding an otherwise selfish and brutish nature” is outdated, and that our morality and social relationships are also embedded deeply into our genetic make-up. We cannot live alone, and we, therefore, have within us the basic stuff it takes to figure out how to work together.

The last of Darwin’s sequels to the Origin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), was an attempt to erase this last barrier presumed to exist between human and nonhuman animals–the idea that the expression of such feelings as suffering, anxiety, grief, despair, joy, love, devotion, hatred, and anger is unique to human beings.

“Darwin connected studies of facial muscles and the emission of sounds with the corresponding emotional states in man and then argued that the same facial movements and sounds in nonhuman animals express similar emotional states. This book laid the groundwork for the study of ethology, neurobiology, and communication theory in psychology. “

Paradoxically, it took neuroscientists beginning actively during a conference in 1995 to start focusing on a variety of these emotions we call вЂsocial emotions’ like embarrassment, shame, contempt, passion, admiration, pride, and guilt. These researchers suggest that in contrast to the notion that culture is a thin veneer, we are learning that what look strictly like ‘cultural’ features such as our rules of law are in fact, based upon the origins of these early pro-social emotions.

I’ll take that discussion up in greater detail in my next post.

1. In Descent: http://www.crystalinks.com/darwin.html

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin%27s_health

3. In Descent: http://www.crystalinks.com/darwin.html

4. http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2004/mayjun/features/roughga...

5. http://fora.tv/2009/06/22/The_Genial_Gene_Joan_Roughgarden

Deep thought - Mar 2BVS predicts solid future in digging up people’s pasts