Green buildings are an important component in the transition to an energy efficient future, so I think its worth pointing out new developments that make energy efficiency a design priority.

The City of Sydney has outlined a vision for 2030 that aims to redevelop a lot of areas on the city fringes in a sustainable way. The first development to fit into this new scheme of things is a project planned for the old Kent (CUB) Brewery site, to the west of Central Station, known as Fraser's Broadway.

The project will be designed by Jean Nouvel and Foster + Partners, along with a number of local firms, and is aiming to be the first 6 green star development in the country and the first to achieve carbon neutrality.

Interesting features from a sustainability point of view include :

* a gas-fired, co-generation electricity plant (which they call a "trigeneration plant" as it provides heating, cooling and electricity)
* a waste-water recycling plant combined with rainwater capture
* green rooftops
* smart metering
* solar powered lighting in public spaces
* reducing vehicle traffic by directing cars into an integrated basement and underground road system
* limited parking provision within the precinct, car share schemes and integration into the inner city bicycle network
* recycling of 90% of all demolition waste

Obviously when it comes to property development in Sydney you need to take all these claims with a (very large) grain of salt, but it is encouraging to see these ideas being talked about at least - and with a bit of luck most or all of them will actually eventuate.

EcoGeek points to a rather large hybrid electric vehicle that GE is working on. Its not exactly green, but better than the status quo at least.

Its wheels are bigger than your car...the driver has to climb a flight of stairs to get to his seat. And, if GE has their way, they might soon be painting it (at least metaphorically) green.

Hybrid cars are generally most exciting when they combine their energy-efficient drive trains with small, lightweight bodies. This is the only way to see Prius-like mileage of 60+ mpg. But hybrid systems also work for larger vehicles like the 2WD Chevy Tahoe hybrid that brought home this year's Green Car of the Year award by getting 50% better city fuel economy than its non-hybrid counterpart.

But GE and the U.S. Department of Energy are taking the idea of making big vehicles more efficient to the extreme. They're working on a project to hybridize haul trucks which, when fully loaded, weigh more than 200 Chevy Tahoes.

Haul trucks are basically massive dump trucks used in mining operations. They, of course, consume massive amounts of fuel, and so increasing effiency marginally can save massive amounts of fuel. Already, most new haul trucks are electrically powered, like diesel locomotives. Their diesel engines power generators that power the electric motors. This is more efficient than traditional drive trains, and provides much more torque for moving such gigantic loads.

GE is working on a system to basically run the electric engines in reverse during braking and store the generated electricity in the same battery packs they use for their hybrid locomotives. They've already got a test-system in place and operating. They're trying to figure out how long the batteries will last in the harsh conditions of mines, and are still unsure how how much fuel they can save using the technology.

The Age reports that Japan is facing butter shortages, as rising agricultural commodity prices cause havoc - apparently even in rich countries.

Japan's acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis. A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand.

While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term — perhaps permanent — reduction in the quality and quantity of its food.

A 130% rise in the global cost of wheat in the past year, caused partly by surging demand from China and India and a huge injection of speculative funds into wheat futures, has forced the Government to hit flour millers with three rounds of stiff mark-ups. The latest — a 30% increase this month — has given rise to speculation that Japan, which relies on imports for 90% of its annual wheat consumption, is no longer on the brink of a food crisis, but has fallen off the cliff.

According to one government poll, 80% of Japanese are frightened about what the future holds for their food supply. Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion ($A2.37 billion) budget for the grains with two months remaining. It was forced to call on an emergency ¥55 billion reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation. "This was the first time the Government has had to take such drastic action since the war," said Akio Shibata, an expert on food imports, who warned the Agriculture Ministry two years ago that Japan would have to cut back drastically on its sophisticated diet if it did not become more self-sufficient.

In the wake of the decision this week by Kazakhstan, the world's fifth biggest wheat exporter, to join Russia, Ukraine and Argentina in stopping exports to satisfy domestic demand, the situation in Japan is expected to worsen. ...

"In the past, Japan was a rich country with a powerful yen that could easily buy cheap imports such as wheat, corn and soybeans," said Mr Shibata, who directs the Marubeni Research Institute in Tokyo. "But with enormous competition from the booming Chinese and Indian economies, that's changed forever. You also need to take into account recent developments, including the damage to crops caused by drought and other disasters in exporting countries like Australia," where the value of wheat exports has tumbled from $3.49 billion to $2.77 billion in the past three years.

The situation has been compounded by a surge in demand for bio-fuels such as ethanol, made from maize, encouraging farmers around the world to divert their efforts away from wheat and barley and into maize, further driving up prices.

The SMH is also following the food situation - "Dearer food unleashes 'silent tsunami'".

A "silent tsunami" unleashed by costlier food threatens 100 million people, the United Nations said on Tuesday, but views differed as to how to stop it. Aid bodies said there was enough food to go round but the key was to help the poor afford it, and urged producing nations not to curb exports to stockpile food at home.

In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain would seek changes to EU biofuels targets if it was shown that planting crops for fuel was driving up food prices - a day after the bloc stood by its plans to boost biofuel use.

Riots in poor Asian and African countries have followed steep rises in food prices caused by many factors - dearer fuel, bad weather, rising disposable incomes boosting demand and the conversion of land to grow crops for biofuel. Rice from Thailand, the world's top exporter, has more than doubled in price this year.

Sheeran said artificially created shortages, such as those caused by countries that have slowed or stopped exports, were worsening the problem. Major food exporters including Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Egypt and Cambodia have closed their stocks to safeguard supplies. "The world has been consuming more than it has been producing for the past three years, so stocks have been drawn down," Sheeran said. "The world knows how to produce food and will do so. But we will have a couple of challenging years."

Meanwhile the government here is trying to keep food prices down by increasing competition in the supermarket sector (whether or not the arrival of Wal*Mart in Australia would be a good thing or not isn't discussed).

IN a move to drive down food prices, the Federal Government will make it easier for foreign supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart, Costco and Aldi to set up in Australia and challenge giants Coles and Woolworths. With inflation figures due today expected to show significant upward pressure on food prices, the Herald can reveal the Rudd Government will change investment rules to give foreign buyers of vacant commercial land more time to start developing it.

The price of rice hit another record today.

World rice prices have hit new record highs in Asian trade, following further concerns that export bans by top rice-producing countries are hitting supply. To compound the problem, the Australian harvest has finished with just 18,000 tonnes in the bin, well down from the 1.2-million-tonne crops of previous years.

Sunrice chief executive officer Gary Helou says this 80-year low in Australian production is having a big impact on the current world price. "In the medium grain market we have had an impact, a big impact," he said. "This medium-grain variety that's consumed up in Japan, in the Pacific, northern Asia, Middle East and Europe is only grown and exported out of Australia, California and Egypt, so the world market, expects it, needs it and relies on it.

The Times reports that US shops are rationing food for first time - though "food" should probably be replaced with "rice".

US RETAIL giant Wal-Mart is rationing rice sales to protect dwindling supplies as the global price skyrockets and producers such as Australia struggle to keep up with demand. The drastic move is the first time that food rationing has been introduced in the US.

Growing appetites in China and India, drought in Australia and pests in Vietnam have contributed to the rice shortage and soaring prices. Hoarding by Asian farmers and rice dealers has sparked clampdowns by authorities there who are worried about getting subsidised rice to the poor.

While Americans suffered some rationing during World War II for items such as petrol, light bulbs and stockings, they have never had to limit consumption of a key food item. In Britain, where Wal-Mart owns Asda supermarkets, rice is being rationed by shopkeepers in Asian neighbourhoods to prevent hoarding. Tilda, the biggest importer of basmati rice, said that its buyers — who sell to the curry and Chinese restaurant trade as well as to families — were restricting customers to two bags per person. “It is happening in the cash-and-carries,” said Jonathan Calland, a company executive. “I heard from our sales force that one lady went into a cash-and-carry and tried to buy eight 20kg bags.”

