Oil

Interview: James Howard Kunstler

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James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency” and two World Made by Hand novels, talks to Transition Voice about recent Wall Street scandals, the role of oil and what he thinks of the Transition movement. Along with the keen analysis that readers are used to from Kunstler, this piece explores a side of his work that is not as well known. And we think that’s cool.

ODAC Newsletter – Dec 3

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The Obama administration announced this week that it has reversed its decision to open up new leases in areas of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast. The intention to lift the moratorium which had been in place since 2006 was made weeks before the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. See the recent UKITPOES paper for more on the likely impact of the Gulf of Mexico disaster on oil production…

Oil price spike: blame greedy speculators or peak oil? (book review)

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Matt Taibbi’s new book “Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America” relentlessly hunts down the Wall Street crooks who destroyed the economy. Whether sleazy mortgage brokers who’d sell their own grandma for a quick buck, arrogant whiz kids pushing pump-and-dump schemes or smooth vampires in $4,000 suits who masterminded the whole plan to suck the middle class dry, Taibbi is not afraid to name names. And don’t forget the craven regulators like Alan Greenspan who aided and abetted the whole mob. But when it comes to energy and the oil price spike of 2008, does Taibbi check his skepticism at the door?

Distance costs money

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Economist Jeff Rubin, author of Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization says that high oil prices caused every US recession since the 1970s. Now we complain that credit scams are a bubble that will cause deflation. But is oil still lurking in there?

The evolution of Transition in the U.S.

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Transition is not a movement for bringing about change. Change is coming, with us or without us, whether we want it or not — profound change. Transition is a movement for preparing our communities for the changes that are coming. And our preparation is likely to crumble unless we are able to connect with and cultivate the aliveness, the wholeness, the healing, and the sacredness that underlies the Transition process.

Towards a kinder gentler (smaller) Oil Drum

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For the past 5 years, The Oil Drum has been a home base for many high level discussions about the details and implications surrounding an early peak in global crude oil production as well as topics on society and energy in general. The entire site was started, and continued, by volunteers, in what might be described as a loose anarchy glued by social capital… In many ways our initial mission is over. The fact that oil depletion is real and urgent is no longer a 3+ standard deviation viewpoint (see recent IEA World Energy Outlook). However, thorough understanding of the nuances and importance of energy in our lives is still not widespread. [This article describes] our plans on how best TOD can play a role in the ongoing energy debate

Review of National Commission Working Paper #6, “Stopping the Macondo spill”

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From the report: “The containment story thus contains two parallel threads. First, on April 20, the oil and gas industry was unprepared to respond to a deepwater blowout, and the federal government was similarly unprepared to provide meaningful supervision.

Second, in a compressed timeframe, BP was able to design, build, and use new containment technologies, while the federal government was able to develop effective oversight capacity. Those impressive efforts, however, were made necessary by the failure to anticipate a subsea blowout in the first place.”