Energy Policy

Deepwater Horizon: Lessons from Petroleum Engineering and the Roman Empire

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Why did the Deepwater Horizon blow up last year, kill 11 workers, and cause the massive oil eruption into the Gulf of Mexico? You’re likely to get different answers if you talk separately to a petroleum engineer or an anthropologist. When they team up, it gets really interesting. Anthropologist Joseph Tainter (author of The Collapse of Complex Societies) and petroleum engineer Tad Patzek talk about the new book they’ve co-authored: Drilling Down: The Gulf oil debacle and our energy dilemma.

A psychological carbon tax

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There’s plenty of understanding that efficiency measures can sometimes (often) fail if they fall victim to Jevon’s Paradox. The common response is that we need to couple efficiency measures with a carbon tax or similar policy that give people both the means and the incentive to decrease energy consumption. But let’s look at the underlying goal of a carbon tax: to change behavior. How does it change behavior? By penalizing undesirable behavior (financially). The downside to a carbon tax is that it requires overcoming many political hurdles that don’t seem likely to be overcome anytime soon. What are the alternatives?

Shale gas – Dec 12

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-E.P.A. Links Tainted Water in Wyoming to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas
-Shale gas drilling’s dirty secret is out
-Encana throws cold water on EPA report
-Ex-oil worker blasts shale gas industry
-No U.S.-style shale gas boom in EU: E&Y
-Petrochina says new shale gas find tough to develop

Deconstructing “ethical oil”

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EthicalOil.org is a defense of the Canadian oil sands industry. The argument it makes is that because human rights standards are much better in Canada than in many other oil exporting nations, Canada should be considered a more “moral” source of oil. In fact, the oil from the oil sands is touted as a “fair trade choice.” Once I’d read through the site, it was hard to imagine why the oil sands industry would even want it online. If these people were working for me with the express mission of defending the oil sands, I would fire them.

ODAC Newsletter – Dec 9

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OPEC head Abdullah El-Badri warned European leaders on Wednesday against imposing sanctions on Iranian oil, stating that the 865,000 barrels a day which goes mostly to Southern Europe would be difficult to replace. Global supply is already tight and oil prices remain stubbornly high despite the chronic Euro-crisis…

Climate – Dec 9

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– NYT’s Andrew Revkin: Naomi Klein’s Inconvenient Climate Conclusions
– Obama Will ‘Reject’ Attempt to Restart Keystone XL
– David Roberts: The brutal logic of climate change
– The 1 Percent and the Fate of the Earth

Declaration of the indigenous peoples of the world to COP17

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We, the Indigenous Peoples of the world, united in the face of the climate crisis and the lack of political will of the States, especially the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, demand the immediate adoption of legally binding agreements with shared but differentiated responsibilities, to halt global warming and to define alternative models of development in harmony with Mother Earth.