Category: Earth Policy Institute


Needed: A Copernican Shift

Filed Under: Building the Green Economy, Earth Policy Institute, Renewable Resources, Zero-combustion paradigm
by staff — 1 Comment
May 26, 2009

Lester R. Brown, EPI :: In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres,” in which he challenged the view that the sun revolved around the earth, arguing instead that the earth revolved around the sun. With his new model of the solar system, he began a wide-ranging debate among scientists, theologians, and others. His alternative to the earlier Ptolemaic model, which had the earth at the center of the universe, led to a revolution in thinking, to a new worldview.

Today we need a similar shift in our worldview, in how we think about the relationship between the earth and the economy. The issue now is not which celestial sphere revolves around the other but whether the environment is part of the economy or the economy is part of the environment. Economists see the environment as a subset of the economy. Ecologists, on the other hand, see the economy as a subset of the environment.

Like Ptolemy’s view of the solar system, the economists’ view is confusing efforts to understand our modern world. It has created an economy that is out of sync with the ecosystem on which it depends.

Economic theory and economic indicators do not explain how the economy is disrupting and destroying the earth’s natural systems. Economic theory does not explain why Arctic sea ice is melting. It does not explain why grasslands are turning into desert in northwestern China, why coral reefs are dying in the South Pacific, or why the Newfoundland cod fishery collapsed. Nor does it explain why we are in the early stages of the greatest extinction of plants and animals since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. Yet economics is essential to measuring the cost to society of these excesses.

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'On Thin Ice' Tracks Glacial Melt, Indian Food Security

Filed Under: Building the Green Economy, Earth Policy Institute, Human Health, Hyper-convergence paradigm, Quipu Economic Forum, Renewable Resources, Water Scarcity, Zero-combustion paradigm
by Joseph Robertson — Leave a comment
May 22, 2009

TheHotSpring.net :: NOW, with David Brancaccio, travels to the Indian Himalaya, to examine the problem of persistent accelerating ice melt which is speeding the erosion of glaciers that feed the Ganges River, which in turn provides water for hundreds of millions of people and sustains a precarious but massive food economy.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds global warming is causing glaciers to melt on every continent, and glacial melt is accelerating. It is expected land-based ice-melt could lead to a 3-foot rise in sea levels by the end of this century, a tidal surge, however gradual, that could displace 2-3 billion people living in coastal regions around the world.

But the immediate problem examined by NOW in this video is the potential worldwide food crisis resulting from failing river systems, starved of water fed from glacial sources at the top of their watersheds. The president of the Earth Policy Institute says the resulting scarcity and price-distortions could become a global security threat.

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Creating New Jobs, Cutting Carbon Emissions & Reducing Oil Imports by Investing in Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency

Filed Under: Building the Green Economy, Earth Policy Institute, Quipu Economic Forum, Renewable Resources, Zero-combustion paradigm
by staff — Leave a comment
December 12, 2008

plan_b-3Lester R. Brown, EPI :: At a time when major U.S. companies are announcing job layoffs almost daily, the renewable energy industry is hiring new workers every day to build wind farms, install rooftop solar arrays, and build solar thermal and geothermal power plants. The output of industrial firms that manufacture the equipment for these energy facilities is expanding by well over 30 percent a year. These investments both create jobs and help prevent climate change from spiraling out of control.

Among the several sources of renewable energy, wind looms large. The United States has 24,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity already online (think 24 coal-fired power plants), and 83 wind farms with some 8,000 megawatts of capacity are under construction. Beyond this, a staggering 225,000 megawatts of planned wind farms are waiting for access to transmission lines.

Currently, the United States has 40 plants manufacturing wind power components. Eight of these plants are assembling wind turbines, 20 are fabricating wind towers, and 12 are making blades. In addition, many more manufacturing facilities are under construction, recently announced, and in planning. Every billion dollars invested in wind farms creates some 3,350 jobs—nearly four times the 870 jobs created with a similar investment in coal-fired power plants. (See data.)

With solar cells (photovoltaics), the U.S. growth potential can be seen in the recent expansion from small rooftop installations to commercial generating facilities covering several square miles. In 2007, the United States installed roughly 200 megawatts of solar cell generating capacity, most of it on rooftops. In 2008, Pacific Gas & Electric—a leading California utility—contracted with two firms to build 800 megawatts of solar photovoltaic generating capacity; their output at peak power will equal that of a nuclear reactor. A billion dollars invested in solar cell installations generates 1,480 jobs.

