Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
But facts, as the saying goes, are stubborn things. And the world we live in today has already changed significantly from the world that existed in 1989, when messaging around plastics, even if untrue, was enough to affect reality for the oil industry.
Yes, confronting the climate crisis will require a switch from ‘dirty’ to ‘clean’ power. But it also demands a radical reconfiguration of environmental power dynamics.
To the extent that oil demand goes down in the future, it will go down because people can’t afford oil distillates at the price producers need to produce the corresponding oil.
Almost a week after Hurricane Laura struck Louisiana’s coast, which is studded with oil and gas industry pipes, tanks, wells, and rigs, I photographed from the sky oil sheen along at least 20 miles of marsh and bayous that absorbed the full strength of the storm.
Government officials and state-owned energy enterprises in China are currently debating another wave of coal power investment, despite a severely diminished business case for the technology.
Already, 2020 is shaping up to be a record-breaking year for powerful storms and other impacts of the climate crisis.
The most important unknown element, when it comes to how bad things could get, scientists say, is what actions we take today to curb the worst effects of climate change down the road.
Electricity generated from wind and solar is 30-50% cheaper than previously thought, according to newly published UK government figures.
We hope these episodes will give you a bit more familiarity with the terms and concepts of energy, and help to fill in some of the knowledge that you were never offered in school.
In this pandemic summer you may not have paid attention to BC Hydro’s belated filing of two disturbing reports on the Site C dam. The reports cited big problems with costs, in part because of the notoriously unstable shales of the Peace River Valley.
There are new calls to apply the lessons learned from the successful campaign to end tobacco advertising to ‘high carbon’ products and lifestyles, and to ‘stop adverts fuelling the climate emergency‘.
Building the Site C dam in northeastern British Columbia is proving more difficult than officials predicted due to unstable ground on the northern bank. Adding to concerns: myriad earthquakes.
As demand for fossil fuel plummets, education, job creation and other support is critical to save millions of oil industry employees and their communities from collapse.
