Climate change policy – Aug 22
Leading Canada Liberal proposes carbon tax /
Interview: Nancy Skinner, U.S. Director, The Climate Group / Limiting climate change: the neglected obstacle
Staff
Geopolitics – Aug 22
Energy crisis – the culprit is national oil companies & socialism [Not!] / Sino-Cuba energy relations raise concern in Washington /
Russian pipeline monopoly warns Lithuanian refinery of long shutoff / Bolivia suspends a takeover of oil and gas / Japan and China race for African oil
Cuba’s pathbreaking energy policies
As the age of oil ends, a society that clings to the social and economic institutions and practices of the early twenty-first century will go the way of North Korea. The lesson to be learned from these two Communist states is change or die. [Former Washington Post columnist von Hoffman jumps on the peak oil bandwagon.]
CERA’s Rosy Oil Forecast – Pabulum to the People
CERA’s new report might be reassuring if they did not have a checkered forecasting record, and if its findings were not hedged six ways to Sunday.
Carbon sequestration – Aug 21
Deep-sea sediments could safely store man-made carbon dioxide /
Burying the evidence of global warming (carbon sequestration in lava flows) /
Needed: A Price on Carbon
Economics – Aug 21
Ford Is Slashing Production 20% for 4th Quarter /
Wal-Mart Posts First Profit Decline in a Decade /
Australia: Brace yourselves, warns Treasurer /
Meacher: Now America goes cap in hand, as Britain once did /
The eurozone cannot decouple from US recession
Katrina, global warming & peak oil
You might say that if fossil fuels are a big, thick steak, then renewables like ethanol are an arugula side salad with low-cal dressing. The salad is better for your health and lighter on the land, but it’s not going to fill your belly.
Net Oil Exports Revisited
Jeffrey J. Brown on the decline in global oil exports and the future of suburbia
Real men don’t go vroom
The Tesla would show the world that electric cars were definitely not dead yet. In fact the Tesla might well be the death knell of the combustion engine itself.
Environment – Aug 20
China’s anti-pollution efforts stink /
Engineered grass found growing in wild /
Scientists add years to ozone recovery
The new age of sail
…Let us drop the conceit that these are “problems,” and that they can be “fixed.” Let us instead try an experiment: let us dissociate from human history, and free-associate our way into the next chapter of natural history, which, let us bravely assume, a member of our ecologically challenged species will still be on hand to narrate.
The democratization of envy
The question for a future with ecological limits becomes: What shall we do with this powerful force of envy which has been awakened across the globe? How will people, both the rich and those aspiring to greater wealth, come to grips with limits which will undermine the consumer society within which that envy flourishes?
