"Limits to Growth" re-emerges in new paper "Is Global Collapse Immanent" by Australian academic Graham M. Turner. Linda Doman from US Energy Information Administration tells us the world will burn 30% more oil & gas in 2040. Marc-Andre Parisien, Canadian Forest Service on record mega-fires in the Canadian far north.
All interviews by Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock.
All music by Alex Smith
In 58 minute affiliates version, there is a good break point at 24:14 for those who need to insert station ID.
Are we really in "recovery". A comparison of predictions made in the 1970's in the Limits to Growth study, suggest we may be heading toward collapse instead.
Key to the theory advanced by Dr. Graham M. Turner of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne, is that more and more capital will be diverted into getting difficult oil and gas (fracking, Tar Sands, deep water drilling) - with less available for manufacturing and consumption of products.
In the decline, you and I get less purchasing power. At some point, the global system collapses - perhaps even before climate change delivers devastating extreme weather.
On the other side, Linda Doman, chief energy analyst for the US Energy Information Administration predicts the world will use even more oil and gas as the decades advance. Oil use by OECD countries (US, Canada, Europe, Japan) hit a peak in 2005, but continues to ramp up in India, China, and the Middle East, swamping our gains from energy efficiency.
Dr. Jason Box, the Danish ice specialist, has released stunning pictures of normally white Greenland turned sooty black. It's partly from coal burning and general pollution. But another boost of black soot comes from record fires in the Canadian Boreal forest and Arctic this year. Black soot is a warming agent of it's own, absorbing more of the sun's heat over vast northern areas - instead of reflecting sunlight back into space.
Northern forests are becoming a carbon source, instead of a carbon sink. Our guest Marc-Andre Parisien is a wildfire specialist with the Canadian Forest Service.