Fossil Fuels

The future needs an attitude adjustment

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Our expectations tend to be outsized with respect to the physical limitations at hand. We quickly dash up against ideological articles of faith, so that many are unable to acknowledge that there is an energy/resource problem at all. The Spock in me wants to raise an eyebrow and say “fascinating.” The human in me is distressed by the implications to our collective rationality. The adult in me wants less whining, fewer temper tantrums, realistic expectations, a willingness to sacrifice where needed, the maturity to talk of the possibility of collapse and the need to step off the growth train, and adoption of a selfless attitude that we owe future generations a livable world where we can live rich and fulfilling lives with another click of the ratchet. Otherwise we deserve a spanking—sorry—attitude adjustment. And nature is happy to oblige.

Keystone XL – on front line of oil debate

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– Protests seen as stand against fossil fuels
– U.S. Congress hands energy industry historic victory
– Oil lobby lagging reality
– The politics of pipe: Keystone’s troubled route
– If You Care About Keystone and Climate Change, Occupy Exxon
– Official White House Response to Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline

As economic growth fails, how do we live? Part II: Out with the old

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We cannot “set things right” in the sense of restoring things to the way they once were, but we must begin now to adapt to the new realities if we are to reduce suffering and continue an advanced culture. Today’s article, “Out With the Old”, discusses ending seven unsustainable practices.

Identity crisis

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Thirty months into a new life devoid of regular interaction with inmates and honors students, I’m having the sort of identity crisis described by Dmitry Orlov in his excellent book, Reinventing Collapse. According to Orlov, middle-aged men — specifically those aged 45 to 55, nicely bracketing the age I departed the ivory tower (49) and my current age (51) — experienced the highest rate of mortality as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Bakken shale and U.S. oil production

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On Sept. 25, 2011 National Public Radio’s All Things Considered program had a segment consisting of what I considered highly questionable information concerning oil production in the Bakken Shale region of North Dakota and U.S. oil production in general. The segment indicated that U.S. oil production would rise dramatically in the foreseeable future due to new technological developments. Segments like this may play well to the public’s desire for optimism but they don’t present an accurate assessment of future oil production in the Bakken Shale region or in the U.S.

Politics: the third-rail of peak oil analysis

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Just as the growth-based prosperity that our broader culture has liked to attribute to its own good virtues can easily be seen as a product, first, of colonial expansion and then of the unleashed abundance of coal, oil, and natural gas, so also have our chief political beliefs developed under similar circumstances. Individual liberalism, and thus freedom as we have largely known it, are also the products of abundance, often an ill-begotten sort of abundance. Individual liberalism’s main dictum, that you can do whatever you want, up until the point where it does harm to another, made sense as a principle political good only in a world of relatively unlimited space, whether geographical space for migration and resource exploitation, or the less defined space that appeared available to unlimited economic expansion and all the waste and destruction that goes with it.

Energy – Dec 23

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– Former oil expert from the IEA: decline of ‘all liquids’ soon after 2015 (in French)
– Nigeria on alert as Shell announces worst oil spill in a decade
– Shelling out the Oil in Waters off Nigeria: Radar Satellite Image December 21, 2011
– Oil Workers Rise Up in Kazakhstan, Face Brutal Crackdown
– MIT: The Chinese Solar Machine

Oil and geopolitics: a turbulent year, and no end in sight

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Kazakhstan is moving fast to pacify its restive west as a new video circulates in which police shoot and beat retreating oil workers protesting labor conditions. Two reasons: With parliamentary elections three weeks away, President Nursultan Nazarbayev (pictured above) wants to stamp out any political narrative conflicting with his long-time assertion of keeping Kazakhstan stable. Abroad, the jittery global oil market is already starting to factor in a possible disruption of Kazakhstan’s 1.5 million barrels a day of oil exports