I’ve mentioned quite a few times the spurious calculations offered by Ted Trainer of the Simplicity Institute, purporting to prove that renewable energy can’t sustain a modern lifestyle. But I haven’t looked hard at the other side of the coin; the idea that ‘degrowth’ could provide us with a sustainable, low-tech but still comfortable way of living, based on local self-sufficiency.
Samuel Alexander, also of the Simplicity Institute, has a piece in the Conversation, making this claim. Presumably, unlike energy technology, this is an area where the Institute ought to have some special expertise. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case.
Alexander makes two points of particular interest.
First, he suggests that we (that is, urban dwellers) could meet our food needs through a combination of suburban gardening and trade with nearby farmers. This is illustrated by a picture of a community garden in San Francisco.
Second, he observes that this is not a process that should be sought through top-down measures from government, but rather through ‘bottom-up’ initiatives from individuals and groups.
I’ll deal with the second point first. Rather than putting this discussion in the future tense, why not look at attempts to move in this direction, which have been going on for at least forty years (there was a big movement to Nimbin on the NSW North Coast in the early 1970s, for example). As far as I know, none of these have got anywhere near achieving self-sufficiency in food, let alone fibre for clothing, timber for building and so on. And, as far as I can see, there is less going on in this direction now than there was 40 years ago.
That’s not to say of course, that self-sufficiency is impossible. For thousands of years, the majority of the world’s population lived by subsistence agriculture, and a billion or more still do. The only problems were
(i) It’s a life of miserable, back-breaking work from which people have always fled at the earliest opportunity, even when the alternative was near-starvation in a disease-ridden urban slum or shantytown
(ii) The current world population could not possibly be fed (even on a meat-free diet) with the yields typical of traditional subsistence agriculture
Perhaps the Simplicity Institute is counting on using more modern (but sustainable) technology to achieve high food yields. At one level, this might just be feasible. ‘Organic’ farmers have shown that it’s possible to achieve commercial yields without using pesticides or manufactured fertilisers, though other costs are higher, so that it is necessary to charge a premium price. But this only works on a significant scale if, in other respects, standard energy-intenisve industrial technologies (farm machinery, food processing and so on) are used.
Alexander makes it pretty clear that (as with the Institute’s attacks on renewable energy) this kind of modest tinkering is not what he has in mind. So, let’s take a look at the community garden he uses to illustrate the simpler approach. The photo shows about 20 people and a dozen or so garden beds, each about 1-2 sq m in area.
I’m not much of a gardener, but the total area looks pretty comparable to the backyard patch we had when I was a kid, which certainly didn’t feed our family. Rather than rely on such impressionistic stuff, though, it seems better to look at some proper data. Alexander doesn’t offer any and neither does the Simplicity Institute website, but the Internet has plenty of information.
Typical estimates seem to be that you need somewhere from 100-400 sq m to supply enough vegetables for a single person.
That includes a carbohydrate source such as potatoes, and perhaps fruit, but no meat, eggs, milk, grain or plant protein sources like soybeans.
Taking the most optimistic numbers possible, the garden plots illustrated by Alexander would meet less than half the vegetable needs of one person. This isn’t a remotely serious analysis: it’s more like claiming that a household could supply its own electricity by pedalling a stationary bike.
A more immediate objection relates to the transition path. Suppose that the Simplicity Institute managed to convince everyone that it is necessary to adopt the ‘degrowth’ approach they advocate. This would require a comprehensive restructuring of the entire economy: food production and distribution systems are just one example.
How rapidly could such a transformation be achieved? An obvious answer is to run the tape in reverse. The shift from a largely agricultural economy to our current post-industrial economy took about 200 years in the leading economies, and has nowhere been achieved in less than two generations (say 60 years). It seems reasonably to assume that reversing the process would take just as long, even granting the improbable premise that we started tomorrow[^1]
We don’t have 60 years to spare. If the world economy isn’t thoroughly decarbonized by 2050 (a little over 30 years away), the chance of holding global warming to 2 degrees C will have been lost.