A similar growth situation exists with solar thermal power plants—facilities that use mirrors to concentrate sunlight and generate steam to power turbines. Until recently there was just one of these facilities in the United States: the 350-megawatt SEGS complex in California. Now there are 18 commercial-scale power plants under development (15 in California, 2 in Florida, and 1 in Arizona) with a collective generating capacity of 4,160 megawatts—nearly a twelvefold increase. This is an example of yet another labor-intensive energy technology (2,270 jobs per billion dollars invested) with a sharply falling cost curve that is fast becoming a major player in the U.S. energy economy.

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Food Insecurity & Failing States

Filed Under: Building the Green Economy, Crisis Policy Forum, Earth Policy Institute, Food Supply Security, Quipu Economic Forum
by jr3o — Leave a comment
July 12, 2008

EXCERPT FROM PLAN B 3.0, CH. 2: “DETERIORATING OIL & FOOD SECURITY”

Lester R. Brown, EPI :: During the concluding half of the last century, the world was making steady progress in reducing hunger, but during the transition into the new century, the tide began to turn. In February 2007, James Morris, head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), announced that 18,000 children are now dying each day from hunger and related causes. For perspective, this loss of young lives in one day is almost five times U.S. combat deaths in Iraq through four years of fighting. Although these huge numbers of dying children may be an abstraction, each represents a young life ended far too soon. (75)

There are many ways of measuring hunger. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calculates the number of hungry people based on food intake. FAO data say the long-term trend in reducing hunger is encouraging, but not the recent trend. The number of people in developing countries who are hungry and malnourished, which declined from 960 million in 1970 to 800 million in 1996, has turned upward, reaching 830 million in 2003. (76)

Projections by Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota four years ago showed the number of hungry and malnourished people decreasing to 625 million by 2025. But an update of these projections in early 2007 that took into account the effect of the massive diversion of grain to ethanol distilleries on world food prices shows the number of hungry people climbing instead of decreasing—to 1.2 billion by 2025. (77)

One of the manifestations of a sharp rise in grain prices is a correspondingly sharp drop in food assistance. Since the budgets of food aid agencies are set a year or more ahead, a rise in food prices shrinks food assistance. For example, the United States, by far the largest food aid donor, saw the price of a ton of food aid in 2007 climb to $611, up from $363 per ton in 2004. In the absence of supplemental appropriations, food aid will drop by 40 percent. Key recipients, like Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and the Sudan, will be hit hard. (78)

Working together, the FAO and WFP each year release an assessment of crop and food conditions that lists the countries in dire need of food assistance. In May 2007, a total of 33 countries with a combined population of 763 million were on this list. Of these, 17 were in need of external food assistance because of recent civil strife and conflict. Many of these countries are on the top 20 list of failing states, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. The bottom line is that political insecurity and food insecurity often go hand-in-hand. (79)

The countries on WFP’s food emergency lists are mostly societies trapped between lowered mortality and continuing high-levels of fertility. In this situation, which leads to state failure if permitted to continue indefinitely, agricultural development is often interrupted by a decline in personal security that makes it difficult to maintain technical support for farmers and to sustain timely flows of seed and fertilizer.

With failing states and declining personal security, it is difficult even to operate food relief programs. WFP head James Morris, discussing the food relief operation in early 2007 in Sudan’s Darfur region, where violence and insecurity are rampant, says, “Our convoys are attacked almost daily. We had a driver killed there at the end of last year. Our convoys coming through Chad from Libya are always at risk.” In failed and failing states, food relief, however sorely needed, is not always assured. And sometimes even though people are starving, it is simply not possible to reach them with food. (80)

There are many threats to future food security, including falling water tables and rising temperatures, but the most immediate threat may be the diversion of an ever-larger share of the U.S. grain harvest into the production of fuel for cars. Only the U.S. government can intervene to restrict this diversion and avoid life-threatening rises in world grain prices.

ENDNOTES:

75. Edith M. Lederer, “U.N.: Hunger Kills 18,000 Kids Each Day,” Associated Press, 17 February 2007; Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, icasualties.org/oif, updated 31 July 2007.

76. Loganaden Naiken, “Keynote Paper: FAO Methodology for Estimating the Prevalence of Undernourishment,” at www.fao.org/docrep/ 005/y4249e/y4249e06.htm, viewed 1 August 2007; FAO, op. cit. note 41.

