Summary: QUICK SUMMARY: "Is Global Collapse Imminent" by Australian academic Graham M. Turner. Linda Doman from US Energy Information Administration says world will burn 30% more oil and gas in 2040. Marc-Andre Parisien from the Canadian Forest Service tells us about record mega-fires in the Canadian far north. Radio Ecoshock 140924 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. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi Or you can listen to (and download) it right now on our Sound Cloud page. The heads-in-the-sand photo taken The Strand beach in Townsville, Australia is in response to lack of action on climate change. Photo: Cranky Curlew Productions. IS GLOBAL COLLAPSE IMMINENT? - GRAHAM M. TURNER If you are wondering how long this high-consumption civilization can keep going, you are not alone. It's not just counter-culture types either. A small parade of billionaires have appeared on the financial blog Zero Hedge, predicting a shattering financial crash. But seldom do we find academics asking "Is Global Collapse Imminent?" That is the title of a new research paper, which adds "An Updated Comparison of 'The Limits to Growth' With Historical Data". The author and our guest is Dr Graham M. Turner. He is a Principal Research Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, part of the University of Melbourne in Australia. Find this paper here. It's not a difficult read, and well worth your time. You can also read this interesting take on the paper by Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander in the Guardian newspaper, September 2, 2014. This is Turner's second review of the Limits to Growth. His first was in 2008: Turner, G.M. 2008 "A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality" Global Environmental Change, 18, pp. 397-411. The original "Limits to Growth" study in the 1970's helped shape the entire environmental movement. It was remorseless trashed by pro-business writers, as proven wrong, and consigned to the dustbin of history. Now many of us sense we are teetering on the edge, so I'm really pleased to have this opportunity to talk with Dr. Turner. It seems to me, reading this paper, Turner has returned to the Peak Oil scenario, saying the ever-increasing diversion of capital into more difficult to extract fossil fuels is, quote "the primary cause of collapse of the BAU [business as usual] scenario." Keep in mind, Graham Turner is not absolutely PREDICTING an imminent global c
