Media & Communications

The Age of Aquarius

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Prices may fall later this year, but will not likely dip below the $110/barrel floor price. It is actually more likely that the price will continue to rise this year, as Goldman Sachs believes, because 1) stuff happens, e.g. deepwater project delays, project cost inflation, blown-up pipelines, and 2) we are now living in Flatland.

The post-oil novel: a celebration!

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The post-oil novel began as a little-known aberration within the speculative fiction genre. But it’s now hitting bestseller lists, generating comment in major papers, and garnering increasing acceptance from the mainstream of speculative fiction. Frank Kaminski takes a spirited, authoritative look at this blossoming subgenre

Peak oil: “It’s the flows, stupid!”

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Because they don’t understand peak oil, many reporters keep getting the story wrong. Because they don’t understand peak oil, some in the U.S. Congress and Senate now threaten to sue OPEC. Because they don’t understand peak oil, business journals keep whining that producer nations don’t practice rational economics.

Aus Deutschland

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With several recent articles and TV pieces in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, ZDF (Second Public German TV network) and N-TV (private TV network), Peak Oil is now becoming established in mainstream German media.

Articles in German:

200 Dollar pro Barrel? Experte rät zur Abkehr
Russen-Alarm an der Öl-Front
“Peak Oil” – Wann geht uns der Saft aus?
Simone Boehringer interviews Matthew Simmons
Fatih Birol (IEA) interview: »Wir sollten das Öl verlassen, bevor es uns verlässt«

Ignoring the elephant in the room

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The disconnect between peak oil concerns and the presidential race is almost total. The candidates remain unwaveringly oblivious to the true causes of rising fuel prices, preferring instead to dwell on irrelevant — actually, counterproductive—measures like suspending the federal gas tax during the summer months or taxing Big Oil. This is akin to putting a band-aid on a melanoma.

Preparing for which future?

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As the age of cheap abundant energy comes to its end, making meaningful plans for the future depends on a vision of the future we can expect. Many of the supposed answers to the challenge of peak oil, however, have been proposed in response to many other crises, real and imaginary. How much of our thinking about the future is defined by the attempt to find plausible problems for culturally favored solutions to solve?