Green Design » Resource – Planet

Calling All Map Geeks

Clark Williams-Derry — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:39:27 +0000

Cool site. Visit now.

Go here. Now.

Or maybe don't, if you don't want to get sucked into a vortex of clever map awesomeness.

This tidbit was originally posted on the Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score.

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(Posted by Clark Williams-Derry in Resource - Planet at 1:39 PM)

The Atlas of Hidden Water

Geoff Manaugh — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:07:22 +0000

[Image: From the "atlas of hidden water." Check out the original PDF or simply view it
larger].

An "atlas of hidden water" has been created to reveal where the world's freshwater aquifers really lie. "The hope," New Scientist reports, "is that it will help pave the way to an international law to govern how water is shared around the world."
This prospective hydro-geopolitical legislation currently includes a "draft Convention on transboundary aquifers."

[Image: The "hidden water" of South America].

"What the UNESCO map reveals," New Scientist adds, "is just how many aquifers cross international borders. So far, the organisation has identified 273 trans-boundary aquifers: 68 in the Americas, 38 in Africa, 155 in Eastern and Western Europe and 12 in Asia." One of these is the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, whose waters are nearly a million years old.
According – somewhat oddly – to the International Atomic Energy Agency:

The ancient system’s massive reserves, estimated at 375,000 cu km of water (equivalent to about 500 years of Nile River discharge), are confined deep inside the earth’s underground chambers – staggered, tiered, and pooled beneath the sands of the Sahara Desert, oasis settlements, wadis (dry riverbeds that contain water only during times of heavy rain), small villages, towns, and large cities.

If the surface landscapes there are already so beautiful, how exciting would it be to explore those underground staggered tiers and pools...

A more detailed map is due out in 2009 – meanwhile, several more can be downloaded here.

Geoff Manaugh is the author of BldgBlog, where this post originally appeared.

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(Posted by Geoff Manaugh in Resource - Planet at 11:07 AM)

Today is Earth Overshoot Day

Sarah Kuck — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:55:37 +0000

Creeping steadily up the calendar page is Earth Overshoot Day, the day our demand surpasses nature's budget. In almost 10 months, humanity has consumed all the new resources the planet will produce this year, according to Global Footprint Network calculations. We are now living beyond our ecological means, warns GFN. Every day from now on, we are essentially borrowing resources from the future:

Just like any company nature has a budget – it can only produce so many resources and absorb so much waste each year. Globally, we now demand the biological capacity of 1.4 planets, according to Global Footprint Network data. But of course, we only have one.

What contributes to our increasing demand? Part of the story is that there are simply more people on the planet requiring nature’s services. In some areas of the world – most notably in high income regions like the U.S. and Europe, as well as industrializing nations like China – per capita resource consumption has also been increasing. In other areas of the world, however, including India and parts of Africa, per capita Ecological Footprints have actually declined, likely as a result of there being less resources available per person.

Carbon is also a big part of the story, as it is the greatest contributor to ecological overshoot. Humanity is emitting carbon faster than the planet can re-absorb it. Our carbon Footprint has increased more than 700 percent since 1961.

United Nations business-as-usual projections show humanity requiring the equivalent of two planets by 2050. (For details see Global Footprint Network and WWF’s Living Planet Report 2006). This would put Earth Overshoot Day on July 1, and means it would take two years for the planet to regenerate what we use in one year. Reaching this level of ecological deficit spending may be physically impossible.

The Global Footprint Network is working with businesses and governments worldwide to encourage them to make ecological limits a central part of their decision making processes, to integrate smart infrastructure and to implement green technology. They also recommend that we take action in our own lives by eating less meat, driving and flying less, and using less energy in the home.

But more important, perhaps, than choosing to take the bus home to eat veggies in your CFL-lit dining room, is the choice to remain optimistic about our ability to create a bright green future for all. Measurements like Earth Overshoot Day remind us of how huge the challenges are that we are up against. And unfortunately, things are probably going to get worse before they get better. But that is no reason to give up on creating a world where we all live within our ecological limits.

It's a bold indication that now is precisely the time to stand even taller and fight even harder for the world we want to live in.

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Resource - Planet at 3:55 PM)

Corn v. Crude

Clark Williams-Derry — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:42:50 +0000

Why are corn and oil prices rising in tandem?

I've become a bit obsessive about oil prices -- I check them online several times each day, just out of habit.

But most other commodities remain something of a mystery to me. I keep hearing, for example, about the tremendous increase in corn and soybean prices, along with other grains and oil seeds. Still, until last night, I'd never taken the time to find out just how steep that increase has been.

So to satisfy my curiosity, I put together the following chart, using figures from the phenomenally helpful futuresource.com, comparing the rise in recent futures contracts for corn and crude oil. Behold:

Remarkably similar, no? Obviously, price trends in corn and oil aren't completely identical. But starting last September or so, they start moving up more or less in tandem, with roughly the same percentage increase since then.

