Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
An interview with activist and writer Naomi Klein that captures her thoughts on the Occupy Movement, the tar sands pipeline, and how to prepare for the largest economic shock yet.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
An extensive study by the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded that highly toxic and cancer-causing fluids from shale gas drilling most likely contaminated shallow groundwater in Pavillion, Wyoming. The findings, which strengthen the hands of those calling for a public inquiry on B.C.’s shale gas industry, contradict industry claims that hydraulic fracturing “is a proven technology used safely for more than 60 years in more than a million wells.”
As The Big Engine That Couldn’t has faltered for several years, it is becoming increasingly clear the economy is running off the tracks. Both investors and the public are beginning to realize the long-revered goal of endless economic growth is failing. Anger and fear are widespread, as the livelihoods and hopes of ordinary Americans are being destroyed. Anger runs among the “99%” over economic injustices that favor the “1%”. Fear, however, may run among 100% over this question: How do we live when economic growth fails?
– Al Jazeera on World Petroleum Conference in Doha (video)
– Reining In the ‘Soft Costs’ of Solar
– Overview of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) – NASA presentation
– Canadian MP, Laurin Liu, proposes sustainable energy strategy
– ASPO-Switzerland: Benzin und Diesel immer teurer
Like buses, you wait for ages for Energy Descent Action Plans to come along, and then two come along at once. This month sees the publication of two new EDAPs, from Llambed in mid-Wales, and Dunbar in East Lothian, Scotland. These two high quality pieces of work represent two communities taking the idea of an EDAP and rooting it to their place, their community, their challenges.
The current global food system is highly fuel- and transport-dependent. Fuels will almost certainly become less affordable in the near and medium term, making the current, highly fuel-dependent agricultural production system less secure and food less affordable. It is therefore necessary to promote food self-sufficiency and reduce the need for fuel inputs to the food system at all levels.
Why did the Deepwater Horizon blow up last year, kill 11 workers, and cause the massive oil eruption into the Gulf of Mexico? You’re likely to get different answers if you talk separately to a petroleum engineer or an anthropologist. When they team up, it gets really interesting. Anthropologist Joseph Tainter (author of The Collapse of Complex Societies) and petroleum engineer Tad Patzek talk about the new book they’ve co-authored: Drilling Down: The Gulf oil debacle and our energy dilemma.
-The End of Growth in the United States
-Do Less with Less, and Love It
-Could Obama Be the First Steady-State President?
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Europe in the breach
-China slipping
-Notes from the World Petroleum Congres
-Quote of the week
-The Briefs
There’s plenty of understanding that efficiency measures can sometimes (often) fail if they fall victim to Jevon’s Paradox. The common response is that we need to couple efficiency measures with a carbon tax or similar policy that give people both the means and the incentive to decrease energy consumption. But let’s look at the underlying goal of a carbon tax: to change behavior. How does it change behavior? By penalizing undesirable behavior (financially). The downside to a carbon tax is that it requires overcoming many political hurdles that don’t seem likely to be overcome anytime soon. What are the alternatives?
-E.P.A. Links Tainted Water in Wyoming to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas
-Shale gas drilling’s dirty secret is out
-Encana throws cold water on EPA report
-Ex-oil worker blasts shale gas industry
-No U.S.-style shale gas boom in EU: E&Y
-Petrochina says new shale gas find tough to develop
