Hi Benoit.
Where is this “considerable doubt” on whether renewable energy sources can meet energy demands? You say it can only provide “a small share of conventional demand”, but I think it is more apt to say there is little (but thankfully increasing gradually) interest by major governments and private investors in such technologies, as they are after profit in the short-term, without thinking in the long-term. Renewable (and wholly clean) technologies, if rolled out and invested in properly, could easily provide a significant quantity of power to nations (geographical setting and the make-up of the land would of course determine what type of renewable energy generation would be most suitable, as I say in my essay, for Ireland it would be wind and wave energy).

“The food crisis in now an old and permanent problem” – I disagree on the second part, we must be positive and believe we can emerge from this crisis.

You do a very decent job of summing up the overall situation, but I think your solution “volunteering” requires much more fleshing out and expansion. It seems like the beginnings of a solution, but it is presented more like an afterthought.

*In relation to your comment on my essay, the point I’m making is that underdeveloped countries (who have been exploited consistently by richer countries) require guidance and help from the more developed countries to avoid making similar mistakes in relation to food and energy production and distribution (termed “climate equity” in my essay, meaning they would not be "limited in prospering"). I argue throughout for a “radical re-think” both in developed and developing countries, particularly in the second page from highlighting everyone’s responsibility to protect the vulnerable, demanding answers to ensure factors like global justice and equity become a reality, all based on the principles of health promotion.

Hello Thomas,

Thanks a great lot for your detailed comments! I will try to substantiate them one by one.

1) The "considerable doubt" about the ability of renewable energy sources to meet demand has a quantitative but also a qualitative dimension: (1) are we able to meet current and growing demand? And (2) is the type of energy available from renewable sources able to meet the type of the demand? From a *quantitative* growth perspective, the relative share of modern renewable energy sources is relatively low (about 5%) so it will take quite some time to increase whereas, with the exhaustion of fossil fuels, we need new energy streams now. In other words, there remains considerable doubt that supply will grow fast enough relatively to the exhaustion of oil (or, perhaps more accurately, the vigorous increase of their price). From a *qualitative* perspective, most cars can't be fueled with electricity but renewable energies produce either electricity (wind power, solar power) or heat. What we know for sure is that there is and will increasingly be a huge demand *of fossil fuels* that won't possibly be catered by renewables. This is precisely what fosters the biofuel-driven food crisis and is likely to make it increasingly severe.

A little related anecdote that I found the wikipedia page for the movie "Mad Max" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_max): "In a 2006 newspaper commentary on peak oil, James McCausland wrote the following in relation to Mad Max: "In 1973, the Arab oil-producing nations convulsed most of the world by tightening the spigots on their wells and sharply reducing production. Corporations, and nations including Japan, went into crisis mode and many started to think of ways to lessen their reliance on petroleum products. As the after-shock waves began to subside and black gold started to flow again, most enterprises kicked petroleum replacement well down the agenda. Yet there were further signs of the desperate measures individuals would take to ensure mobility. A couple of oil strikes that hit many pumps revealed the ferocity with which Australians would defend their right to fill a tank. Long queues formed at the stations with petrol – and anyone who tried to sneak ahead in the queue met raw violence. George and I wrote the script based on the thesis that people would do almost anything to keep vehicles moving and the assumption that nations would not consider the huge costs of providing infrastructure for alternative energy until it was too late."

2) “The food crisis in now an old and permanent problem”. Well, if you recognize that over 1bn people live below the absolute poverty line, this implies a state of permanent crisis. Clearly, this is difficult to perceive for us from where we are but that is what it means. Today's situation is labeled "crisis" because it got significantly worse and, that if no political measure is taken to reduce fuel-food coupling effects, it will even get much worse. Thus, it is not a question of optimism or pessimism but a question of assessing and understanding in a realistic fashion the situation we are in. Yes we can emerge from this crisis but, in my opinion, it starts by making people realize what seems to lie ahead and call them to action to bring about and accelerate much needed change and decisions. An a priori optimistic position is, in my opinion, dangerous because it assumes that "things are going to work out fine in the end" which is a rather big one to make given the situation we are now in and which prevents people from taking these very important matters in their own hands.

