It is interesting how almost none of the popular conversation concerning climate change (whomever or whatever could be said to causing it), contains the following concerns about water:

As the temperature on earth rises, not only do the polar ice caps and permafrost fields of the north melt (causing all of the troubles we are now beginning to see), but so do mountain snow fields and glaciers. This is significant because it is the largest direct source of water to the statistical majority of the people on the earth, in the form of rivers. Now, these snow fields exist in the first place because of receding glaciers from the last ice age, but are maintained in a delicate balance by the weather conditions allowing continued rain and snowfall, which happen to be the major creators of the second largest water source: aquifers.

As our weather patterns change, and ice in various locations melts, this becomes a terrifying prospect.

We can talk about climate change as a function of many things, but perhaps the most significant is this, the one we are almost ignoring: the universal human right to clean water. This has been difficult enough for us to attempt before the recent rapid climate changes, but it will only get more difficult as we continue down this road.

The website for the movie, Flow (due to be released on DVD toward the end of 2008), has a page called Take Action, which has some intersting links. Check it out.

In the New York Times 2 weeks ago, Michael Pollan, author of two books from the bibliography (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and In Defense of Food), published an open letter to the next president. In it he addresses the next “farmer in chief,” and advises:

[ . . . ] you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them.

Resolarizing the food system means building the infrastructure for a regional food economy — one that can support diversified farming and, by shortening the food chain, reduce the amount of fossil fuel in the American diet.

I happened to see Michael Pollan speak this evening, here in Seattle, and in his talk he mentioned an interview (by Joe Klein of Time Magazine) with Barack Obama from this last week where Obama explains what he learned from reading the letter, and starts what will hopefully be a long conversation in our government on the not only the issues at hand, but how they in turn interconnect with so many others.

You can read Michael Pollan’s letter here.

A peak can generally be defined as a high point, as of a mountain; in scientific graphing, you usually find the term used to represent the highest (of perhaps many) point(s).

Peak Oil is a theory, now generally considered fact, which was first put forth by Marion King Hubbert in 1956. Hubbert was a geologist, and worked as many geologists do: for a petroleum company, in a pragmatic fashion, with the primary goal of finding more oil to make more money. The petroleum company in question was Shell Oil, and his post was in Shell’s research lab in Houston, Texas. When Hubbert was asked to make a global survey and estimate of available petroleum within the earth, he issued a highly controversial paper. In it he explains the ideas of what he called a Hubbert’s Curve, and a Hubbert’s Peak, which describe oil production over time. He projected with these that oil production in the U.S. of A would peak at around 1970, and while the prediction was greeted by his superiors at Shell (and peers throughout the world) with derision, in 1970, it came true. In 1974 he further predicted that worldwide oil production would peak at around 1995.¹

More specifically, what this Hubbert’s peak describes is that as extraction of oil continues, the efficiencies of extraction rise as the cost of extraction drops (in the standard industrial model of efficiency), and more can be produced each year until the peak. After the peak, not only does it become more difficult to extract the resource, and more expensive, but the quality of that petroleum decreases, thus requiring more refinement, and more cost. This increased cost is only exacerbated by the increase in cost due to increase in demand (proportional to increase in population), and the cost per barrel of crude oil increases exponentially until it is no longer available.

The global effects of this unparalleled disaster could possibly be ever so slightly offset with some politically characteristic bandages, but the main effect of these efforts would be to the bank accounts of the few, not the lifestyles of the many. Even if it could solve our energy crisis, we would have the considerable ecological situation left growing worse every day.

In any case, the concept of peak oil has been accepted to the point of being veritably main-stream over the past 6 years. Something which is surprisingly little more than a fringe consideration currently, is peak minerals. While on the topic of our western lifestyles, we must realize that everything we use is grown (or at least created by taking advantage of the nuclear energy of our sun in some way), or it is mined.

image of a copper mine, courtesy of the mysteries of google.
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tappening.com has a good deal of interesting information on the benefits of tap water in general, on worldwide ecological health, and on the U.S of A’s use of money.