Year: 2011

Tough Oil: Five public health challenges of petroleum scarcity

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“There are no solutions, only responses,” says EHS professor Brian Schwartz, co-director of the Program on Global Sustainability and Health and a nationally recognized expert on the health consequences of peak oil. “You can deny climate change forever, but you can’t deny the rising price of oil. The limitations to ever-increasing production are a geologic reality.”

The coming era of petroleum scarcity is “probably the most underreported issue of our time,” says Schwartz, MD, MS. He and Bloomberg School colleagues have spent much of the past decade looking at how ever-more-costly petroleum will affect some of the key drivers of public health, and what strategies we should adopt now to minimize future health consequences.

5% health: The risk of catabolic collapse and peak fat in modern health systems

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Peak oil, and peak fat, are transforming the logic that currently shapes the global biomedical system. Firstly, because coming energy famines will render one of the world’s most energy-intensive systems unsustainable. And second, because until the medical system addresses the causes of illness with the same brilliance with which it addresses the effects, the population will continue to get sicker.

#OccupyWallStreet and the new forms of revolt

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– NYT: Wall Street Occupiers, Protesting Till Whenever
– We Are the 99 Percent – protestors tell their stories
– The Nuts and Bolts of #OccupyWallStreet
– The Danger of Simplicity
– Leninist assumptions and cult hierarchies
– Murdoch and Berlusconi: the fall of two media empires and the network multitudes

Dr. Steve Keen on debunking economics

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Understanding of peak oil is greatly improved by a realistic understanding of money and debt. Dr. Steve Keen, University of Western Sydney, provides an overview of this understanding in his just published lecture on Debunking Economics. Dr. Keen returns to North America in November to share his insights and new research at the International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change: Vision, Action and Leadership.
(video of a talk by Dr. Keen)

Climate change, peak oil – the video game

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The global economy is headed toward collapse, revolutions are breaking out across the Middle East, famine is ravaging Africa and the world is approaching a peak oil crisis. No, these are not headlines ripped from the news; these are the challenges facing Windows and Mac gamers in “Fate of the World: Tipping Point from Red Redemption.”

This hardcore strategy game puts players in hypothetical situations within a realistic world, with threatening scenarios based on the latest science and modeling technologies covering the next two centuries. Players must balance economic, political and environmental needs in order to save the world (or destroy it).

The overburden: Review of “The Last Mountain”

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The film The Last Mountain has it all: a human story of ordinary citizens fighting a soulless and unaccountable coal corporation; an urgency as the last mountain in the Coal River Valley is eyed by Big Coal for surface mining; a history and context for the people’s claim to the rights of the commons; activism in the form of petitioning the government as well as civil disobedience; the role of business, profit, labor and economy as labor power is eroded and corporate profits soar; the eco-system, heritage, and culture of the region; and a new way forward proposed by the people themselves. It’s the best documentary I’ve seen on mountain top removal. But really, it’s about so much more and has come together perfectly as a gestalt, a meme for our times.

The Last Mountain, June 2011, 95 minutes, Dada Films, Directed by Bill Haney.

ODAC Newsletter – Sep 30

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The debt crisis and the war in Libya continued their push and pull on the oil price this week with the outlook currently weakening over fears of a Eurozone recession. Despite this Brent continues to trade at over $100/barrel – around double the price at which any previous economic recovery has occurred. The rising cost of energy is playing out in a number of ways…

Peak oil – Sept 30

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– “Rome didn’t collapse in a day” – adult comic about one man’s awakening to peak oil
– Is Yergin Correct about Oil Supply? by Gail Tverberg (an Opinion the WSJ did not run)
– Forget about peak oil (Yergin interviewed by “Salon”)
– The UK’s North Sea production declines below 1 million barrel per day