Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We live in some pretty incredible times…At times the implications seem overwhelming. But this Halloween Campfire post is a quick reminder that despite our massive challenges, (and that we are human, imperfect, and mortal) – we can find joy, fun, meaning and satisfaction in many everyday, low throughput ways – we just have to decide to do so. That’s both the trick and the treat.
According to an often cited saying, “If you want peace, work for justice.” But, most economic justice work is currently premised on the view that greater economic equality requires continued economic growth. This constitutes a wholehearted embrace of a cornucopian future; it recognizes no limits to growth that are implied by climate change, world peak oil production, and the rapid depletion of other resources including metal ores, water, soil and fish.
Oil prices vacillated this week, falling back from their recent high on news of unexpectedly large US inventories, later rallying as the US economy officially emerged from recession…
On 21 October the final workshop was held in Brussels (Belgium) of the integrated transport and energy baseline until 2030 (iTREN-2030) modeling project. At the workshop a final scenario was presented that incorporated likely transport and energy policies, and the effects on European transport of a continued global plateau in oil production up to 2030. The integrated scenario was generated by four energy and transport models that have been linked in iTREN-2030 to increase the forecasting power of the transport policies of the European Commission.
A weekly round-up including:
– Production and prices
– China
– Quote of the Week
The party isn’t over — at least not yet. For the last year, relatively low oil prices have helped us all cope with the economic collapse. We’ve paid less for gasoline than we have for years. And businesses have paid less for running their factories, planes and product transportation. But last week we began hearing the music die down and waiters moving guests out the door.
Critique of October, 2009 issue of Scientific American essay: Squeezing More Oil from the Ground
The world’s first peak-oil recession has come to a close, according to third-quarter numbers invented by the federal government. Apparently dumping trillions of dollars onto big banks, insurance companies, and automobile manufacturers interrupted the plummeting descent of American Empire. The stock markets skyrocketed expectedly. Predictably, so did the commodities markets.
Last week oil broke out of a months-long trading range and surged to $82 a barrel. For many of us who remember $140 oil from the summer of ’08 this might not sound impressive until you are reminded that every time oil (adjusted for inflation) broke $80 a barrel some sort of economic recession occurred.
One feature of this year’s ASPO conference that I most enjoyed was the contradiction amongst presentations. Marcio Mello gave an animated talk on Sunday night about the pre-salt formations off the coast of Brazil quoting that there are upwards of 500 billion barrels of oil available, an extravagant estimate that peak oilers are unused to hearing. Monday morning two talks on natural gas were juxtaposed in tone and content, one claiming that natural gas is the “American Treasure” and the other claiming that shale gas is marginally profitable, let alone a “treasure.”
Even as we’ve been going through years of hand-wringing about security of supply, and about how Russia was an unreliable gas supplier, it comes out the European gas buyers are themselves increasingly refusing to pay the price that underpins the security of their Russian supplies, and are breaking their contractual obligations towards Gazprom, making Europe, erm, a less reliable customer…
Where will you go when the sewers clog up? Where will you go when the porcelain finally cracks? Where will you go when the Toilet Duck quacks its last?
