permaculture

["Bart Anderson" <bart@cwo.com>]

>> LONDON (Reuters) - Fields of swaying giant grass and patchwork patterns
of willow plantations could become common sights as Britain turns to crops
for heating and electricity to tackle the effects of global warming.

Articles like this appear regularly, with the inevitable message:

"XXX  might, just might, be the solution to global warming and the energy
crisis"

where XXX is:

breeder reactors
nuclear fusion
corn ethanol
elephant grass
coal sequestration
hydrogen
thin-film photovoltaics
palm oil
jatropha curcas tree (for bio-diesel)

Almost never do the articles mention the underlying reality -- the sheer
magnitude of our energy use cannot be sustained.   The scale is just too
big.

Other key truths that are missing:
1. The energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) for many of the proposed
processes is low.  You don't get much net energy out.
2. New energy sources take tremendous amounts of capital and long periods of
time to be put into place (decades).
3. New schemes usually have a political lobby behind them, propagandizaing
and distorting the science.
4. Energy sources ALWAYS have side effects - pollution, CO2, radioactive
wastes.

In the case of ethanol and bio-diesel, some of the side effects are:
1. Expansion of areas under cultivation (for example, rainforests cut down
for palm plantations)
2. Degradation of farmland due to intensive cultivation and removal of
biomass from the local cycle.
3. Raising the price of food crops.

The relevant permaculture principle is the imperative to minimize the
import/export of materials.

The problem with the barrage of new schemes is that they distract from
the ultimate solution --reducing energy use.