Paul Kingsnorth on Renewables in Apr. '08 Ecologist

thought a few might be interested in this (maybe CEO Hoicka most):

in the April 2008 issue of Ecologist, Paul Kingsnorth writes about the storm brewing in Lewis about a massive, 181 turbine wind farm. here are some highlights from the article.

The battle of Lewis [a contested site of a 181 turbine wind farm] is not the easily-told story of greens versus anti-green reactionaries. It is more complex, and more interesting, than that.
The question that hovers above it all is currently echoing around the world, and will only grow louder: in the fight against climate change, will the environment have to be destroyed to save the environment? Can the ends justify the means?
(26)

The amount of maize needed to fill the tank of a Range Rover with ethanol fuel would feed a person for a whole year. Fill your tank every two weeks for a year and you have taken enough food out of circulation to feed a hungry village.
(27)

Ironically, it now seems that biofuels don't even do what they were intended to: new research has revealed that, once the 'carbon cost' of clearing land for biofuels is taken into account, virtually every biofuel crop actually produces more emissions than the fuel it replaces.
(27)

The lesson to be learned from all this is a sobering one. Renewable energy technologies as we currently know them are incapable of providing anything like the amount of power we have come to expect from fossil fuels. Even if technologies improve, which they will undoubtedly do, they will not do so fast or cheaply enough to prevent the growing conflicts over land that the spread of large-scale renewables is already provoking.
...
[G]reen technologies can have a distinctly un-green downside. And green technologies – any technologies – on this sort of ['mega project'] scale are going to be undemocratic, top-down, unaccountable and, potentially, very destructive indeed.
Scale, in the end, is all.
(28)

interesting and highly relevant stuff, even if he may be a little more polemics than research.

i missed the deadline!!

maybe i had subconscious fears of political disruptions, but i procrastinated (or alternately, blame my office for too much work) on the isee in nairobi conference, and was so tired tonight but debated getting it in by midnight on the deadline. however, the secretariat is in new zealand and is *closed*, so i missed it, even though i wasn't planning to go anyways, i really wanted to go through the process.

maybe i am lucky this week, i searched for a bit and found this list, and i *am* carefully debating hooking up with friends in thailand in august, and what do you know? there is an energy security and climate change conference in bangkok right after i plan on landing there, with academics from all over, including UBC and Toronto, so maybe my vacation will include improving my academic credentials as well. and maybe there is even something relevant closer to home, but i doubt it--sadly, i think everything in canada is about the tar sands these days, and i think my masters work actually is more likely to be employed in a country facing real scarcity.