Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Continued violence in the Middle East kept oil prices high this week. Libyan exports are down at least 1 million barrels a day and fears are escalating that the stand-off there could turn in to a protracted civil war. The unrest spread to Oman this week where security forces clashed with demonstrators. Meanwhile news of the arrest of a Shi’ite cleric demanding democratic reforms in Saudi Arabia sent the Saudi Tadawul stock exchange down 11%.
Documentaries that cover peak oil or deal with resource depletion tend to be downers on the whole, offering few pleasures beyond the snarky joy of Schadenfreude. “The Economics of Happiness” is different. Yes, it’s realistic about climate change, resource depletion, overpopulation and the other horsemen of the globalized industrial apocalypse. But it’s also hopeful about the future, showing how we could all live with more dignity, fun and humanity once we graduate from the consumerist rat race.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers
-Wastewater Recycling No Cure-All in Gas Process
-Politics Seen to Limit E.P.A. as It Sets Rules for Natural Gas
Whatever the outcome of the protests, uprisings, and rebellions now sweeping the Middle East, one thing is guaranteed: the world of oil will be permanently transformed.
To people who follow the energy industry closely, it’s a common occurrence to come across announcements from companies proclaiming to have developed the key to the ‘next big thing’ — for solving the world’s energy crisis. Maybe they say they can take any sort of waste biomass and turn it into fuel — ethanol, diesel, pyrolysis oil, mixed alcohols — at very low cost. Or they say they can produce renewable electricity at a price competitive with coal.
The layperson reads the news release and is curious: “Is this real?”
As concerns grow in the U.S. about the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to extract natural gas from shale, companies have set their sights on Europe and its abundant reserves of this “unconventional” gas. But from Britain to Poland, critics warn of the potentially high environmental cost of this looming energy boom.
-Spain adopts energy saving measures to combat oil price hike
-China pollution ‘threatens growth’
-Denmark Targets Fossil-Fuel Independence Through Wind, Biogas
As we begin another week of turmoil in the Middle East, and countries further afield batten down the hatches in an effort to preclude being next, here are some of the things we don’t know: — Whether oil prices are going up to $220 a barrel (and $5 at the pump), or down to $70 a barrel and more like $2.50 for a gallon of gasoline in the United States; — Whether Saudi Arabia really increased its oil production last week, or if the truth is a bit different; — And, finally, whether Russia’s gentleman president, Dmitry Medvedev, has been rummaging through Vladimir Putin’s archive of paranoid off-the-cuff remarks, and truly does not grasp what is happening around him.
It seems to me that above some imaginary line, resources can be extracted and producers can make a profit selling them, and the economy can use them successfully. Below the imaginary line, the cost of production will be so high that if a price that is adequate for a producer to make a reasonable profit is charged, the high price will send the economy into recession.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-Replacing Libyan oil
-The Middle East upheaval
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
This civilization uses oil for its blood. Almost everything we make, buy, and use has oil in it’s food chain. You know that. Never mind that we are bleeding carbon into the sky and the ocean, or the developing climate shift. Even if oil was lily white, we are still running out of the cheap stuff – that we need for a global economy feeding billions of humans. And we are determined to drive right off that cliff, without a Plan B.
