"The world economy is probably knackered, whatever we might do now."

This assessment comes from George Monbiot writing in the Guardian.  He is talking about the onset of Peak Oil which they aslo wrote about a week ago, as the IEA seemed to be forced to overstate the reserves, and hence overstate our degree of comfort, in the existing energy supplies. 

He is duly pessimistic about the world economy, as with no cheap transport, no cheap goods.  Makes sense, doesn't it?

But what he rightly points out is that farming, and hence our food security depends on the fossils fuels as a major input.  Read the article to get the context, but this should make you sit up and take notice. 

"Wyn Evans, who runs a mixed farm of 170 acres, has been trying to reduce his dependency on fossil fuels since 1977. He has installed an anaerobic digester, a wind turbine, solar panels and a ground-sourced heat pump. He has sought wherever possible to replace diesel with his own electricity. Instead of using his tractor to spread slurry, he pumps it from the digester on to nearby fields. He's replaced his tractor-driven irrigation system with an electric one, and set up a new system for drying hay indoors, which means he has to turn it in the field only once. Whatever else he does is likely to produce smaller savings. But these innovations have reduced his use of diesel by only around 25%."

Oh crap. 

Comments

[Bob]

Most worrying is that politicians don't seem to get it. Here in Vancouver - mountains to one side, sea to the other - we're allowing the city to sprawl out down the valley, paving over good agricultural land and building roads and bridges like there's no tomorrow. We're told we got to prepare for the flood of goods from China that will travel across this vast country.

Difficult to be a 100 mile dieter when you can chomp on cheap apples from New Zealand and chocs from switzerland.

[Hamish]

Agreed, if only that flow of goods was not illusory, we would be fine. One child per family in China was not conceived, if you will excuse the word in this context, purely as social repression, but also as some kind of reaction to the demographics that the hardliners could see and react to.