77. C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007.

78. Missy Ryan, “Commodity Boom Eats into Aid for World’s Hungry,” Reuters, 5 September 2007.

79. FAO, Crop Prospects and Food Situation, no. 3, May 2007; Fund for Peace and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The Failed States Index 2007,” Foreign Policy, July/August 2007; U.N. Population Division, World Population Prospects, op. cit. note 2.

80. Lederer, op. cit. note 75.

Excerpt from Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Earth Policy Institute, 2008)
Republished here by permission of the Earth Policy Institute

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Wind Power Set to Become World's Leading Energy Source

Filed Under: Building the Green Economy, Earth Policy Institute, Quipu Economic Forum, Renewable Resources, Zero-combustion paradigm
by jr3o — Leave a comment
July 10, 2008

Lester R. Brown, EPI :: In 1991, a national wind resource inventory taken by the U.S. Department of Energy startled the world when it reported that the three most wind-rich states —North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas— had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Now a new study by a team of engineers at Stanford reports that the wind energy potential is actually substantially greater than that estimated in 1991.

Advances in wind turbine design since 1991 allow turbines to operate at lower wind speeds, to harness more of the wind’s energy, and to harvest it at greater heights —dramatically expanding the harnessable wind resource. Add to this the recent bullish assessments of offshore wind potential, and the enormity of the wind resource becomes apparent. Wind power can meet not only all U.S. electricity needs, but all U.S. energy needs.

In a joint assessment of global wind resources called Wind Force 12, the European Wind Energy Association and Greenpeace concluded that the world’s wind-generating potential —assuming that only 10 percent of the earth’s land area would be available for development— is double the projected world electricity demand in 2020. A far larger share of the land area could be used for wind generation in sparsely populated, wind-rich regions, such as the Great Plains of North America, northwest China, eastern Siberia, and the Patagonian region of Argentina. If the huge offshore potential is added to this, it seems likely that wind power could satisfy not only world electricity needs but perhaps even total energy needs. (See data http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update24_data.htm)

Over the last decade wind has been the world’s fastest-growing energy source. Rising from 4,800 megawatts of generating capacity in 1995 to 31,100 megawatts in 2002, it increased a staggering sixfold. Worldwide, wind turbines now supply enough electricity to satisfy the residential needs of 40 million Europeans.

Wind is popular because it is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, widely distributed, climate-benign, and clean–attributes that no other energy source can match. The cost of wind-generated electricity has dropped from 38¢ a kilowatt-hour in the early 1980s to roughly 4¢ a kilowatt-hour today on prime wind sites. Some recently signed U.S. and U.K. long-term supply contracts are providing electricity at 3¢ a kilowatt-hour. Wind Force 12 projected that the average cost per kilowatt hour of wind-generated electricity will drop to 2.6¢ by 2010 and to 2.1¢ by 2020. U.S. energy consultant Harry Braun says that if wind turbines are mass-produced on assembly lines like automobiles, the cost of wind-generated electricity could drop to 1-2¢ per kilowatt hour.

Although wind-generated electricity is already cheap, its cost continues to fall. In contrast with oil, there is no OPEC to set prices for wind. And in contrast to natural gas prices, which are highly volatile and can double in a matter of months, wind prices are declining.

Another great appeal of wind is its wide distribution. In the United States, for example, some 28 states now have utility-scale wind farms feeding electricity into the local grid. While a small handful of countries controls the world’s oil, nearly all countries can tap wind energy.

Denmark leads the world in the share of its electricity from wind —20 percent. In terms of sheer generating capacity, Germany leads with 12,000 megawatts. By the end of 2003, it will have already surpassed its 2010 goal of 12,500 megawatts of generating capacity. For Germany, this rapid growth in wind power is central to reaching its goal of reducing carbon emissions 40 percent by 2020.

Rapid worldwide growth is projected to continue as more countries turn to wind. In addition to the early leaders —Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the United States— many other countries have ambitious plans, including the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, and China.

In densely populated Europe, the off-shore potential for developing wind is also being exploited. Denmark is now building its second off-shore wind farm, this one with 160 megawatts of generating capacity. Germany has some 12,000 megawatts of off-shore generating capacity under consideration.

