Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Last week the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy was released. I always look forward to the release, because the data represent the most comprehensive, publicly available database on energy consumption and production statistics. I have now read through this year’s report, picking out what I believe are important trends and data points.
If you still know anybody who thinks the economy is in “recovery,” just lay this one single statistic on them: one in two recent U.S. college graduates today is unemployed or underemployed, unable to find work in his or her chosen field.
So what happens, in this time of economic starvation, when one of those remaining corporate businesses wants to buck the trend, and instead of leaving town, actually wants to come in?
-Energy expert Byron King on peak oil, natural gas and rare earth [video]
-Chart of the week: a picture of world oil
-Europe shale push shaken by Exxon’s Poland pullout
-‘Carbon capture’ too risky, earthquake prone: US study
A weekly review including:
– Oil and the Global Economy
– Europe at a turning point
– The Iranian confrontation
– An IEA appraisal
– Quote of the Week
– Briefs
We don’t see a peak for the year 2000, nor we see it for 2005. If the peak had been in 2000 or 2005, we should be already seeing a significant production decline. What we see, instead, is a plateau that has been lasting for the past five years or so, interrupting the growth trend that had been the rule from 1983. So, no peak so far, but clearly “something” has been happening with oil production starting with the first decade of the 21st century, considering also the remarkable increase in oil prices of that period. But what’s happening, exactly? Where is the peak? Should we expect it soon, or is it delayed for a long time?
It’s a good thing, the proliferating discussion about economic growth and environmental protection among ecologists. Such discussion was sorely lacking just ten years ago. Without addressing the subject of economic growth, the ecological professions would be but marginally relevant to society and doomed to extinction. Money is running out for research that appears benign at best and wasteful at worst in the days of fiscal austerity, otherwise known as the 21st century.
Subscribe to a magazine such as Adventure Cycling or Google your way to any of hundreds of bicycle travel blogs and you will quickly learn that average people do travel by bicycle . . . all the time. And it’s not surprising. Cycling is more efficient than any other method of travel.
Gifts have the function of bonding communities together. … If your entire life is nothing but money transactions, … then you don’t have community because you don’t need anybody. — Charles Eisenstein
My dad just gave me a brand-new sawzall reciprocating saw. Yesterday its maiden voyage helped to repair the rainwater harvesting tanks at the community garden. In the spirit of gifting (in Maori they call it hau), with this “second giving” the sawzall entered into the gift economy.
By now skeptical readers may have concluded that we are cherry-picking the evidence to confirm our hypothesis that global growth is ending. An argument against that hypothesis would surely start with data from China, whose economy has continued expanding at about 9 percent per year in recent years even in the face of deepening worries elsewhere.
But China is slowing too. And its problems may end up being just as deep as those in Greece or the US.
That’s when you see the past and the future in your own hands. How everything hinges ultimately on our own efforts: Who will dig the land, who will shape the land, what is it worth, and in what spirit will this work be done? Up until the 1950s half the population in Suffolk worked on the land; now it’s 0.5 percent. The country has become something we understand at arm’s length, a Suffolk of industrial agriculture, fringed with nature tourism and leisure. And yet in our hearts, somewhere, we know there is a deeper relationship we have with our homeland, and if we were wise, we would be seeking it out.
This new study explores the implications of a major financial crisis for the supply-chains that feed us, keep production running and maintain our critical infrastructure. It also provides a framework for looking at global complexity, vulnerability risk and collapse dynamics. A broad financial collapse is argued to be likely arisng from credit over-expansion and the emergent effects of peak oil and food. A scenario involving the collapse of the Eurozone to show that increasing socio-economic complexity could rapidly spread irretrievable supply-chain failure across the world.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman likes to pose the following problem to audiences to illustrate our habitual modes of thinking: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 together and the bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
