Oil

#266: A black hole of debt

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KMO welcomes repeat guests Richard Heinberg and Dmitry Orlov back to the C-Realm Podcast to compare notes on the state of economic transition in which we find ourselves. In his new book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, Richard makes the case that we have reached a crucial inflection point in economic history after which human progress and well-being must be de-coupled from economic growth. Dmitry describes a near-term future in which the United States has been dismantled by its creditors, whom he describes as trans-national mafias.

Energy and peace: the dangers of our slow energy transition

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Resource scarcity and climate change should be driving forward our transition to the energy systems of the future. Though this transition has started in important ways in several locations, change is not being undertaken at either the scale or speed required.

Why oil is killing the American farm

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A new documentary, American Meat, is the first food documentary to really delve into how dependent our industrial food system is on fossil fuels. Using this vulnerability to help frame the discussion on the industrial versus the sustainable approach, director Graham Meriwether produces a film that helps make clear that in order to survive the decline in cheap energy, we need to ramp up our small scale sustainable farming efforts. He also focuses on the increasing profitability of such farms, and their ability to create more jobs.

The link between peak oil and peak debt – Part 2

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In Part 1 of this post, I pointed out that an economy is closely linked with the resources that underly it. Because of this, if there is really is a limit that prevents oil supply from rising endlessly, then there is also a limit that prevents debt from rising endlessly. I talked about seeing a two-way link between peak oil and peak debt…

Unburnable Carbon – Are the world’s financial markets carrying a carbon bubble? (Report)

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The Carbon Tracker initiative is a new way of looking at the carbon emissions problem. It is focused on the fossil fuel reserves held by publically listed companies and the way they are valued and assessed by markets. Currently financial markets have an unlimited capacity to treat fossil fuel reserves as assets. As governments move to control carbon emissions, this market failure is creating systemic risks for institutional investors, notably the threat of fossil fuel assets becoming stranded as the shift to a low-carbon economy accelerates.

The link between peak oil and peak debt – Part 1

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The economy is closely linked with the physical resources that underly it. Most economists assume debt can rise endlessly, just as they assume GDP can rise endlessly. But if there really is a limit that prevents oil supply from rising endlessly, it seems to me that there is also a corresponding limit that prevents debt from rising endlessly.

Peak exploration: The Apollo program and the high water mark of Western civilization

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As we lament the launching of the last U.S. space shuttle mission, we should pause for a moment and reflect on what it really means. Ironically, the first moon landing happened one year before America reached its domestic peak in oil production, which likely better explains more than any other single factor why the space program failed to advance after Apollo program wrapped up.