Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Erik Curren Despite the plans of major electricity users around the world to pull away from nuclear power after Fukushima, Saudi Arabia has announced that it’s planning to start building power reactors at a breakneck pace. This could be yet another sign that Matt Simmons was right about the Saudi oil peak, signalling the beginning of the end of the Oil Age. But we have to wonder if the Oil Sheiks can control their new atomic toy.
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.
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?
Much has been made of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization’s FAO) 2009 recommendation that the world will need to produce 70 percent more food to feed the projected global population of 9.1 billion people in 2050. Policymakers and agricultural investors have focused on increasing supply for the global food market. And while 925 million people worldwide today remain chronically hungry—amidst unprecedented population growth, resource depletion, and climate change—meeting the needs of the future is an enormous challenge for the world food system.
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."
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
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?
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.
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?
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?
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”?
Recent suggestions that the current boom in natural gas will be a bridge to a future of sustainable energy are highly reminiscent of similar claims from the past — claims that turned out to be entirely wrongheaded. A bridge is only useful if there’s somewhere to get to on the other side, and in the future ahead of us, the other side will inevitably be defined by much less energy use. With the help of a photovoltaic panel, the Archdruid explains.
