Oil

One year later: Assessing the lasting impact of the Gulf spill

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The worst environmental disaster in history isn’t the oil that gets away. It’s the oil we burn, the coal we burn, the gas we burn. The real catastrophic spill is the carbon dioxide billowing from our tailpipes and smokestacks every second, year upon decade. That spill is destabilizing the planet’s life-supporting systems, killing polar wildlife, shrinking tropical reefs, dissolving shellfish, raising the sea level along densely populated coasts, jeopardizing agriculture, and threatening food security for hundreds of millions of people.

The peak oil crisis: killing off the recovery

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Polls suggest that as many as 50 percent of American families have had some sort of financial setback in recent years. Into this milieu we now have added higher oil prices. Moreover, given the increasing unrest in many Middle Eastern states, continued robust economic growth in China and India will result in still higher prices before the year is out. It implies that in the not too distant future there will be another economic downturn.

Energy – April 19

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– Secret UK memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
– NYT on Hyrdrofracking: Chemicals Were Injected Into Wells, Report Says
– Decision looms on Mekong River dam opposed by conservation groups
– Sasol’s Plan For North American Shale Gas: Turn It Into Diesel
– Big Coal’s Dirty Secret: Breakthrough New Study on Longwall Mining Regulatory Failure and Ruin in Pennsylvania

The Green Hand Reskilling Initiative

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I admit it: in the days of mobile internet and GPS, the concept of posting physical signs as a way of generating community may seem “retro” and outmoded. However, signs are all about locality. Finding resources in the course of our normal daily movements is direct, efficient, and full of the possibilities inherent in the manifold layers of existence that engage when we interact with our living immediate environment.

Japan, oil and the fragility of globalization

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Japan’s oil addiction and nuclear woes have shown the world what the energy status quo doesn’t want ordinary people to see: the social limits of growing energy consumption. Japan is now running on empty. Imported oil not only grows more costly by the day but also buys diminishing economic returns. To pay for imported oil or fund its anointed substitute, nuclear energy, Japan now cultivates a hellish debt load that analysts call a ticking time bomb. Unlike many oil-driven cultures though the Japanese will now fall back on traditions of resilience.

“Saudi’s slash oil output” … or did physics?

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Does the Saudi oil minister’s statement that the oil market is oversupplied make any sense? Saudi production goes down in the face of rising demand, and prices skyrocket, and that shows the market is oversupplied? Wouldn’t prices have dropped drastically during that period if the market had been oversupplied?