Wind power is now a viable, robust, fast-growing industry. Cheap electricity from wind makes it economical to electrolyze water and produce hydrogen. Hydrogen is the fuel of choice for the highly efficient fuel cells that will be used widely in the future to power motor vehicles and to supply electricity, heating, and cooling for buildings. Hydrogen also offers a way of storing wind energy and of transporting it efficiently by pipeline or in liquefied form by ship.

With the wind industry’s engineering know-how and manufacturing experience, it would be relatively easy to scale up the size of the industry, even doubling it annually for several years, if the need arose. If, for example, crop-shrinking heat waves raise food prices and generate public pressure to quickly reduce carbon emissions by replacing coal and oil with wind and hydrogen, it will be possible to do so. If the need arises to shift quickly to hydrogen-fueled automobiles, this can be done by converting
gasoline-burning internal combustion engines to hydrogen with inexpensive conversion kits.

For energy investors, growth in the future lies with wind and the hydrogen produced with cheap wind-generated electricity. Solar cell sales are growing at over 30 percent a year and are likely to supply much of the electricity for the 1.7 billion people who are still without electricity, most of them living in developing country villages. But solar cells are still too costly to supply the vast amounts of energy required to power a modern economy.

World coal burning peaked in 1996 and has fallen 2 percent since then. It is a fading industry, not an exciting investment prospect. Nor is oil particularly promising, since world production is not likely to expand far beyond current levels. Production of natural gas, the cleanest and least climate-disruptive of the fossil fuels, is likely to continue expanding for a few more decades, fortuitously developing an infrastructure that can be adapted for hydrogen. Nuclear power generation is expected to peak soon, when the large number of aging plants that will be closing down will exceed the small number of plants that are under construction.

The energy future belongs to wind. The world energy economy became progressively more global during the twentieth century as the world turned to oil. It promises to reverse direction and become more local during the twenty-first century as the world turns to wind, wind-generated hydrogen, and solar cells. Wind and wind-generated hydrogen will shape not only the energy sector of the global economy but the global economy itself.

Originally Published: June 25, 2003
(http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update24.htm)
Reproduced here by Permission of Earth Policy Institute
Copyright © 2003 Earth Policy Institute

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Wind Energy Demand Booming

Filed Under: Building the Green Economy, Earth Policy Institute, Quipu Economic Forum, Renewable Resources, Zero-combustion paradigm
by admin — Leave a comment
July 10, 2008

COST DROPPING BELOW CONVENTIONAL SOURCES MARKS KEY MILESTONE IN U.S. SHIFT TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

Lester R. Brown, EPI :: When Austin Energy, the publicly owned utility in Austin, Texas, launched its GreenChoice program in 2000, customers opting for green electricity paid a premium. During the fall of 2005, climbing natural gas prices pulled conventional electricity costs above those of wind-generated electricity, the source of most green power. This crossing of the cost lines in Austin and several other communities is a milestone in the U.S. shift to a renewable energy economy.

Austin Energy buys wind-generated electricity under 10-year, fixed-price contracts and passes this stable price on to its GreenChoice subscribers. This fixed-price energy product is quite attractive to Austin’s 388 corporate GreenChoice customers, including Advanced Micro Devices, Dell, IBM, Samsung, and 3M. Advanced Micro Devices expects to save $4 million over the next decade through this arrangement. School districts are also signing up. Round Rock School District, for example, projects 10-year savings to local taxpayers at $2 million.

Facing a Texas-style stampede of consumers wanting to sign up for the current remaining supply of green electricity, Austin Energy has resorted to a GreenChoice raffle that will be held on March 23. All its customers—both residential and business—were invited to participate in the drawing.

A similar situation has unfolded in Colorado with Xcel Energy, which is the state’s largest electricity supplier. Xcel’s 33,000 Windsource customers, who until late 2005 were paying $6 more each month for their electricity, are now paying slightly less than those using conventional electricity, which comes mostly from natural gas and coal. To meet fast-growing demand, Xcel is currently soliciting proposals from wind developers for up to 775 megawatts of new wind power generation, enough to supply 232,000 Colorado homes with electricity.

Austin Energy and Xcel Energy are among the first utilities to pass on the falling cost of wind energy to their customers. In the short run, the price advantage of wind over conventional electricity may disappear as the surging demand for wind electricity from climate-conscious customers outruns the supply, driving up the price, and as natural gas prices fall from their late 2005 highs. Over the longer term, however, as reserves of natural gas are depleted, its price is projected to rise, giving a strong advantage to wind.

