Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Extract from www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10011306
… the president of Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft said on Tuesday the country’s oil production should grow by 5-6 per cent this year and is likely to top out soon after that.
“Beyond 2005 we will probably reach the ceiling in output, ” he said. “The period of easy oil extraction is over and to boost output further we need serious capital investment and more time,” he said.
It is true that no high-energy society has ever halved its material throughput and existed at that level across generations. But an absent precedent for an unprecedented situation merely tells us the situation is new, not what people will do.
October 1, 2026
With age, I’ve become more aware of the world’s complexity but also better equipped to come to simple, albeit painful, conclusions: We need to replace fantasies of endless growth with ideas about managing the contraction.
September 16, 2026
In this post, I examine differences in economic behaviour by comparing two types of periods: those with low energy affordability and those with high energy affordability.
August 26, 2026
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