D. Ray Long

Commentary: Peak Oil, Declining EROI and the New Energy-Economic Reality

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This week in the ASPO-USA Webinar series, Dr. Charles A.S. Hall presented his talk “Peak Oil, Declining EROI and the New Energy-Economic Reality. Dr. Hall was trained as a systems ecologist by Howard Odum at the University of North Carolina. Today he is ESF Foundation Distinguished Professor at State University of New York in the College of Environmental Science & Forestry. He is also the author of Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy.

A suburban holiday

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I now think of my native country the way many of my countrymen think of Ireland, as a holiday destination, indulgent and surreal, except instead of a rollercoaster my daughter and I scream happily and hold on to the car as we drive around a highway cloverleaf, and instead of a castle I can take her to a Barnes and Noble the same size. But then, as much as we enjoy seeing friends and family again, I’m reminded why we’re raising our daughter somewhere else.

Mudville – Tin Village at the Sunrise Festival

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Sometimes you have to go off-line, off-grid, out of your comfort zones, to get a sense of what is possible. I know now when push comes to shove people can work together in hard conditions and flourish. And when they do something beautiful can happen that you would not expect if you judged everything from the way things appear, from the outside. The people who will make the future work are not the people you think: the control people, the shiny people, the spiritual people. They are the activist people, smart, funny, edgy, generous, friendly, warrior-hearted. The people who are not afraid of the mud. Who are not afraid of the earth or each other, and who can still make a fire, come what may.

Eight Fallacies about Growth

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One thing the Democrats and Republicans will agree on in the current U.S. presidential campaign is that economic growth is our number one goal and is the basic solution to all problems. The idea that growth could conceivably cost more than it is worth at the margin, and therefore become uneconomic in the literal sense, will not be considered. But, aside from political denial, why do people (frequently economists) not understand that continuous growth of the economy (measured by either real GDP or resource throughput) could in theory, and probably has in fact, become uneconomic? What is it that confuses them?

Here are eight likely reasons for confusion.

How cascading failures in the global finance system could mean TEOTWAWKI

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I’ve met David Korowicz and he is a thoughtful, deeply knowledgeable, highly analytical, caring man who worries that the global system we now labor under is headed for what might be called the ultimate crash. To Korowicz, a physicist turned risk consultant, that system resembles nothing so much as a house of cards waiting to be blown down by the next financial hurricane that comes its way.

‘Central banks should admit their mistakes’: an interview with the Bank of England’s Andy Haldane

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Andy Haldane, Executive Director of Financial Stability at the Bank of England, has been hailed as a new type of policy expert and intellectual. In this interview, for our Uneconomics series, he sets out his vision for the future of economics and economic policy-making. It is a future where central banks are humble, “listen as often as they speak”, and own up to their mistakes.

Pulitzer-Winning Reporting Duo Don Barlett and James Steele on “The Betrayal of the American Dream” (Parts 1 and 2)

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The famed award-winning investigative reporting team of Donald Barlett and James Steele have just published a new book, “The Betrayal of the American Dream,” a followup to their landmark bestseller, “America: What Went Wrong?” As Republicans and Democrats continue disputing who should bear the brunt of the tax burden, Barlett and Steele argue that America’s middle class has been decimated over the years due to policies governing not only taxes but also bank regulations, trade deficits and pension funds. Their book chronicles how the American middle class has been systematically impoverished and its prospects thwarted in favor of a new ruling elite.