Newly Updated Articles and "Bright Green Lies"

As I was busy editing this blog by updating articles in each category of predicament for the new year and adding about 200 more articles, I came across an article for a book which is scheduled to be available this coming March: Bright Green Lies.

Now (this update is being added April 2, 2021) that the book is out, a fantastic review has come in, quote:

"Before picking up this book, I'd already studied bright green "solutions" enough to conclude these so-called "solutions" are only worsening the ecocide of this beautiful planet and hastening the demise of the living. This book confirmed those conclusions, and more. Turns out the litany of horrors I thought I'd thoroughly uncovered about industrial civilization and the technology being pushed to "save us" from climate change were, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg.

The authors of Bright Green Lies dive deep into the details of these technologies and "solutions" to expose the true devastation they will, and indeed already are, causing, all while bright greens claim they will save the Earth. And the authors explain all this in an accessible and engaging way--so much so, that I had a hard time putting this book down.

Those of us who call ourselves environmentalists have long known that a civilization powered by oil, coal, gas, plastic and the pollution they cause is not sustainable, and is in fact in the process of collapsing. What many environmentalists may not have noticed is that "environmentalism" has been thoroughly co-opted by corporations--in many cases, by the very same corporations who would previously have had us believe that more oil, coal, gas and plastic were good things. These corporations have turned environmentalism from saving the Earth into saving civilization, and environmentalists into shills for industry--industry that learned how to make us all feel like we're doing good things for the planet by begging for MORE industry, only colored "green". Because that's what we're doing when we say we need the Green New Deal, or we need to "electrify everything", or we say we need more renewable energy, or we see pictures of solar panels and wind turbines and dams and believe these technologies will save the planet. They will not. This book explains in devastating detail why they, and other so-called solutions, will not save the planet, and how they will do so much more harm that we can possibly imagine.

At the end, there is no arguing left to be done. The authors anticipated every "but what about..." and explain why those won't work either. At the end, every environmentalist, even those who might--right now--be promoting new solar farms in the desert, or supporting new dams in the Amazon, or new lithium mines for the lithium to power those batteries in those cool electric cars we want to drive around in, will understand: we cannot support any of that if our loyalty is with the living world, and if our loyalty is NOT with the living world, then we have a death wish, because we humans cannot and will not survive on a dead planet.

Everyone should read this book, especially environmentalists. The first 13 chapters are devastating because there is no escaping the depth of the pickle we're in. Chapter 14 is where they lay out the REAL solutions--the only ones that will actually work. It's a short chapter, because the solutions are simple. As the authors say: to stop destroying the planet, we have to stop destroying the planet. It really is that simple.

Read this book. Then act. Stop destroying this planet, the one and only planet we call home, the one we can't live without. No more excuses; no more rationalizations; no more denying the truth or pretending that the harms we can't see don't really exist. It's time to face reality."

A new article covering the upcoming film based on the book provides critical insights into both; quote: 

"We see the same pattern today, in the real world, with the addition of so-called renewables. On a global scale, “green” technologies do not even deliver on their most basic promise of reducing fossil fuel consumption.

All the mining, pollution and habitat destruction simply adds to the harm being done to the planet. Nothing about the production of “green” energy helps the natural world.

The push for “green” energy solves for the wrong variable. It takes a high-energy, high-consumption industrial civilization as a given, when this is precisely what needs to change if we are to live sustainably on this planet.

The real solutions are obvious; stop the industries that are causing the harm and allow life to come back. Fossil fuels need our opposition. So do lithium mines, rare earths mines, copper mines, iron mines, and industrial wind and solar facilities. Fracking should not be tolerated. Neither should biomass plants or hydroelectric dams.

Forests, prairies, mangroves, seagrasses, and fish have all been decimated. They could all sequester large amounts of carbon if we allowed them to recover."

Another article I recommend also highlights the issues covered in Bright Green Lies.

