Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Max Keiser, host of the financial cable news show On the Edge, interviews Kurt Cobb, author, blogger and columnist, on world oil supplies, Cobb’s peak-oil themed novel, Prelude, global credit conditions and many other topics in this wide-ranging discussion.
With the environmental crisis, we’re now in a situation where we can decide whether biologist Ernst Mayr was right or not. If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.
– Protests Against Forced Eviction from US-Backed Coal Mine Continue in Bangladesh
– Shell and Cairn Energy Announce ‘Risky’ Drilling Plans in Arctic
– Why is the UK backing biomass power?
It’s not resource depletion, peak oil, climate change, rising population, corporatocracy or environmental devastation that will be the cause of our demise. Nor is the problem a political stalemate or the stranded costs of our investments in useless, outmoded or destructive technology. These are the not the problems, really: they are the symptoms. Our callousness plays a causal role here, empowering all of these immanent threats to humanity. Change that and we start to change everything.
According to The Times, Iraq’s oil ministry is to reset its oil production target for 2017 reducing it down from 12 million barrels per day to between 6.6-7 mb/d. The news is of no surprise to anyone (with the possible exception of Donald Trump)…
-Goodies and baddies
-Humanitarian intervention: whom to protect, whom to abandon
-The theory and practice of humanitarian intervention and the interest of western powers: Liberia, Darfur, Rwanda, Iraq, and Libya
– Act now on peak oil or curtail mobility, says European Commission
– The Mother Of All Price Signals Is Upon Us, Says Investor Jeremy Grantham
– Big oil price swings are here to stay (video)
– Russia halts petrol exports
What confidence should we now have in projections about China that assume more of the same? The ruling Communist Party threw the dice definitively for state capitalism and untrammeled growth decades ago and now sits atop a potential volcano. Only one thing may keep the present system safely in place: ever more growth. The minute China’s economy falters, the minute some bubble bursts, whether through an overheating economy or for other reasons, the country’s rulers have a problem on their hands that could potentially make the Arab Spring look mild by comparison.
– Will China’s peak herald the “peak human”?
– Live long. Stay healthy. Join the immortals
– Immanuel Wallerstein: The world system after 1945
With the death of Osama bin Laden, can America now face threats to our future more dangerous than Al Qaeda — peak oil and climate change?
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-A turning point for global oil
-China
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Rising petrol prices and huge oil company profits combined to put pressure on President Obama this week. Prices are reaching around $4.00/gallon, levels not seen since 2008 and a psychological barrier for many Americans whose entire infrastructure is designed around the motor car.
