Turning toward the sun for energy
One key component of the Plan B climate stabilization strategy is solar energy. Solar is even more ubiquitous than wind energy and can be harnessed with both solar photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal collectors.
Lester Brown
China’s Energy Future
I was recently asked to participate in an energy roundtable at Focus on China’s Energy Future and the Shale Gas Question. It is no secret that I feel that China’s moves stand to continue sending shock waves through the energy markets over the upcoming years. In fact, energy news from China warranted inclusion in My Top 10 Energy Stories of both 2009 and 2010. In 2009, I stated my belief that “China will be the single-biggest driver of oil prices over at least the next 5-10 years.” In 2010, the news was reported by the International Energy Administration (IEA) that China had become the world’s top energy consumer. BP confirmed this in their just-released Statistical Review of World Energy 2011.
Ask me about my agony and despair!
Often is the question posed to me, maybe over on my Facebook page or via email after someone has made it through the messier parts of my book, but also in sundry sweaty nightclubs or boutique SF coffeeholes and therefore almost always fully clothed but almost never in a state of calm emotional stability: Mark, how the hell do you do it?
How do you avoid becoming horribly soiled and tainted, downtrodden and depressed every single day by the relentless onslaught, the endless horrors and bleakness hurled forth by the blood-soaked and desperately panicky mainstream media, inside of which you apparently still writhe and (mostly, sporadically, drunkenly) thrive?
Why doesn’t the UN consider energy depletion?
In thousands of ways, UN policy helps shape how we respond to emerging crises, from basic poverty to world political events, from food to climate change and population. What is emerging, however, is that UN analyses are increasingly diverging from reality – as they attempt to describe our future, they have failed to adequately (or at all) take into account that most basic of all considerations, material limits on energy resources.
The Shrinking Pie: Currency wars
Since the economic crisis began, stresses in trade between the U.S. and China have led to unfriendly official comments on both sides regarding the other nation’s currency. Some financial commentators suggest that "currency wars," which might also embroil the European Union and other nations, may be in the offing, and that these could eventually turn into trade wars or even military conflicts. The U.S. dollar, as the world’s reserve currency and as the national currency of the country leading the world into the post-growth era, appears to be central to these "money wars."
Peak oil notes – June 9
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
Sailing craft for a post-collapse world
Land transport will be costly, difficult and dangerous after the industrial system has broken down. Moving goods and people by water will be a better option even for quite short distances but what sort of boats will be needed and what materials will be available to build them?
The peak oil crisis: the gathering storm
The world is beginning to look a lot like the August of 1914 or perhaps the summer of 1939 all over again. This time instead of the great powers of central Europe dragging the rest of us into a European affair, it seems that nearly every corner of the earth is facing some sort of imminent disaster that could combine into a very unpleasant situation.
The French Connection: a report on the acceleration of Transition in France
You can get a sense of where Transition in France is heading; quite rightly so. You can taste the cultural identity of France embodied in Transition in France; something José Bové and Pierre Rabhi – and the Colibri folks would be proud of. France is the last major European country to take up Transition, just ahead of Albania, and about at the same stage as Portugal. Why has it taken so long?
Sierra Club goes totally peak oil — almost
A veteran anti-corporate campaigner, Michael Brune is not your ordinary environmentalist. And now that’s he’s in charge, America’s oldest and largest green group is no longer your father’s Sierra Club. So it’s no surprise that his book “Coming Clean,” re-released after the Deepwater Horizon spill, presents peak oil as a major energy challenge. But as a big fan of the green economy, Brune is more optimistic than many peak oil writers about the ability of solar, wind and other renewables to replace oil and coal. Is he right?
Heeding the warnings of environmental Reveres
Pathetically the media has been awash with New York Congressmember Anthony Weiner’s string of electronic sexual peccadillos. Punctuating the sensationalism, and between the TV commercials from the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries, are story after story of extreme weather events. Herein lies the real scandal: Why aren’t the TV meteorologists, with each story, following the words “extreme weather” with another two, “climate change”?
Who has time to worry about OPEC?
Members of OPEC will agree to increase their official production today, but that won’t do much to lower prices — the plenitude of energy-related stress across the globe underscores more than ever how power has dispersed out of OPEC’s hands. It’s not only the civil war in Libya, and the loss of its 1.4 million barrels a day of oil exports, or the chaos in Yemen. From the South China Sea to Alberta, Canada, tempers are flared over the control and movement of oil.
