Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Bob Waldrop Going forward into the peak oil decline years, strong local economies are all that stand between us and collapse… When people shift their money from trans-continental banks to local banks and credit unions, their money goes to work in their own neighborhood and strengthens the real, local economy where they live and work.
Houston with oil at $70 or $300
How some Torontonians are preparing for PO
ASPO-USA conference proceedings
Commodities head for biggest weekly decline in over 50 years
Oil markets shifting from bullish to bearish
Eating local tests comfort zones
Why my (farmer) dad’s going green
Britain on a plate – class & diet
Could quotas keep fish on the menu?
Zimbabwe on the brink of new crisis as food runs out
Crossing paths in “The Walkable City”
To save energy, cities darken street lights
Future solutions in 1930s house
San Francisco speaks
New York speaks
Green energy boom in bailout bill
Palin to play ball with Big Oil
Will the U.S. nationalize the banks?
“Drill, baby, drill” already debunked – by Bush administration
A sustainable bailout plan for the U.S.
Worldchanging and the American future
Nashville’s gas crisis: inside the Metro bunker? (satire)
Receding horizons for alternative energy supplies
Richard Leakey: the end of the world as we know it
The slow erosion of heart and soul
Implications of fossil fuel constraints on economic growth and global warming
Climate change may be sparking new and bigger “dead zones”
Global carbon emissions rising rapidly: study
Met Office warns of need for drastic cuts in GHGs from 2010
Postcard from a tipping planet (animation)
Coal’s comeback
‘Clean coal’ policies absent, GAO finds
Al Gore’s call for civil disobedience to block coal plants
Boomtown Dubai feels effects of a global crisis
The party’s over for Iceland
Bolivia: defeat of the right
Behind the bluster, Russia Is collapsing
The backdrop of a financial crash on Wall Street cast a shadow over this year’s Association for the Study of Peak Oil – USA conference in Sacramento in late September. Speakers talked of an ominous parallel between the financial crisis and another graver crisis in the making – the coming rapid decline of worldwide oil production, which has stalled after reaching an all-time high more than three years ago.
New projects are harder to fund. Highly leveraged companies are sometimes finding it necessary to shed assets. Some players are finding themselves to be the indirect casualties of other players, like Lehman, that have already failed. Long term, we will probably see consolidation and lower production than would have been the case without the credit crunch. Of course, if there is a major recession, it is possible that we won’t need as high production.
Like the courtesan in the novel of 19th century French writer Balzac, atomic energy is a mélange of splendor and misery. It is at once a wellspring of great expectations about reducing reliance on fossil fuels and ridding nations of dependence on imported oil, and a hot bed of nightmares worthy of Dante’s infernal imagery about the land of eternal sorrows.
