Solutions & sustainability – June 30

Meg Wheatley – the power of chaos /
We must preserve the earth’s dwindling resources for my 5 children / Think you would be happier if you were richer? Think again / Bogota’s mayor’s happy ‘war on cars’ /
“Made to Break” reveals the roots of our throwaway culture / High tech trash: Elizabeth Grossman

Other energy – June 30

Sierra Club sues Pentagon over wind-farm delays / CERA: another decade of rising upstream costs? /
Saudis not cutting oil output further – ambassador / Republican politician: A 100-mpg car? Let’s start the race / Conference on ocean energy in Bremerhaven, Oct. 23-24 / World could face choice between food and fuel / Mexico’s oil bonanza starts to dry up

Coal: The Other Fossil Fuel

“The Smoky City” was a major industrial center of the United States in the 20th century. During World War II, Pittsburgh produced more steel than all of Germany. The steel industry centered on the Three Rivers put Pittsburgh on the map, but the Bessemer process that made steel production economical also required a great deal of coal.

Big Money and Mother Nature

Sure, there is a lot of oil and gas left out there for the driller’s bit (if you can wait long enough for a delivery of drill bits). But the deposits that the extraction companies will encounter will be smaller, further afield, and more expensive to develop and produce. The Anadarko and Phelps Dodge plays certainly illustrate another point, one for which T. Boone Pickens is equally famous: that you can still “drill for reserves on Wall Street.”

Interview with makers of “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

And to their shock, the car companies built probably the most advanced car Detroit ever built, and the most maintenance-free car. And when all the car companies were forced to do it, they realized that it threatened their business model. It also threatened the oil industry. So they wanted to dismantle it. (Wide-ranging discussion on many energy issues.)