Wal-Mart said that Sam’s Club, its wholesale business, which sells food to restaurants and other retailers, had limited each customer to four bags of long-grain white rice per visit. In the past three months wholesalers have experienced a sharp rise in demand for food items such as wheat, rice and milk as businesses stocked up to protect themselves against rising prices. ...

Food prices across the world have rocketed in the past two years, driven by increased demand for corn — the grain that is fermented to produce ethanol, the biofuel. With corn a main foodstock in dairy farming, milk has doubled in price in two years.

The Wall Street Journal says Maybe It’s Time for Americans to Start Stockpiling Food. And people say peak oilers are alarmists. I might note that hoarding is the worst thing people can do, as the domino effect it has on the system just breeds panic, rising prices and more hoarding - a vicious circle we really don't need.

I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You’ve seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they’re a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

The Washington Times (an unreliable source, but nevertheless) says Americans Are Hoarding Food as Industry Seeks Regulations - and points the finger at commodity speculators.

Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas. Their pleas did not find a sympathetic audience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where regulators said high prices are mostly the result of soaring world demand for grains combined with high fuel prices and drought-induced shortages in many countries.

The regulatory clash came amid evidence that a rash of headlines in recent weeks about food riots around the world has prompted some in the United States to stock up on staples. Costco and other grocery stores in California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on how many sacks of rice each customer can buy. Filipinos in Canada are scooping up all the rice they can find and shipping it to relatives in the Philippines, which is suffering a severe shortage that is leaving many people hungry.

While farmers here and abroad generally are benefiting from the high prices, even they have been burned by a tidal wave of investors and speculators pouring into the futures markets for corn, wheat, rice and other commodities and who are driving up prices in a way that makes it difficult for farmers to run their businesses. “Something is wrong,” said National Farmers Union President Tom Buis, adding that the CFTC’s refusal to rein in speculators will force farmers and consumers to take their case to Congress.

Bloomberg reports that World Vision is cutting back on food relief as it cannot afford soaring food costs.

World Vision International, which provides food relief in 35 countries, said it can no longer provide rations to 1.5 million of the poor people it fed last year because of soaring costs and unmet aid commitments by donors.

``Despite our best efforts, more than a million of our beneficiaries are no longer receiving food aid,'' World Vision President Dean Hirsch said in a statement yesterday. ``Around 572,000 of these are children who urgently need enough healthy food to thrive.''

Popular Mechanics has an article on producing "green gasoline" from cellulose. I'm starting to think that even next generation biofuels that meet Vinod Khosla's CLAW criteria are basically a waste of time - as population increases, any competition between fuel and food (either directly - converting food to fuel or growing fuel crops instead of food crops - or indirectly by slowly impacting soil quality) is going to be a bad thing. We're better off just migrating away from our legacy transportation fuel infrastructure and moving to pure electric transport - so we should focus on this goal primarily.

Researchers at UMass Amherst recently published a new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose, paving the way to turn wood scraps into gasoline, diesel fuel, Tupperware—anything, essentially, that’s normally refined from petroleum. Many scientists have been working on ways to turn everything from corn stalks to tires into ethanol, sidestepping some of the problems inherent to making fuel from corn and other food products. But ethanol has a number of liabilities, regardless of the source. For instance, it requires automotive engines to be modified and contains less energy than gasoline, driving down fuel economy.

Turning cellulose into gasoline is tricky. Unlike raw crude, which is made up mostly of hydrocarbons to begin with, plant material contains a great deal of oxygen woven into its molecular structure. “Crude oil looks more similar to gasoline than biomass does,” says George Huber, lead author of the new study. “So the challenge is how do you efficiently remove the oxygen and make these compounds that look like gasoline or diesel fuel? And how do you do it in the fewest number of steps and in the most economical way?”

Using a catalyst commonly employed in the petroleum industry, Huber and his colleagues heated small amounts of cellulose very quickly for a matter of seconds before cooling it, producing a high-octane liquid similar to gasoline. “The temperature window is very critical,” Huber says. If you heat too slowly, you produce mainly coke—elemental carbon residue. If you heat too fast, you make mainly vapors. The sweet spot, about 1000 degrees per second, transfers roughly half the cellulose’s energy into hydrocarbons. “If we can get 100 percent yield, we estimate the cost to be about a dollar per gallon,” Huber says. “Right now we’re at 50 percent. Can we get 100 percent? I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll bump those numbers up.”

Huber and his colleagues aren’t the first to derive hydrocarbons from renewable sources. Virent Energy Systems, for example, just signed a deal with Shell to produce gasoline from plant sugars and expects to open a pilot facility in the next two years. UOP is working on a project to produce jet fuel for U.S. and NATO fighters from algal and vegetable oils. But Huber’s work stands out as likely the first direct conversion from cellulose, opening up as potential fuel sources virtually anything that grows. Commercialization of the technology may take another five to 10 years, the researchers predict.

Developments in so-called “green hydrocarbons” arrive as ethanol continues to come under attack as expensive, inefficient and a contributor to rising food prices around the world. (More than a billion bushels of corn are diverted to ethanol production each year.) “There’s certainly a lot of historical inertia for ethanol. It’s gotten us off to a great start, but I can’t see the country transitioning to flex-fuel,” says John Regalbuto, director of the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at the National Science Foundation. “I almost think, long term, that we will go to plug-in hybrids. But we’re still going to need diesel and jet fuel—you can’t run trains or fly planes with ethanol or hydrogen.”

New Scientist reports that Chinese coal stocks have dropped to 12 days worth (I think the usual number is closer to 15 days. Somewhere, Ross Gittens is smiling (as are all the local coal companies).

China's booming economy could be running out of steam – literally.

At the end of a cold and stormy winter, the country has just 12 days of coal reserves at most power stations. Some provinces, including Hebei, bordering Beijing, have less than a week's coal left. This is a record low, the state electricity regulatory commission revealed on Tuesday.

China relies on burning coal for 70% of its electricity. Even though Chinese coal production in the first quarter of this year was up almost 15% on the same period last year, it has apparently not been enough to meet rapidly growing demand.

Coal imports, which started last year, have also failed to meet the difference between supply and demand. Such is the demand for power from an economy that has been growing by 10% a year for more than two decades.

The International Energy Agency says China increased capacity at coal-fired power stations by 100 gigawatts in 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available.

It is often claimed that China builds a new coal-fired power plant once a week but the IEA figure suggests that it in fact builds two, assuming a typical plant size of one gigawatt.

Even that is not enough to meet soaring demand. The deputy head of the Chinese electricity regulatory commission, Wang Yeping, said the country is likely to be short of 10 gigawatts of electricity generating capacity by this summer.

That will cause brownouts and power shortages, particularly in southern provinces such as Guangdong, where the spread of air conditioning systems is competing with industry for power.

I'm still tracking news about geothermal energy in the background - here's a little roundup of new stories.

The Sunday Oregonian reports that "pressure is building" for goethermal energy in "Get ready for a geyser of geothermal power".

Oregon has seen geothermal projects on the drawing board before, but several now appear to be moving toward reality. That's in part because rising costs of other types of power make geothermal more attractive and because improved technology allows plants to produce power from lower-temperature geothermal reservoirs than before, experts said. At least three companies are planning geothermal power plants in Oregon, and one could be producing electricity in less than two years, officials said. The recent failure of Congress to extend tax breaks for renewable energy makes financing the plants more challenging but should not derail them entirely, officials said.

Slate reports that Iceland has power to burn.

Iceland's economy, which until recently relied largely on fishing, has diversified in recent years, with rapid growth in tourism, manufacturing, and financial services. And like the Blue Lagoon, much of the growth has been a happy byproduct of Iceland's decadeslong strategy of tapping sources of renewable energy. Mindful of climate change and the need to limit emissions, many U.S. states have set goals of obtaining 10 percent or 15 percent of their energy from renewables at some point in the distant future, and the European Union has pledged to reach 20 percent by 2020. But Iceland is already at about 80 percent. All electricity on the island is generated through geothermal or hydroelectric sources—low-emissions sources that don't use fossil fuels. Most homes are heated by water pumped from geothermal hot spots. "We are blessed with a lot of clean and renewable energy," Prime Minster Geir H. Haarde told Newsweek. "The only uses of fossil fuels in Iceland are people using cars and the fishing fleet." And increasingly, Iceland, whose most prominent exports have been haddock and Björk, is devising ways to export what has been a stranded resource.

