Energy Policy

The peak oil crisis: The first rule of holes

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America has dug itself into the deepest hole it has been in since 1860 when the dispute over slavery reached its zenith. That hole took five years of war and 150 years of social discord before we could start climbing out. The current hole, reliance on fossil fuels for nearly everything, will also take many decades of hardships to work itself out.

Iraq’s Oil: The Greatest Prize Of All?

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The subject of Iraqi oil is one which has fascinated me for a number of years, so in this post I’ll outline why I believe that Iraq probably has the world’s largest oil reserves – or, as Daniel Yergin once said of the middle east, it is “the greatest single prize in all history” (echoing a similar statement by George Kennan at the end of world war 2).

Spoof New York Times has new vision for America

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A new vision of America was presented yesterday in an elaborate parody of “The New York Times by the Yes Men, a group of liberal pranksters. Thousands of paper copies were handed out and a web version is online. Articles include:
“Nationalized Oil To Fund Climate Change Efforts”
“New York Bike Path System Expanded Dramatically”
“Crumbling Infrastructure Brings Opportunities”
“Biofuels Ban Act Signed Into Law, Seeks to Ease Food Shortage”

A New Deal or a war footing? Thinking through our response to climate change

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Any response to climate change is going to have to take seriously the costs of that response – the costs in terms of long term economic security, and the environmental costs. It may well be that we are close enough to our tipping point that we can’t afford a decade of massive, intensive industrialization that raises our use of fossil fuels, even for a big payoff on the other side.