Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
From the Fukushima nuclear crisis to the civil war in Libya, a rising spiral of troubles that may just mark a new phase in the predicament of industrial society is being met more and more often with what amount to incantations. As something of a specialist in incantations, the Archdruid suggests that something more practical may be needed just now.
It is coming to the point that one’s world outlook has to be modified every few months as the old ways of looking at things are changed by events. So it is with oil — supply, demand and, of course, price. At the beginning of the year the future of oil was thought to be mostly about China and how fast its economy and demand for oil would grow during 2011. In last two months, however, the world situation has changed markedly and we now have a multiplicity of factors vying to influence the global oil markets in ways as yet unknown.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The earthquake
-Quote of the week
In February, world food prices reached the highest level on record. Soaring food prices are already a source of spreading hunger and political unrest, and it appears likely that they will climb further in the months ahead.
Oil prices were buffeted this week by escalating violence in Libya and fear of further disruption in the Middle East on the one hand, and a new debt crisis in the Eurozone threatening further economic turmoil on the other. In Libya this week the Gaddafi regime has launched a full scale military offensive against the rebels and appeared on Thursday to be gaining the upper hand.
There’s a presumption out there that things look tough in the Middle East, but that soon enough — maybe by summer — they will sort themselves out, and becalm the volatile prices of oil and gasoline. Not so, says veteran oil analyst Edward Morse, a student of history who correctly called the 2008 oil bubble while everyone else was still throwing money into the pot. “This is not a one-off disruption,” Morse says. Instead, we’re in a new age of geopolitical risk that threatens to disrupt the region for a decade or even longer.
With instability in the Middle East driving oil prices higher, huge cracks are widening in the global economy. In an effort to broaden the conversation about Middle East unrest and its impacts on oil prices and economies, the Post Carbon Institute offers six informed perspectives on what to expect in the days, weeks and months ahead. Individuals, businesses and policy makers are made aware of the speed with which seemingly incremental price gains can topple global dominoes.
As oil prices rise, heating our homes with wood becomes more attractive. Steven Hamburg is the Chief Scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund, and he co-authored a recent report on the potential of northeastern forests to meet our energy need. Tom Whipple writes the weekly Peak Oil Review, and his latest edition says, “Collapse would not be too strong a term to apply to the global economy should Saudi oil production of 9 million b/d be halted or severely restricted by domestic unrest.” We talk to him about what he sees that indicates Saudi production may become shut in, and why that’s so important.
Since 2001, Americans have been living with a nightmare Arab, a Muslim monster threatening us to the core, chilling our souls with the cry, “God is great!” Yet after two months of world-historic protest and rebellion in streets and squares across the Arab world, we are finally waking up to another reality: that this was our bad dream, significantly a creation of our own fevered imaginations.
– Saudi Arabia is losing its fear
– Why Saudi Arabia is ripe for revolution.
– The Muslim Brothers In Egypt’s ‘Orderly Transition’
The world-system has been in a structural crisis since the 1970s. The primary characteristic of a structural crisis is chaos. This is not a situation of totally random happenings. It is a situation of rapid and constant fluctuations in all the parameters of the historical system. This includes not only the world-economy, the interstate system, and cultural-ideological currents, but also the availability of life resources, climatic conditions, and pandemics. The one encouraging feature about a systemic crisis is the degree to which it increases the viability of agency, of what we call “free will.” When the system is far from equilibrium, every little input has great effect.
Thirty-four years have come and gone since Energy Secretary James Schlesinger described the American approach to oil supply problems. “We have only two modes—complacency and panic.” Nothing has changed. As popular revolt spread from Egypt into Libya, panic smoothly replaced complacency in the markets and the overwrought minds of the American people. Apparently, since Egypt blew up first, and Libya, which is west of Egypt, blew up next, it has been deemed logical to conclude that Algeria, which is west of Libya, will be the next domino to fall.