IceNews reports that Al Gore is to speak at Glitnir climate conference in Iceland.

Nordic bank Glitnir and the University of Iceland will host an open meeting with Al Gore in Reykjavik in April. Al Gore, the former vice-president of the United States and Nobel Prize winner, will be the keynote speaker at a meeting on environmental issues scheduled to take place at Haskolabio in Reykjavik on 8th April.

Larus Welding, CEO of Glitnir Bank, said the meeting with Al Gore is related to Glitnir’s overseas efforts to promote the bank’s expertise in sustainable energy. “Glitnir is at the forefront in international financial services for geothermal energy projects. We are already engaged in a number of exciting ventures in the U.S. with leading companies in this field. The Bank has obtained considerable attention among numerous parties who are participants in the public discourse on sustainable energy resources, one of them being Al Gore,” said Mr Welding.

Mr Welding said the meeting with Al Gore is important in light of Glitnir’s progress in the field of renewable energy resources, which offer numerous opportunities particularly with the record-high oil prices seen in recent months.

A fairly large proportion of geothermal stories in the news stream relate to efforts by Iceland based companies like Glitnir Bank to export geothermal power technology and expertise offshore - particularly to the US and developing nations.

All Africa.com reports that Iceland is helping Ethiopia explore geothermal power.

Following the signing of a bilateral relation agreement between Ethiopia and Iceland on January 2008 to explore geothermal power potential in the rift valley region, a team of experts from Reykjavik are to engage in a bilateral geothermal survey. It would be too early to talk about the project cost, said Sendeku Araya, public relations division Head at the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporations (EEPCo). "Ethiopia has an estimated potential of 1000mw of power from geothermal energy located in the rift region," ambassador Svavar Gestsson, especial envoy to the ministry of foreign affairs, told Fortune. He said the exact potential would be known after the actual study is conducted.

IceNews reports on a Electricity agreement signed between Yemen and Iceland.

emen’s General Corporation for Electricity and Iceland’s Reykjavik Energy Invest company signed a new agreement on Sunday, according to reports by Saba, Yemen’s news agency. The document signals a new agreement on electricity generation between the two countries. The agreement details a plan for REI to lead a study into the geothermal potential at Lesi Mountain in the Dhamar region of Yemen. If the potential for a geothermal project is there, REI will initiate drilling works in the location. According to the document, REI will invest in the first geothermal station after the study is finalised, which is expected to occur by the end of August this year.

Like Iceland, Yemen is increasingly using renewable sources of energy such as geothermal energy, wind power and solar power. Iceland’s minister expressed his willingness to assist Yemen in the expansion of their renewable energy sources. Iceland is considered the foremost expert in geothermal operations and is the country with the most electricity generated from renewable resources.

Cleantech.com reports that Glitnir is bringing geothermal power to India.

The bank is teaming up with India's LNJ Bhilwara Group to explore the country's untapped potential. Reykjavik, Iceland-based Glitnir Bank is continuing to spread the word about geothermal, announcing a joint venture today for exploration in India. Glitnir is partnering with Noida, India's LNJ Bhilwara Group, a diversified business with operations in power generation.

Wired reports that Iceland is a compelling location for data centres because of the climate and cheap renewable energy availability (though network connectivity could do with a boost).

Quick -- what's the first thing you associate with Iceland? Glaciers and blondes, right? According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study (and some lobbying from the Invest in Iceland Agency), the country should be associated with data centers.

Not only is the Nordic country an ideal choice for toasty data centers with its chilly climate, but the geothermal and hydroelectric power sources could keep the electricity bills low. "The study showed that Iceland offers a lower cost for data centers than the US, the UK and even India," boasted an Agency spokesperson. "Iceland also has the second lowest corporate tax in the OECD at 15 per cent, highly skilled IT labor at competitive prices, and low land and lease costs."

Business Green has a look at recent economic uncertainty and the country's potential to become a leader in clean energy technology.

It is somewhat ironic that of all the countries currently struggling with the prospect of an economic downturn it is the one arguably having the toughest time that ultimately has the least to worry about when it looks to its long-term future.

Over the past few weeks, Icelanders have had to become used to their country making a series of unwelcome appearances on the world's business pages. Commentators have wondered aloud if this small northern economy of just 300,000 people could be the first to collapse as a result of the global credit crunch.

Despite a fundamentally strong economy that has in recent years propelled Iceland to the top of the UN's quality of life rankings, the country's banks have been hit hard by the recent drop off in investor confidence and have struggled to obtain foreign currency loans.

The net result has been an economic car crash. The central bank last week raised interest rates for the second time in three weeks to a record 15.5 per cent. This was in an attempt to head off spiralling inflation and shore up the Krona following a start to the year that has seen it lose a fifth of its value against the Euro. Meanwhile, the finance ministry is now predicting that the economy will contract next year for the first time in over 15 years as high interest rates put the brakes on consumer spending.

And yet, while it may prove of little consolation to those Icelanders facing a tough couple of years, many within the Icelandic government believe the country's recent travails are the precursor to a long-term economic boom that should make Iceland a global trailblazer in the development of clean technologies.

Cryptogon recently pointed to an FT article on "crashing iceland" - "Allegations that Speculators Are Colluding, Attempting to Crash Iceland for Profit".

An executive who works with a big Icelandic bank recalls: “Upon entering the bar I was approached by one of the hedge fund managers. He informed me that all people in this party – except for him, of course – were shorting Iceland.” The executive says the fund manager described Iceland’s profit-making potential as the “second coming of Christ”.

“As dinner progressed – some people actually decided not to eat at all but just sit at the bar – and more drinks were downed, the conversation and questions started to get more hostile and short positions openly declared,” the executive says.

What started as an alcohol-fuelled evening has become a full-blown investigation by Iceland’s Financial Supervisory Authority into an alleged speculative attack by hedge funds on Iceland’s currency, banking system and stock market. Jonas Jonsson, director-general of Iceland’s FSA, says the authorities are “searching whether some parties have systematically been distributing negative and false rumours about the Icelandic banks and financial system in order to profit from it”. ...

The suspicion is that speculators exerted undue pressure on the illiquid CDS market in the knowledge that the wider the spread went, the more fear of a banking collapse would contaminate the stock and currency markets. There are also concerns about the way rumours were spread about the alleged reliance of Iceland’s banks on internet deposits, which triggered reports in UK newspapers that such deposits could be withdrawn rapidly.

The chief executives of the three main banks, Landsbanki, Glitnir and Kaupthing, made clear in interviews last week there is no evidence this is the case, despite the negative publicity about Iceland. They firmly believe such rumours were started deliberately in order to spark fears of a run on their overseas deposits. Iceland’s most senior officials have declared open war on the speculators. David Oddsson, governor of the central bank and former prime minister, says: “There is an unpleasant odour of unscrupulous dealers who have decided to make a last stab at breaking down the Icelandic financial system.” ...

These events serve as a testament to Iceland’s transformation from fishing-based backwater to northern European tiger economy. Icelanders have certainly grown richer. Its economy may be the smallest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with a gross domestic product of about $20bn (£10bn, €13bn) but GDP per capita income is approximately $60,000, among the highest. Private jets swoop into Reykjavik’s airport bearing home-grown billionaires, while black Range Rovers purr through the capital’s streets amid a forest of cranes.

These sorts of stories remind me of a mockumentary made for British TV a few years ago called "The Man Who Broke Britain". I've never managed to get hold of a copy, but it sounds like it was quite well done (at one point I believe it was going to be ditched because of the controversial subject matter, but the online articles don't mention this).

