We cannot drill our way out of this oil crisis. Since 2000, oil companies working in the U.S. have doubled the number of wells drilled per year.
Although increased drilling has added new oil to the nation's supply, it has not done so fast enough to offset the terminal decline of existing fields.
We are going to have to import more of our oil. Period.
Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2004 4:08 am Post subject: Harnessing Entropy for Sustainability
Despite my limited understanding of the matter of living within entropy's imperatives, I hope that the following outline of some practical problems and their resolution might be useful as an illustration of dealing with those imperatives.
___________________________
Suppose I have a problem with cold northerly winds in spring hitting my home and suppressing growth in the veg garden, and another with paying for unsatisfactory loads of firewood, and one autumn I decide to do something about these problems.
To optimize their resolution I need to achieve all the carbon efficiency I can (that is I need to minimize the carbon emissions that the changes cause) in order to minimize the disorder (entropy) generated, while maximizing benign effects (neg-entropy) such as supporting local trades to help counter the age-old urban money-drain from the country.
Integrating the Problems' Resolution
Having thought about the options, I visit a friend who's a charcoal maker (who works coppice woodland and mostly supplies bagged charcoal for barbeques) and buy quarter of a tonne from him (for about $40 equivalent).
This he delivers to a good local blacksmith (who's won prizes for his wrought iron gates), whom I ask to make the blade and straps of a strong spade and also a light double bitted axehead, using the charcoal as fuel for his forge, with the surplus being part-payment for his work.
When they're done I split a billet of ash firewood to blanks and work them by hand shaping one to fit the axehead and another the spade, and set heavy rivets to fasten the latter after morticing a topbar onto it. The axehead is fastened onto its handle with an oaken wedge that is then sealed with pitch from the house's woodstove. Both handles are well-rubbed with sheep fleece from a neighbour's barn to coat them with lanolin as a preservative and polish.
Since it is late autumn the sap in the trees of a local woodland has now fallen. After getting skilled advice on the subject, I carefully dig up a few hundred saplings from the thousands in the woods (that are going to be shaded out and die if left where they are) and fell enough poles to make light stakes for them.
Once they've been hauled home, the task of planting up a small woodlot to the north of the house and garden can begin.
When the saplings are planted they start giving wind-shelter across about 12 times their height, and begin sheltering the house and the veg garden and increasing the latter's yields. Once they've have grown for at least 5 years (and preferably 12 to 15 years) they'll start to yield a small sustainable fuelwood supply each year.
Considerations.
The tasks above entail very little money having to be earned compared to a conventional approach, primarily because the saplings are got for labour alone. What money is spent goes to local trades, with an intentional encouragement of future trading between them. Wherever possible, actions are designed to achieve multiple benefits.
For all it will be years before the woodlot can displace much bought-in firewood, outlay to provide a sustainable supply has been minimized, two fine and highly durable tools have been acquired and the required wind-shelter has been started.
Pollution has been minimized by trading locally and so avoiding transport emissions, as well as by supplying the smith with charcoal to make the tools, and by making the tool handles rather than buying machine-made ones.
As the woodlot grows it will take many tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere (that would otherwise have stayed there) of which a fraction will be cycled through the woodstove chimney each year into the trees' regrowth, (that is the same tonnage of carbon is cycled if not the same atoms). Over the years the trees' leaves will help to build soil by contributing carbon and trace elements to it. The woodlot's carbon banking is a major part of the project's overall neg-entropy.
Overview
The actions above are perhaps to modern eyes a long-winded approach to dealing with the problems posed at the outset. An email to Holland could get me the cheapest trees, delivered by truck, sea-ferry and truck, while a Chinese spade I can get cheap in the county town along with softwood stakes. But the trees will not be native varieties and having been intensively raised may not be hardy enough to do well, the stakes will have been grown in unsustainable plantations and the spade will be trash, and I'd have to spend a deal of time earning money to pay for for these things.
In reality the careful actions outlined above reflect an efficient long-term investment approach, and one which not only minimizes as far as feasible the generation of counter-productive disorder (entropy) but also actively develops both social and ecological resources (neg-entropy) to avoid having to generate entropy in the future.
It is worth noting that the urban money-drain mentioned above has impoverished rural communities worldwide, and has eroded peoples' freedom of choice to live within their resources' capacities. It has to be plugged if sustainable rural culture is to be restored. (Be it clearly understood, like anyone else, in the last resort of poverty I'd fell scarce trees for firewood to keep dependants from fading out with frost).
This account may seem very remote from some readers' present way of life, (for instance I happen to live in an area where various skilled trades have endured) but I suggest that post peak those who want to learn a trade may find a rural way of life highly preferable and far more productive and fulfilling than that in the newly impoverished cities.
Moreover, in case it hadn't been noticed, the sustainability of those cities is wholly reliant, now as ever, on the sustainability of the countryside that supports them.
I'd only point out that few people are so well set up as to be able to keep to the posted example's standard. I guess like yourself, I aspire to and work towards it.
I am interested greatly in the chances for young people to learn of the skills of good living. If you don't already know of somewhere in your state, maybe its worth passing the word round for people to get one started ? I'm putting out feelers over here, as it seems a seminal way to go.
Am I right in thinking that you're living in what is technically Hickory coppice ??
If so, I'd be very very envious if I weren't too old for such folly. Hickory is so fine and so rare here in Britain . . .
Even if it's another tree altogether, it sounds a great resource and yes, it certainly counts as sustainable coppice if treated with working respect.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
News
Discussions
Resources
Members
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
