Carl Etnier, host of “Equal Time,” asks guest Kurt Cobb about his peak-oil-themed thriller, Prelude, in a wide-ranging interview covering who in government circles understands peak oil, Vermont’s new peak-oil-aware governor, the inscrutable and often unmanageably complex human-built systems within which we live, the advisability of using nature as a guide for redesigning those systems, and recent revelations in the media about exaggerated and perhaps fraudulent claims concerning the amount of natural gas we can expect from shale gas fields. The second half of the hour-long program is devoted to an interview with Vermont Law School faculty member Don Kreis who discusses the federal courtroom battle over possible closure of the Yankee nuclear power plant in Vermont. The interview includes audio excerpts from arguments made before the court.
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Robert Jensen argues that ‘fewer and less’ is unavoidable. But the future is not fixed
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
A future of ‘fewer and less’ may be unavoidable. But how do we get there humanely?
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
Affordability, not scarcity, is the real energy crisis
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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