Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff – Don’t sweat the oil speculators
– Saudi Arabia protests could be calamitous for oil market
– FT: Oil markets brace for Saudi ‘rage’ as global spare capacity wears thin
– The secret group setting the price of oil: Us (energy traders)
– Tverberg: If Oil Supply Declines Quickly, How do We Deal with It?
– Oil Roller Coaster Gets Wilder (PO with a local slant)
– The unusual uses of urine
– NYT on Peak Coffee: Heat Damages Colombia Coffee, Raising Prices
– Decline of Honey Bees Now a Global Phenomenon, says UN
– US farmers fear the return of the Dust Bowl
– The world food crisis” the squeeze on purchasing power
With instability in the Middle East driving oil prices higher, huge cracks are widening in the global economy. In an effort to broaden the conversation about Middle East unrest and its impacts on oil prices and economies, the Post Carbon Institute offers six informed perspectives on what to expect in the days, weeks and months ahead. Individuals, businesses and policy makers are made aware of the speed with which seemingly incremental price gains can topple global dominoes.
Petroleum geophysicist and author Jean Laherrère explains that we are in the current energy crisis not only because fuel is running out, but because its cost is too cheap. Laherrère, a former TOTAL oil company employee, used his insider knowledge to co-author a game-changing 1998 article in Scientific American, “The End of Cheap Oil,” which studied oil depletion based on the most accurate database of the world’s oilfields at the time.
Vancouver filmmaker Jon Cooksey’s documentary film How to Boil a Frog showcases a unique talent for delivering bad news with a humorous twist. He also advocates that we bring our hearts, minds, and political activism to the table in order to push back against the corporate assault on our lives.
As all of you know who have spent the better part of your working life hitching and unhitching stuff, when you are alone you must bring the tractor to a dead stop at the exact right place, get off, and because you never are in the exact right place, pull the implement forward or the tractor backward the inch or so necessary with brute, hernia-causing strength. No tractor yet made, even on perfectly level ground, will stay put exactly where you stop it for hitching.
– Nansen Saleri: Our Man-Made Energy Crisis
– The truth about India’s coal
– Will Federal Regulators Crack Down on Oil Speculation?
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The world-system has been in a structural crisis since the 1970s. The primary characteristic of a structural crisis is chaos. This is not a situation of totally random happenings. It is a situation of rapid and constant fluctuations in all the parameters of the historical system. This includes not only the world-economy, the interstate system, and cultural-ideological currents, but also the availability of life resources, climatic conditions, and pandemics. The one encouraging feature about a systemic crisis is the degree to which it increases the viability of agency, of what we call “free will.” When the system is far from equilibrium, every little input has great effect.
For millions of rural women and their families in developing countries, rights to agricultural land and forest resources are critical determinants of their well-being and their security against destitution. Not only can such property rights enhance individual welfare, they can also strengthen livelihoods for the most vulnerable and help conserve forests that are of global importance as carbon sinks and sources of biodiversity.
Electric aviation can replace our oil based transport with a system that is faster, cleaner and cheaper using existing technology. No advanced batteries are required to build this system!
(Replacing oil with electric aviation using take-off assist)
– UN: Eco-Farming Feeds the World
– Eco-Farming Could Double Food Output of Poor Countries, Says UN
– NYT’s Mark Bittman: Sustainable Farming Can Feed the World?
– Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food
– How one New York bike lane could affect the future of cycling worldwide
– New level of anti-bike mania in NYC (a classic takedown of a “New Yorker” screed)
– Bicycle master plan is expected to be approved by the L.A. City Council
– Bike spike expected as motoring costs increase
– Urban Bikeway Design Guide introduced (NEW)
