A moving target: Hardening our infrastructure against climate change
Hardening our infrastructure against the effects of climate change on our electrical grid, our drainage and sewer systems, and our roads and bridges seems like a no-brainer.
Kurt Cobb
The standard American diet: Downstream revenue for the U.S. health care system
Two recent reports add to the mounting evidence about how this strangely destructive system works.
Whatever happened to China’s revolutionary molten salt nuclear reactor program?
The case of molten salt reactors should make us wary of those promising quick, easy solutions to future energy needs and climate change.
Vaccine passports, globalism and the threat to humankind
The Biden administration is about to require COVID-19 vaccinations for all U.S. visitors. The plan is likely to become unworkable in very short order. It is an attempt to get around a now very clear fact about widespread international travel: That travel has become a threat to all humankind.
All of a sudden: Climate change tipping points appear with a vengeance
For decades policymakers and the public believed that climate change would arrive gradually and that therefore we had plenty of time to deal with it. Climate scientists knew better. The consequences of delaying action are now in the news every single day.
Huge carbon capture pipeline network proposed: Industry’s ‘delay-and-fail strategy’ rises again
The fossil fuel industry has been exceptionally proficient at delaying actions which would curb our appetite for fossil fuels or which would actually address climate change by dramatically reducing carbon emissions.
Standing Marx on his head: Rethinking socialism and sustainability
Marx is famous for standing Hegel on his head, arguing that ideas and culture are not the fundamental causes of a society’s form as Hegel claimed, but that it is the productive situation which determines a society’s superstructure of ideas and values. Sorry socialist comrades but he was wrong about that. And it’s important for thinking about revolutionary strategy.
Has OPEC finally won the war against shale oil?
It appears that OPEC has finally won its long war against shale oil as beaten up investors seek their fortunes elsewhere.
Climate change consequences: Too hot, too wet and out of time
We thought we had decades to avert climate catastrophe. But it’s already here.
Modern architecture: Ugliness is beauty
Modern architecture took a wrong turn early in the 20th century. It’s why there are many of us who find the modern buildings where we work, live, shop and socialize less than inviting and even disturbing in some cases.
Shale oil and gas fraud: A sign of a peak in oil supplies?
Investment icon Warren Buffett once wrote in a letter to shareholders, “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.” In the wake of the pandemic, the tide has gone out in U.S. shale oil and the naked swimmers are all around. With this decline of the so-called “shale miracle” is a peak in world oil production already behind us?
Who pays for the care of “orphaned” oil and gas wells? You do
There have been millions of oil and gas wells drilled in the United States since the beginning of the oil age and millions more drilled throughout the world. The carelessness of those who drilled and prospered by them is now turning into an ugly and persistent legacy of the industrial age.
