Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A lot of things started shaking loose last week, and not just in Haiti. The Scott Brown senate seat victory in Massachussetts shook loose a Democratic “super-majority” that only had to be constructed because the US Senate stupidly turned the filibuster into standard operating procedure where it once was a seldom-used procedural dodge employed strictly by villains seeking to paralyze the chamber. Thanks to the new system, the senate is now in a continual state of paralysis.
-Jim Rogers, The World Is Not Short of Grain
-The Suburbanization of Poverty: Trends in Metropolitan America, 2000 to 2008
-Is the “Volcker Rule” More Than a Marketing Slogan?
-“Bonds, Climate Bonds!”
-Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson
-Economic growth ‘cannot continue’
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and Production
-Venezuela
-China continues to grow
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Here’s one take on key events that impacted the peak oil story during the decade of the 2000s. If you have a favorite factor that isn’t listed below, send it along; we may run a follow-up.
-Uganda oil contracts give little cause for optimism
-Iraq’s production bonanza may fuel a slide in oil
-Shell faces legal fight over Arctic wells
-Venezuela oil ‘may double Saudi Arabia’
Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets and the author of Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller built his reputation as one of Canada’s top economists based on a number of successful predictions including the housing bust of the early 90s and the rise of oil prices. In his recent book, Mr. Rubin predicts $225 per barrel oil by 2012 and with it the end of globalization, a movement towards local sourcing and a need for massive scaling up of energy efficiency.
Rather than follow the customary American dream, Tammy and Logan sold their home and car, and moved to a bikeable/walkable neighborhood in Sacramento, California. After reading Derrick Jensen’s writings, this couple used Your Money or Your Life as a means to get out of debt and, they feel, regain their lives and their future. While they recount the psychological challenges of facing a future of declining resources, the catalyst that continues to move them forward is a dream of living in an affordable tiny house within a supportive community).
A friend of mine, Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man) once observed that cutting your energy usage should be as easy as rolling off a log – that as long as it is always easier to use more resources, and the path of least resistance heads towards taking the car or turning up the heat, we’re destined to struggle. And he’s right.
Oil prices dropped this week on rising US inventories, a strengthening dollar, and news of a further crackdown on credit in China. Speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week, Richard Jones, Deputy Executive Director of the IEA predicted that there would be little price volatility in 2010 as existing supplies and stock build ups would balance demand.
The January edition of Oilwatch Monthly is now available: 1) Conventional crude production – Latest figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that crude oil production including lease condensates increased by 592,000 b/d from September to October 2009, resulting in total production of crude oil including lease condensates of 73.12 million b/d…
-Do soot emissions mean that wood heating causes global warming?
-Bavarian prince hits resistance over plans for giant solar park
-Companies team up with Abu Dhabi over green jet fuel
-Hybrid Cars Won’t Save Much Oil
Very little seems to connect the quest for community in today’s declining industrial societies with the mostly empty and mostly forgotten lodge halls that still dot America’s older cities and towns. Appearances deceive, though, for the old fraternal lodges — themselves the product of an earlier quest for community — offer some useful pointers for the present, as well as a cautionary lesson of no small importance.
