Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
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 supposedly vast reserves of crude oil aren’t what they seem to be.
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.
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.
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.
In this week’s Frankly, Nate takes thermodynamics out of the physics classroom, utilizing its principles to explain the invisible forces behind growth, competition, and complexity in our world.
Fusion is periodically touted as the next big thing in energy. Even if it proves commercially feasible someday, that day is far off.
Instead of floating grandiose export pipeline projects as solutions to a rising tide of problems, the Canadian government might want to change course.
It’s worrying about the electric bill with all those lights on. It’s having a light strand die and not wanting to spend money to replace it. A lot of money… It’s maybe even a bit of disengagement with this holiday season. Why bother making a fuss over it…
In this week’s Frankly, Nate explores how the prices we encounter in our daily lives are influenced by not only how much money is in the system, but also by resource depletion, technology, affordability by ‘the masses,’ and trust within a complex global system.
So, what have we got? A global economy staggering amongst geopolitical tension, a bubble to beat all bubbles, and the twin shocks of a (potentially permanent) oil price crash and the EV subsidies ending — and all with the backdrop of worsening climate change driving up inflation and inflicting constant disasters.
Electricity is our energy future, but the details of that future are still sketchy. Right now, the picture is being drawn by billionaire investors, but it looks dark and dystopian. Surely more imaginative artists could do better.