The only chance of decarbonization is an approach that is focused much more narrowly on reducing CO2 emissions, through energy efficiency, renewable energy and a shift away from the most energy-intensive forms of consumption. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, this can be done at very low cost, but we need to move much faster than we are doing.
Those, like Trainer and Alexander, who oppose any effective action to reduce CO2 emissions, while demanding a massively larger agenda reflecting their social and ideological preferences, are effective (and sometimes actual [^2]) allies of the rightwing denialists.
fn1. The UN Climate Change Framework Convention process started more than 20 years ago, and is only now producing any significant (though still inadequate) action. ‘Degrowth’ isn’t a process or even the basis of a movement, it’s just an idea.
fn2. One notable meeting place was Barry Brooks’ Brave New Climate site, where denunciations of renewable energy from Trainer and Peter Lang, a denialist who used to comment here, sit side by side
John Quiggin 
@Hermit
Oh for heaven’s sake Hermit.
Our per capita emissions (c18t) are about twice as high as Germany’s (c9t)
Germany has reduced their total emissions by 30% since 1990, whereas ours have risen slightly since 1990.
Germany’s have increased slightly since they decided to shift away from nuclear in 2012, but their renewable sector is still growing and they expect to get back on track
Our emissions declined slightly following the introduction of the carbon price, but emissions from the electricity sector have begun to increase again now that the carbon price has been abolished
Investment in renewables in Australia has declined by 70% in the last year
Calling me “Orwellian” for correcting your mistaken assertions is just ridiculous. I won’t engage any further if you won’t talk sense.
@Hermit
Hermit, this kind of 1-year-data-sample cherry picking would make a climate change denialist blush. The US Energy Administration figures (link to follow) show that the total emissions from the consumption of energy for Germany have decreased by ~8 million tons/year on average since 2000. By the same measure, emissions for Australia have increased by ~6 million tons/year on average.
Orwellian indeed.
UEA figures from above: http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8&cid=AS,GM,&syid=2000&eyid=2012&unit=MMTCD
@Newtownian
I disagree. As I said above, I am not in a position to evaluate the cognitive accomplishments of the LNP cabinet, to their credit or their detriment, but I see no reason why being of only mediocre cognitive accomplishment would be a bar to progress to the highest levels if their prime objective was to serve others.
Pauline Hanson was probably no less cognitively able than Abbott or Hockey or Barnaby Joyce or Truss. The reason she flamed and burned was that she left the Liberals. earned the ire of the pro-Coalition press much as Palmer is now, but unlike him, lacked the resources to fight back. She had been a Liberal before being spectacularly dumped, and was on the wrong end of a dirty tricks campaign by Abbott, who had a party machine to call upon.
When I look at Hanson I see someone who aside from being a little less disciplined could be swapped for Joyce or Hunt or Abbott or Hockey himself. She is Abbott without Murdoch riding shotgun.
Our system selects for venality, stamina and the ability to stay inside the tent. If you have that and are willing to do anything, the way is open to you. Being too clever makes you slightly risky to the puppet masters. There’s always the possibility that you might get it into your head that you can double-cross them and start implementing your own agenda. None of them wants that. An inability to think independently is almost certainly an asset in the view of the Murdoch coterie.
@Nathan
I’m assuming that anomaly for Germany in 08-09 was as a result of the GFC?
Thank you for posting a link to that information, Nathan.
@Fran Barlow
Emotionally I am inclined to agree with you at an existential level. And their stupidity may well be the death of us. But Richard Denniss made me stop and thing about what has been happenning this past year and what is the larger nature of the forces here that need to be opposed desperately and soon.
Abbott and co surficially appear to be a bunch of deluded clowns. But they have still had little trouble in getting their noxious policies through parliament with little opposition thanks to diversion of ‘public discussion’ toward non-issues like a few poor nutters who come from middle east hells on earth. In a word they are still winning despite all expectations. I think Denniss’s point was that we should not underestimate the ability of LNP and their mates to win this battle with the forces opposed to free market capitalism.
