Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Before civilization culture, children were dependent on their parents for a period of about ten years, during which, following the model of most wild creatures, they spent most of their waking lives learning to be independent, through play.
Hell today announced a new Pilot Colonization Program to relocate demons, devils, incubi, succubi, and Damned Souls to the surface of the Earth, starting as early as 2012. Lucifer Jr., Senior Executive Vice-President of Hades, explained the rationale behind the new program: “From our perspective, warming Earth temperatures offers an infernally perfect solution for the overcrowding we’ve been experiencing in Hell for the last 66 years. As the planet heats up, Earth will present a terrific opportunity for Hell’s growth and expansion.”
An exclusive interview with one of the most astute minds in the world of finance whose insights offer crucial preparation for living in a post-industrial world.
The Post Carbon Reader feels like a Chicago book. I know that it’s really a West Coast production, with its eponymous institute located north of the San Francisco Bay area. But this book forsakes the Cassandra cry of a Berkeley activist at a giant redwood tree-sit. Likewise missing is the smooth scenario-spinning of a Silicon Valley venture capitalist at a TED conference. It’s an encyclopedia that seems more at home among the leering gargoyles and faux-Gothic spires of Hyde Park than on the sun-kissed lanes of Sonoma wine country.
Why are we “the Doomers” for thinking oil is limited? Clinical psychologist Kathy McMahon (“the Peak Shrink”) finds people all over the world are worried about our fossil civilization collapsing. In this hot new speech, she has answers for our own sanity, in a crazy world.
At the ASPO Conference in early October 2007, Robert Hirsch presented his view of the impact of peak oil on the economy and society. While most of his assertions are readily supportable, the historical record is nevertheless perhaps more nuanced and deserves consideration in thinking about future events.
The campaign of 2010 may produce members of Congress and of the Senate who are nothing but conduits for corporate agendas and whose loyalties can be traced directly to corporate-funded campaign groups–groups made up of anonymous donors who seek nothing less than direct control of the government of the United States for their personal gain.
– Monbiot: The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires
– NYT: Coal Industry Spending to Sway Next Congress
– New book confirms greed, power and cover-up are BP trademarks
– Saudis Need Shale to Solve Gas Dilemma
– Trillions necessary to maintain Russia’s oil production
– Musings: Curtain Being Pulled Back from The Oz of Gas Shales
– The use of quantitative indicators for analyzing energy security
– Surging price of oil forces US military to seek alternative energy sources
– Navajos Hope to Shift From Coal to Wind and Sun
– Our aging water systems are long past due for a major overhaul
“Large conventional oil production is increasingly no longer part of the future. We must expect to get along without what has been our critical energy source in expanding the world’s economy for more than half a century. But acceptance [of the idea of peak oil] by knowledgeable people is not enough.
“Our willingness, let alone our ability, to do anything serious about the impending inability to increase oil output is still a long way off. The political order responds to what the public believes today, not to what it may come to believe tomorrow.”
Dr. Schlesinger has served as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (1971-73), Secretary of Defense (1973-75), Director of the CIA and was the first Secretary of Energy (1977-79).
Keynote address to the recent ASPO-USA conference in Washington D.C. (transcript and video) .
Big oil was smiling this week as Q3 profits rose on the back of higher oil prices. Prices are 12% higher than last year, and according to JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are likely to go higher, even above $100/barrel, by next year. Such a price rise may provide a test of OPEC’s ability to raise production…
