From Cleopatra to Columbia
Our world is so dominated by machines and motors (fifty in a typical home) that it’s easy to forget that most of human history has been powered by muscle.
Even Stephen Roach Has It Wrong
In his latest commentary, Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach, perhaps the only Wall Street economist who at least partially comprehends the looming economic danger, once again lamented that a “co-dependent global economy can’t live without the excess consumption of Americans.”
The Great Phase Transition: The Post-oil Era
Jorge Figueiredo argues that Peak Oil will exacerbate a crisis in capitalism, and the as yet unwritten result could either be fascistic or ‘revolutionary’.
Canada: City gas pump price passes $1
The price of regular gasoline has passed the $1 mark in a large Canadian city, apparently for the first time.
A model alternative-fuel strategy for U.S.
Andres Oppenheimer argues that the US should follow Brazil’s example in starting a massive biodiesel and fuel ethanol industry.
IEA warns against possible acute oil shortage
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has come to the conclusion that the world economy is facing a serious threat of acute oil shortage.
Video: Rep. Bartlett’s Peak Oil Presentation to the US Congress
[UPDATE APR 9 – new date for next speech] On the 14th March Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett made a presentation on Peak Oil to the US Congress. Online video of the presentation and a text version with graphics are now available. Rep. Bartlett will be giving a second presentation on solutions in about a week.
Get your foot off the gas – it’s black gold
What will cost $3 a litre, require car-pooling, the permanent military occupation of Iraq and oil drilling on the Great Barrier Reef? Petrol, according to experts who have been contemplating its future in an oil-poor Australia.
Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil
Excellent review of the current cheap-oil-energy and material intensity of UK food production and makes a good case for relocalisation as integral to improving the situation.
Turning up the gas – Imports will keep UK’s power plants running
National Grid Transco (NGT) yesterday took steps to strengthen Britain’s fragile energy supply situation by unveiling plans to spend £355m in tripling the capacity of the country’s first new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal.
Has Ghawar truly peaked?
A monthly publication put out by the Bank of Montreal argues that “Hubbert’s Peak must have arrived for Ghawar, the world’s biggest oilfield, and Wall Street’s most-cited reason for assuring us month after month that oil prices would plunge…”
Prospects in the Post-Petroleum World
The longing for the simpler times of my childhood when the unreliable third world electrical grid went down and my extended family of aunts came outside to sit in the dark and talk to me. It was an awake-to-the-moment, off routine, no TV, intimacy that was somehow magical. This, if we could get through the dark times of loss and chaos, was something to look forward to.