We have seen the grossest sexism (against Gillard) the grossest racism (boat people), evil propaganda replete, transparent lies (buy Medibank Private and a for profit organization will make your health costs cheaper) and finally successful deployment of that old shiboleth – the external irrelevant enemy. And they are getting away with it by in large.
The LNP are down a bit in the polls a bit but their popularity should by rights be less than 10%. The point here is they being quite successful at pushing an agenda verging on cryptofascism but we still get no effective action against it. Denniss’s thesis seem to be this is not just ad hoc bu rather well orchestrated implying a rat cunning intelligence that must not be underestimated.
Further the LNP we see today did not come out of a vacuum but its current agenda is the logical result of a wide anti-democratic 35+ years of a neo-liberal agenda/push. It seduced the Labor Party as well as the old conservative party of Menzies. Think about I Ruddbot and his gall to claim we elected him rather than the Labor Party. Its part of the same crap. We now have no coherent opposition framework that I can see, beyond a wishlist akin to Miss Universe motherhoods like world peace and being kind to animals.
So I think the hypothesis that this requires a degree of intelligence is plausible. By way of support I’d also point out that over the millennia human civilization has been extensively based on something quite surficially unintelligent, that is religions based on sky god variants. The theological bases and spin like that of the LNP is rubbish. But the applied psychology of power and control has proved smart and served the powerful well.
@Nathan
Er selective choice of stats did you say? The IEA series in your link stops at 2011. I’m talking from then until now. Also Australia’s original emissions in 2000 were about 562 Mt CO2e. The IEA seems to have lopped off 200 Mt.
One of the most amusingly apt things I have read this week.
“… self-interested behaviour creates, in addition to the invisible hand, an even larger invisible elbow…”
From his Preface to “The Labyrinth of Technology” by Willem H. Vanderburg.
I caught some of Joe Hockey talking on BBC’s Hard Talk show with journalist Stephen Sackur. Anyone who knows Sackur’s style knows he’s a take no prisoners style of interviewer. He’s relentless and unlike our lot here, he evidently comes well prepared to interviews.
In the bits I heard Sackur was taking Joe Hockey apart . Whoever failed to tell Joe Hockey to avoid Sackur clearly wasn’t his friend.
I found a link to Germany’s detailed emissions time series but it’s in German. A tidbit is given under the heading Real Pressure in this link
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-19/rising-german-coal-use-imperils-european-emissions-deal.html
It was just over a week ago that one of Merkel’s advisors visited Australia offering unsolicited advice on emissions. IMO both countries are greenhouse rogue nations.
yea gods!
Who would possibly claim I object to solar power??? (weird).
As I have said several times now the point is:
2) if efficient renewables need dams, acres for wind farms and for solar, all of which are finite, how can renewables give the entire world’s population the same standard of living?
particularly as the global population doubles.
yea gods!
Who would possibly claim I object to solar power??? (weird).
As I have said several times now the point is:
2) if efficient renewables need dams, acres for wind farms and for solar, all of which are finite, how can renewables give the entire world’s population the same standard of living?
particularly as the global population doubles.
@Newtownian
If I line up in the 100m at the Olympics against the seven fastest sprinters in the world, but I start sitting on a motor cycle and with all the other lanes fouled by hurdles, the fact that I win shouldn’t prompt the others to declare they underestimated me.
Abbott had Murdoch and the ALP, the leadership of which is drawn from the same caste of folk pandered to Murdoch. Simple. In 2007 the ALP had them. In 1996 Howard inherited them. In 1983 the ALP got them and handed incredible media power to Murdoch. There is a pattern.
@Hermit
Some unimportant mistakes:
1) It’s the EIA not the IEA (keen observers will notice I couldn’t get this right either!)
2) The data goes to 2012, i.e right up until your magical year of 2013.