The Man who broke Britain is a full-length drama film made by the BBC in 2004. The film was written by Simon Finch and Gabriel Range, produced by the former and directed by the latter. It is shot in documentary-style - very convincingly so - and is part of their "What if..." series of programmes, in which the BBC highlight potential problems, disasters and other current affairs issues which could conceivably impact our lives.

In this particular programme, the topic is the global and local economy. The whole concept of the film hinges on the concept of financial derivatives - one of the things that caused Enron to eventually bite the dust.

"Financial derivatives" is a bit of an obscure term for the layman. As the film explains it: "Two parties take out a contract, and they agree they will exchange moneys based on the change in value of that asset. It moves up or moves down. One of them wins, one of them loses, it's as simple as that"

This documentary (or mockumentary, rather, considering it is set in the beginning of 2005) is extremely convincingly shot. The actors, the story-line, the way it is produced, everything seems extraordinarily well thought through and the characters in the film are most believable. The filmmakers have also managed to deftly include footage of both the British prime minister Tony Blair, and US president George W. Bush, combined with real news footage and lots of convincing stock footage, for further realism.

While painting a bleak picture of the world, basically leading through a global financial collapse, not unlike the depression of the late 1920s and 1930s, the programme raises a series of points for discussion.

In the film, a rogue financial derivative trader has foiled the system, and has included a phrase in contracts that makes the banks extremely vulnerable to certain conditions - in this case, if the oil price rises to extreme levels. Of course, the trader is in cahoot with terrorist organisations, who use violent acts of terrorism to drive the price of oil up. When it reaches the magical limit, a major bank topples, and takes a large portion of other financial institutions with it.

While mostly an exercise in "what if", the film raises a series of important questions about the ethical aspects of banking and financial institutions. It is easy to imagine this film being used as a basis for discussion in ethics- and perhaps also in macro-economics classes.

Ron Paul has pretty much slipped off the (internet news) radar since the John "Bomb bomb Iran" McCain clinched the Republican nomination but his supporters are still coming up with some novel ideas - the latest of which seems to be an intentional community for Libertarians in West Texas called "Paulville". I suspect this would be a little different to your average eco-village or hippie commune, but it will be fun to watch how it turns out (hat tip Dave M for the link).

The goal of Paulville.org it to establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty.

The process is forming a co-op of people buying shares in the community and these people would be granted land use at a minimum of 1 acre per share, for as long as they homesteaded the land. The community would be privately held by the co-op to establish private property for the general community thus preserving the community is 100% freedom and liberty lovers. The community votes on all community efforts, such as utilities etc. However no one is forced to consume these utilities and or pay for them, AKA people can be off grid on their share of land. This is in line with the ideals that you're free to live your life the way you want and not be forced to do or pay for other people's life styles you may not agree with.

These communities are not for the faint at heard they will start as undeveloped land in non city locals, as this is the way to secure large tracts of land needed for these efforts.

Peak oil was always going to present a big challenge for the airline industry - and even the early stages seem to be causing a lot of issues.

The SMH reports that US planes are flying on dangerously low fuel levels, with the number of emergency landings soaring.

A review by federal authorities has revealed a sharp increase in planes, particularly from Continental Airlines, flying into the New York area with so little fuel that they demand an emergency landing. In a report on minimum and emergency fuel declarations into Newark airport last year, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) expressed concern that some of the incidents may be prompted by fuel-saving measures. "We are concerned that fuel-saving measures may have contributed to the low fuel declarations because of two pilot bulletins issued by Continental Airlines in 2007," the report said.

The SMH also reports that Air NZ expects fuel costs to hit profits

Air NZ said crude oil's "unprecedented rise" had also seen a widening of the gap between crude oil and jet fuel, which for the past two years has been about $US15 per barrel. Now it was more than $US25 per barrel. The airline had crude oil hedges in place but they did not protect against the growing differential with jet fuel.

It had recently increased ticket prices but if the oil prices were sustained, they would have "a significant impact, requiring continued review of our pricing, network and cost-base". Air NZ also said it was entering compensation talks with Boeing after news that the delivery of its first Boeing 787-9 aircraft has been delayed.

And one last piece of good news from the SMH - all foreigners leaving the US will now be fingerprinted - smile, you're on Big Brother.

The US government says it wants airlines and cruiseliners to take biometric data from foreigners leaving the country under new plans aimed at fighting terrorism and illegal immigration. Since January 2004, immigration services have taken a photo and fingerprints from each foreigner entering the United States to identify those using a false name and to stop terrorists, drug traffickers or illegal immigrants. More than 90 million prints have already been collected, but under a proposed law announced by the minister of homeland security today, the system would be expanded to every foreigner leaving the country by sea or air.

Wired has an article on some engineers developing $100 micro-wind turbines for the developing world.

A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid Guatemalan villages by this summer.

After the U.S. engineers finish the design, local workers in the town of Quetzaltenango will manufacture the small-scale turbine. It will produce 10-15 watts of electricity, enough to charge a 12-volt battery that can power simple devices like LED lights.

"They're replacing kerosene lamps, if anything at all," said Matt McLean, a mechanical engineer by day and leader of the wind-turbine project by night. "The biggest driver is just keeping the cost way down. We're shooting for under $100, which is a challenge, but we're in that range."

The effort comes amidst recent efforts to bring new light and power to small towns in the developing world. An estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide are without electricity, and many of them are forced to light their homes with kerosene. Using one of these lamps is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, says the World Bank, and the lamps present a significant fire risk. That's why many startup companies, such as d.Light, are trying to bring cheaper LED lights to homes, but they still need a solution for producing power locally.

That's where organizations like Engineers Without Borders come in. Founded in 2002 by Bernard Amadie, a professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, it has grown to more than 10,000 members in over 250 chapters. According to Cathy Leslie, the executive director of the U.S. organization, 340 projects are underway.

Apparently some people are never happy - The Age has a column bemoaning the demise of the Rodent - "Hating Howard gave life real meaning. What is a good leftie to do now ?".

I'LL tell you something for free. The leftie dinner parties aren't nearly as much fun as they used to be. We miss Howard. Sure, we're glad he's gone, but we miss him. We got what we wanted but now we've got bugger all to talk about. Nothing to rail against. Nothing to make us thump our fists on the table and force spit to fly out of our mouths. Nothing to set our eyes ablaze. Last year the left was on fire. This year we're happy. And we're not happy about it. The left loves a whinge, a wine and a rant. ...

Man, we loved to hate Howard. Back in the good old days of 2007 it was wall-to-wall leftie love-ins of hatred. The hate brought us closer together. Now, who've we got? We can't hate Brendan Nelson. That'd be like picking on the retarded kid. Bring back Costello, I say. If the Liberals truly loved the latte left they would present us with Alexander Downer esquire fully stuffed complete with an apple in his mouth. Or Bulletproof Bronwyn Bishop. Please! We're begging. If we can't have something to rail against, at least give us, the cartoonists and the comedians something to laugh at.

The Melbourne Comedy Festival had a significant drop in ticket sales this year. There were plenty of theories about why this was: mortgage rates were up, it started earlier in the year than usual, ticket prices too high. My theory? Because Howard's gone. The past two years the Comedy Festival had bumper ticket sales. I reckon this was because people felt disillusioned and powerless with a government that ran on spin, dog whistles, scare campaigns, pork-barrelling and fear-mongering. We wanted to be in a room watching someone prowl up and down the stage screaming that yes, it was wrong, and no, we weren't alone. And when we all laughed as one we realised we weren't. When a comedian bagged WorkChoices, the treatment of asylum seekers, Howard's refusal to say sorry, our involvement in Iraq or his pandering to the aspirationals, we cheered. We left with fire in our belly and ticket stub in hand feeling as if maybe we could help make a change. And we did.

I was complaining about the "Australian disease" in my post about coal to liquids last week, as it became clear just how much King Coal is coming to dominate the local economy.

