Videos

Al Gore in this speech for wecansolveit.org once again show us the way of solving three of our major problems: Global Climate Change, the Energy Crisis and Security.

As he conveys his message about what needs to be done to save our civilization he delivers a hard blow to the Bush administration and the current American strategy of "status quo". To continue on a failing path were gasoline prices soar, innocent people die and the planet gets in worse shape every year.

I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously.
- Al Gore

The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse - much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland.
- Al Gore

A seven minute CNBC newscast featuring an unusually pessimistic Matt Simmons. The looks on their faces is classic, a recognition of a plausible threat and genuine fear of the consequences of Peak Oil.

Check out 4:35 where a really horrendous scenario is presented.

We're wasting so much time going on a witchhunt trying to find out who got the prices so high. What we ought to be doing is doing our homework for what we didn't learn in the last decade - the fact that we were giving oil away and it's still cheap. It's going to go higher, it might go way higher.
- Matt Simmons

It's getting quite obvious that we are not looking at a bubble and that speculation is not what is driving the oil price. We're facing a "surplus demand". Looking at it as a supply deficit is ridiculous.

A well made animation by José Tapia that explains what Global Climate Change is, what it is doing and will do, and finally what we can do to prevent more damage to the one planet we call home.

The European Union has it's own Youtube page, quite humorously called EU Tube. As of this time it contains 132 videos, many of which are highly interesting.

It feels great that the European Union is taking Global Climate Change seriously, and even recognizes the job opportunities the change from fossil and nuclear power to renewable energy sources create.

This is short overview of what Earthship houses are all about. It's still a relatively unheard of design principle but the general ideas have been presented by many smart people over the years addressing sustainability and recycling.

Mike Reynolds is the inventor of Earthship and calls the practice of building houses like this "Biotecture". An ingenious term for the idea of combining architecture and sustainability. We need more ideas like this to tackle Global Climate Change.

Doesn't that just look great with food growing indoors? And the lighting from the well planned windows is really neat as well. Obviously using tires will not be possible in the long run, the most sustainable material is presumably stone, so Earthship houses in it's current implementation is not the final answer, but many of the design principles will be the cornerstones of the coming post oil society.

Very well made documentary including Michael Meacher (Former UK Environment Minister), Colin Campbell, Richard Heinberg and others. It touches upon the energy crisis in the 70's and how we totally ignored the problems during the 80's, 90's and this century as well.

The documentary also paints a dim picture for our economy. The economy is currently based upon "steady growth" which we will no longer be able to sustain. That will be a serious problem for each and everyone of us.

Of course one would have expect the politicians across the world to have begun to get together to talk about the implications and what each of them needs to do in order to deal with this threat. I suspect the reason that doesn't happen is because the United States, far and away the most powerful country of the world, has decided that it doesn't want to convene an international conference to discuss how it's going to be shared out.

What they have decided to do, pretty clearly from invading Iraq and trying to control oil from the Caspian basin, which is the second largest repository of oil that is left in the world, is to try to monopolize for themselves, the supply of this oil, because oil is power.
- Michael Meacher

Peak Oil is the event of our lifetime.
- Richard Heinberg

Read more at http://oilsmokeandmirrors.com.

This video contains a presentation by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett. It is the best presentation we've seen so far about why the world is in such a bad state. It ties in the mathematical concept of the exponential function (compound interest for example) to explain what is going on.

Many call this video "the most important video you will ever see" and we agree with them. Everyone on the planet should see and understand this video.

Al Gore speaks at TED. Great video comparing Earth and Venus and why carbon dioxide is a real problem. He also speaks about us being a generation that can rise to the occasion, to tackle the Global Climate Change, and that we should do it with joy and pride.

Earth and Venus are exactly the same size [...] and have exactly the same amount of carbon. The difference is on Earth most of the carbon has been leached over time out of the atmosphere, deposited in the ground as coal, oil, natural gas etc. On Venus most of it is in the atmosphere. The difference is that our temperature is 59 F degrees on average, on Venus it's 855 F. This is relevant to our current strategy of taking as much carbon out of the ground as quickly as possible and putting it into the atmosphere.

Amory Lovins talks about efficiency and new materials that can help us make better cars.

As a physicist I've been wondering why our cars use about one third of a percent of their fuel energy to move the driver.

In this 50 minute video series Thomas L. Friedman reports about the current state of our addiction to oil. The first part deals with cars and gasoline, what we are to expect in the coming decade.

Our consumption of gasoline is warming the planet.

We are funding both sides of the war on terrorism.

It's quite interesting to see how GM defended their production of the Hummer in this video and how they are now in the year 2008 in very big economic trouble and want to sell the Hummer and SUV divisions. It seems there is no longer any customer demand. It's just tragic.

Amory Lovins speaks on TED about how to save fuel by improving efficiency. He also touches upon some political issues connected to our use of oil and how improving efficiency can really help. He does so with great insight and humor.

He also sends a harsh warning to the American car industry, it will have to improve efficiency or Americans will start importing efficient cars.

The old story about climate protection is that it's costly or it would've been done already. The new story about climate protection is that it is not costly but profitable. It's cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel.

David Keith talks about what has happened so far with our emissions and the polar ice caps etc. He then presents a surprising solution that was presented in the 50's.

New research improves the idea and it's time to develop this idea into a real plan if we need an emergency brake.