Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Guy McPherson 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.
-Wall Street’s Naked Swindle
-Where Will the Jobs Come From?
-New School of Thought Brings Energy to ‘the Dismal Science’
-The greatest theft in American history
-Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?
-Revolutionizing Economic Thought
-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.
This run-up-in-oil-prices-and-then-crash-in-recession cycle will continue until we actually move to other sources of energy.
Much passionate concern is flying around regarding the United Nations meeting on climate this December in Copenhagen. We hear it from honest activists and from politicians who sound trustworthy on this most crucial matter. An example is Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Great Britain, who deserves a prize for eloquence in warning us of climate change.
A weekly review including:
– Production and prices
– Copenhagen
– Oil and Money Conference
– Quote of the Week
– Briefs
The scene in the White House these days must be a sort of Opera Bouffe, in which an earnest and rather grave young man moves from one roomful of lesser officials to another in which all agree to pretend that they have prevented the nation from falling into something they call “the abyss.” At the end of Act I, a young deputy FDIC commissioner in the Little Mary Sunshine mold gets down on one knee, belts out a show-stopper about the glories of a bright and shining “tomorrow,” and the audience goes out for intermission to discover that the city has been burning down around the theater all night.
Our industry is at a crossroads. In the past few years, oil supply has struggled to keep pace with demand. But the financial crisis has reduced demand by 2 million barrels per day, creating excess inventories and lower prices. But once economic growth recovers, it is likely we will return to the market conditions of one year ago. The price of $140 per barrel oil was not an aberration; it was a warning.
“Peak oil can be a very tricky topic, the way I talk about it and deal with it at the end of the day is: We need to revolutionize the way we consume and produce energy… We need to really be the leaders in saying: the future for our children and our grandchildren as far as energy consumption and as far as production, it looks like this” with those words Colorado Governor Bill Ritter started his closing speech at the ASPO conference in Denver that took place from 10 to 12 October 2009.
Hold on to your hat! There will be no smooth descent from the worldwide peak.