What's going on here?

Well, for one thing, high energy prices have increased the cost of tractor fuel, fertilizer, and other petrochemical inputs, which makes it more expensive to grow corn -- which, in turn, raises the amount of money that farmers demand for their crops.

But that's at most a partial explanation. Even at last year's relatively high fuel prices, energy intensive farm inputs -- such as tractor fuel, fertilizers, and pesticides -- represented less than a quarter of the costs of corn production in the corn belt. Rent, taxes, interest, labor, machinery, seed, and other factors were cumulatively far more costly. So a doubling of fuel costs simply doesn't double production costs -- and yet, oil and corn prices both doubled.

To me, that suggests that some additional factors besides higher input costs must be influencing corn price trends. Other forces that are often cited for the rising price of corn include:

The fall of the dollar on international currency markets, which raises the buying power of foreign purchasers -- though again, that's only part of the story, since the corn and oil have risen faster than the dollar has fallen.
Drought in many grain-producing parts of the world.
Rising demand from rapidly industrializing nations such as China.

There's good evidence for all of those factors, I'm sure. But given how closely the past year's corn and oil trends match up, I can't help but think that higher oil costs may be affecting corn prices more directly, through the ethanol market.

At this point, the growth of the ethanol industry has turned corn into a substitute for crude: when oil prices go up, ethanol (a gasoline substitute) is automatically worth more on the market. And that means that when oil prices rise, ethanol distillers are willing to pay more for their feedstock. Rising oil prices thereby give distillers a natural incentive to bid up the price of corn -- a trend that's great for farmers, but certainly puts a financial squeeze on distillers' profit margins.

I think that most analysts now agree that the demand for biofuels feedstocks is having some sort of effect on commodity markets. But there's a huge debate over just how strong this effect is.

The USDA, for example, has cited estimates from the President's Council of Economic Advisors that "only 3 percent of the...increase we have seen in world food prices this year is due to the increased demand on corn for ethanol." That figure's gotten a lot of play in the press; but...well, let's just say, use it at your own risk.

The international Food Policy Research Institute -- a reputable bunch, in my opinion -- says that biofuels account for roughly 30 percent of recent food price increases.

And a article in the UK newspaper The Guardian discusses a "secret" World Bank report that found that three-quarters of the global increase in food prices could be attributed to biofuels. (That's another figure that, given the "secret" sourcing, I'd view with some skepticism.)

So there you have it -- biofuels are either responsible for 3 percent, 30 percent or 75 percent of the increase in global food prices!! Good luck figuring that one out.

At the moment, I don't really have an opinion right now on which estimate is right. But eventually the markets will tell us: if corn continues to move in tandem with oil -- at least in broad terms -- that'll strengthen the hand of those who argue that biofuels are having a major effect on food prices. If corn and oil prices start to decouple, then perhaps biofuels aren't such a big deal for food costs.

As for me, I just keep looking at the graph above, considering the similarities the trajectory of food and fuel -- and pondering the implications.

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(Posted by Clark Williams-Derry in Resource - Planet at 2:42 PM)

SUV Rollover

WorldChanging Team — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:45:47 +0000

by Clark Williams-Derry
From the Sightline Institute's Daily Score

Gas guzzlers are losing their resale value--fast.

Via Calculated Risk, USAToday is reporting that SUV resale value is plummeting.

[W]holesale prices on big SUVs such as Chevrolet Tahoes, Ford Expeditions and Toyota Sequoias are down 17% from a year ago. Full-size pickups have fallen as much as 15%...

The reason, obviously, is that soaring gas prices are souring car buyers on the big guzzlers. When a gallon of gas was cheaper than a cuppa joe, size and power seemed like nifty luxuries. But with gas nudging $4, the luxuries have become albatrosses.

There's absolutely no reason for "I-told-you-so's" here. Cars are the second largest purchase most people ever make, next to their homes, so rapid depreciation will be a serious hit to a lot of families. Still, there's not all that much to be done: SUV owners, whether they knew it or not, were making a bet that oil would stay cheap for a good, long while. It didn't, and they're paying the price for a bet gone bad.

The only thing that we can do, collectively, is to stop assuming that oil will be cheaper in the future than it is today. Maybe it will be; but the experience of the last 8 years suggests otherwise. Still, despite price hikes that outstripped most predictions, there are all sorts of decisions -- from what kind of cars to buy, to what kinds of neighborhoods to build, to what kind of transportation investments we should pay for -- that are being made under the tacit assumption that gas prices will come back to earth.

That's a risky bet. Just ask someone who's trying to trade in a Toyota Sequoia.

[Picture courtesy of Flickr user joguldi, distributed under a Creative Commons license.]

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Resource - Planet at 10:45 AM)