Fossil Fuels

The peak oil crisis: contagion

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With every passing day it is becoming more apparent that the crisis of the depletion of cheap oil has become deeply enmeshed in the European debt crises. … Concern over the course of the Greek debt crisis has been roiling the foreign exchange and equity markets of late taking oil prices along for a rather wild ride. Last week we had London oil below $100 a barrel, but renewed optimism, or as it is now known, “risk appetite,” soon sent London oil back up over $111 where it continues to methodically eat the heart out of the OECD economies. London oil has now been above $100 a barrel for the last nine months and so far shows no signs of collapsing to the fabled $60 a barrel level as it did three years ago.

Fracking and coalbed methane: Unconventional gas in the UK

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When gas fracking and other “unconventional” energy resources are discussed in the media the focus is usually on the technology used to produced the energy, or the impact this might have on the environment. In fact, the significant feature of the exploitation of unconventional energy resources is that our present energy situation is so precarious that companies and governments consider these valid energy sources; public interest demands that this aspect of the problem be examined.

How I prepared my family for peak oil – Nicole Foss (video and text)

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Nicole Foss is senior editor of The Automatic Earth web site, and an international speaker integrating topics of peak oil, economics and personal preparation. In 2001, Foss moved her family from England to rural Ontario, in order to prepare her family for peak oil and economic uncertainty. Local Future nonprofit has published to YouTube the entire 40-minute presentation by Foss on her considerations for personal preparation, in advance of her keynote presentation at the International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change: Vision, Action, Leadership.

Where did the President’s mojo go?

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Increasingly, those of us who were ready to move with President Obama four years ago are deciding to leave normal channels and find new forms of action. Here’s an example: by year’s end the president has said he will make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry crude oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

The nation’s top climate scientists sent the administration a letter indicating that such a development would be disastrous for the climate. … But every indication from this administration suggests that it is prepared to grant the necessary permission for a project that has the enthusiastic backing of the Chamber of Commerce, and in which the Koch Brothers have a “direct and substantial interest.”

Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution

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The world is doomed to repeat four-year cycles of booms followed by crashes if we don’t get off oil, Jeremy Rifkin warned a Climate One audience in San Francisco on October 3. The solution, what he calls the Third Industrial Revolution, is the “Energy Internet,” a nervous system linking millions of small renewable energy producers.