Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Hayward is apparently completely unaware of the growing realization by everybody else that his monomaniacal quest for cost-cutting, corner-cutting, and profits was the proximate cause of this disaster, which, it must be pointed out, killed 11 people.
One of the most stunning outcomes of the now month-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the utter reversal of corporate images it has generated. At once, Exxon — for two decades tarred as the callous, greedy and dirty culprit in the Valdez oil spill in Alaska — is regarded in expert circles as the squeaky clean, state-of-the-art, cutting-edge model of safe, environmentally friendly oil drilling. And BP — which spent tens of millions of dollars under former CEO John Brown successfully branding itself as the green, publicly interested conscience of the industry — is now the poster child of the devil-may-care, dollar-grubbing, environmentally and labor unfriendly oil company.
-Transit as a Development Tool, but in Whose Interest?
-Better Bikeways: Guerrilla Improvements and DIY Signage
-What’s not to like about high-speed rail? The case simply hasn’t been made
Yesterday, a friend sent me over this graph, which shows the levels of carbon dioxide emitted by the USA over the last twenty years. As the accompanying report explains, it shows that 2009 was an “exceptional” year – exceptional in that emissions levels fell by more than they had fallen in a single year since 1949. The reason? The economic crash.
Oilwatch Monthly for May 2010
We still don’t have the faintest idea how much oil is spewing out of the well in the Gulf. Nor do we have the faintest idea what the full environmental consequence of what may well be the biggest single-event human-caused. ecological disaster of all time (the very fact that I have to add the word “single-event” to that statement should tell you something). We know that it is almost certainly more than all the low estimates to date, and we know that the ecological consequences will be huge, lasting and we do not understand them.
British Petroleum (BP) portrayed itself this past decade as an oil company investing in renewable sources of clean energy for a “Beyond Petroleum” future. BP had many people convinced that it was a very different kind of oil company, but the catastrophic spill this spring in the Gulf of Mexico is shedding light on the true nature of this transnational corporation.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Production and prices
-the Deepwater horizon
-Venezuela
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
-Energy stat of the week
This article concisely summarizes most of what has been discussed in Energy Bulletin over the past few months regarding Peak Oil. Reading all this news, I realized we are now actually facing The End of The World (As We Know It). I struggled for awhile with how to write about this. Despair is not the answer.
There was much to welcome in the new coalition’s energy policy. In particular, ODAC supports the commitment to a “huge increase” in anaerobic digestion; raise renewables targets; the “full establishment” of feed-in-tariffs while maintaining the existing banded ROCs to ensure continuity for big renewables investors; a shift of aviation duty from people to planes; scrap Heathrow’s third runway and block new ones at Stanstead and Gatwick.
-DOE Still Disavows Peak Oil Forecast, Despite New Studies
-Oil industry spent big on Senate panel members
-US oil industry watchdog to be broken up
South Asians are seeing more work on the ground and hearing more policy announcements about urban development than ever before. For many who live in and around towns and cities in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India (where South Asia’s biggest cities lie) this could be a good thing. The trouble is: national governments and planning authorities in Dhaka, Islamabad and New Delhi are tending more and more to follow a single ideology – economic growth will drive down poverty – and a primary route to that misplaced objective, which is greater urbanisation.