Ross Gittens can see the sunny side of this though, as he idly contemplates the de-industrialisation of the economy and the transformation of the nation into a giant quarry in "Everything's coming up roses", in which he predicts that we'll be "riding on the back of a coal truck" for the next few decades.

Global warming apparently isn't a problem in his eyes - or at least not one that people will bother to try and mitigate by burning less coal.

Powerful forces are at work that most of us are only dimly aware of. They will persist despite any economic slowdown and change the face of our economy.

The re-emergence of China and India as major economic powers is changing the structure of the world economy. These are the two most populous countries - accounting for almost 40 per cent of the globe's population - and when they start growing strongly and treading the well-trodden path of economic development they make a big difference.

Until now, the world economy has been growing unusually strongly. But get this: last year the United States, Europe and Japan accounted for only about 20 per cent of the growth in gross world product, whereas China and India - with help from Russia and Brazil - accounted for more than 40 per cent of that growth.

China is doing more than just churning out loads of cheap exports. It's busy turning a backward, rural economy into a modern industrial economy that will eventually yield its citizens a standard of living in the same ballpark as ours.

It's in the process of catching up with the developed world, achieving in the space of, say, 50 years what took the West 200 years. That's possible because of infusions of developed-country capital and, more importantly, technology.

This rapid development involves humungous expenditure on all the things we take for granted: roads, railways, bridges, power stations, housing and much else. This, in turn, requires huge quantities of energy and raw materials.

Among many other resources, China is consuming well over a third of the world's annual production of coal and iron ore. But China has a relatively low endowment of natural resources per person.

This is where we come in, of course. Australia accounts for about half the world's annual production of coking coal (for making steel) and about a fifth of the world's production of steaming coal (for generating electricity) and iron ore.

Rural and mineral commodities have always dominated our exports. The prices the world pays for those commodities vary greatly from year to year according to the vagaries of world demand and supply. In consequence, we've enjoyed "commodity booms" - periods of high world commodity prices - roughly every 20 or 30 years.

The present resources boom is probably the biggest we've ever experienced. The contract prices we receive for coal are expected to almost triple this year, with prices for iron ore leaping by a paltry 65 per cent.

Here's the point: unlike every other, fleeting commodity boom we've experienced, this one is likely to be permanent. Why? Because it's produced not by a temporary surge in the developed countries' demand for commodities, but by the industrialisation of the Chinese and Indian economies, a process that's likely to last for several decades.

Coal and iron ore prices will eventually fall back from their present sky-high levels, of course. But not until we and our competitor countries have greatly increased our production of those commodities. And even when they've fallen, prices are likely to remain much higher than they were.

See what this means? Throughout most of last century we watched the relative prices of our primary commodity exports steadily decline. The stuff we had to sell the developed world constituted an ever-diminishing share of its needs. We were backing a loser.

But with the development of China, India and other emerging economies, commodity-exporting countries like us are back on top. The stuff we've got to sell is now in great and continuing demand. We've returned to riding on the back of a coal truck.

This is great news. As a nation we're now a lot richer than we thought we were and can enjoy a significantly higher standard of living.

(The news will, however, discomfort people who're convincing themselves it's a sin to sell coal and those who imagine global warming will somehow halt the poor countries' economic development. Remember that most of what we're selling the Chinese goes to make steel, not electricity.)

But just as the re-emergence of China and India is changing the structure of the world economy, so our part in that re-emergence will change the structure of our economy - in ways many people won't like.

This restoration of Australia's comparative advantage in mining will require us to shift resources out of other industries and into mining. Our manufacturers are likely to be first in the firing line, although inbound tourism will also take a hit. Our soaring dollar will stay high as part of the pressure on these industries to contract.

For readers overseas who don't understand the coal truck reference, traditionally (back in the day when the country was just a giant sheep farm that supplied raw materials for British textile mills) the Australian economy was described as "riding on the sheep's back".

If I seem grumpier than usual its because the weather is rubbish...

I haven't seen much in the way of real news about ocean power this week, but Inhabitat has a post on the recently announced 20 million pound Saltire Prize for innovation in clean ocean energy.

Calling all marine renewable energy innovators! The Scottish Government announced a new prize at the beginning of April designed to encourage world scientists to push the boundaries for new clean, power generated from the sea. The Saltire Prize is worth a cool $20 million (£10 million) to the person or team who demonstrates innovation in marine renewable energy technology and is deployed in Scotland. The details of the prize are still being worked out, but it is time to get cracking if you have a great idea.

The Saltire Prize was inspired by other innovation prizes you may be familiar with like, the Ansari X Prize that led to the first private spacecraft launch, and also the Virgin Earth Challenge created by Richard Branson. Richard Branson’s prize is for scientists to create new ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. These challenges have created incredible innovation with a great return on investment. Did you know that the Ansari X Prize awarded $10 million, but led to $100 million worth of R&D? The Scottish Government hopes their prize will lead to similar if not better innovations and further advance renewable energy technology.

Scotland is well situated to benefit from the innovations as a result of the prize. The potential for renewable energy in Scotland is considerable. They have the potential to generate 25% of Europe’s wind energy, 25% of Europe’s tidal power and 10% of Europe’s wave power. When an area of your country gets called the “Saudi Arabia of tidal power,” that means you have some potential. Plans are already underway to develop the Pentland Firth, between Orkney and mainland Scotland, which alone could generate up to 10 GW.

While Scotland has significant potential, in terms of installed capacity, only a 0.27 MW of wave power is installed and no tidal power at all. In fact Korea is building the largest tidal power plant, set to come online by 2015. This prize is meant to kickstart Scotland’s marine renewable energy program and help meet their target of generating 50% of their electricity demand from renewable energy by 2020.

There were a couple of small Australian solar power projects that I left out of my look at solar thermal power a little while ago, as I thought they were worthy of separate consideration.

The first of these is being put together by a South Australian company called Wizard Power, which is trying to commercialise research from the Australian National University (ANU) - a solar concentrator dish and a closed loop thermochemical energy storage system using ammonia.

Most solar thermal projects use molten salt or water to store energy in the form of heat, as will another Australian solar thermal plant that uses graphite as the storage medium.

Like other solar thermal companies (Ausra being the highest profile example), Wizard is touting the coupling of energy storage with solar power as a "baseload power" solution, with the goal for the new plant being to provide power 24 hours a day to the South Australian town of Whyalla.

Wizard plans to start construction of a demonstration plant in October and to begin generating power from July 2009. Six concentrator dishes will be built on land opposite the OneSteel steelworks, which receives an average of 301 days of sunshine each year.

The demonstration plant was funded with an Australian Greenhouse Office grant of $7.4 million as part of the Advanced Electricity Storage Technologies programme, and the plant may be expanded if the technology is proven.

There have been reports that an associated company, Wizard IT, has gone into receivership, but apparently this does not impact the Wizard Power organisation.

The ANU describes the "closed loop thermochemical energy storage using ammonia" process as :

n this system, ammonia (NH3) is dissociated in an energy storing (endothermic) chemical reactor as it absorbs solar thermal energy. At a later time and place, the reaction products hydrogen (H2) and nitrogen (N2) react in an energy releasing (exothermic) reactor to resynthesise ammonia.

2 NH3 + Heat <---> N2 + 3 H2

A fixed amount of reactants (ammonia, nitrogen and hydrogen) are contained in a closed loop, and pass alternately between energy storing and energy releasing reactors with provision for storage of reactants in between. Because the solar energy is stored in a chemical form at ambient temperature, there are zero energy losses in the store regardless of the length of time that the reactants remain in storage. The reactors are packed with standard commercial catalyst materials to promote both reactions. Counter-flow heat exchangers transfer heat between in-going and out-going reactants at each reactor to use the energy most effectively.

Feeding the reactors with pure reactants is possible through the natural separation of reactants and products in the storage system: at the pressures applied, ammonia condenses.

