We Don’t Need Any More Renewables
The claim is ubiquitous: if we’re to meet our climate goals, we need a mass buildout of renewable energy production. But this claim is false, and worse yet, attempting it will accelerate climate collapse.
Energy featured
Peak Oil (Not!), Peak Dispatchability, and WEF Risks
This week’s Frankly is another edition of Nate’s Wide Boundary News series, where he invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through a wider-boundary lens. Today’s edition features reflections on a new peak in crude oil production, the growth of non-dispatchable electricity, and a report recently released by the World Economic Forum assessing global risks.
How to Read the Signs of Collapse: Economic Stagnation, Resource Scarcity, and Europe’s Industrial Decline
Today, Nate is joined by Balázs Matics, the author of the popular Substack blog The Honest Sorcerer, to explore the systemic reasons behind civilization’s potential collapse, the importance of energy security, and the growing effects of geopolitical instability.
In Defence of a Basic Land Income
The minimum living wage has reignited the debate on basic income. But would it be viable in the face of eco-social collapse? A basic land income could be an alternative suited to this scenario.
The Creature in the Machine
In this week’s episode, Nate reflects on his experience with knee surgery and being a “creature in the machine” (the Superorganism).
After Decades of Deflection, ExxonMobil Moves to Reshape Global Climate Accounting
An ExxonMobil-backed initiative, Carbon Measures, is pushing to reshape how the world does the math on climate change. Their system, outside analysts point out, leaves consumers holding the bag.
World oil and natural gas consumption vs discoveries: Diverging trends mean trouble
In the oil and natural gas industry it is a truism that you can’t produce what you haven’t discovered. Here’s why current trends are disturbing.
Alberta’s Fiscal Crisis Is Self-Inflicted
Smith gambled that strong oil prices would deliver her chaos-making government a safe ride on the roller-coaster. But if Trump’s Venezuela gambit succeeds, Smith’s increasingly unpopular government could find itself flying off the track all together.
Venezuela’s goo-in-the-ground isn’t usable oil at current prices (and may never be)
Venezuela’s supposedly vast reserves of crude oil aren’t what they seem to be.
Venezuela and the New World Disorder
So the new year has arrived, and the world’s power dynamics are shifting in a new Cold War. A revolutionary U.S. government has revived the Monroe Doctrine, gunboat diplomacy and the primacy of oil. In so doing it has kicked old-fashioned notions of law and sovereignty in the shins with a Putin-like swagger.
The Securitization of Minerals in the EU: Why Europe is Not Immune to the Resource Curse
This article examines how access to mineral raw materials in the EU has been transformed through a process of securitization over the last two decades. What was once mainly a matter of economic policy and trade has been reframed—through narratives constructed by industrial lobbies and political allies—as an existential issue for European security and survival.
Weak signals of the Venezuela war
Like Russia’s frontline blood banks, the Venezuelan bond trade signalled that the preceding furore was headed in a specific direction. And in the increasingly chaotic, ill-defined mess of multipolar politics and climate chaos, reliably finding which ‘weak signals’ matter—and which signals are just noise—will be vital for navigating what comes next.
