Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
What is striking about both books [Blood and Oil by Klare and Oil: Anatomy of an Industry by Yeomans]… is that they argue that the United States can avoid the petro-military dystopia if Americans (a) get Bush out of office, (b) make a concerted effort to create and exploit alternative fuels, and (c) — in Klare’s words — “reduce American dependence on imported oil and … sever the links between our energy behavior and our overseas security commitments.”
The experts are calling for energy reforms. Why aren’t the politicians?
Damage to the reactor head of the Davis-Besse power plant in Ohio ranks among the top five most serious nuclear plant accidents or near-accidents since Three Mile Island, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday.
THE spike in oil prices in recent months is stoking heated arguments between market players, who blame each other for the lack of production capacity that has been exposed by strong global demand.
Imagine having your own annual greenhouse gas allowance which you ’spend’ each time you fill up with petrol or pay an electric or gas bill. It sounds like a scene from a futuristic movie, but this scenario could really happen in the next few years according to researchers at the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Prediction.
China plans to establish a company that will raise as much as 100 billion yuan (12 billion dollars) to build the country’s strategic oil reserve infrastructure, state media reported.
Renewable and low-carbon energy are not just the long-term solutions to climate change. They are indispensable today if we are to cushion the British economy against volatile oil and gas prices and the impending peak in world oil production – not least the dwindling reserves in the North Sea.
Since about 1999 per capita world average oil consumption is increasing. This recovery, after a long decline through about 1980-2000, has strong implications for potential oil demand, and potential annual growth of world oil demand as we enter the period immediately preceding ‘Peak Oil’.
Securing supply tops the energy-policy agenda. That is the message coming loud and clear from more than 60 energy-industry leaders, including big-company CEOs and senior government officials, recently surveyed by the World Economic Forum…. History shows that policymakers will put price and supply before social and environmental concerns.
Limited spare capacity means that the ability of oil producers to meet the sharpest rise in demand since the 1970s is likely to be severely tested, according to experts attending an OPEC-sponsored seminar in Vienna.
Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute have come up with a proposal to save American capitalism from the end of the age of oil.
If alternative-energy companies are so hot, why are their stocks so unpopular? Record-high oil prices make wind and solar increasingly competitive. Fear of climate change should brighten prospects for any alternative to fossil fuels, which release the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Yet over the past two years, the worldwide stock-market value of companies developing renewable energy—which includes everything from wind and solar to recycling—fell from $13 billion to $10.7 billion, while the value of fossil-fuel companies surged to record highs of more than $1.2 trillion.
