Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– Oil Prices Rise Sunday as Egypt Unrest Gooses Market
– Egyptian Unrest Has Repercussions in Global Economy
– White House quietly prepares for a post-Mubarak era in Egypt
– Juan Cole interview: “Egypt is a Praetorian Regime”
– Israel ‘anxiously monitoring’ turmoil in Egypt
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Deepwater drilling
-China’s ongoing drought
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
– Pushing Back Against Economic Crisis, Youth Unrest Ripples Around World
– Capitalism and Degrowth – An Impossibility Theorem
– Daniel Tanuro: The Futility of Green Capitalism
– Actually, The Retirement Age is Too High
Author, blogger and social critic James Howard Kunstler opens up on two circumstances he sees running neck and neck “that are going to put us out of business as an advanced industrial civilization”—the “fiasco” in banking, money and finance and the unfolding “energy predicament.” He explains that the crises are really all about “capital” and that we need to look at how wealth has been accumulated and deployed for productive purposes.
Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi hinted this week that OPEC might move to increase oil production to satisfy rising demand. Both OPEC and the IEA are anticipating demand growth this year, and with Brent crude close to $100/barrel the pressure on OPEC is growing…Many of the OPEC nations face serious threats of their own as they struggle to generate jobs for their growing populations. No doubt the house of Saud and other OPEC leaders will be casting a wary eye at the recent uprising in Tunisia and the riots in Egypt.
Did you hear anything surprising in Obama’s State of the Union address last night? Anything truly visionary? Me neither. Of course, that wasn’t the point.
A mid-weekly peak oil update:
-Developments this week
-Global food supplies
Program information about the 9th International ASPO Conference about Peakoil & Gas, 27-29 April 2011, Brussels, Belgium
I find it sad that there was no explicit discussion of the incontrovertible scientific fact that we are destabilizing our climate with our energy system. Elsewhere in the world, this can be discussed frankly, but in the US, out of deference to half the political spectrum being in total denial, the elephant in the room cannot be named. There are aggressive goals for converting the energy system to “clean energy” with no discussion at all as to why that might be necessary.
Advocates for natural gas routinely assert that it produces 50 percent less greenhouse gases than coal and is a significant step toward a greener energy future. But those assumptions are based on emissions from the tailpipe or smokestack and don’t account for the methane and other pollution emitted when gas is extracted and piped to power plants and other customers.
Although there obviously will be many problems buried in the details of a proposal as broad and comprehensive as this one, the basic idea of seeing that every person is given equal access to enough energy to survive (warmth, cooking fuel) is a noble one. It is well worth the costs in terms of avoided civil unrest if people come to believe that declining amounts of fossil energy is being allocated fairly.
Many people believe the State of the Union is just political theater. While it’s true the speech last night was thin on specifics, one thing that was very specific was that Obama says he wants to cut subsidies to oil companies and give the money to clean energy instead. But everybody knows Big Oil controls Washington. Does this proposal have any chance at all? And what about the future of clean energy in a down economy with a glaring national debt?
