Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In a world of blatantly increasing food insecurity — driven by population, dietary trends, rising oil prices, and growing climate instability — America’s policy of burning one third of our corn crop in our engines (soon to be 37% or more) is becoming increasingly untenable, if not unconscionable.
Were the Egyptian people that bravely took to the streets to overthrow a tyrannical regime taking part in the world’s first peak oil revolution?
There is a story implicit in the farmer’s relation to the land, and it is our culture’s central organizing myth, the one that informs all the other stories we tell. The story is just a few words long, but its implications are widespread and profound. The story is this: everything belongs to us.
Program information about the 9th International ASPO Conference about Peakoil & Gas, 27-29 April 2011, Brussels, Belgium
-Biofuel jatropha falls from wonder-crop pedestal
(references new Friends of the Earth report)
-U.S. okays ethanol boost for more cars
-US offers $650m in loan guarantees for second-generation biofuel
-Court challenges stall new biofuel crops
It’s not the apocalypse. And it’s certainly not the Death Star or the planet Tatooine. But The Windup Girl is a compelling vision of our industrial world as it could be in a low-energy future. Paolo Bacigalupi’s techno-political thriller imagines how, in the time after peak oil and economic collapse, global trade could return via airships and GMOs.
– OPEC pumping at near maximum
– Jack Gerard, head of API, on peak oil
– Tverberg: Problems with corn ethanol
– Hidden Pitfalls of Increasing U.S. Dependence On Canadian Oil Sands
-Using Waste, Swedish City Cuts Its Fossil Fuel Use
-Africa mulls biofuels as land grab fears grow
-Biomass – a burning issue
-EU plans to tackle unwanted impacts of biofuels
-Cornell to develop algal biofuels
Personally, I don’t believe large-scale commercialization of cellulosic ethanol will ever be viable due to the aforementioned fundamental issues with biomass conversion and efficiency, and will ultimately be relegated to the role of a niche fuel provider.
– The Tea Party Targets… Sustainable Development?
– Here’s where we should cut: corn ethanol subsidies
– Walmart local food?
– U.S. Oil Imports Shrink, Yet Worries Loom
In The Maltese Falcon a character tells detective Sam Spade, “By Gad, sir, you’re a character, that you are! Yes, sir, there’s never any telling what you’ll do or say next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.”* I’m telling Bob Hirsch the same thing. There’s no denying the man’s considerable credentials within the energy industry, nor his contribution to peak oil scholarship as principal author of the first major U.S. government report to take the issue seriously. But neither is there any predicting what outlandish thing he’ll propose next in his efforts to spread the message.
“The energy world faces unprecedented uncertainty”, so begins the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, released on Tuesday. The annual report from the energy watchdog guides the energy policies of OECD member countries including Britain.
