Matthew Wild

It’s a race to failure between rogue states and global oil output

by

Dwindling global oil supplies are leaving the world ever more reliant on a group of unstable countries – many of which are themselves facing major domestic problems right now.
Believe it or not, many of the world’s major oil exporters cannot maintain their own domestic energy requirements. Venezuelan consumers endure electricity blackouts of “seven or eight hours a day,” but less well known is the situation in the Middle East, where residents are facing rolling power outages just as summer temperatures soar, and with it, the demand for air conditioning.

America divided: the politics of inequality

by

The economic crisis in the United States has had a profound impact on the lives of millions of its citizens. Among the most damaging is the experience of unemployment. In a country where notions of work, self-reliance, and self-improvement are fundamental to its identity, the insecurities and hardships associated with forced idleness are hard indeed to cope with.

Revisiting the Fake Fire Brigade Part 2: Biomass – A Panacea?

by

In many resource discussions, biomass emerges as a solution that allows us to continue many activities currently powered by fossil fuels: First, to move cars, trucks, machinery and planes when oil runs out or becomes too expensive. Second, to provide flexibility in electric power generation, i.e. when other sources are stochastic and inflexible, biomass would provide the necessary gap-filling power. Third, to heat our homes, after natural gas production declines. There are many estimates of future uses for biomass, and many new technologies that are making their first baby-steps, quite a few of them promising and worth trying.

What else?

by

For more than 100 years the coal-producing counties of eastern Kentucky have been dependent on the coal industry, which has dominated them politically and, submitting only to the limits of technology, has come near to ruining them. The legacy of the coal economy in the Kentucky mountains will be immense and lasting damage to the land and to the people. Much of the damage to the land and the streams, and to water quality downstream, will be irreparable within historical time. The lastingness of the damage to the people will, to a considerable extent, be determined by the people.

Cool roofs save money, save energy, cut pollution and directly reduce warming!

by

What wildly underfunded climate solution can achieve all of these goals simultaneously:

  • Slow global warming by increasing the reflectivity of the Earth (geo-engineering)
  • Reduce local temperatures in the hottest cities (adaptation)
  • Reduce fossil CO2 emissions (mitigation)
  • Save U.S. consumers and businesses billions of dollars in energy costs
  • Reduce urban smog and hence cardio-pulmonary disease
  • Create more than 100,000 jobs in two years?

The answer is a major effort to make roofs (and pavements) whiter and/or more reflective, which should be coupled with a major urban tree-planting effort.

Economics – July 22

by

-Outpacing U.S., China now the world’s largest gorger of energy
-The Big Picture according to TAE: An updated primer guide
-The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It
-Interview: How Our Economy is Killing the Earth
-Part 5A. What Happens If Things Go Really Badly? $15 Trillion of Sovereign Debt in Default