By ensuring that the stuff leaving each reactor transfers its own thermal energy (sensible heat) to the stuff going in - using heat exchangers - most of the solar energy is stored in the change in composition of the chemicals which are kept at ambient temperature.

The advantages of this energy storage mechanism are identified as:

* A high energy storage density, by volume and mass.
* The reactions are easy to control and to reverse and there are no unwanted side reactions.
* All constituents involved are environmentally benign.
* There exists a history of industrial application with the associated available expertise and hardware.
* A readily achievable turning temperature of 400oC to 500oC (depending on the pressure). This helps to reduce thermal losses from dish receivers, avoids some high temperature materials limitations, and allows lower quality (and hence cheaper) dish optics to be used.
* All reactants for transport and handling are in the fluid phase, which provides a convenient means of energy transport without thermal loss.
* At ambient temperature the ammonia component of reactant mixtures condenses to form a liquid, whilst the nitrogen and hydrogen remains as a gas. This means that only one storage vessel is required for reactants and products.

There is also a possibility of using the low grade heat left after power generation for secondary applications such as desalination.

I haven't been able to find any comparisons of thermochemical energy storage to other storage mechanisms, so its hard to e certain how much of a boost (if any) this process gives compared to the alternatives.

Dr Keith Lovegrove from ANU mentioned some details regarding the solar dishes used in a talk on "Concentrating On Solar Thermal as a Solution to Climate Change" at the "Zero Emission" Conference in Melbourne last year.

A quick comment on why ANU advocates dishes, rather than other alternatives. Essentially if you go through the numbers, we pick up a higher optical efficiency and higher thermal efficiency in the receiver and that also propagates through. Our turbines will be the same as anyone else’s turbines but at the end of the day, we think we’ll get twice the electrical output per area of mirror. So that’s just in case you’re following that route. ...

Where is solar thermal power going? I think we can learn from the wind industry. It’s very similar. It’s about manufacturing, the use of steel and glass and not rocket science. Wind industry has grown exponentially and costs have declined. And we can expect the same. ...

Here’s a thought. We could actually export solar energy. How would we do that? Well, we would do that by using, for example, solar thermal systems can gasify biomass and even, dare I say it, gasified coal, in which case the final energy content is a mixture of solar and fossils. You can synthesise all that stuff into methanol and ship it overseas and quite literally power Japan, given that they’re 40% dependent on Middle Eastern oil at the moment and not very happy about that. It’s quite conceivable to imagine Australia as an exporter of solar energy.

I'll close with a quote from Thomas Edison back in 1910 (Source: Interview in Elbert Hubbard's Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great):

Some day some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire. I'll do the trick myself if some one else doesn't get at it. Why, that is all there is about my work in electricity--you know, I never claimed to have invented electricity--that is a campaign lie--nail it!

Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, but we will take that up later. Now the trick was, you see, to concentrate the juice and liberate it as you needed it. The old-fashioned way inaugurated by Jove, of letting it off in a clap of thunder, is dangerous, disconcerting and wasteful. It doesn't fetch up anywhere. My task was to subdivide the current and use it in a great number of little lights, and to do this I had to store it. And we haven't really found out how to store it yet and let it off real easy-like and cheap. Why, we have just begun to commence to get ready to find out about electricity. This scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of--it is so wasteful. It is just the old, foolish Prometheus idea, and the father of Prometheus was a baboon."

When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy. Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property.

There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it can not be destroyed. Now, I am not sure but that my new storage-battery is the thing. I'd tell you about that, but I don't want to bore you...

Energy minister Martin Ferguson has embarked on a novel way of making his "find a new Bass Strait" wish come true - expand the definition of Australia to cover more of the seabed (see the new map here). I'm sure there will be plenty of gas in the regions offshore WA - but a lot of the other territory is probably pretty hostile territory for operating oil rigs.

THE Federal Government has forecast a "potential bonanza" of oil and gas riches following a decision by the United Nations to grant Australia an extra 2.5 million square kilometres in land - all of it under the sea. The Resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, announced yesterday that Australia's jurisdiction over the Continental Shelf in nine areas around the mainland and in the sub-Antarctic had been expanded beyond the existing 200 nautical mile limit. "I am pleased to announce that Australia, the largest island in the world, has just been dramatically increased in size," Mr Ferguson said.

Although Australia will soon be able to lay claim to the oil, gas and any other deposits under the new territory, it will have no control over the waters above. Therefore, Mr Ferguson said, Australia would not be able to police shipping, fishing or whaling in the waters above the expanded territory. But the decision still opened up "a wealth of exploration entitlements", he said. "This is potentially a bonanza; we have unknown capacity out there. The truth of the matter is that they have been hardly explored. There has been some exploration in terms of gas."

The Howard government introduced a 150 per cent subsidy on the petrol resource rent tax paid by oil and gas companies to promote further exploration but Mr Ferguson said it had never been used. He agreed a new form of incentive would be needed to encourage exploration beneath the deep waters. "We are not oil rich, we do need to find another Bass Strait or alternatively develop another fuel. We're talking about deep sea exploration which is not cheap. It's not easy to get (oil and gas) rigs, they are scarce around the world.

Mr Ferguson said there would be nothing in the federal budget next month, but he suggested future budgets could include breaks or exemptions from the resource tax. Of the nine new land areas granted to Australia, two are in the sub-Antarctic. One is south of Macquarie Island, the other east of Heard and McDonald Islands.

Mr Ferguson said the latter fell within the protected Antarctic zone and would not be mined. He did not immediately rule out exploration of the waters around Macquarie Island, in the Southern Ocean. The island is not protected by the Antarctic treaty, but is on the World Heritage List. Australia's jurisdiction would be effective once the Governor-General, Michael Jeffrey, proclaimed the decision by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

Greg Palast has an unusual take on the North American Competitiveness Council meeting in New Orleans.

Psst! George Bush has a secret.

While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in Pennsylvania, the President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the NAFTA Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.

You’re not supposed to know that – for two reasons:

First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to showcase the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it is a monument to Bush’s leadership: The city still looks like Dresden 1946, with over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or wandering lost and broke in America.

The second reason Bush has kept this major summit a virtual secret is its real agenda. More important, the agenda-makers, the guys who called the meeting, must remain as far out of camera range as possible: The North American Competitiveness Council.

Never heard of The Council? Well, maybe you’ve heard of the counselors: the chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron Oil, Lockheed-Martin and 27 other multinational masters of the corporate universe. And why did the landlords of our continent order our presidents to a three-nation pajama party? Their term is “harmonization.”

Harmonization has nothing to do with singing in fifths like Simon and Garfunkel. Harmonization means making rules and regulations the same in all three countries. Or, more specifically, watering down rules – on health, safety, labor rights, oil drilling, polluting and so on - in other words, any regulations that get between The Council members and their profits.

Take for example, pesticides. Wal-Mart and agri-business don’t want to reduce the legal amount of poison allowed in what you eat. Solution: “harmonize” US and Canadian pesticide standards to Mexico’s.
Can they do that? Can Bush just say, “Eat your peas – even if they’re radioactive?” Under NAFTA, at least the way George Bush reads it (or has it read to him), he can. At any rate, he does.

The three chiefs of state will meet privately with the thirty corporate chiefs where they are also expected to legally erase more of our borders, to expand the “NAFTA highway.” Technically, the NAFTA highway is a set of legal rules governing transcontinental shipment. Some fear NAFTA highway expansion will allow a new flood of cheap Mexican products into the US and Canada. Not so. Their hunger to expand the NAFTA highway is to bring in even cheaper Chinese goods.

Say what?

As trade expert Maud Barlow explained to me, the new “NAFTA highway” will allow Chinese stuff dumped into Mexico to be hauled northward as duty-free “Mexican” products. That’s one of the quiet agendas of this “Summit for Security and Prosperity,” the official Orwellian name for this meet. Think of the SSP “harmonization” as the Trojan Taco of trade.

