• 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics
  • Energy can neither be created, nor destroyed;
  • As energy is transformed from one form to another, some is ‘dissipated’ and lost. Another way to think of it–for all of the organization and structure in a system, to create that requires more disruption in a system (e.g., the road may be built in the city, but the rock quarry may gouge into a mountain in the rural landscape)
• Supply-side and demand-side policies
• ‘Hard’ vs ‘soft’ energy paths
• Energy flow–how does energy ‘move’ through an ecosystem
  • transfers (Odum’s ‘10% rule’)
  • solar energy–how do humans use it, how does nature use it, and how much (of photosynthetic capacity)?
  • Fossil fuels, agriculture, land use (how do we grow food for 7 billion?)
• Odum: Human ecosystems (at least in industrialized societies) operate ‘far from equilibrium’–meaning what?
  • Survival requires a ‘continuous input of high-quality energy’
    • What happens without it?
• the problem of ‘Peak oil’
  • Pfeiffer: Are we eating fossil fuels?
  • Kunstler: The ‘long emergency‘
  • ‘hard oil‘ (e.g., from tar sands, harsh environments) is generally more energy-intensive to produce, refine
• Transitioning to a post hydrocarbon economy
  • Conservation (power production, for instance)
  • Supply-side–more renewables (solar, geothermal, tides, wind, new hydro, hydrogen, biomass ….)
  • Transportation (rail, mass transit, smart growth, telecommuting …)
  • Efficiencies (buildings, factories, appliances, electricity grid …)
  • Use of remaining petroleum–can we afford Dollar Stores, or even biofuels, with humans’ use of photosynthetic capacity to feed 7+ billion?
  • Cuba’s post-Soviet experience
• Related to climate change
  • Solar radiation, light and heat, and the greenhouse effect
  • Greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane (60 x more efficient at heat trapping than CO2), nitrous oxide (270 times …), etc.
  • Fossil fuels: coal, oil, natural gas
  • Keeling curve , CO2 , CO2 & temperature
  • Renewables vs non-renewables
  • ‘Embodied’ energy
    • e.g., Odum says to double crop yields requires up to a 10-fold increase in inputs
  • Argument for a warming planet?
  • Humans’ role?

Some concepts

• Laws of thermodynamics
• Ecosystem
• Evolution
• Peak oil
• Sustainable development
• Greenhouse effect
• Supply-side and demand-side energy policy
• ‘Soft’ and ‘hard’ energy paths