3) The data, as I pointed out, is for emissions from the consumption of energy (i.e. fuel for electricity and transport), which is what we’re talking about (at least that’s what I think we’re talking about). So, things like methane emissions from agriculture aren’t included.
The important mistake:
Never mind 2013, if you look closely you’ll see that 2012 was a slight increase also! The point is, tacking a couple points on to a long term trend doesn’t do much to change the trend. The data shows Australia is a long-term increaser of emissions and Germany is a long term decreaser of emissions.
You say: “I’m talking from then until now. ”
Which is about as legitimate as when the denialists do it. Even if you’re convinced (as I’m guessing you are) that the recent uptick is meaningful and driven by German policy shifts with regard to nuclear power instead of statistical noise, statements about who are the “good guys” and “bad guys” with respect to decarbonisation only make sense over the longer term (incidentally, if you go all the way back to 1990 the comparison is even more stark). And over that time, the evidence shows that we have been shirking our responsibilities in comparison to the Germans (and others for that matter).
@Troy Prideaux
Yes, that’s my understanding. If you have a look around that site you can see several OECD countries have similar behaviour. But not all of them, intriguingly. For example, France has a big fall off but then continues to decline from that point. Presumably, this is to do with their relative GFC recoveries. It would be interesting to do an analysis with respect to GDP.
Ivor,
“2) if efficient renewables need dams, acres for wind farms and for solar, all of which are finite, how can renewables give the entire world’s population the same standard of living?
particularly as the global population doubles.”
You need technical reference groups and community reference groups – you work out what the technical options for various scenarios are while working with the community reference groups. So say a city reference group says – we want extravagant energy – lets cover the whole state with wind farms! Then a country reference group says – we hate wind farms – you can only have zero energy or coal! Then the technical reference group says – you can’t have coal it would ruin the climate. You can’t have zero energy because the city people are all crowded in and can’t grow their own food and make enough beeswax candles to read at night time. Then you negotiate – and everyone agrees they will both conserve energy and have some ugly wind farms out of practical necessity in order that they die thinking they are reasonably good people not evil people who ruined the climate in order to watch too many DVDs in the night time etc.
@Fran Barlow
There is a pattern indeed. When I saw that large photo of Abbott, wife and daughters (technically and propagandistically a brilliant photo) on the front page of the Courier Mail on a newstand (at the time when he was suffering from the “problem with women” attacks in the campaign, I said to my wife, “He’s won.” Needless to say, I said it with a heavy heart.
People are so manipulable. As more than one writer has pointed out, propaganda works best with images. A single stunning good photo like that is an enormous propaganda victory in the media and can deliver hundreds of thousands of votes in the Australian context IMO.
Oops, typo-ed my own nick.
@Ivor
OK, thanks I understand now.
“.. if efficient renewables need dams, acres for wind farms and for solar, all of which are finite, how can renewables give the entire world’s population the same standard of living?
particularly as the global population doubles.
1. I don’t think the world population will double again. That is I don’t think it will go to 14 billion. I expect it to peak before then maybe at 10 billion. Whether that can be stabilised or whether it will drop back somewhat I don’t know. Of course, these are only a layperson’s guesses. But the key point is we cannot just assume it will double again. We might well be too close to various sorts of limits for that.
2. Even at 10 billion, the mere space requirements for wind and solar power could be easily met on a global basis though some small, densely populated countries will have an issue and so they will be energy importers from other regions.
3. The limits to growth are likely to be elsewhere other than in space and probably even material requirements for solar and wind power.
4. It’s starting to look now that waste sink limits will limit our growth. I have had to change my opinion on LTG in the last few years from raw material and raw energy resources being the limit to waste sinks being the limit. Dangerous climate change is, or will be if it happens, the outcome of violating a such a waste sink limit. Basically, if we overwhelm natural sinks with waste, we degrade the bioservices and other biospheric services that the biosphere provides to us. We change the climate and biosphere from something relatively benign and supportive of human life to something less benign and supportive. It is also the case that we can get a phase shift. Things (weather patterns, ocean currents) could become highly disturbed and then some of them could flip fairly rapidly to a new state. The damaging disruption would be enormous.
