Los Angeles Indymedia : Activist News

Peak Oil: Imposed by Nature

Sunday, September 11th, 5:00 PM
Throop Memorial Church
300 S Los Robles Ave
Pasadena, CA 91101
map - 0.5 miles east of Del Mar Goldline station at the corner of Del Mar and Los Robles.

What is Peak Oil?
Peak Oil is the simplest label for the problem of energy resource depletion, or more specifically, the peak in global oil production. Oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, one that has powered phenomenal economic and population growth over the last century and a half. The rate of oil 'production,' meaning extraction & refining (currently about 83 million barrels/day), has grown in most years over the last century, but once we go through the halfway point of all reserves, production becomes ever more likely to decline, hence 'peak'. Peak Oil means not 'running out of oil', but 'running out of cheap oil'. For societies leveraged on ever increasing amounts of cheap oil, the consequences may be dire. Without significant successful cultural reform, economic and social decline seems inevitable.   Read More at http://www.lapostcarbon.org/

We will also view a short documentary: Our Synthetic Sea (Either the 9 or 22 minute version, http://www.algalita.org).

Studies indicate less than 5% of plastic ever gets recycled, while each American is said to contribute some 65 lbs. of plastic into landfills each year.The ocean is especially susceptible to plastic pollution. It takes longer for the sun to break apart plastic in the ocean than on land because of the oceans’ cooling capacity. Most plastic floats near the sea surface where some is mistaken for food by birds and fishes. Plastics are carried by currents and can circulate continually in the open sea. Broken, degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the central North Pacific by a factor of 6-1. That means six pounds of plastic for every single pound of zooplankton.