Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Liberal journalists, pale greens and others are trivializing the BP/Deepwater oil spill and distracting attention from the social roots of environmental destruction. It’s time to dump the myth of “consumer sovereignty.”
-Beyond BP: Michael Klare on US Energy Policy
-Scientists Allege Federal Gov’t Tried to Muffle Plume Findings
-Oil sands toxins growing rapidly
-The Triumph of the Amateur: Remembering Matt Simmons
-Peak oil is the villain governments need
-High Oil Prices: Quantification of direct and indirect impacts for the EU)
Below are excerpts from two recently released reports on transport. The first, Towards a Zero Carbon Vision for UK Transport, from a UK based team offers a pathway to a reduced carbon scenario for the UK transport sector based on a variety of strategies already in place in Europe. The second report has been produced for the American Public Transportation Association and addresses the links between public health and public transport.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting world oil demand will set a new record next year when is smashes through 2008’s pre-recession high – and warning that the “era of cheap oil is over.” According to the IEA’s latest Oil Market Report, published August 11, global demand will reach 86.6 million barrels per day in 2010, and then 87.9 million barrels per day in 2011, assuming a continuing global economic recovery. This means demand is set to pass the all-time high of 86.9 million barrels per day established in 2008 before the global economic downturn.
This might be an opportune time to make a disclosure: I am a BP shareholder. Admittedly, I’ve never attended the company’s annual meeting, and if I did, I would have very little weight to throw around.
Everyone knows that it takes energy to produce anything. The energy used in mining, transport, processing, manufacturing, delivery, and disposal is “embodied” in every product we consume, from food to diapers to televisions and insurance policies. Our traditional way of looking at energy, however, highlights only current consumption, traditionally disaggregated into agricultural, industrial, transportation, commercial, and residential sectors.
Oil prices dropped back out of the $80/barrel range this week on weak economic news, and stockpile gains. There is growing anticipation that the US Federal Reserve is about to embark on a new round of quantitative easing following Tuesday’s downgrade of the recovery outlook. In China, July figures showed a slowdown in industrial production and retail sales which added to market nervousness…
Every year the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) holds a conference where legislators from all over the U.S. gather for updates on major policy concerns. This year the organization found that issues surrounding the future of nation’s energy supply were becoming of such paramount importance to state governments that it set up a task force to study the issues; produced a report on meeting the energy challenges; and devoted a whole day prior to the annual meeting to an “Energy Policy Summit.” … A key unstated issue was completely ignored: resource depletion
Oil and safe drinking water are on parallel courses to depletion – a scarcity that will lead to starvation, disease and warfare. The issue here is drinking water. And there is a lot less of that than seawater. Due to a number of management issues, made worse by climate change, drinking water is fast becoming a geopolitical resource to rival oil – a flashpoint at various places around the globe.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Supply and demand
-IEA’s monthly oil market report
Energy Investment banker and leading peak oil proponent Matthew Simmons died suddenly on Sunday [Aug. 8], following an apparent heart attack. While Simmons did not come up with the idea of peak oil – geophysicist M King Hubbert first published the theory in the 1950s — he arguably did more than anyone to publicize it. It was Simmons’ 2005 classic Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, that turned discussion of peak oil from a fringe environmental concern into something with business pages credibility.
The Gulf of Mexico’s capacity to recover from previous environmental assaults — especially the 1979 Ixtoc explosion — provides encouragement about the prospects for its post-Deepwater future. But scientists remain worried about the BP spill’s long-term effects on the health of the Gulf and its sea life.
