Oil supply, demand set on a hair trigger
With no room for error, prices will be volatile. Buckle up. The country could be in for an oil-price roller-coaster ride three to five years long.
Culture & Behavior
Put us all on rations
It will take more than a few extra pounds on our gas bills to make us do something about global warming
An answer in Somerset: The Age of Entropy is here. We should all now be learning how to live without oil
‘Never again,” the Texas oil baron and corporate raider T Boone Pickens announced this month, “will we pump more than 82m barrels.” As we are pumping 82m barrels of oil a day at the moment, what Pickens is saying is that global production has peaked. If he is right, then the oil geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, who announced to general ridicule last year that he was “99% confident” it would happen in 2004, has been vindicated. Rather more importantly, industrial civilisation is over.
Banks Raise Profile on Energy Markets
Several European and U.S. banks have recently moved into the increasingly lucrative energy trading business or have taken steps to expand their involvement in oil, gas and power derivatives.
Can We Live Without Oil? Getting There on Less
Americans are addicted to the joys of the open road. But the joys come at too high a price and we’re about to hit bottom. We can get around without oil. Here’s the 12-step program to do it.
Richard Heinberg Interviewed by Jim Pupluva (transcript)
Jim Puplava: Welcome everyone. Joining me on the program today is Richard Heinberg. He has been writing about energy resource issues and the dynamics of cultural change for many years. He’s a member of the core faculty at New College of California and he’s an award-winning author of three previous books. His last book is called The Party is Over; his newsletter was nominated for the best alternative newsletter award; his new book is called Power Down: Options and Actions for a Post -Carbon World.
Stark choices face us on energy use
Human nature is such that we tend to wait for a crisis to happen before we react. However, as the current series of articles on the looming energy crisis highlight, we do so at our peril.
The idle shall inherit the earth
The work ethic maintains a strong grip on our psyche, but it is dangerous and unnecessary. Colin Tudge on the evolutionists’ case for getting off the treadmill and taking it easy
The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: “It Can Happen Here”
In 1944 Vice President Wallace wrote, “If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States”.
Facing the Limits to Growth
In an updated version of an influential 1972 book on the dangers facing the planet, the authors confirm that the earth is taxed and overcommitted. But, as they say, knowing is half the battle.
Maybe it’s time to panic about gas
Breaking the $2-a-gallon gasoline price barrier was unpleasant, and your lightened wallet may be eliciting visions of Nixon-era rationing and fill-up lines beyond the horizon, but geologists and economists think the industry and the economy will be just fine. Gas is cheap, they say, when you consider the rising costs of everything else. But another consensus has emerged among the experts: This might be a good time to panic anyway.
Vonnegut: Cold Turkey
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.
