Media & Communications

Another wake-up call for the world’s biggest oil junkie

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The explosion and destruction of the Horizon deepwater rig and the subsequent oil spill disaster are only the latest in a series of wake-up calls you’ve received. Are you listening now? Your first warning came in 1956, with the publication of M. King Hubbert’s model of US oil production, which correctly predicted its peak in 1970. When Hubbert updated his model on camera in 1976, he also nailed the peak of worldwide conventional oil production in 2005.

From the Deepwater Horizon

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The Gulf of Mexico “spill” is really a man-made underwater volcano of oil. This accident taps a primeval fear in the human mind. Something dark and uncontrollable rushes out of the Earth, poisoning the global oceans. Could that really happen? Richard Heinberg, Anita Burke, Riki Ott, Antonia Juhasz, and new song “Corporate Catastrophe”.

Peak oil futures: same crisis, different responses

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Peak oil theorists predict an impending terminal decline of world oil production, with no adequate alternate resource and technology available to replace oil as the backbone resource of industrial society. Instead of endlessly debating whether peak oil theorists are right or wrong, let us simply ask what would happen if they were right. Based on historical case studies I suggest that there would be different reactions in different parts of the world, ranging from predatory militarism to authoritarian retrenchment and the mobilization of local resilience.

Peak oil, prices, and supplies – May 6

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-Groundhog Day for Oil
-Oil disaster may prove tipping point for world oil production
-Mother of all gushers could kill Earth’s oceans
-Peak Oil and the Return of the Jet Set
-Not So Fast: With Gas Prices Low, A Return To Oil
-Caution Required for Gulf Oil Spill Clean-Up, Bioremediation Expert Says

Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan website launched today!!

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It gives me the greatest pleasure this morning to launch the Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan website. The site makes the full version of the UK’s first EDAP freely available, invites comments and discussion, and will act as a dynamic portal for people to discuss the Plan and reshape subsequent revisions.

Inconvenient? You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet (book review)

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Get used to it, baby: if there were an easier available place to find new oil than a mile beneath the sea, they’d be drilling there. The accident in the Gulf of Mexico, however damaging it is already, however widely it may spread, is minor compared with what is happening, invisibly, above our heads. That’s the message of Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth, and what he’s been warning about for over two decades.

Worse than 1789?

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Senator Levin pretty much had Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein dead in a casket with that now-notorious email from GS’s head of sales and trading, Tom Montag, describing one of their billion-dollar investment “products” as “one shitty deal.” Levin seemed to delight in crossing the boundary into the realm of the unspeakable, knowing that even the so-called “family” newspapers and cable TV networks would have to report it. And just to make sure nobody missed the point, the senator repeated that phrase at least twenty times before the day was over.

Peak oil, prices, and supplies – May 4

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-BP Fought Safety Measures at Deepwater Oil Rigs
-Toyota’s Bill Reinert on Peak Oil
-How Bad Is the Oil Spill? Ask the Pelicans
-Asean members try to forge agreement on oil and gas rich Spratly Islands
-Track the Gulf of Mexico oil spill movement in animated graphic
-Response options for BP oil spill

Industry leaders seem to be showing more openness to energy descent issues

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I’ve spent the last two days at the Institute for the Future’s Ten-Year Forecast retreat in Sausalito, CA…At this retreat, I introduced ideas relating to peak net energy, and the possibility of major changes in the years ahead. I found industry leaders much more open than I had expected to listening to and understanding our energy predicament, and talking about what may be ahead. In this post, I would like to tell you about my experience.

Faces & visions of the food movement: Sam Mogannam

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Sam Mogannam is the much-loved owner of San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market, Bi-Rite Creamery, and founder of 18 Reasons, a community space that invites people to explore art, food, and community…With his market and his devotion to people, and farmers in particular, he’s brought back the family-owned grocery and created a renewed sense of community in this pocket of the Mission District (and also my neighborhood). I sat down with him in his office above the store recently to interview him as the first in a series of perspectives on folks around the country who are making a difference in the effort to transform our food system.