Energy Policy

The Top 10 Peak-Oil-Related Stories of 2008

by

1. The Global Recession
2. Price Volatility: Who Knew?
3. Falling Investment = Building the Big Boomerang
4. The IEA Changes its Stance (will U.S. EIA, CERA and Exxon-Mobil follow?)
5. The Campaign and the Elections
6. OPEC Cuts Production
7. The Large Exporters: from Boom to Busted
8. Shale Gas: Game Changer or Rope-a-Dope? [or “a mixed blessing”]
9. Food vs. Fuel Hit Pocketbooks Worldwide
10. Global Production Peaks, on the Production Plateau

No second chance

by

Most economists believe that we are not in any imminent danger of societal collapse. We have plenty of resources and the big problem of global warming can be solved by taxing or otherwise restricting the use of carbon-based fuels. New technologies will give us what we need, in time and affordably. It has always been thus. (Except when it hasn’t. But one would have to know the history of civilizations that did succumb to resource degradation and scarcity, and most economists are very much concerned with the utterly now.)

With twig and dung

by

From the hills of the Deccan Plateau in western India’s state of Maharashtra, the world of export fuels is unimaginable. In these hill villages firewood is still the primary fuel. In the hour before the sun goes down over the hills and the temperature drops, women bearing head loads of bundles of light branches head back to their simple homes. What these families have in common with many hundreds of thousands of households in rural India is their continued reliance on wood as fuel, whether for cooking or, as in these windswept hills, for keeping warm.

Forecast for 2009

by

The big theme for 2009 economically will be contraction. The end of the cheap energy era will announce itself as the end of conventional “growth” and the shrinking back of activity, wealth, and populations. … My hope for the year, at least for my own society, is that we will transition away from being a nation of complacent, distracted, over-fed clowns, to become a purposeful and responsible people willing to put their shoulders to the wheel to get some things done. My motto for the new year: “no more crybabies!”