Staff

Ignoring the elephant in the room

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The disconnect between peak oil concerns and the presidential race is almost total. The candidates remain unwaveringly oblivious to the true causes of rising fuel prices, preferring instead to dwell on irrelevant — actually, counterproductive—measures like suspending the federal gas tax during the summer months or taxing Big Oil. This is akin to putting a band-aid on a melanoma.

The U. S. electric grid: will it be our undoing?

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Many believe that a decline in oil production can be remedied by increasing our use of electricity – more nuclear, wind, solar voltaic, geothermal or even coal. This model assumes that our electric grid will be working well enough for this to happen. There is substantial doubt that this will be the case.

Preparing for which future?

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As the age of cheap abundant energy comes to its end, making meaningful plans for the future depends on a vision of the future we can expect. Many of the supposed answers to the challenge of peak oil, however, have been proposed in response to many other crises, real and imaginary. How much of our thinking about the future is defined by the attempt to find plausible problems for culturally favored solutions to solve?

Bipartisan effort to continue renewable energy tax credits

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Congressman Roscoe Bartlett and 34 colleagues introduced bipartisan legislation to break the stalemate on extension of renewable energy tax credits.
+ background on why this is important:

Thomas L. Friedman: Dumb as We Wanna Be
New York Times editorial
CSM: Arizona’s solar aspirations in peril
Summary of
Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act of 2008

Peak oil – May 6

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Tim O’Reilly: Fermi’s Paradox and the end of cheap oil
People’s Weekly: End of cheap oil is now
Shell execs briefed on peak oil in 1956
On quenching our “big thirst” for oil
12 steps of peak oil
Financial Express of India