15 Big Ideas From 2005

But peak oil isn't just expensive. It's almost certainly revolutionary. And it's also at our doorstep. Forget about the production capacity knocked out by Hurricane Katrina. The real story is China, as one-seventh of the world's population begins a wild, carbon-fueled ride towards western prosperity. Initially destructive, economists predict peak oil will ultimately be the necessity that is the mother of new invention, as major western economies retool to refuel and get serious about energy alternatives. In the process, everything from the way we design our cities to how we grow our food to the global status we enjoy goes up for grabs. Of course, the obvious way to mitigate any future oil shock would be to start curtailing use and demanding new efficiencies while the choice is still ours. Crises inevitability produce opportunities and as the nineteenth century philosopher Joseph Schumpeter observed, in any period of creative destructive where old orders, ideas and industries are plowed under, the place you want to be is at the front of the pack. Becoming a world leader in green energy technologies and low-carbon living doesn't only sound nice, it makes solid business sense with potentially vast profits once the economics of oil start to tilt. But first things first: eliminating the twenty percent gap between Canada's current carbon emissions and its Kyoto goals would be a good place to start. Nano gets big How small is a nanometer? Ted Sargent, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology at the University of Toronto, likes to use this rule of thumb. A nanometer is to a meter what a marble is to the earth. It's pretty small. But it's at this almost incomprehensibly tiny scale that big things are happening. http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/12/29/BigIdeas/print.html And Part 2 http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/12/30/15BigIdeasPart2/ [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on January 2, 2006]

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