Interest in wind energy is rising as production costs fall. Although media attention focuses on communities with a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) response to wind turbines, such as the large, off-shore wind farm planned off Cape Cod, in most of the country wind farms are enthusiastically welcomed. Here, it’s the PIIMBY syndrome—put-it-in-my-backyard.

When Xcel announced it would develop several hundred megawatts of additional wind-generating capacity, it got the attention of ranching communities throughout wind-rich eastern Colorado. In tiny ranch-country towns like Grover, near the Wyoming border, ranchers welcomed a proposed 300-megawatt wind farm that would span some 30 ranches.

With a large, advanced-design wind turbine generating easily $100,000 worth of electricity per year, even a 3-percent royalty would earn ranchers $3,000 a year from leasing a quarter-acre of ranchland. And they can still run cattle on the land. If the proposed project is approved as expected, these 30 or so ranchers will have an average of seven turbines each, yielding roughly $21,000 a year in additional income. A decade from now, there may be thousands of ranchers who will be earning more selling electricity than they do selling cattle.

In upstate New York, dairy farmers in Lewis County near Lake Ontario warmly embraced the 195-turbine Maple Ridge Wind Farm, and the $5,000 to $10,000-annual royalty offered for each of the turbines on their land. Rural communities welcome wind farms because they provide income to farmers and ranchers, skilled jobs, cheap electricity, and additional tax revenue to upgrade schools and maintain roads.

The growing profitability of wind energy is attracting big-time players. Four years ago, General Electric purchased Enron Wind, one of Enron’s few profitable segments, parlaying its advanced wind turbine design into a leading position in the world wind turbine market.

In mid-2005, Goldman Sachs purchased Zilkha Renewable Energy, a small wind farm development company. Now called Horizon Wind Energy, this wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs has under construction or in the planning stages 4,000 megawatts of wind-generated electricity, enough to supply electricity to 1.2 million homes.

AES, a leading international player in electricity generation, has used its purchase of SeaWest, another wind developer, to establish a strong position in the U.S. wind sector. It now has under development 1,800 megawatts of wind-generating capacity. Shell, one of the leading bidders for offshore wind rights in the United Kingdom, owns 315 megawatts of wind-generating capacity in the United States and is planning more. And BP is mapping out areas in the United States where it could build some 2,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity.

Overall, U.S. wind-generating capacity expanded by 36 percent in 2005, reaching 9,149 megawatts. This year it could expand by 50 percent. At the end of 2005, there were commercial wind farms in 30 states. (See data.)

Wind power generation would grow even faster if it were not constrained by the availability of turbines. General Electric, now supplying 60 percent of the U.S. wind turbine market, is sold out through 2007. Clipper Windpower, a startup turbine manufacturer, is planning to produce 20 of its 2.5-megawatt Liberty turbines per month by mid 2006 and a total of 250 turbines in 2007. Its production is also committed well into the future.

After years of industry uncertainty, when Congress allowed the wind production tax credit (PTC) to lapse several times, the 2005 PTC extension through 2007 has given investors renewed confidence in the future of wind power. The extension of the PTC, which is designed to offset subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear power, is leading to record growth in the number of new wind farms planned.

Wind energy is emerging as a centerpiece of the new energy economy, because it is abundant, inexpensive, inexhaustible, widely distributed, clean, and climate-benign. Three of the 50 states—North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas—have enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. The cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen from 38¢ per kilowatt-hour in the early 1980s to 4¢ to 6¢ today, offering an almost endless supply of cheap energy.

Beyond that, these wells will never go dry. No one can cut off the supply or raise the fuel cost. And wind can supply our energy needs without disrupting the earth’s climate.

Originally Published online: 22 March 2006
(http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update52.htm)
Reproduced here by Permission of Earth Policy Institute
Copyright © 2006 Earth Policy Institute

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Challenge on Food Front: Business-as-Usual Not a Viable Option

Filed Under: Building the Green Economy, Earth Policy Institute, Food Supply Security, Quipu Economic Forum, Water Scarcity
by jr3o — Leave a comment
June 23, 2008

Lester R. Brown, EPI :: A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because of weather-related events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different, however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends that are slowing the growth in supply.

