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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 8/23/09

Running Out Of Fossil Fuels: A Cause For Glee?

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Message Emily Spence
Summed up, the resultant changes, in turn, punch holes in the food web, which creates further problems due to natural environments being largely interdependent in complex ways. As a result, whole immense bionetworks are falling like intersecting arrays of dominoes wherein each bar pushes another one or two down, which does the same to further ones in a branching system. In this manner, many eco-niches are, slowly, failing across the planet.

Another example, this one on land, concerns the white birch. Due to ozone layer thinness, they have grown spindly and are not developing thick trunks. (I was told that this was the reason when I asked a forest ranger to whom I mentioned that I'd noticed the change.) As a result, many of them have tall spaghetti-like branches that, when they get top heavy with leaves, snap in half. Losing a few branches this way, in and of itself, might not pose a problem. Yet, with the huge openings in the surface of the birch due to breakage, all sorts of organisms have easy entrance and finish the trees off in combination with their weakened state due to drought and delimited sustenance from photosynthesis caused by the massive leaf loss. As such, I have seen huge stands, covering many acres, with approximately ninety percent dead birch resultant from this ugly occurrence.

While these accounts involve observation and are merely anecdotal, one can be sure that many other species are experiencing similar difficulties due to a variety of intersecting causes, that, both directly and indirectly, create problems for yet further species one after another in a cascading array.

All considered, how much will have to be missing from the overall complex matrix before a tipping point is reached so that many environments become unable to foster much life, including human existence? Where would people go when all the good places left have already been overrun by everyone else having the same idea of migrating to the last locations capable of supporting survival?

As John Muir, the environmentalist, suggested around a hundred years ago, "Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe." He, also, predicted, "Brought into right relationships with the wilderness, man would see that his appropriation of Earth's resources beyond his personal needs would only bring imbalance and begat ultimate loss and poverty by all." How unfortunate that his peers -- our forebears -- never earnestly heeded his words. However, it may not be too late for us to do so. Accordingly, we must, with greatest determination, try!

REFERENCES

[1] Please refer to: http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/
portal/index.php
, Oil and gas may run short by 2015, say industry experts ... (http://environment.independent.co.uk/
climate_change/article2790960.ece
), A Crude Awakening:
The Oil Crash (2006)
( www.imdb.com/title/tt0776794/)
and Crude (www.crudemovie.net/).

[2} Accounts of the non-viability are provided at: SteveLendmanBlog: Resource Wars - Can We Survive Them? (sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/06/resource-wars-can...), Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anythin... (www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/catalogue/0-522-85251-3.h), Why Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer (www.commondreams.org/views05/0509-22.htm) and Friends of the Earth: Press Releases: Why nuclear power is n... (www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/why_nuclea ).

[3] Excellent analyses is offered at:
http://203.99.65.121/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&
objectid=10450519&pnum=0
and The Coming Biofuels Disaster - CommonDreams.org (www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/28/2153/).

[4] An overview is located at: Where Does Electricity Come From? - Environmental Defense (http://www.environmentaldefense.org/
article.cfm?contentID=774).

[5] Two different types of summaries of the most pressing global difficulties can be found at: World Revolution : The State of the World (BriefVersion) (http://www.worldrevolution.org/projects/
globalissuesoverview/overview2/BriefOverview.htm) and Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential Project: ... (www.uia.org/encyclop/15sign.htm).

[6] The problem is well described at: globeandmail.com: How global warming goes against the grain (www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.2007), Environmental Degradation and Hunger - Social and Economic P... (www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/hunger/environment/) and Cornell News: Climate-change disease (www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Feb00/AAAS.Pimente).


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Emily Spence is a progressive living in MA. She has spent many years involved with assorted types of human rights, environmental and social service efforts.
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