Fossil Fuels

Robert Hirsch on “The Impending World Energy Mess”

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Robert Hirsch made waves as the 2005 author of what became known simply as the Hirsch Report, the first study funded by the US government on peak oil and its consequences. The experience of writing that report left him shaken at the consequences of peak oil. Now he says that in the next 2-5 years we’ll see world oil production permanently decline, a phenomenon “unlike anything faced by modern civilization.”
(audio interview about Hirsch’s new book)

Advice to students: understand money, localize

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A coal industry CEO told students at a small Quaker boarding high school to prepare for jobs in coal mines and power plants, rather than study philosophy or become community organizers….He preached high technology as the answer to humanity’s energy woes—technology created and owned by large multi-national corporations, which are designed to amass enormous monetary and physical wealth by exploiting natural resources and human labor.

Not arks or fortresses but Cities of Light

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We have a natural desire to find a way that we and our loved ones can be “safe” in the midst of the upcoming Peak Oil, Economic Collapse, and Climate Change cataclysms. This leads us to think of Arks or Fortresses, which simply won’t work. What then is a model for the coming times? The only model that can work is the decidedly unsafe and generous City of Light.

Iceberg economies and shadow selves

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As 2010 ends, what really interests me aren’t the corrosions and failures of this system, but the way another system, another invisible hand, is always at work in what you could think of as the great, ongoing, Manichean arm-wrestling match that keeps our planet spinning. The invisible claw of the market may fail to comprehend how powerful the other hand — the one that gives rather than takes — is, but neither does that open hand know itself or its own power. It should. We all should.

Top 10 peak oil stories of 2010

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The biggest stories of 2010 were financial. But you could say that the continuing Great Recession, the deficit debate, and more and more mortgage defaults were really stories of energy-driven economic crisis. This year also had plenty of big stories directly on energy, including some breakthroughs on peak oil. Here are our top picks. It’s a highly subjective list; so please chime in with any stories you think we left off.