Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Reserves of conventional “easy” oil have mostly been used up. How likely is it that remaining reserves will be produced at the rate projected?
NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed. Biking along the Lake Ontario shoreline one autumn afternoon, I passed the new and just-barely operational Durham-York Energy Centre and a question popped into mind. If this incinerator produces a lot of electricity, where are all the wires? The question was prompted in part by the … Read more
The Energy Cliff is a key concept in ecological economics. Should we understand this Cliff as both a mathematical ratio and a historical reality?
The underlying assumption in peak oil models is that scarcity would appear before the final cutoff of consumption.
There are many who believe that the use of energy is critical to the growth of the economy. In fact, I am among these people. The thing that is not as apparent is that growth in energy consumption is dependent on the growth of debt.
Over the past ten years, it has taken us trillions of dollars, basically, to keep us on an undulating plateau in actual crude oil production. What happens going forward?
Anyone with any sense for global economic trends ought to be worried. The signs are everywhere of a serious deflationary crisis.
Gleaning is an ancient tradition, deeply embedded in the agricultural world.
As fossil fuels, which provide more than 80 percent of the power modern society uses, become more energy intensive to extract and refine, there is a growing drag on economic activity as more and more of the economy’s resources are devoted simply to getting the energy we want.
Does the recent climate accord between US and China mean that many countries will now forge ahead with renewables and other green solutions? I think that there are more pitfalls than many realize.
Eventually, production must go down: there will still be oil that could be, theoretically, extracted, but that we won’t be able to afford to extract. This is the essence of the concept of depletion.
You can’t understand the predicament we’re in until you can see the oil that saturates every single aspect of our life. What follows is a life cycle of a simple object, the pencil.
