Year: 2011

Happiness, simplicity and apocalypse – May 1

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– Happiness theory at center stage in Soros economic conference
– The ‘I’m-happy-I’m-green’ consensus won’t placate our lust for novelty
– Simplicity Institute report shows that less can be more
– Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse
– Venezuela Comes Sixth in Gallup “Wellbeing” Survey

The ghost of ASPO-9: climate change

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The first morning of the 9th ASPO conference in Brussels had a good presentation of what we know today about climate change. But the IPCC vision is not the same as that of ASPO and the contrast flared during the panel discussion, when Kjell Aleklett, president of ASPO, accused van Ypersele and IPCC of following a “business as usual” approach. Having neglected peak oil (and peak fuels) in their scenarios, Aleklett said, the IPCC was presenting unrealistic and excessively pessimistic predictions of global warming.

A surprise: China’s energy consumption will stabilize

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According a new study by Berkeley Lab’s China Energy Group, the steeply rising curve of energy demand in China will begin to moderate between 2030 and 2035 and flatten thereafter. There will come a time—within the next two decades—when the number of people in China acquiring cars, larger homes, and other accouterments of industrialized societies will peak.

World – April 30

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– Europeans shift long-held view that social benefits are untouchable
– Europe’s Nationalists Waiting in the Dark
– Chomsky on Iraq, corporations and financialization of the economy
– McCarthyism in Manama? (Bahrain)

More on the Saudi’s slash of oil output

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In other words, Mr. Horsnell is saying that since the world previously thought that the Saudi’s were producing less in December than they actually were, then the estimated worldwide “buffer” production capacity was significantly less than believed, as well. Also, his observation that the Saudi’s evidently needed to produce at 9 million b/d in order to balance the market is the exact opposite of what Mr. Naimi said, four weeks later….In turn, if the Saudi’s can’t really sustain even 9 million b/d, then this would have serious implications for the world in that the next, more intense manifestations of Peak Oil may be nearer than we think.

Control, and other illusions

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Civilisation is a story. It is a story about where we have come from and where we are going. There are many ways to tell that story, but one version has been very much the dominant one in the West for the past couple of centuries. We know this story: it’s the one about modern, urban industrial culture’s ineffable superiority over all others; the one about human evolution leading inevitably to this point. It’s the one about winning the war against nature, being the only species which thinks and loves and dreams; it’s the one about machines and circuitry and ingenuity and progress. And it’s true, in some ways, at least as far as it goes. But it may not be going much further.