[p2p-research] EU peak materials report

[Ryan Lanham]

Seems increasingly clear that active solar won't be a major part of the solution.



On Jul 13, 2010, at 6:58 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> also from doors of perception:
>  
> RESOURCE DEPLETION: NOT ENOUGH RAW MATERIALS FOR GREEN TECH?
> Many people assume that 'green tech' will save our high entropy lifestyles as
> oil and gas become less abundant.. But rare earth metals essential to the
> production of green tech - mobile phones, thin layer photovoltaics, lithium-ion
> batteries, synthetic fuels, among others -  are running short. The EU Raw
> Materials Initiative says that we are approaching Peak Antimony, Peak Cobalt,
> Peak Gallium, Peak Germanium, Peak Indium, Peak Platinum, peak Palladium, Peak
> Neodymium and Peak Tantalum. Blimey.
> http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/752&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
> FINANCIAL CRISIS 'DOUBLE DIP'
> 'Double dip' sounds more like an ice cream you'd buy at the beach than a
> financial meltdown. A more somber tone was set at last month's Transition Towns
> conference by Stoneleigh, the co-editor of Automatic Earth. In a clinical
> presentation, she described the convergence of Peak Oil, and the 'collapse of
> global Ponzi finance', as 'a perfect storm of converging phenomena that threaten
> to sink our age of prosperity through wealth destruction, social discontent, and
> global conflict'. The energy crisis and the financial crisis are feeding off
> each other, said Stoneleigh.  Describing the hydrocarbon epoch (the one we're in
> now) as a 'fleeting interlude in history', she went on to anticipate a 'net
> energy cliff' and an accompanying deflation. Phew.
> http://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2010/06/453356.html
> FOOD: HOW BANKSTERS STARVE THE POOREST PEOPLE
> The most sickening of this month's reports is about food and finance. Jayati
> Ghosh, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, has found that
> the dramatic rise and fall of world food prices in 2007-08 was largely a result
> of speculative activity in global commodity markets. At the height of the
> financial boom, he reports, so-called 'index investors' were thought to own 35
> per cent of corn futures contracts, 42 per cent of soybean contracts and 64 per
> cent of wheat contracts. 'Cultivators and food consumers appear to have lost in
> this phase of extreme price instability', he writes; the only gainers from this
> process were 'financial intermediaries who were able to profit from rapidly
> changing prices'. Despite the recent fall in agricultural prices in world trade,
> food prices remain high and even continue to increase for vulnerable groups.
> Yuk.
> http://www.networkideas.org/working/dec2009/08_2009.pdf
> SLOWED FOOD REVOLUTION
> The food situation is not much better in the rich-at-the-moment countries.
> Heather Rogers writes in American Prospect that 'the local food revolution
> doesn't stand a chance' because President Obama's Department of Agriculture is
> doing little to ensure the survival of holistic local farmers. Rogers continues
> that 'the government continues to channel public resources disproportionately to
> conventional growers -- benefits that then flow to the corporations from which
> they buy their seeds and chemicals and on to agribusiness processors in the form
> of cheap grain'. This text, too, is grim - but Michael Pollan says it's a must-read. Gulp.
> http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=slowed_food_revolution
> 
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