Limits thinking is always valid on a finite planet. The issue is simply which limits take effect first. The principle is always sound.
@Ikonoclast
Use – 10 billion. Give each the right to use 5,000 kw/hr pa – for reasonable standard of living.
So you need 50 Trillion kw/hr.
If you get around 50 w/hr from each square meter (based on Australia’s solar farm),
you need 1,000 trillion square meters.
This is 100 billion hectares.
1 billion sq km.
This is around 50 times the area of Queensland (@ 2 million sq km).
If you get a schoolboys globe, you cover continents by painting out 50 lots of Queensland.
Maybe the calculation is wrong.
@Newtownian Emotion is the key and the LNP have played their cards well. They have worked on age old stereotypes and struck gold. I don’t see any letting up while the world is in grip of Global Terror.
Terror of what you might ask? – I don’t know; at Sydney Airport I noticed that cheese is on the banned list. War on Microbes?
@Ivor
The solar farm you referred to provides 37,000 MWhr per year from 50 hectares, or 74,000 MWhr per year per square kilometre. That’s 74 kWhr per year per square metre.
If each person gets 5,000 kWhr per year, they need 67.6 square metres. At 10 billion people, 675,676 square kilometres, roughly 40% of the size of Queensland.
rog,
“Terror of what you might ask? – I don’t know; at Sydney Airport I noticed that cheese is on the banned list. War on Microbes?”
our small town has had our train station rubbish bins taken away because country folk taking trains are under such great threat of attack.
Litter has increased – but what is proper waste management compared to staying safe from all these rural train station attacks that have been happening constantly.
@Ivor
With a total land area on earth of 149 million square kilometres, that’s about 0.5% of the land surface that’s required.
You’re out by two or three orders of magnitude, depending on whether we use one billion square kilometres or 50 times two million square kilometres as your answer.
I think you are correct.
I think I missed out applying a factor from 50 w/hr to an annual rate.
I’ll use your calc.
I think you are correct.
I think I missed out applying a factor from 50 w/hr to an annual rate.
I’ll use your calc.
@Ivor
Yes Ivor, the calculation is wrong.
If you’d gone and found a rooftop solar system like I suggested you could have checked its output and seen your estimates are off.
A square meter of 20% efficient panel will produce about a kilowatt-hour of electricity a day or about 365 kilowatt-hours a year in a sunny location so about 13.7 square meters would be required to generate 5,000 kilowatt-hours. To generate that much for 10 billion people would require 137 000 000 000 square meters of solar panel or 137,000 square kilometers or 60% of the land area of Victoria. Now not everywhere is a sunny location, for example Germany only recieves about two-thirds the sunshine that Brisbane does, so let’s bump that up to 165 000 square kilometers of optimally aligned panels. (A lot of the world’s population lives in sunny areas.) This could probably technically be all put on rooftops, but if you want it in solar farms bump it up to say 220,000 square kilometers to adequately space the panels, which is still less than the land area of Victoria. If tracking solar is used instead of fixed panels the area required might very roughly drop to say 175,000 square kilometers.
Note to people not paying attention: This is just working from Ivor’s estimate. I am not saying all power will come from solar in the future. I am pretty sure other generating capacity will also be used, that PV efficiencies will get higher, and we also appear to be heading for a peak population of under 10 billion. Possibly even under 9 billion, but that is not clear.
@Fran Barlow
Re: Murdoch and the pattern, I’ll re-post (from Monday Message Board):
I see the NSW premier is appearing in the latest TV ads for Murdoch’s ‘Daily Terror’.
Leaving aside the total wrongness of this, can anyone think of another example of a sitting Premier appearing in a TV advertisement for a commercial product?
