Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
With an aggressive campaign focused on advertising, lobbying, and political contributions, America’s coal industry has succeeded in beating back a challenge from environmentalists and clean-energy advocates. The dirty truth is that Big Coal is more powerful today than ever.
– US Coal to Gasoline Plant Will be the Largest in the World
– New Exxon talking points
– SCSU professor eyes oil deposits in study
– Energy analyst Charles Maxwell: brace for $300/barrel oil
– Monbiot: The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires
– NYT: Coal Industry Spending to Sway Next Congress
– New book confirms greed, power and cover-up are BP trademarks
The campaign of 2010 may produce members of Congress and of the Senate who are nothing but conduits for corporate agendas and whose loyalties can be traced directly to corporate-funded campaign groups–groups made up of anonymous donors who seek nothing less than direct control of the government of the United States for their personal gain.
– Our Last Chance to Save Humanity? (MR reviews James Hansen’s book)
– Climate Watch: The Arctic’s Effect on California
– ‘Key Time’ to Solve Nature Crisis ? (biodiversity conference)
After weeks of prediction and build up, this was finally the week of the UK government spending review statement. With the government insisting that it will be the greenest ever there was much anticipation of how the Department of Energy and Climate Change would fare in the review…
– French protests jeopardise airport fuel supplies
– U.S. Study: World’s ‘Peak Coal’ Moment Has Arrived
– Peak Everything
– New book on the Gulf spill
Reports on talks by Jeff Rubin, Bianca Jagger, Kjell Aleklett, David Rutledge, Robert Hirsch and Nicole Foss (Stoneleigh).
– French towns swap rubbish trucks for horse-drawn carts
– Swiss Solar boat heads on around-the-world voyage
– Zero Emissions Race – 30 days around the world using renewables
– Does (European) Social-Democracy Have a Future?
– The Soot Road: Travelling along one of most polluted energy corridors on Earth
Five years ago Robert Hirsch headed the team that produced the first US government-sponsored report discussing the consequences of declining world oil production. The team which wrote the original “Hirsch” report is now out with a book that discusses the current state of the world energy situation and what we can expect in the decades ahead.
– Canada helps create an oil sands world (Brace for a global ‘age of tough oil.’)
– South Africa is nearing peak coal, say scientists
– Peak oil interview with Robert Rapier
– Chicken Little updated for the Age of Peak Oil and Climate Change (criticism of Charles Maxwell)
– What psychology can teach us about our response to climate change
– Facebook – unfriend coal
– Rocky Mountain dust-up: runoff’s dirty secret
– Arctic ice in death spiral