Barlow is Chairwoman of the Council of Canadians. She is known as the “Ralph Nader of Canada” (not Nader version 2.0, The Spoiler Candidate, but Nader version 1.0, the consumer advocate). Because Americans are too distracted by the Punch-and-Judy primaries to complain about this lobby-fest on the bayou, Canadian Barlow is leading street protests against this greed-grab.

I caught up with this courageous Canadian (I’ve seen her face down corporate bullying we can’t imagine in the US) on her way down to New Orleans. Barlow’s particular concerns are first, the NSS agreement promotes a five-fold increase in the mining of Canadian tar sands for import, as liquid crude oil, into the USA, an idea filthier than a re-make of Debbie Does Dallas. “This is an insane model of development,” she says, especially given Bush’s recent claim that he wants to slow global warming.

Bush himself is pushing his Canadian and Mexican counterparts to adopt US-style “Homeland Security” measures so that, says Barlow, “we’ll all be zip-locked together in one security bag.”

There will be other anti-SSP protesters in New Orleans as well, from America’s populist Right. They are concerned that the Security and Prosperity Summit is worse than the “NAFTA on steroids” that Barlow fears. The populists see in the SPP a nascent “North American Union,” and the elimination of the good old US of A.

They’re wrong, of course. The U.S. of A. has been long eliminated, at least economically. The Competitiveness Council is a multinational crew, with one shared set of country clubs, beach homes, art collections, union busters and lobbyists knowing no borders.

The populist radio hosts railing against the coming North American Union don’t realize that these CEOs won’t take away their flags or Fourth of July or Star-Spangled Banner. The rags and flags will always be kept around to con the schmucks along the Yahoo Belt into donating their children to the Iraq Occupation or other misadventures. A billionaire like Carlos Slim, the richest man on the planet (sorry, Mr. Gates), didn’t buy the Mexican government to “protect” his nation from Gringos but to protect his media monopoly.

So there is no United States of America nor Canada nor Mexico - at least as we like to imagine ourselves in our national fairy tales: self-governing democracies run by we the people or nosotros el pueblo. There’s just the diktats of the North American Prosperity Council. Get used to it.

Energy Bulletin has a roundup of energy politics news from Latin America, including this story from Cynthia McKinney on Mexico.

First of all, it is important to note and ask the question why is it that the corporate press are not even touching the events playing out right now in the capital city of our neighbor to the south and their importance to us? Had I not actually been there myself, I would be hard pressed to convince any audience that events of this magnitude were actually taking place anywhere in the world, let alone in a country as important and close to us as Mexico.

... as we speak, the Mexican Senate Chamber has been occupied. The massive rally held today has probably just ended, and some of the opposition Members of the Mexican Congress are inside the building on the dais and have announced a hunger strike. Days ago, one of the leading papers in Mexico City had a photo of the Chamber of Deputies of the Mexican Congress with an unfurled banner covering the Speaker's Rostrum, proclaiming the Chamber "Closed." The banner was hung by elected Members of the Mexican Congress who constitute the Frente Amplio Progresista that has dared to draw a line in the sand against U.S.-inspired legislation just introduced to allow foreign corporate ownership of PEMEX, Mexico's state-owned oil company.

Mexican women are energized around the idea of nation. The idea of patria. I wrote my Master's Thesis on the "Idea of Nation." And to see the women, in their t-shirts and kerchiefs, so committed to their country, their nation, their identity. To them, that's Mexico's oil, natural gas, electricity, land, and water and it ought to be used by the Mexican people first and foremost for their own national development. But sadly, it's the public policy emanating from Washington, D.C. that threatens that.

The PR war in Mexico is turning ugly, with the oil companies running ads comparing the left wing leader to Hitler, Mussolini and Pinochet - though I suspect Pinochet would have had him rounded up and shot if he was trying the same thing in 1970's Chile.

Looks like there was a little funny business going on at the 2020 summit regarding climate change - the hand of the greenhouse mafia at work, perhaps ?

The SMH reports there was a dispute over new coal-fired power stations, with Penny Wong over-riding the recommendation to ban them.

A ban on new coal-fired power plants has been left out of recommendations by the 2020 summit despite widespread support among environment delegates. Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong cited a lack of consensus in not including a moratorium on building plants which did not capture and store carbon.

Stream participant Tanya Ritchie pushed for its inclusion in the final group session after it was left off the draft document. "I would like to propose ... making a statement that we build no new coal-fired power stations unless they have commercially proven carbon capture and sequestration," Ms Ritchie said to applause. WWF Australia chief executive Greg Bourne and Australian Conservation Foundation president Ian Lowe backed the move. ...

Climate scientist David Karoly said industry figures within the stream and some others with concerns about the effects on coal mining communities had blocked the ban idea. "There is and was within the group very strong support and a small minority of opposition that in the end prevented that because the minister and co-chairs wanted consensus," Professor Karoly said after the meeting. "We shouldn't be saying we'll put in new coal-fired power stations now and we'll retrofit them when technology become available."

The SMH also noted that the fossil fuel industry dominated the climate change stream.

But the flurry of big ideas began to look decidedly modest when filtered through a sieve of committee process and translated into bureaucratese. The sub-group discussing climate change faced the task of setting a "man on the moon" challenge that fitted the Australian psyche, on a par with the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme, which still provides most of the nation's renewable energy. But one single great idea did not shine through.

The sub-group was heavy with representatives of the fossil fuel industry. It had no one who could unequivocably be said to be from the environment movement. Even the relatively straightforward issue of cutting energy use, now accepted by many governments and businesses, met obstacles. Australia might need to emit much more carbon in the future, said Peter Coates, the chairman in Australia of the mining giant Xstrata, as climate change fuelled world food shortages and the nation increased production to fill the gap.

"We may find that energy intensity will increase," Mr Coates said. He called for a "level playing field" for carbon capture and storage technology - an experimental field that already draws large public subsidies.

Anna Rose, from the youth summit climate group, said: "It's outrageous, and I'm really uncomfortable because you can't have a proper discussion about climate change without anyone from the environment movement. I'm being forced to try and represent the climate movement, which I'm not qualified to do. It's really, really disappointing because we were told to come in with an open mind."

Some imaginations were fired by a suggestion from the Melbourne University meteorologist David Karoly that giant underwater turbines could be installed between Sydney Heads and the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne, to take advantage of concentrated tidal flow.

"It would generate a surprisingly large amount of power," Professor Karoly said. "But there are a thousand good ideas that we didn't have the chance to really consider, like putting solar hot water and photovoltaic panels on the roof of every new house."

There was quite a bit of talk in climate skeptic circles over the northern winter about arctic ice forming over a larger area than in previous years (though scientists cautioned they were on thin ice, so to speak, as the new stuff wasn't equivalent to the older, thicker ice pack).

Judging by the data appearing at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in recent weeks, this thin cover has rapidly melted and disappeared, with arctic sea ice extent now lower than the same period in 2007 (which was the previous record low).

Anyone care to hazard a bet as to which year we will see the complete summer disappearance of arctic ice for the first time ? I've already seen one prediction of 2011.

Update - 23 April :

WTF - the graph has changed and the sharp dip has disappeared !

Maybe the solution to global warming is easy - just change the data...

Jamais Cascio has the second installment of his series on "The Big Picture" up, this one looking at "Resource Collapse".

Truism #1: Human society's continued existence depends on the sustained flows of a variety of natural resources.
Truism #2: What that set of natural resources comprises can change over time.

We (the human we) have pushed the limits of many of the resources our civilization has come to depend upon. Oil is the most talked-about example, but from topsoil to fisheries, water to wheat, many of the resources underpinning life and society as we know it face significant threat. In many cases, this threat comes from simple over-consumption; in others, it comes from ecosystem damage (often, but not always, made worse by over-consumption).

The most obvious cause of over-consumption is population. Long a contentious issue for environmentalists, the argument that "we have too many people," logical in theory, faces serious ethical questions when turned to practice. One example: how do we decide who gets to continue living? Over-consumption is compounded by rising standards-of-living allowing more people to consume even more than before, and by a historically-rooted assumption that the Earth is big and can always provide.

