Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff Oil prices dropped this week on rising US inventories, a strengthening dollar, and news of a further crackdown on credit in China. Speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week, Richard Jones, Deputy Executive Director of the IEA predicted that there would be little price volatility in 2010 as existing supplies and stock build ups would balance demand.
-When the Media Is the Disaster
-Naomi Klein on how corporate branding has taken over America
-The best things in life are free
-Do soot emissions mean that wood heating causes global warming?
-Bavarian prince hits resistance over plans for giant solar park
-Companies team up with Abu Dhabi over green jet fuel
-Hybrid Cars Won’t Save Much Oil
Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—giving corporations the ability to spend money directly to influence federal elections under the Constitution’s First Amendment—was inevitable. It represents a logical expansion of corporate constitutional “rights”—which include the rights of persons which have been judicially conferred upon corporations. “Personhood” rights mean that corporations possess First Amendment rights to free speech, along with a litany of other rights that are secured to persons under the federal Bill of Rights.
Sometimes when I am in the right mood I say during my presentations that “China has Walmart to thank for its fantastic growth”. That growth has transformed China into a wealthy nation that can now afford to pay more than anyone else for the world’s remaining oil production rights…The fact that there is insufficient oil for continued global growth can mean that we, in addition to Peak Oil, will see “Peak Globalisation”.
The January edition of Oilwatch Monthly is now available: 1) Conventional crude production – Latest figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that crude oil production including lease condensates increased by 592,000 b/d from September to October 2009, resulting in total production of crude oil including lease condensates of 73.12 million b/d…
-Pick-your-own vegetables to replace flowers in high street
-Permaculture Design is for Disaster Relief, Not Just for Gardens
-Sharon, the bounty!: A review of Astyk’s “Independence Days”
-Oilrigs should be used for homes in areas at risk of flooding, report says
-Growing Home—Urban Agriculture in Chicago
-Towns Rush to Make Low-Carbon Transition
It is true that people worked long hours in the past – but the pattern of those hours was radically different. Community thrived when more people lived and worked embedded in their community. Now most Americans spend a third of their waking hours in a workplace community, often completely unconnected from the community proximate to their home…Instead of belonging to connected social institutions, if they are members of community organizations, they are probably members of completely different ones.
Interested in Energy? Like to rock out? Well, three rockin’ peak-oil/energy related songs are included here with lyrics: Peak Oil Blues, Americium, and Energy Matters. A brief commentary on each song is also provided to improve your listening experience. Rock on.
Very little seems to connect the quest for community in today’s declining industrial societies with the mostly empty and mostly forgotten lodge halls that still dot America’s older cities and towns. Appearances deceive, though, for the old fraternal lodges — themselves the product of an earlier quest for community — offer some useful pointers for the present, as well as a cautionary lesson of no small importance.
-Conoco, Total to expand oil sands project
-Shell faces shareholder revolt over Canadian tar sands project
-Alberta to study pace of oil sands growth
-UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning
-The New Storm Brewing On the Climate Front
-U.N. Panel’s Glacier Warning Is Criticized as Exaggerated
-“Glacier gate” – how the Murdoch press have got it wrong on the Himalayan big melt
-Hanging EPA regulations around Democrats’ necks
-Murkowski to call on Congress to block federal greenhouse gas regulation
-Emissions targets set for delay
-UN drops deadline for countries to state climate change targets
