Commentary: Global Energy Drivers in a “Black Swan World”

Last year the global credit crunch and its knock-on effects precipitated the sharpest oil and gas price declines in over two decades. Despite the recent $100+/ Bbl price implosion and subsequent partial recovery, we have now entered an historic inflection point—call it “practical peak oil”—in the global balance of conventional energy supplies…

Review and application of SSI study, “Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development”

The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) at the US Army War College has issued many stimulating research papers in recent years, several of which deal with energy security issues. Nathan Freier’s recent SSI paper (which we will examine here) does not focus on energy issues. Rather, the central purpose of his study is to present a paradigm for the examination of potential strategic shocks.

Is Canada becoming a petrostate?

Canada’s increasing reliance on energy exports, especially oil from the Alberta tar sands, risks unsettling its politics and economy and turning the country into a petrostate–an authoritarian society in which dissent is stifled and enterprises beyond the energy sector are de-emphasized or even discouraged.

Clean Energy Act Is Not Going Anywhere

If you have read my book “Detensive Nation”, you know I am concerned about the damage we humans are doing to our environment. Our intensive consumption of energy, arable land, fresh water, and minerals is not sustainable. That means we humans will be forced to adopt a detensive Cultural EcoSystem. In order to ease the pain of this transition, we need a positive, proactive, and intellectually honest political system.