Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Today’s episode features segments from Agroinnovations featuring well-known figures like Paul Stamets – a mycologist (aka mushroom specialist) from Olympia, Washington, the U.K’s Rob Hopkins who has popularized the Transition Town Movement and Montana journalist and author Richard Manning, who possesses a keen interest in the history and future of the American prairie and agriculture.
In the last few months, the vigorous debate over the future of world oil supplies has hit the mainstream radar screen. The optimists closed ranks—they have to because their numbers are shrinking—and launched a barrage of misleading reports and opinion pieces, suggesting that supplies will grow from today’s 85 million barrels a day to as much as 115 mb/day by 2030.
NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed. World oil production peaked in July 2008 at 74.74 million barrels/day (mbd) and now has fallen to about 72 mbd. It is expected that oil production will decline at about 2.2 mbd per year as shown below in the chart. The forecasts from the IEA WEO … Read more
The Government and Opposition today voted against a Greens motion in the Senate calling on the Government to plan for peak oil.
Part 1 of KrisCan’s Peak Oil conversation with Richard Heinberg about the limits to growth, the GDP measuring claims on our resources and the importance of communicating with our policy makers. He talks about the need to move away from the idea of continuous growth and begin to measure quality of life as a marker of success.
A weekly review including:
– Production and prices
– Will China continue to grow?
– Copenhagen
– Uranium
– Quote of the Week
– Briefs
While apocalyptic stories may seem as if they are about our collective path, for the individual they are really about an inward journey. That is why they can be quite good at filling movie theaters, bookstores, and churches. And, that is why appeals to the apocalyptic strain in culture are a wrongheaded strategy when attempting to move people toward actual concrete steps that can improve our collective prospects amid the unfolding calamities of the 21st century.
Hey humans – we’re screwin’ up! As the beasts of resource depletion and climate change slouch ever-closer towards our happy homes, maybe it’s time to re-think things a bit. In this epic story, the Doomer Ghost of Christmas Future gives us a grim tour of one of our possible futures, shows us “The Last Book Ever Written,” and gives us an inspirational kick in the pants. It’s a chilling, brutally-honest, and inspiring tale for those brave enough to face the truth, and strong enough to do something about it.
Oil prices fluctuated in the high $70’s this week reflecting the ups and downs of the dollar. Higher oil prices are loosening the discipline around the implementation of OPEC oil quotas as producers cash in…
John Michael Greer has officially established himself as an institution within the peak oil community. Truly one of the finest minds working on the predicament of modern-day industrial civilization, he is so well-read in so many fields that he regularly gains access to insights that utterly elude his contemporaries. For this he is treasured by a growing number of loyal readers—and, I suspect, hated by equally many fellow bloggers who wish that they could be half as good.
A weekly review including:
– Production and prices
– Cambridge Energy’s new report
In my view, the Uppsala study is unduly pessimistic, implying an immediate crisis (in 2010 and thereafter) which is not in accord with reasonable expectations about future production levels both within OPEC and outside the cartel. In alerting the public to the peak oil issue, the Guardian is doing good work. But not knowing any bettter, they picked the wrong study in my view. The false choice the Guardian offers us, the IEA or Uppsala, amounts to a kind of all or nothing proposition.