3) About "volunteering" as a solution. You are very right that this would benefit from further developments and I would have liked to do them but we all had only 1000 words and my main objective was to deconstruct the assumptions built in the essay question and displace the focus. However, at such a general level, it is strongly established that this activity, in itself, fosters well-being while being possibly productive and consuming little resources. It is actionable by individuals, businesses or policy-makers. Moreover, it alsocaptures the idea of people having to take matters in their own hands because volunteers can provide resources to organizations aiming at accelerating change and developing social innovations.

4) I've addressed the point about your essay on your own discussion thread ;)

Kind regards,

Benoit

Hey! I was hoping to read a bit more about volunteering. Sounds like a very intriguing idea, but I am not sure weather I buy it :) I guess it can be a powerful.. should people be somewhat universally mobilized? actually, maybe sporadic individual actions could work? I do think it could be quite meaningful... but obviously not the solution that could solve the big problems of the world... :) or is it?

Volunteering... Many of our leaders are out of touch... I believe the ideas of a volunteer are better however simple, than the idea of a world leader, say Gordon Brown, however complex....

Great read!

Hello Aiste. As explained in an earlier comment, I decided to focus on deconstructing the question and, for this reason, ran out of space to write more about volunteering. However, the idea is that volunteering functions at two levels: (1) in itself, it produces individual well-being for the volunteer. This has been very well established by psychological research, at least for charity-like type of work. (2) As a mean, since it is a productive activity, it could be used to tackle and experiment on the myriad of problems that we face, develop alternative modes of production, pressure policy-makers for reform, etc. I don't think that this can be sufficient to address the major forthcoming crisis we'll face but perhaps it could be useful to take some actions that will nevertheless mitigate the disaster or foster solidarity networks when breakdowns will happen? I don't know but in any case, I don't believe in policy-makers and in businesses and I think these issues are way too important to just sit and observe. Essentially, calling for volunteering is nothing more than a call to organized action.

Hey Benoit, I also replied on my own comment window (it's getting a bit confusing). Anyway, here's my issues: is the organized action you are talking about an already existing phenomena? if yes (like interest/lobby groups, civil society organizations etc.), what is needed so it becomes a stronger force? (because obviously right now it's not working very well) if not, what has to change? Let's say I am a person concerned about the world a bit more than an average person.. and still, what can I REALLY do and how much can I achieve?:)
Best,Aiste

Hi Benoit,
I've enjoyed reading your essay and I have some questions. :) Do you consider that the climate change is caused only by people? And if you assume that it can be decreased by our activities?

Personally I'm not convinced of any possibility, I think we've made some changes by the huge carbon dioxide emission but I also feel inclined to the theory that we're much dependened on the natural - biological, geological processes.

I totally agree with your statement that the real problem is overconsumption. As a person from the postcomunistic country I had the opportunity to see the changes in people's lifestyle and the level of their consumption. It was extremely low when I was a child, and, what maybe suprising to people from Western Europe, it was found as enough by many people and still is. In 90ties people became excited by the possibilities of "possession", completely without thinking, we can call this time "euphoric overconsumption". ;) Now it's changing but slowely. However - that all made me sure about the meaning and great sense that local activities make. We aren't able to create one solution proper and working well in every country, but by local activities we can really change much. It may be done by volunteering, proposed by you. But I think volunteering should be the begining, the impact, the factor that starts real changes in societies, in the way that people think, the way they live and the way they behave.

At the end about energies. That is undoubted that renewable energies can become only the support to the traditional energy production, it's impossible to meet the even average region demand only by renewable resources. And that's what we all shoul keep in mind while talking about "green" and "not green" energies.
Magdalena.

