Renewable Energy
We as Celts know that man is rapidly using up the energy resources on our planet - what has been happening is seriously out of balance with our natural world- These actions are causing for many unsustainable impacts such as climate change and issues linked to social health.
Eating our habitat!
Yet we are all to some extent caught up in these unsustainable activities, this because we are subject to the social systems and models which were developed and deployed by our fore fathers to improve our standards of life.
The primary system that governs our lives is the capitalist system, this is a social development tool which like all tools can provide benefits but when wrongly used can cause for serious consequence-
| The Unsustainable Piracy of Capitalism : The end of an Era | |||||
The Capitalism system has suffered from the inadequacy of man to facilitate the system in a sustainable manner. Instead of Man controlling Capitalism- Capitalism has controlled man. Root causes for this- Ego- Envy and Greed! Our world governments are starting to wake up to the challenges of climate change, energy security and environmental degradation. However as we in the first world have feasted on the delights of – modern technologies other worlds have barely nibbled the apple! Clearly as the climate challenges start to impact on our global ‘social realities’ tensions linked to resentment will form and these are likely to impede the resolution process. To ensure that we meet these challenges head on we must first begin to make some fundamental changes to the type of capitalism that is currently dominating the global economy. In the first world as a direct consequence of the industrial ages we have sourced, produced, used and wasted energy and the methodology used to drive this forward was and still is to some extent by the growth-driven capitalism model. |
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This particular argument is discussed by Jonathan Poritt (2006) . . . In many respects, the crisis is not so much a consequence of 'things running out' (be it oil or gas, or the atmosphere's absorptive capacity), as the inevitable conclusion to a uniquely abhorrent and destructive system of wealth creation. Jonathan Porritt Of all the defining characteristics of post-World War II capitalism, the centrality of economic growth as the overarching policy objective is perhaps the most important. It has driven turnover in the global economy to a staggering US$45 trillion per annum, doubling in just 25 years, with the volume of world trade now 12 times what it was in 1945. Hundreds of millions of people's lives have been enriched, often dramatically, in the process. Yet as we also know, those dramatic increases in economic activity and material wellbeing have failed to solve many of the world's worst problems (particularly chronic poverty in developing countries), and have created a host of additional problems as a consequence of the environmental and social externalities. Many of those externalities are energy-related, all the way through from local air pollution issues in both the rich and the poor world, to the global challenges of climate change. However one reacts to the explosion in economic activity and material prosperity over the last 60 years or so, there is no denying that it has been fuelled predominantly by access to cheap oil and gas. Without that massive and exhilarating infusion of plentiful hydrocarbons, our world today would look very different. Without that massive and exhilarating infusion of plentyful hydrocarbons, our world today would look very different |
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They are, by definition, non-renewable resources. They will, inevitably, start running out at some stage in the future. At that point, our lives will change dramatically. Even if we are successful in preparing ourselves for the transition from an oil-rich world to a world largely without oil, the disruptions will still be dramatic and potentially disastrous. This debate has only just started to warm up again. There's an inevitable sense amongst politicians of a certain age that they've 'been there and done that'. Most lived through the oil shocks of the 1970s, and were exposed to a turbulent debate about the possibility of oil running out in their own lifetime. Unfortunately, those concerns sputtered out. Jimmy Carter's enthusiastic but often ill-directed attempts to get the American people to understand the consequences of their gas-guzzling lifestyles (during which he famously described energy conservation as the 'moral equivalent of war') were swept away by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Right-wing commentators and economists seized the moment to lambaste the doom-and-gloom merchants who had predicted the all-butinstant drying up of oil supplies, and the high ground occupied by environmentalists concerned about the physical limits to growth was systematically cut away from beneath them.
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| Looking back over those 30 years, it's clear that this lost opportunity (to set humankind on a more sustainable energy path) represents the single biggest set back for the environment movement during that time. Instead of shifting both public and private sector investments into energy efficiency, renewable technologies and less energy-intensive infrastructure, we've burned our way through billions of barrels of oil with no thought for the future and no thought for the environmental consequences. That is now beginning to change. The 'peak oil' debate has been well and truly revived, and Renewable Energy World has carried articles from a number of the most eloquent exponents of the theory that global production will peak much earlier than either the oil companies or the majority of 'independent experts' would have us believe. | |||||
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Global production peaking is not, of course, the same thing as oil running out. Huge amounts of oil will still be pumped after that point - but on an inexorably declining basis. Politicians just seem to be drifting into this hugely challenging new world without so much as a passing recognition of the fact that oil production could be down by as much as 75% within just 30 years. As Colin Campbell points out in a new collection of articles about the peak oil debate, 'The Final Energy Crisis', we're planning to undertake this transition 'without sight of a substitute energy that comes close to matching the utility, convenience and low cost of oil and gas.' But is it right to be pressing the panic button at this stage? Long before we see that drop in production of 75%, the price mechanism will, indeed, kick in, and rising prices will extend the period of time that oil remains available for various uses in society - if the worsening consequences of climate change have not already compelled politicians to force all users of hydrocarbon fuels to internalize more of the costs of their use. Many commentators believe not only that these market mechanisms provide the best antidote to today's 'peak oil Cassandras', but that the 'managed volatility' in oil prices in 2004 (exceeding $50 a barrel on a number of occasions) provided proof positive that the system is working quite adequately.
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The shift to renewables provides an unparalleled opportunity for entrepreneur-driven technological change
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