But some resources simply have limits -- there's a maximum amount of oil to be extracted, or copper to be dug up. Some resources (topsoil, fisheries) can renew themselves, but at a rate far slower than our use. Unfortunately, what we've seen from other dwindling resources is that humans have a tendency to try to grab the last bits for themselves, even at the expense of others. This is the so-called "tragedy of the commons," and its most visible present-day manifestation has to be ocean fisheries. Many seafood species are the on the verge of total collapse, perhaps even extinction; official efforts to limit or halt fishing of certain species face desperate communities dependent upon the industry.

The other driver for resource collapse, ecosystem damage, is somewhat more complex. In some cases, such as honeybees, we still have little certainty as to why the resource is in such danger. In the case of wheat, the risk comes from a combination of human and natural activity.

If you hadn't heard that wheat is threatened, you're not alone. It's a relatively recent problem: a fungus known as Ug99. Emerging in Uganda in 1999 (hence the name), this black stem rust fungus seemed to be slowly moving north into the Middle East, not yet hitting locations dependent upon wheat as a primary food crop; this slow movement seemed to offer biologists time to come up with effective counters and to breed resistant strains of wheat, a time-consuming process. But that luck didn't hold.

...on 8 June 2007, Cyclone Gonu hit the Arabian peninsula, the worst storm there for 30 years.

"We know it changed the winds," says Wafa Khoury of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, because desert locusts the FAO had been tracking in Yemen blew north towards Iran instead of north-west as expected [...]. "We think it may have done that to the rust spores." This means, she says, that Ug99 has reached Iran a year or two earlier than predicted. The fear is that the same winds could have blown the spores into Pakistan, which is also north of Yemen, and where surveillance of the fungus is limited.

In Iran, the spore will encounter barberry bushes, which trigger explosive reproduction of Ug99 (and more potential for mutation). From Iran to Pakistan, and then to India (much more dependent upon wheat) and to China. From China, it can blow to North America (as dust and soot do already). The fungus ignores current strains of wheat with fungal resistance, because it initially faced monocultures of wheat with single markers for resistance, allowing for easy mutation and replication.

I'm just glad the Norwegian seed vault is now up and operating. But as disturbing as the potential for collapse may be, the second truism listed above offers cause for hope.

Ecosystem services is the term to remember this time around. It's tempting to think of ourselves as dependent upon the resources we currently use, but that's not quite right. What we depend upon are the services the various resources provide -- the energy, for example, or the protein. In principle, if we can receive those service a different way, we may avoid the repercussions of the collapse of a particular resource. It's true that, in some cases (like water), the resources effectively are the services, but even here, we have to be careful not to think of a particular source (e.g., aquifers) as being the only possibility.

Bird poop provides an instructive example. In the 19th century, guano from birds native to Peru offered the world's best form of fertilizer -- so good that guano became the subject of imperial ambitions, national laws, and international tension. In "When guano imperialists ruled the earth," Salon's Andrew Leonard quotes from President Millard Fillmore's 1850 state of the union address:

Peruvian guano has become so desirable an article to the agricultural interest of the United States that it is the duty of the Government to employ all the means properly in its power for the purpose of causing that article to be imported into the country at a reasonable price.

But by the end of the century, the market for guano had collapsed, along with Peru's economy, because of the development of industrial "superphosphate" fertilizer. It's worth noting that, even if superphosphate hadn't been developed, Peru would have been in trouble -- the supplies of guano were just about depleted by the time the market collapsed. That's right: The world was facing "Peak Guano," only to be saved by catalytic innovation.

...

The clearest connection between resource collapse and catalytic innovation is in the realm of substitution services. Nobody wants oil, for example, people want what can be done with oil. That can mean other forms of energy, such as electricity (for transportation), or it may mean other sources of hydrocarbons, such as thermal polymerization (for plastics), and so forth. The big concern: will the substitute technologies be ready by the time the resource is (effectively) gone?

Often, the issue really isn't technology, but expense and willingness to change. Driving the cost of alternatives down to make them competitive with the depleting resource can be difficult; even more difficult can be getting people to accept a substitution service that isn't exactly like the old one (even if it's objectively "better"). Cultured meat would be far and away better than today's meat processing industry -- environmentally, ethically, health-wise -- but, even if the product looked, tasted and felt just like "real" meat, a substantial number of people would likely avoid it simply because it was weird.

More important may be questions of culture and "ways of life." Substitutions rarely mean the same workforce providing one resource shifts seamlessly over to its replacement; more often, the substitute comes from an entirely different region, or may require different kinds or numbers of workers.

It also means a change in mindset or interpretations of the world around us. I've commented before about the imminent emergence of photovoltaic technologies allowing us to make nearly any surface a point of power generation. To an extent, this seems superficially obvious, but try taking a walk or drive with your mind's eye set on what would be different with a solar world. What rationale would we have, for example, for not giving any outside surface a photovoltaic layer? How would we design the material world differently? What would disappear -- and what would suddenly become ubiquitous?

I'm always keen for news on alternative wind power experiments, so I enjoyed this post from Tyler Hamilton on recent developments in the area (which points to a series of articles at Greentech media).

A big open question is to what degree any of these approaches have a chance anytime soon? The wind industry is dominated by big turbine makers who can't keep up with demand. Wind-energy developers will buy up anything they can get, so there's little incentive for the Vestas and GEs of the world to invest in cutting edge technologies that improve or complement their existing wind businesses.

This concerns observers such as Robert Thresher, a researcher at the National Wind Technology Center, which is a part of the U.S. government's National Renewable Energy Lab. "It's such a sellers market right now," says Thresher. "The market has grown, there's high demand, and (manufacturers) are taking their money and investing in plants and factories." Likewise, Joshua Magee, an analyst with Emerging Energy Research, says the focus for the wind industry right now is on implementation rather than innovation. He calls any improvements to existing technologies "incremental" among the main manufacturers, which are more focused on the potential for energy storage that can give their product a more baseload profile.

That said, the big manufacturers ignore these new technologies at their own peril. Both Magee and Thresher say new approaches could prove an effective way for smaller companies to break into the big boys club or for one of the big boys, through an acquisition, to distinquish themselves in a market where the products are increasingly becoming different flavors of vanilla.

One global warming related fear is the issue of oceans turning to acid as they absorb extra CO2, killing off corals and other smaller sea creatures.

TreeHugger reports that some phytoplankton like acid - unfortunately they tend to be the ones that cause algal blooms.

It's generally accepted that increasingly acidified oceans could prove disastrous for most forms of marine life. We say most - coral reefs, certain phytoplankton species and larger organisms - because oceanographers are still hard at work studying the effects of higher carbon dioxide levels on individual species. Many, in fact, have now concluded that higher levels of dissolved carbon dioxide could help some species thrive over others.

ScienceNOW's Phil Berardelli reports on a new study by an international group of researchers that has found that Emiliana huxleyi, otherwise known as the common coccolithophore, seems to be handling the pH drop better than most.

Because a higher acidity inhibits the formation of calcium carbonate shells - which coccolithophores have - it was once thought that these miniature phytoplankton would suffer disproportionately from a rise in carbon dioxide levels. Quite the contrary: To their surprise, the scientists found that the coccolithophores couldn't get enough of the stuff - boosting their growth and rate of reproduction to keep up with the higher concentrations.

The question that remains - and is likely to prove much more difficult to answer - is whether these coccolithophores could act as carbon sinks. Though they consume carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, they also release some during the shell formation process - whether these two processes counterbalance remains to be seen (though most scientists doubt any upside would be negligible).

One of my faculty at the University of Southern California, Dave Hutchins, got similar results with several other phytoplankton species. In his case, he subjected several populations to higher levels of carbon dioxide and higher temperatures to gauge the full impact of climate change. The problem was that those species that often benefited most were HABs (or harmful algal bloom species) - not exactly the type of plankton you'd like to have forming large blooms.