The world has not experienced anything quite like this before. In the face of rising food prices and spreading hunger, the social order is beginning to break down in some countries. In several provinces in Thailand, for instance, rustlers steal rice by harvesting fields during the night. In response, Thai villagers with distant fields have taken to guarding ripe rice fields at night with loaded shotguns.

In Sudan, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is responsible for supplying grain to 2 million people in Darfur refugee camps, is facing a difficult mission to say the least. During the first three months of this year, 56 grain-laden trucks were hijacked. Thus far, only 20 of the trucks have been recovered and some 24 drivers are still unaccounted for. This threat to U.N.-supplied food to the Darfur camps has reduced the flow of food into the region by half, raising the specter of starvation if supply lines cannot be secured.

In Pakistan, where flour prices have doubled, food insecurity is a national concern. Thousands of armed Pakistani troops have been assigned to guard grain elevators and to accompany the trucks that transport grain.

Food riots are now becoming commonplace. In Egypt, the bread lines at bakeries that distribute state-subsidized bread are often the scene of fights. In Morocco, 34 food rioters were jailed. In Yemen, food riots turned deadly, taking at least a dozen lives. In Cameroon, dozens of people have died in food riots and hundreds have been arrested. Other countries with food riots include Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Senegal. (See additional examples of food price unrest.)

The doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices has sharply reduced the availability of food aid, putting the 37 countries that depend on the WFP’s emergency food assistance at risk. In March, the WFP issued an urgent appeal for $500 million of additional funds.

Around the world, a politics of food scarcity is emerging. Most fundamentally, it involves the restriction of grain exports by countries that want to check the rise in their domestic food prices. Russia, the Ukraine, and Argentina are among the governments that are currently restricting wheat exports. Countries restricting rice exports include Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Egypt. These export restrictions simply drive prices higher in the world market.

The chronically tight food supply the world is now facing is driven by the cumulative effect of several well established trends that are affecting both global demand and supply. On the demand side, the trends include the continuing addition of 70 million people per year to the earth’s population, the desire of some 4 billion people to move up the food chain and consume more grain-intensive livestock products, and the recent sharp acceleration in the U.S. use of grain to produce ethanol for cars. Since 2005, this last source of demand has raised the annual growth in world grain consumption from roughly 20 million tons to 50 million tons.

Meanwhile, on the supply side, there is little new land to be brought under the plow unless it comes from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo basins and in Indonesia, or from clearing land in the Brazilian cerrado, a savannah-like region south of the Amazon rainforest. Unfortunately, this has heavy environmental costs: the release of sequestered carbon, the loss of plant and animal species, and increased rainfall runoff and soil erosion. And in scores of countries prime cropland is being lost to both industrial and residential construction and to the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for fast-growing automobile fleets.

New sources of irrigation water are even more scarce than new land to plow. During the last half of the twentieth century, world irrigated area nearly tripled, expanding from 94 million hectares in 1950 to 276 million hectares in 2000. In the years since then there has been little, if any, growth. As a result, irrigated area per person is shrinking by 1 percent a year.

Meanwhile, the backlog of agricultural technology that can be used to raise cropland productivity is dwindling. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s farmers raised grainland productivity by 2.1 percent a year, but from 1990 until 2007 this growth rate slowed to 1.2 percent a year. And the rising price of oil is boosting the costs of both food production and transport while at the same time making it more profitable to convert grain into fuel for cars.

Beyond this, climate change presents new risks. Crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, and the melting of the Asian mountain glaciers that sustain the dry-season flow of that region’s major rivers, are combining to make harvest expansion more difficult. In the past the negative effect of unusual weather events was always temporary; within a year or two things would return to normal. But with climate in flux, there is no norm to return to.

The collective effect of these trends makes it more and more difficult for farmers to keep pace with the growth in demand. During seven of the last eight years, grain consumption exceeded production. After seven years of drawing down stocks, world grain carryover stocks in 2008 have fallen to 55 days of world consumption, the lowest on record. The result is a new era of tightening food supplies, rising food prices, and political instability. With grain stocks at an all-time low, the world is only one poor harvest away from total chaos in world grain markets.

Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. Food security will deteriorate further unless leading countries can collectively mobilize to stabilize population, restrict the use of grain to produce automotive fuel, stabilize climate, stabilize water tables and aquifers, protect cropland, and conserve soils. Stabilizing population is not simply a matter of providing reproductive health care and family planning services. It requires a worldwide effort to eradicate poverty. Eliminating water shortages depends on a global attempt to raise water productivity similar to the effort launched a half-century ago to raise land productivity, an initiative that has nearly tripled the world grain yield per hectare. None of these goals can be achieved quickly, but progress toward all is essential to restoring a semblance of food security.

This troubling situation is unlike any the world has faced before. The challenge is not simply to deal with a temporary rise in grain prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter those trends whose cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security that is a hallmark of civilization. If food security cannot be restored quickly, social unrest and political instability will spread and the number of failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very stability of civilization itself.

Originally published online: 16 April 2008
(http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72.htm)
Republished here by permission of Earth Policy Institute
Copyright © 2008 Earth Policy Institute

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Moving Down the Food Chain

Filed Under: Earth Policy Institute, Food Supply Security, Quipu Economic Forum
by admin — Leave a comment
March 28, 2008

Lester Brown's latest book is on sale in bookstores and at Earth-Policy.org, and can be read in full online there, free of charge.EXCERPT FROM PLAN B 3.0, CH. 9: “FEEDING 8 BILLION WELL”

Lester Brown, EPI :: One of the questions I am most often asked is, “How many peo-ple can the earth support?” I answer with another question: “Atwhat level of food consumption?” Using round numbers, at theU.S. level of 800 kilograms of grain per person annually for food and feed, the 2-billion-ton annual world harvest of grain would support 2.5 billion people. At the Italian level of consumption of close to 400 kilograms, the current harvest would support 5 billion people. At the 200 kilograms of grain consumed by the average Indian, it would support a population of 10 billion.

In every society where incomes rise, people move up the food chain, eating more animal protein as beef, pork, poultry, milk, eggs, and seafood. The mix of animal products varies with geography and culture, but the shift to more livestock products as purchasing power increases appears to be universal. As consumption of livestock products, poultry, and farmed fish rises, grain use per person also rises. Of the roughly 800 kilograms of grain consumed per person each year in the United States, about 100 kilograms is eaten directly as bread, pasta, and breakfast cereals, while the bulk of the grain is consumed indirectly in the form of livestock and poultry products. By contrast, in India, where people consume just under 200 kilograms of grain per year, or roughly a pound per day, nearly all grain is eaten directly to satisfy basic food energy needs. Little is available for conversion into livestock products.

Of the three countries just cited, life expectancy is highest in Italy even though U.S. medical expenditures per person are much higher. People who live very low or very high on the food chain do not live as long as those in an intermediate position. Those consuming a Mediterranean type diet that includes meat, cheese, and seafood, but all in moderation, are healthier and live longer. People living high on the food chain, such as Americans or Canadians, can improve their health by moving down the food chain. For those who live in low-income countries like India, where a starchy staple such as rice can supply 60 percent or more of total caloric intake, eating more protein-rich foods can improve health and raise life expectancy.

In agriculture we often look at how climate affects the food supply but not at how what we eat affects climate. While we understand rather well the link between climate change and the fuel efficiency of the cars we buy, we do not have a comparable understanding of the climate effect of various dietary options. Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martin of the University of Chicago have addressed this issue. They begin by noting that the energy used in the food economy to provide the typical American diet and that used for personal transportation are roughly the same. In fact, the range between the more and less carbon-intensive transportation options and dietary options is each about 4 to 1. With cars, the Toyota Prius, a gas-electric hybrid, uses scarcely one fourth as much fuel as a Chevrolet Suburban SUV. Similarly with diets, a plant-based diet requires roughly one fourth as much energy as a diet rich in red meat. Shifting from a diet rich in red meat to a plant-based diet cuts greenhouse gas emissions as much as shifting from a Suburban SUV to a Prius.

The inclusion of soybean meal in feed rations to convert grain into animal protein more efficiently, the shift by consumers to more grain-efficient forms of animal protein, and the movement of consumers down the food chain all can help reduce the demand for land, water, and fertilizer. This reduces carbon emissions and thus helps to stabilize climate as well.

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Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Filed Under: Building the Green Economy, Earth Policy Institute, Quipu Economic Forum
by jr3o — Leave a comment
February 8, 2008

Lester Brown's latest book is on sale in bookstores and at Earth-Policy.org, and can be read in full online there, free of charge.BOOK REVIEW & INTRODUCTION TO ONGOING HOT SPRING DISCUSSION

Ecologist and researcher Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, has issued the 3rd installment of his ‘Plan B’ books —Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (2008)—, which lay out the most vital research underlying and the most optimal means of meeting the need to transition to a sustainable economy that not only works in harmony with natural system, but also helps to reverse the excesses of the existing industrial model.

