Our shadow, the Borg, and the ruthlessness of efficiency
A fictional race of near automatons called The Borg appearing in the Star Trek series of television shows and movies have more in common with us modern humans than we’d like to admit.
Kurt Cobb
Taxing the sun: The Koch brothers find a tax they like
The Koch brothers, the much-maligned fossil fuel titans, were in the news last week after their legislative stalking horse, the innocuously named American Legislative Exchange Council, was discovered pushing legislation in the states that would establish new fees on solar energy.
Euro crisis or Argentina/Iceland/Malaysia: Which will be the model for future crises?
Will the future crises that climate change, peak resources and ecological destruction be just other useful crises for the powerful to make the rest pay?
Separating Gloom from Doom: A Post-Carbon Existentialism
This can be scary. But even while considering the direst aspects of a world of increasing constraints and contractions, I don’t find the future to be the source of gloom.
Chasing Ice (documentary film review)
If compelling scientific evidence isn’t sufficient to change the minds of people in the most powerful and second highest CO2-emitting nation in the world, wonder these experts, then what is? Nature photographer James Balog may have found one answer.
The Time of the Seedbearers
I’ve more than once considered writing a fantasy novel about the fall of Atlantis as a way of talking about the crisis of our age.
New York state shale gas: Not so much
A drilling foreman once told me, "Don’t believe ANY reserve number unless it’s linked to a price." And, that is just what petroleum geologist and consultant Arthur Berman and his colleague Lyndon Pittinger have done in a new report on the viability of shale gas in New York state.
Refusing the Call: A Tale Rewritten
I have been wondering for some time now how to talk about the weirdly autumnal note that sounds so often and so clearly in America these days.
On Earth Day, an Economics for People and Planet
Much has changed since the first Earth Day in 1970. Not only have our ecological crises come into sharper focus, it has also become obvious that we need to rescue not just the Earth, but also its people from the clutches of an economy gone mad.
Perverse outcomes: Lifting U.S. oil export ban would mean greater dependence on foreign oil
There is a case regarding market efficiency for overturning America’s oil export ban, but this is NOT the one the industry is using in its public relations campaign. That’s because increased efficiency in the world oil market would actually make the country’s oil supply more vulnerable to events abroad.
The End of Employment
Nothing is easier, as the Long Descent begins to pick up speed around us, than giving in to despair—and nothing is more pointless.
Kashagan – Back to the drawing board?
The recent shutdown of Kashagan oil field in Kazakhstan represents one of the most scathing riches-to-rags stories in modern oil history.
