Fossil Fuels

America and Oil: Declining together?

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America and Oil. It’s like bacon and eggs, Batman and Robin. As the old song lyric went, you can’t have one without the other. Once upon a time, it was also a surefire formula for national greatness and global preeminence. Now, it’s a guarantee of a trip to hell in a hand basket. The Chinese know it. Does Washington?

Learning from China: Why the existing economic model will fail

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What China is teaching us is that the western economic model—the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy—will not work for the world. If it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which by 2035 is projected to have an even larger population than China. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in developing countries who are also dreaming the “American dream.” And in an increasingly integrated global economy, where we all depend on the same grain, oil, and steel, the western economic model will no longer work for the industrial countries either.

Growing through the storm

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How can we adapt mentally, and socially to Peak Oil, climate change and an economic bust at the same time? 3 interviews with solutions: interviews: “Peak Oil Shrink” Kathy McMahon from Vermont on unexpected lessons from Hurricane Irene. Urban homesteader Jules Dervaes – food self-sufficiency on a city lot. Richard Heinberg on coping with the End of Growth – will fertilizer shortages mean “Peak Food”? What are Common Security Clubs and “Resilience Circles”?

Have frackers pushed their luck too far?

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Over the past week, I’ve heard from serious observers of the U.S. shale gas industry — from investment analysts, think-tank scholars and others — that we seem near a tipping point in the heated debate over the companies’ drilling methods: If there is another serious accident or two in which shale gas drillers appear to have polluted a water aquifer, look for significant regulatory curtailment of the industry, as one investment analyst put it.

Canada’s Oil Sands: Energy Security, or Energy Disaster?

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The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. In this Climate One debate, a panel of experts argues for and against the controversial pipeline.

A guide for the perplexed energy policymaker

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If you are an energy policymaker (or layperson interested in energy) and you are NOT perplexed by the last decade, read no further. You have little to gain from what I write below. However, if you are a perplexed energy policymaker (or perplexed layperson interested in energy), please continue and learn why poor quality data, lack of transparency, broad uncertainty and flawed thinking about risk have made it difficult for many experts and the public alike to think sensibly about our energy future.

ASPO-USA Conference: Experts to seek “truth in energy”, find solutions to end of cheap oil

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Experts on energy and the economy will gather on Capitol Hill, November 2-5, to confront the global challenge of resource depletion, Peak Oil, and the end of cheap energy—with a focus on economic implications and strategies to navigate an uncertain and rapidly changing future.

“Peak Oil, Energy & the Economy”, the 2011 conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas USA (ASPO-USA), will feature cutting edge research and analysis by leading experts from North America and Europe. Under the theme of “Truth in Energy”, the event will take a hard look at America’s energy and economic challenges, and the actions required to tackle them.