Fossil Fuels

I’ve accepted peak oil: now what?

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Oil will peak. I get it…I am convinced that this thing we call civilization is ludicrously based on profit and is a madman’s interpretation of the pursuit of happiness. I recognize the insanity. The illusion that participating in the race for stainless steel appliances and ride-on lawn mowers as a worthy endeavor is squashed forever.

So now what?

Q&A: Peak Oil and Public Health

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Tim Parsons, director of Public Affairs, discussed the “peak oil” theory, or the point at which the maximum production rate for the world’s oil is reached, with Brian Schwartz, MD, professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences and co-director of the School’s Program on Global Sustainability and Health. Once the peak is passed, oil production is expected to decline continuously. …Schwartz explains how future demand for energy could impact on our society and our health.

Largely about access

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Abstract: It is sometimes held that U.S. motivations in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, while indeed “largely about oil” (in the well-publicized words of Alan Greenspan), are not (or at least not much) “about access” to the region’s oil per se. This essay critically examines that claim, arguing that the current U.S. resort to force cannot really be understood without regard to the current precariousness of U.S. energy supplies.