Hello Aiste,

I've replied to your points on your page:
http://www.vinyl2010essaycompetition.org/essay/show/id/96

Cheers,

Benoit

Hello Madgalena,

To answer your questions, yes, I assume that climate change is primarily caused by humans. I do so because that's what most climatologists and relevant scientific organizations all say now. Thus, I also think that it can be reduced if we decrease our activity. There is a very simple and important model to better understand that which is called "I = P * A * T" where:
- I is the overall environmental impact
- P is the population of the human system you consider
- A is the average affluence level of a human in that system (in other words, the average consumption level)
- T is the level of environmental performance of the technology consumed.

This simple equation enables to understand that we could theoretically consume as much or even more with the same environmental impact, the same population and a constant affluence level if we would improve the environmental efficiency of technology. However, what happens when the population increases, the average affluence level increases and the level of technological development is relatively slow?

The other problem is that the climate system is very "heavy" and slow. We might have set in motion very powerful processes through a decades and decades of depletion, degradation, emission and pollution that no technology could possibly counteract. That is the theory of Lovelock in the "revenge of Gaia" who sees the planet as a "not so young anymore" lady who might not recover from the disease we have inflicted on her.

Thanks for your testimony. It is good to hear that people in your country start to realize the limits of euphoric overconsumption (perhaps primarily because consumption really doesn't bring happiness as conventionally thought rather than environmental consciousness?). Yes, volunteering is primarily to provide the impetus, not the end.

Kind regards,

Benoit

Hi Benoit,

Thank you for your long response. I agree that we can and we should decreas our activity, as you already know I somehow believe in the power of local operations. However if the climate has changed mainly cause of human activities? If we are the strongest factor in that process? I'm not so sure, esspiecially that there exists strong group of scientists who convince or try to persuade that all those temperature, ocean level changes are part of natural process and human activity is only a little percent in it. I recommend to read or listen to what say Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Timothy Ball, prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski. If they or if scientists supporting Al Gore are right? I'm not able to judge it.

But those differences of opinions show that exists huge need to work out some balance between our living and production standards and the way we treat envrionment. Even if we're not affecting climate so much, we undoubtly affect environemnt around us and simultaneously deteriorate our standard of living, what influence our health, economy and our sense of security and happiness.

Thanks for books reccomendations, look like very interesting publications.

Regards,
Magdalena.

Hello Magdalena and thanks for your message.

As far as climate change is concerned, I invite you to have a look at the following page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change. Indeed, the scientific community is unequivocal today: climate change *is* happening and human activity is largely responsible for it. Some scientists (often funded by businesses) have argued against that hypothesis but today, they have been discredited.

Kind regards,

Benoit

Hello Benoit
I enjoyed reading your essay as I have always maintained that volunteering is the way forward. Something which is so simple can produce so much good, especially with so many people in the world actually willing to help we could all make a huge difference to the world. My problem however has always been finding organisations/charities which actually take volunteers abroad and that the organisations which do take volunteers are usually not publicised enough. Any advice?
Thanks

Dear Emma,

Thank you very much for your comment. Rather than pointing you to a specific organization, I will use your question to develop my point a little more. As I've said in the essay, volunteering generates subjective well-being. In other words, people "feel good" about doing volunteer work. Thus, in itself, volunteering produces well-being. That was the question of the essay.

However, volunteering is also a productive activity: the efforts of volunteers could be used to accelerate much-needed change. Thus, if you want to be most useful, in my opinion, you should not search for charity, which are dedicated at producing public goods or services for particular target populations but rather focus on groups that are more focused on modifying the structure of the system we live in, should it be by resisting adverse changes or creating alternatives. I would also suggest you try to find a way to leverage and develop your skills, and find a way to do it from where you are now.

Finally, I think lots of people are focused on addressing these issues through technology. I am convinced that the solution doesn't lie there anymore because we are too deep into the crises and that the work that has the most potential is about changing culture. However, I also increasingly think it makes sense to raise awareness about major and increasingly plausible forthcoming crises ... so that we could prepare for them.

Kind regards,

Benoit

PS: to follow-up the discussion, feel free to join the following group:
http://groups.google.com/group/agc-net