Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Steve Levine The party isn’t over — at least not yet. For the last year, relatively low oil prices have helped us all cope with the economic collapse. We’ve paid less for gasoline than we have for years. And businesses have paid less for running their factories, planes and product transportation. But last week we began hearing the music die down and waiters moving guests out the door.
One feature of this year’s ASPO conference that I most enjoyed was the contradiction amongst presentations. Marcio Mello gave an animated talk on Sunday night about the pre-salt formations off the coast of Brazil quoting that there are upwards of 500 billion barrels of oil available, an extravagant estimate that peak oilers are unused to hearing. Monday morning two talks on natural gas were juxtaposed in tone and content, one claiming that natural gas is the “American Treasure” and the other claiming that shale gas is marginally profitable, let alone a “treasure.”
-Push for Afghanistan troop increase continues on deadly day
-Success elusive for U.S. policy in Afghanistan
-Former Marine captain resigns in protest of Afghanistan war
-The great gamble
-A Crash Course in Democracy
Last week oil broke out of a months-long trading range and surged to $82 a barrel. For many of us who remember $140 oil from the summer of ’08 this might not sound impressive until you are reminded that every time oil (adjusted for inflation) broke $80 a barrel some sort of economic recession occurred.
I start with a basic truth. A persistent pattern of violence against people, community, and nature is inherent in the institutional structure of our existing economy. You don’t treat a cancer with Band-Aids, and we can’t resolve our current economic crisis with marginal regulatory adjustments. It is time to rethink and restructure.
Where will you go when the sewers clog up? Where will you go when the porcelain finally cracks? Where will you go when the Toilet Duck quacks its last?
-Oilwatch Monthly October 2009
-A post-oil world gets less sci-fi by the day
-The Truth About Energy
-Global oil supply: Separating fact from fiction
-Biofuel Displacing Food Crops May Have Bigger Carbon Impact Than Thought
-Biofuels rather than electric cars to meet renewables target
-Tanzania Suspends Biofuels Investments
-Who says it’s green to burn woodchips?
-Carbon advantage of biofuels may be overstated
Passing the world oil peak has had, and doubtless will continue to have, relatively little impact on the long-term price of gasoline. The economic implications of getting through the first half of the Oil Age have been much more significant, a trend that seems likely to continue until the collapse is complete.
-Salon interviews the late Adam Smith
-What Jane Jacobs Can Teach Us About the Economy
-Welcome to 2025
-Carolyn Baker reviews Daniel Elgin’s “The Living Universe”
-Bill Moyers: How Can the U.S. Be an Empire and a Democracy at the Same Time?
“We need to break up the big banks. We need banks that understand good farming practices, soil stewardship … and look at the long-term picture for the good of the environment and not just short-term profits.”
A couple weeks ago, I attended the 2009 international conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), out in Denver. Here’s the long and short of it. We’re in trouble. With a capital “T,” and that rhymes with “P,” and that stands for Peak Oil. By every measure, the world’s output of crude oil peaked between 2005 and 2007.