I suggest this should be the ‘Shark Pool’ for News Ltd/LNP, but it won’t be because the ALP is acquiescing instead of condemning.
@Ivor –
5kWh/day/person = ~200W/person = ~4m^2 solar panels per person = 40×10^9 m2 for 10 billion people.
= a 20 km to a side array.
Land area to provide ALL world power from solar projected to 2030.
http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
(200km) Mixed up powers of 10.
There is a problem.
20 or 40% efficiency is one thing, but you only get 1000 watts per sq. m. when and where the sun is directly over head. At any point within the tropics this only happens twice a year for around 3 minutes at noon. It never happens at latitudes greater than 23.5 degrees.
How was this taken into account?
To estimate solar potential, you need to work with geographical data on incoming solar radiation by month.
Due to broken link, the only source I know of is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080312012614/http://energy.caeds.eng.uml.edu/solbase.html
You then need to apply weightings for city and month (although you could use annual averages).
best to use a spreadsheet.
@Ivor
Ivor, won’t don’t you just use figures for Germany? Your result will be too high since most people live in sunnier locations, but you’ll still be able to see that your previous estimate was way off. In Berlin, which is lousy even for Germany, optimally aligned solar panels operate at about 12% of capacity. That is they produce about 3 kilowatt-hours a day per kilowatt of capacity and 20% efficient panels will produce about 0.58 kilowatt-hours a day per square meter or about 200 kilowatt-hours a year. Alternatively you could use a country that’s about in the middle such as Japan. In Tokyo optimally alligned solar panels can operate at over 17% of capacity and produce over 4 kilowatt-hours a day per kilowatt of capacity and 20% efficient panels will produce about 8.5 kilowatt-hours a day or about 300 kilowatt-hours a year.
And if you want the solar capacity to be in solar farms and are worried about the spacing, well the worlds most populated countries are China, India, USA, Indonesia, Brazil. Pakistan, and Nigeria. They have over half the world’s population between them and are all pretty close to the Equator so increasing the required area by about a third should be sufficient. If for some reason you are worried about being more precise you can use Pythagoras’s Theorem which is, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” No, that’s not right. “Lefty loosey righty tighty?” No, that’s not it. “Only weird thieves think i comes before e except after c?” Eh, you can google it.
Okay, so perhaps the United States doesn’t count as pretty close to the equator, but the bottom half is still quite sunny and the top half still gets more then Germany.
@Ronald Brak
its late. The work is rather complex and there are other factors.
I am surprised that a cross-examined estimate doesn’t already exists sufficiently for someone to cite it.
presumably someone has already done the work.
@Ivor –
Or you can do a quick-and-dirty ‘10% of 1000W for half the day’, i.e. 50W/square meter.
Generally speaking, area is not a huge problem, storage is the problem. More specifically, cases where you have to store energy *seasonally* are a huge problem. This is why we need baseload nuclear..
For a RET energy system (wind water and sun) this has been worked out
“Together, the entire WWS solution would require the equivalent of ~ 0.74% of the global land surface area for footprint and 1.18% for spacing (or 1.9% for footprint plus spacing). Up to 61% of the footprint plus spacing area could be over the ocean if all wind were placed over the ocean although a more likely scenario is that 30–60% of wind may ultimately be placed over the ocean given the strong wind speeds there (Fig. 1). If 50% of wind energy were over the ocean, and since wave and tidal are over the ocean, and if we consider that 70% of hydroelectric power is already in place and that rooftop solar does not require new land, the additional footprint and spacing areas required for all WWS power for all purposes worldwide would be only ~ 0.41% and ~ 0.59%, respec- tively, of all land worldwide (or 1.0% of all land for footprint plus spacing)”
Click to access JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf
That was for 11.47 TW of energy I gather – so global energy use slightly declines through conservation, efficiency, and redistribution.
