Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Energy systems do not exist in a social vacuum but are subject to culture and imagination. Anyone interested in promoting an energy transition away from oil and fossil fuels more generally needs to take this fact into account. Unfortunately, energy culture has often been overlooked as an explanation of U.S. energy development.
The IEA decision to release 60 million barrels from strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) of member nations has been criticized as politically motivated, too small and too late to matter, or, at best, as a desperate attempt to fend off economic woes. The reality and impact of the decision are more complex than that. The move is a bold, price-suppressing “poke in OPEC’s eye” from nations that have been perpetual price takers in the world oil market. The short-term rationale for the decision, however, should not obscure our real oil problem – geopolitics is combining with economics and geology to put us in an oil crunch that is not likely to abate until our nation moves beyond oil.
“Equal Time” hosts a wide-ranging interview with Kurt Cobb, author of the peak-oil-themed thriller Prelude, and a separate interview with Vermont Law School faculty member Don Kreis about the courtroom battle over Vermont’s Yankee nuclear power plant.
The fallout from the IEA’s recent decision to release 60 million barrels of oil reserves continued this week. OPEC members criticized the IEA for “breaching its own principles” and interfering with the market. Traders too seemed little impressed with the move as prices recovered last week’s losses, as Greece drew back from the brink. After all, 60 million barrels is less than a day’s global consumption.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
There are currently no viable substitutes for oil at current rates of consumption. Although alternatives to oil do exist for many of its uses, they are generally vastly inferior to oil in their energy content and in the ease of which they can be extracted, transported, and turned into a commercially-useable fuel.
-The Shale Gas Scam Goes Public
-Reality Check for the Natural Gas Boom: A Look at the NYT Shale Gas E-Mails
-Chesapeake Energy Corporation Comments on Inaccurate and Misleading New York Times Article
-Oil, water shortages, climate change could provoke wars: report
-Sylvia Earle: If the sea is in trouble, we are all in trouble
-Like a grenade in a glasshouse
-Peak oil is ‘getting closer’ but the world is not ready
Looking at the oil supply & demand fundamentals, next year looks like an accident waiting to happen. If economic growth in emerging economies remains on track, and that is a big If, the next oil price shock will occur in 2012.
Throughout the past two centuries economic growth has translated to an increased capability to support more humans with Earth’s available resources. More energy, more raw materials, more jobs, more trade, better sanitation, and key medical advances have all contributed to higher infant survival rates and longer life expectancy in general.
A 30-year war for energy preeminence? You wouldn’t wish it even on a desperate planet. But that’s where we’re headed and there’s no turning back.
The free flow of solar radiation that powers life on earth should be diminished, suggest some, including American Enterprise Institute’s S. Thernstrom, because it threatens the growth of our candle-making economy that requires filling the atmosphere with heat-trapping gasses.
