Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Deborah Lawrence Under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) new rule for oil and gas, companies have been allowed much greater freedom to book reserves. On the surface, there is a good argument to be made for expanding the definition of allowable booked reserves. But in practice, this may have opened the door to false valuations of shale assets.
The US presidential election has taken a predictable turn with the rhetoric du jour that asks, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The implication being that, in the Great Recession, you can’t possibly be better off than you were in the good ol’ days of Dubya Bush and Company.
…Kunstler has a new work of social criticism titled Too Much Magic, his first nonfiction book since The Long Emergency came out in 2005. The book is an inquiry into a skewed, delusional perception of reality that Kunstler thinks has become “baseline normal for the American public lately.” Americans, he says, have been led astray by the incredible technological advancements of recent times. We’ve come to believe that any problem we face is solvable—as if by magic—with the application of some new technology.
-Wind could meet many times world’s total power demand by 2030, Stanford researchers say
-EU proposal would limit use of crop-based biofuels
-Indian blackout held no fear for small hamlet where the power stayed on
-Asia Risks Water Scarcity Amid Coal-Fired Power Embrace
American society seems to have lost its old prejudices against farmers since the hick and hayseed days and in fact the small, local variety is probably being canonized more than we deserve. But the class conflict between city and country is still around.
The path to a new political economy leads straight away from consumerism and commercialism to a very different world in which getting and spending, material possessions, and overall consumption have a decidedly circumscribed and modest place in everyday life.
In the new book, “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt,” journalist Chris Hedges and illustrator Joe Sacco look at the poorest areas in the United States, “sacrifice zones” where human beings and natural resources have been used and then abandoned. A former New York Times correspondent, Hedges reported from Ground Zero beginning just after the 9/11 attacks…”The most retrograde forces within American society have used the specter of the war on terror or terrorism in the same way the most retrograde forces within American society used communism or anti-communism to crush any kind of legitimate dissent or any questioning of the structures of power,” Hedges said.
-EOG Says U.S. Fracking Rule to Cost $1.5 Billion a Year
-Shale gas will not cut EU import dependence: study
-EU study sparks regulation debate over ‘high-risk’ shale gas
-Davey takes aim at shale gas lobby with defence of Energy Bill
-California fracturing takes less water than Texas
Larry Elliot writes in the Gaurdian that ‘the era of cheap food may be over’. He’s absolutely right in one crucial fact; the world faces some tough decisions. Aside from that, however, this was an article from a business desk: a lightened version of human and environmental damage and a broken agricultural system that agricultural solutions will fix. But it’s the wider problem that needs to be addressed.
-An open letter to Owen Paterson, the new environment secretary
-“The 1%”: The Pluses and Minuses of an Historic Term
-We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say
In 2012, the Arctic Sea Ice hit a stunning new record low. Rutgers scientist Jennifer Francis explains how this changes weather for billions of people in the Northern Hemisphere. Plus the Director of the Snow and Ice Data Center, Mark Serreze on record and what it means, and analysis from polar scientist Jennifer Bitz, U of Washington. In depth, direct from top scientists.
In the popular imagination, global warming threatens cold-adapted species, like polar bears and Emperor penguins. However, Silman and many other ecologists have come to believe that climate change is likely to have just as great an impact, indeed probably an even greater impact, in the tropics.