The alterations to the Earth’s climate that are resulting from centuries of burning fossil fuels, rich in carbon and which release unnatural amounts of carbon-dioxide into the environment, are presenting current and future costs that have not been integrated into pricing models:

When Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, released his ground-breaking study in late 2006 on the future costs of climate change, he talked about a massive market failure. He was referring to the failure of the market to incorporate the climate change costs of burning fossil fuels. The costs, he said, would be measured in the trillions of dollars. The difference between the market prices for fossil fuels and the prices that also incorporate their environmental costs to society are huge.

The roots of our current dilemma lie in the enormous growth of the human enterprise over the last century. Since 1900, the world economy has expanded 20-fold and world population has increased fourfold. Although there were places in 1900 where local demand exceeded the capacity of natural systems, this was not a global issue. There was some deforestation, but overpumping of water was virtually unheard of, overfishing was rare, and carbon emissions were so low that there was noserious effect on climate. The indirect costs of these early excesses were negligible.

Now with the economy as large as it is, the indirect costs of burning coal—the costs of air pollution, acid rain, devastated ecosystems, and climate change—can exceed the direct costs, those of mining the coal and transporting it to the power plant. As a result of neglecting to account for these indirect costs, themarket is undervaluing many goods and services, creating economic distortions.

As economic decisionmakers—whether consumers, corporate planners, government policymakers, or investment bankers—we all depend on the market for information to guide us. In order for markets to work and economic actors to make sound decisions, the markets must give us good information, including the full cost of the products we buy. But the market is giving us bad information, and as a result we are making bad decisions—so bad that they are threatening civilization.

The market is in many ways an incredible institution. It allocates resources with an efficiency that no central planning body can match and it easily balances supply and demand. The market has some fundamental weaknesses, however. It does not incorporate into prices the indirect costs of producing goods. It does not value nature’s services properly. And it does not respect the sustainable yield thresholds of natural systems. It also favors the near term over the long term, showing little concern forfuture generations.

A major factor in the challenge now facing human civilization is how exactly to continue to exploit the benefits of a market model, while we make sweeping industrial transitions away from fossil fuels, and ‘program’ the market to learn to account for these vital, and incomparably valuable, considerations. Lester Brown’s latest book is, as is custom with his work, a relentless and committed examination of the problem in its most vital detail, coupled with real solutions and a strategy for overcoming the global challenge of moving to a climate-safe economy.

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Why Ethanol Production Will Drive World Food Prices Even Higher in 2008

Filed Under: Earth Policy Institute, Quipu Economic Forum
by admin — Leave a comment
February 6, 2008

Lester Brown's latest book is on sale in bookstores and at Earth-Policy.org, and can be read in full online there, free of charge.Lester R. Brown, EPI :: We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.

The world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs. Wheat trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on December 17th breached the $10 per bushel level for the first time ever. In mid-January, corn was trading over $5 per bushel, close to its historic high. And on January 11th, soybeans traded at $13.42 per bushel, the highest price ever recorded. All these prices are double those of a year or two ago.

As a result, prices of food products made directly from these commodities such as bread, pasta, and tortillas, and those made indirectly, such as pork, poultry, beef, milk, and eggs, are everywhere on the rise. In Mexico, corn meal prices are up 60 percent. In Pakistan, flour prices have doubled. China is facing rampant food price inflation, some of the worst in decades.

In industrial countries, the higher processing and marketing share of food costs has softened the blow, but even so, prices of food staples are climbing. By late 2007, the U.S. price of a loaf of whole wheat bread was 12 percent higher than a year earlier, milk was up 29 percent, and eggs were up 36 percent. In Italy, pasta prices were up 20 percent.

World grain prices have increased dramatically on three occasions since World War II, each time as a result of weather-reduced harvests. But now it is a matter of demand simply outpacing supply. In seven of the last eight years world grain production has fallen short of consumption. These annual shortfalls have been covered by drawing down grain stocks, but the carryover stocks—the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins—have now dropped to 54 days of world consumption, the lowest on record. [Full Story]

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