Recently, a considerable amount of discussion in several groups I am a part of has focused on how little most people know about energy, the economy, and how ALL forms of energy AND the economy utterly depend upon the fossil fuel platform for their very existence. What seems like common sense to those of us who understand the complexities of the energy systems that supply industrial civilization isn't really very common to most people. As a result, most people fail to realize that without fossil fuels, everything most of us take for granted cannot exist. Here is just a short list of infrastructure (see my article on infrastructure for more details) that depends upon the concentrated energy which only fossil hydrocarbon energy delivers in order for it to be maintained:

• Roads
• Bridges
• Potable Water Systems
• Sewer Systems
• the Electrical Grid
• the Internet
• the Computer/Phone/Tablet you are staring at right now
• the Fossil Fuel Platform
• ALL forms of energy with the exception of completely and entirely naturally-grown food
• ALL cars regardless of how they are powered
• ALL ships regardless of how they are powered
• ALL trucks regardless of how they are powered
• ALL heavy equipment - mining haul trucks, bulldozers, cranes, concrete formers, earthmovers, rollers, asphalt layers, drilling rigs, etc.
• Satellites
• Agriculture Transport
• Practically every store you shop in
• Your house
• Radio Systems
• Television Systems

I obviously could go on and on listing millions of other items that are mass produced such as the clothes you are wearing, the appliances you use daily in your house, and the food you eat. In fact, did you know that every calorie you consume required ten calories of fossil fuels to grow, harvest, and transport to the store?

So, in reality, non-renewable "renewable" energy devices and EVs will NOT stop climate change or even reduce emissions because they utterly depend upon the infrastructural platforms maintained by the fossil fuel platform which itself is also maintained by fossil hydrocarbon fuels. Without fossil fuels, none of those devices nor most of the rest of our industrialized civilization can exist, at least not for 8 billion people. 

I frequently post this picture in groups because many people don't realize that peak oil was reached in October of 2018:

Needless to say, oil extraction is now in terminal decline. Update 3-18-22: Since writing this a little over 14 months ago, I wondered if a new date might be reached at some point and I have seen some reports suggesting that October/November of 2019 was that new date; and this article appears to point to this fact, although other sources are still indicating 2018. This means that the economy will never recover to the way it was in 2018 or 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic. Degrowth and contraction are now the only possibilities for the global economy. Local and regional economies may not be affected for a while, but eventually they too will be forced by the overall woes caused by the lack of surplus energy (surplus energy is the amount of net energy left over to do actual work after the energy to extract a certain amount of gross energy is subtracted from the gross energy extracted) to power the economy. For more information regarding this situation, please see What Would it Take for Humanity to Experience Radical Transformation? and this file.

Update 1-20-23: While we won't know for certain that peak oil was in 2018 until later this year, I think this video with Art Berman and Nate Hagens demonstrates that 2018, was, in fact, the year. This article from Art contains the graphs and highlights.

Update 6-18-23: It is becoming more apparent now that peak oil is behind us. This article by James Puplava continues that theme as does this article from Tim Morgan which contains this article by Goehring & Rozencwajg.

Update 3-25-24: It is now evident that peak oil was in November of 2018.

It is constantly frustrating to those who DO understand and comprehend the predicaments we face that most people have no clue about the upcoming troubles society will be constantly dealing with. For those who aren't quite sure of what all this means, this article which was posted at the peak in October of 2018 will help elucidate the scenario. The article is long but easily understandable and its conclusions couldn't be more stark in the sense that we have about two and a half years before things start to go sideways. The lack of products on store shelves is only the beginning. Shortages of other items will take time to appear but over time some items will become unavailable simply because the companies producing them will go out of business; unable to sell their products at a price that reflects the costs of production. 

Of course, these things are difficult to predict, as they depend on many factors. However, unless populations begin declining significantly or consumption is seriously reduced (or both), the future looks bleak indeed. There are many books and articles pointing to this scenario, but one of the best ones to come out over the past year or so is this one. The article goes into detail about how human behavior is causing the predicaments which are causing us to lose habitat. The simple fact that fossil fuels have "artificially" sustained civilization over the last two centuries means that not only are we losing this source of energy to deal with bringing heat and cooling to our homes and businesses, cooling and heating our food, and providing that food in the first place; but also that we have been producing all kinds of pollution as part of those processes which is continuously denigrating the air we breathe, the soil we grow our food in, and the water we drink. 

Now that I have covered the basics, Alice Friedemann goes into far more detail in a new book: Life After Fossil Fuels - A Reality Check on Alternative Energy. Alice J. Friedemann is the creator of energyskeptic.com. Ms. Friedemann is perhaps best known for her book When Trucks Stop Running – Energy and the Future of Transportation published by Springer, and Peak Soil, which was edited by David Pimentel at Cornell, Tad Patzek at U.C. Berkeley, and Walter Youngquist (author of "Geodestinies").

This brings me back to a constant need to remind those aware of these issues to Live and Love Now. Nobody is guaranteed tomorrow. This means that if you don't thoroughly enjoy what you spend your time doing every day, then it's time to change it. Find what you love and begin living it - as one of my friends says, "Live what you love and love what you live!"