Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When most people think of fossil fuel supplies, they think in terms of barrels of oil, cubic feet of natural gas and tons of coal. But in evaluating how much energy in the form of finite fossil fuels the world has left, these are no longer adequate measurements.
Europe is finally starting to think about its longer-term energy issues, and how they affect transportation plans. To try to deal with these issues, a new European Energy Consultation was set up, specifically to look into these issues. The European Energy Consultation asked for interested individuals to provide their input.
First off, Canada is not now, nor is it ever likely to be, an “Energy Superpower”. This term was first used by Prime Minister Harper on the eve of the 2006 G8 meeting.
-Wanted: Some Journalists With Guts to Take on the Government and BP!
-Out in the Oil with Captain Dave
-Obama admin imposes new freeze on deepwater drilling
The BP spill demands a far more significant response than ongoing cleanups, unsuccessful attempts to plug the gushing oil, and desperate efforts to mitigate the multitude of impacts from the biggest oil catastrophe in U.S. history. The BP spill demands a paradigm shift in how we run our economy and carry out our governance. Historians will one day look back on this spill as the nadir of governmental regulatory performance, in which oil companies commandeered and corrupted the Interior Department oil leasing program. So what’s the response we need to get the paradigm shift going? How about declaring a new holiday?
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Deepwater Horizon Saga
-China
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Ten years ago, energy analyst Steve Andrews challenged widely respected energy guru Amory Lovins via email for what Andrews thought was an overly optimistic vision—about coal consumption trends, evolution in the auto industry, future world oil production, etc.—articulated in the Rocky Mountain Institute‘s Spring 2000 newsletter. …Ten years later, read it for the blind spots everyone had.
Most of us have not bothered to comprehend the yawning gulf that lies between our best intentions and our abject dependence on the wealth-producing properties of petroleum. Nor how this addiction fills us with delusions of godlike mastery over our environment while blinding us to the reality that we humans have grossly overshot our planet’s carrying capacity.
Today, we are rarely called upon to find the limits of our compassion. In a post-peak oil world that will in all likelihood no longer be the case.
– Lloyd’s adds its voice to dire ‘peak oil’ warnings
– Emirates banker: Will oil be coal?
– India cuts gas subsidy in favor of greener investments?
– Peak oil postponed again
Hopes rose this week that BP may be in a position to attempt to ‘kill’ the Macondo oil leak a couple of weeks ahead of its previously anticipated date. The first of two relief wells is now close to the target, and a top BP executive is reported to have told Wall Street Journal that, should weather conditions remain favourable, the well could be shut off by 27th July. With this optimistic, but by no means assured backdrop, Tony Hayward spent this week visiting Middle Eastern investors in an attempt to shore up BP against hostile takeover bids…
-Climate photo of the week: BP oil spill
-Canada: The Saudi Arabia of the North?
-The Gulf Spill – The Battle over the Drilling Moratorium
