Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Chuck Collins, Vicki Robin, and Asher Miller discussed Building Resilience. They took a look at two different models for community resilience building: Resilience Circles & Transition Initiatives. [Transcript now online]
Chuck Collins, Vicki Robin, and Asher Miller discussed Building Resilience. They took a look at two different models for community resilience building: Resilience Circles and Transition Initiatives. [Transcript now online]
Most Americans are caught up in the Klingons/Cylons distinction in ways that are destructive – the default assumption is a techno-utopianism that doesn’t take physical limits into account, and if they consider any other viewpoint, they assume that the alternative is an apocalyptic nightmare, a Mad-Max-style cartoon.
Neither of these is a likely outcome – we know that we are likely to experience unchecked climate change, energy depletion and economic instability related to both (and to a host of other factors) – there’s little doubt about all of those outcomes. But assuming that everyone will have a single utopian or dystopian experience stands against pretty much all historical evidence. That doesn’t mean no one’s life is ever ideal or disastrous – merely that that’s not generally where most experiences lie.
Over the years there has been significant convergence between the peak oil and business-as-usual camps, each hopefully learning from the other. Yergin, whilst attempting to debunk peak oil, appears to have been converted to a late peakist. I can certainly relate to many of the concepts described by Yergin – price influencing supply and demand, technology, innovation and new plays etc – but wonder when these are going to result in new production capacity (supply) that exceeds annual declines?
The stakes are high. Should policy makers listen to Pulitzer Prize winning historians? Or should they listen to geologists and a growing band of economists who can see the dependency of economic growth upon increasing supplies of cheap energy that quite simply do not appear to exist? Most important of all, will the WSJ publish a modified view of the oil world than that presented by Daniel Yergin?
In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, gave his explanation of what’s wrong with peak oil. Here’s why I don’t find his analysis altogether convincing. … I submit that meeting the growing global demand for crude oil over the last five years has posed significant challenges for the world economy. And those who worry that the next 5-10 years might be like the last should not be dismissed as crackpots.
In his article in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Yergin contradicted his own “There Will Be Oil” mantra by stating that discovery of new fields will be lower in future. With detailed knowledge of the world’s oil production one can actually show that part of Yergin’s discussion supports the fact that we are living in the era of Peak Oil. … The false image of the future that Daniel Yergin described can be compared to trying to steer a supertanker on a journey by only looking in the rearview mirror.
Here’s a metaphor that may help in explaining why high oil prices are choking off economic growth for the U.S., and to a lesser extent the rest of the world as well. Think of the oil price as the mercury in a thermostat. As the economy heats up, the mercury expands (oil prices go up). This shuts off the furnace (the factors of production and consumption in the economy that make it grow). As the economy cools, demand for oil contracts and oil prices decline. But with oil now cheap, the factors of production kick in again; this causes oil prices to be bid up, and high prices once again choke off growth.
– Buddhism and the End of Economic Growth
– Chris Clugston: Humanity’s Fatal Distraction
– Downloadable book on green economics (translated from German)
– Rob Hopkins talks about Transition
– Top 5 Ways Hippies Can Make You Rich ($ advantages of intentional communities)
– Interview with Slow Money Founder Woody Tasch
– New Fields May Propel Americas to Top of Oil Companies’ Lists (NY Times cornucopia)
– Peak Oil and Faith Based Energy Debates
– Chevron loses latest stage of Amazon pollution battle
– The coming German energy turnaround
In an epoch when financial pundits insist that manipulating the arcane symbols we call “money” can materialize petroleum in the bowels of the Earth, and a sizable fraction of Americans seem to think that chanting “Drill baby drill” as a mantra can accomplish the same improbable feat, it’s probably past time to discuss the interface between magic and peak oil. The Archdruid plunges in where rationalists fear to tread, with one word of caution–that word “magic” may not mean what you think it means.
The EIA published International Energy Outlook 2011 (IEO 2011) on September 19, showing energy projections to 2035. One summary stated, “Global Energy Use to Jump 53%, largely driven by strong demand from places like India and China.” It seems to me that this estimate is misleadingly high. The EIA is placing too much emphasis on what demand would be, if the price were low enough. In fact, oil, natural gas, and coal are all getting more difficult (and expensive) to extract.
