Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kris De Decker From the earliest civilisations right up to the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans used sheer muscle power, organisation skills and ingenious mechanics to lift weights that would be impossible to handle by most power cranes in operation today.
I found it fairly easy to model gold production both for the world and the main producers in my 2009 post The gold peak, easier to model than the oil peak (part II). In this post, I have tried to do the same for copper production.
I think we can solve this problem. If we look at it from an engineering or technical perspective, we have solutions in hand that we can build out in the next decade that would reduce our carbon dramatically. We could double our nuclear, we could double our natural gas for electric power, ramp up wind and solar dramatically while cutting back our coal use 80 percent…Just because we could do it as engineers with off-the-shelf technology that exists today within a decade does not mean that the policy, economic, or cultural hurtles are not real.
Gazprom, the largest natural gas company in the world, is experiencing a moment of truth. And so, by extension, is Russia, which has relied on the behemoth for a large part of its tax revenue, and as a spearpoint of its foreign policy. The main ramifications are a shakeup in security presumptions in Europe and on the Caspian Sea, both of which until recently have seemed to be under Gazprom’s thumb.
– Falkland Islands drilling disappoints for Desire
– Books about oil: FT says we’ll be slower, more local
– How the majors see ‘business as usual’ on oil and climate
– Postponing peak oil with Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA
– Highlights from the first year of the FT Energy Source blog
The world’s energy ministers are currently discussing a forecast of global oil supplies “peaking between 2020-2025.” The International Energy Forum is the world’s largest gathering of Energy Ministers, who collectively represent “more than 90 per cent of global oil and gas supply and demand.” It is meeting March 29 –31 at the Mexican resort of Cancun. It will be considering peak oil with a document titled Unpacking Uncertainty: Investment Issues in the Petroleum Sector, written by “strategic advisors” PFC Energy, chosen to give an impartial overview of the various oil supply claims.
This paper is concerned with humanity’s impact on its environmental resource base, and the effect the resource base has on human welfare. What mediates between these is our complex civilisation…
Beyond dwindling oil production leading to an economic nose-dive, Yemen faces a plethora of other problems; overpopulation, unemployment, poverty, malnourishment, violence etc. A significant part of its scarce water resources are used for cultivating the mildly narcotic and widely popular plant qat. Yemen is a country heading for collapse.
Passover is a holiday deeply concerned with inclusion – at one point during each seder night, we open our doors and leave them open wide, and call out “let all who are hungry come and eat.” One year, teaching Hebrew School to 10 year olds, I asked them what would happen if they called out and a stranger came in and sat down. My students, largely from affluent and middle families in a leafy suburb where most strangers are likely to be much like them, were to a one deeply uncomfortable with the notion. They expressed fear at the thought of the stranger coming to their table, even surrounded by family members.
Fewer and fewer people are happily employed, according to Derek Bok, former President of Harvard, in his latest book. The only thing Americans hate more than working is commuting, but when he considers how we can get happier, he suggests doing less of neither. Being an unhappy worker seems to be a normal, natural condition, but is it? Our hidden history of working together says it is not.
-Martin Crawford and me speaking at the Launch of ‘Climate Friendly Food’
-Churches partner with ‘transition town’ environmental movement
-Lexicon of Change: The Rise of Transition Culture
-Joel Salatin And Polyface Farm: Stewards of Creation
-Brian Kimmel looks to shine a light on the importance of eating locally with Ingredients at the CIFF
-The Best Film About a Plastic Bag You’ll Ever See
-Green advertising rules are made to be broken
-Watching the green screens at the Environmental Film Festival in D.C.
-Greenpeace Takes Aim at Koch Industries
