Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
How do we move away from a fossil-fuel based society? David Holmgren, ecological design engineer and co-originator of the term “Permaculture” discusses this very question.
Saudi Arabia announced this week that it is halting its $100bn oil expansion programme, claiming that the requirement for the kingdom to increase production has “substantially reduced” in the face of emerging new oil and gas supplies.
For years, governments, industry, and TV ads told us natural gas is the safe bridge fuel while we move away from dirty coal and oil. Cornell University scientist Robert Howarth wondered “Is that true?”…Program includes 27 minute speech by Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell at ASPO USA 2011, November 2nd in Washington D.C. recorded by Carl Etnier of Equal Time Radio, Vermont…Then a follow-up interview this week with Robert Howarth, to fill in his hurried climax of the speech…that methane emissions, when calculated over 20 years…could add up to at least 44% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States!
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
As global energy production peaks, our consumer-driven society is being forced to rethink its values and creatively adapt to a less energy intensive world. Richard Heinberg, senior fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and author of The End of Growth joins Luke to discuss the end of consumerism.
In the last few years the IEA’s annual report has come to recognize that the next 25 years are unlikely to be anything like the last 25 and the report has become much more nuanced. Gone are the extreme predictions that the world will be consuming 50 percent more oil 25 years from now. In their place are forecasts that global oil production will depend heavily on what alternative policy paths are taken by major governments and how much ($38 trillion is necessary) will be spent to find and exploit fossil fuel resources in the coming years.
In recent years, we have heard statements indicating that it is possible to decouple GDP growth from energy growth. I have been looking at the relationship between world GDP and world energy use and am becoming increasingly skeptical that such a decoupling is really possible.
After my talk in Norwich last week, I met a local authority emergency planner, who said that he had found the talk, and the Transition take on resilience, very illuminating. He pointed me in the direction of the latest “Strategic National Framework on Community Resilience”, the latest “national statement for how individual and community resilience can work”, published by the Cabinet Office in March of this year. It is a fascinating document, and is indeed the first official government document on community resilience that refers explicitly to the Transition movement, and as such deserves a post reflecting on it. It also offers a tantalising glimpse into what a government response to peak oil, climate change and economic contraction might look like if anyone had the imagination to create one.
Big Oil’s campaign for energy complacency is picking up steam. They say tar sands and fracking are bringing a new era of plenty. But whatever happened to peak oil?
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Middle East in transition
-Turmoil in Europe
-The IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2011
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs
The following is the text of an address by Richard Heinberg to the Moana Nui Conference in Honolulu, November 12, 2011. Honolulu was concurrently hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Conference; as a response to that secretive international trade meeting, the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala Ka Po collaborated to organize Moana Nui.
US oil prices rose this week on news that the glut of crude stocks at Cushing Oklahoma, which has depressed the benchmark WTI contract for months, may soon be drained. Enbridge is to buy the Seaway pipeline which runs from the Houston area to Cushing, and plans to reverse its flow.