Lots of papers linked to here
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susenergy2030.html
Hows this guy doing on the crazy scale, along with the initiative founded by him, the transition towns?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Hopkins
Maybe some are interst in this, interactive irradation map with annual generation estimates for different technologies, best out there i think:
http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/imaps/index.htm
@Ivor
In the next paragraph;
“Using 70% as the average sunshine days per year (large parts of the world like upper Africa and the Arabian peninsula see 90-95% – so this number is more than fair), we can say that there will be 250 sun days per year at 8 hours of daylight on average. That’s 2,000 hours per year of direct sunlight.”
A new line of argument that renewables won’t be enough has been put forward by Weissbach et al. If an intermittent energy source requires storage the combined energy yield won’t be enough. Economic growth in the 20th century and Chinese growth this century has been powered by burning fossils fuels with high yield specifically EROEI > 7. That high yield is necessary to spillover into cheap energy for services like health care, education and food production. Hunter gatherers were too busy foraging to adequately care for the sick. For high latitude PV + batteries the EROEI is less than 2. Desert solar thermal with overnight heat storage only just makes the cut with EROEI = 9. Compared to coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydro these sources are not high yielding enough to power a multilayered complex society.
Think about it..could Melbourne get through a calm frosty night just on batteries?
There has been some work on establishing a true EROEI for solar; Prieto and Hall studied plants in Spain and found that if you include energy costs to build the solar plants eg roads and rent, and costs of maintenance eg washing panels with very clean deionised and decalcified water the returns on energy were minimal. An added cost was the finance by the govt which drained the public purse. The predicted employment growth did not happen.
Of course EROEI on fossil fuels is also diminishing as costs to remote sites escalate.
The point is that it takes a considerable investment of fossil fuel energy to build and maintain a source that is supposedly renewable.
Link
http://www.springer.com/energy/renewable+and+green+energy/book/978-1-4419-9436-3
See more at: http://www.todaysengineer.org/2013/Jun/book-review.asp#sthash.RGPRQoXG.dpuf
Hunter gatherer humans were much healthier and probably also happier than modern humans .They spent much less time working .Their life expectancy was less only because we have modern medicine.
From my 460 sqm suburban Melbourne (Sunshine) block with vegie garden, chooks ,compost, 13000 L water tanks etc I aim to get the main ingredient for the main meal for most days each year. There are 2 adults here . Usually I get more than half way to that goal. But last summer 4 consecutive 40 +deg days (1 was over 44, and 2 over 42 from memory) wrecked the vegies.
@rog
Agreed – but I only think its part of the mix. Maybe the techniques of control need further deconstruction. Saint Noam Chomsky seems a good starting point in this regard.
Regarding cheese I’m of two minds working in a related field. If its not pasteurized and turned bland cheese does harbor a lot of bacterial pathogens. Listeria is pretty universal but the bigger problem is more likely tuberculosis. A lot of cheeses even in Europe are not made from pasteurized milk – and reportedly taste much better – but they risk being contaminated. Whether we are over-reacting depends in part on how much risk you consider to be tolerable. This issue is an interesting one when it comes to ‘community scale living’. While the latter will reduce the risk of mass outbreaks of disease the lower expertise say in community food production and handling compared to a factory level poses interesting risks that advocates of small is beautiful tend to ignore.
Are such problems/risks significant/real? Not that long ago we brought an innocent looking wicker basket back from the south Pacific and declared it at customs. It seemed fine until the customs guy banged in on the metal examination table and hundreds of little bugs jumped out. The Mortein was called for at once.
One of the bugbears of self sufficiency is the need for crucial external inputs that appear to necessitate fossil fuels. With backyard chooks there seems to be a need for grain, pellets or bread in order to get protein production, be it eggs or meat. As mentioned before for every kilojoule in supermarket bread there may be 10 kJ of energy inputs. Polycrystalline solar panels are expected to need replacing every 25 years. Just one of the key inputs will be electronic grade silicon that starts by fusing silica with coal or oil based coke in an electric arc furnace most likely powered by coal fired electricity. In that sense is solar truly renewable?