Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Zone5 Podcast #3 with Dr. Colin Campbell on Peak Oil, the Financial Collapse, Adaptation and What the Future May Hold. Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of peak Oil and Gas, is officially retired from his career as oil geologist and Peak Oil pundit but kindly agreed to this interview for the zone5 podcast.
-UN alarmed at lack of global support for Haiti’s immediate agricultural needs
-Haiti Is Open For Business
-Haiti: A Creditor, Not A Debtor
-US Brags Haiti Response Is A ‘Model’ While More Than A Million Remain Homeless In Haiti
-China losing appetite for U.S. debt
-Metal prices rising strongly again
-Collapse of the euro is ‘inevitable’: Bailing out the Greek economy futile, says FRENCH banking chief
-Goldman Goes Rogue – Special European Audit To Follow
-The Making of a Euromess
-Did peak oil cause the present financial crisis?
If I were to ask 10 random people what they would expect would be a sign of the arrival of “peak oil”, I would expect that all 10 would say “high oil prices”. Let me tell you what I think the symptoms of the arrival of peak oil are
1. Higher default rates on loans
2. Recession
-How Wrong Is the IPCC?
-Bill Gates: the Most Important Climate Speech of the Year
-Team Finds Subtropical Waters Flushing Through Greenland Fjord
-Oil firms drop group lobbying for US climate bill
With any reasonably successful blog, you have a conversation going on, often between an author and commenters who have a long history and background, and people coming into the conversation for the first time…Balancing the degree to which you write for the regulars and to those new to you is always an interesting exercise.
An Olympian game of musical chairs in global finance heads for a climax in the days ahead as so many eyes are diverted to alternate festivities in British Columbia, where grown men compete for gold by riding things that look like cafeteria trays down icy mountainsides — is this the moment that comes every four years when you wonder why you didn’t get your kid a luge for Christmas?
The world is immensely complicated, and the forces of sweeping change may overall boost transition towns for their positive contribution. Or as Ted Trainer lays out below, a course correction is needed now.
President Obama has issued marching orders for the rapid national adoption of “clean coal” technology. Last week, shortly after his budget address, he ordered a high-level task force to deliver a plan within 180 days determining how “to overcome barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years, with the goal of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects on line by 2016.”
-Saudi Arabia Says Peak Demand for Oil Is an ‘Alarm’
-Virgin’s Richard Branson takes on peak oil
-Oil groups mount legal challenge to Schwarzenegger’s tar sands ban
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-China’s Growth
-India
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs
The history of modern humankind has undergone two major energy transitions, marked by the invention and development of agriculture and the discovery and exploitation of oil. The two energy transitions partition human history into three phases: hunter-gatherer, agricultural, and industrial. Faber et al. (1996) refer to these phases as “Paradigmatic Images of the World,” because they describe the common structure of societies throughout the world. The most important question is “what is the next paradigmatic image of the world?”
