Peak oil review – June 7
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Deepwater horizon
-Has the EIA admitted to peak oil?
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Oil
New York Times on peak oil … and the problem of history
You learn pretty quickly to adjust for what any mainstream media says about peak oil and anyone who does any kind of preparation.
Paint it Black: Oil activism
Hey kids, the circus is in town. One day, the Los Angeles Times announces the Gulf gusher is plugged. They got that news from Coast Guard clown Admiral Thad Allen. The oil didn’t get the message, it kept gushing out of the hole. BP had stopped pumping mud 16 hours previously, but nobody told the government. Even so, 24 hours later, Allen, acting as cheerleader-in-chief, said the same thing, on National TV. Meanwhile, any fool on the Net could see the oil continuing to gush out, if you could find the right camera.
Review: Thriving Beyond Sustainability by Andrés R. Edwards
Given what a sweeping category sustainability is, author and noted sustainability expert Andrés Edwards is to be commended for distilling it down into two easily digestible volumes for lay readers: The Sustainability Revolution and Thriving Beyond Sustainability.
Age of petroleum ends in systemic imbroglio
Peak oil and mixed economy don’t mix.
What Price Pelican?
Our energy subsidy from the stored sunlight in fossil fuels is gigantic. The chemical and kinetic energy embodied in the thick gooey condensed organic matter from past eons is, for all human intents and purposes, indistinguishable from magic. Once in a while, like now, we see the downsides to our dependency on this elixir, in this case the ecological degradation of increasing areas of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystems, and collateral damage to other species.
The addict’s excuse
The Gulf of Mexico is currently experiencing the human equivalent of metastasizing cancer, and the governor of Louisiana proposes that the activities which resulted in that cancer be resumed immediately even as BP’s underwater gusher continues to flow into the gulf.
What’s in a word?: The rhetoric surrounding the Deepwater Horizon disaster
The Obama administration and BP are using increasingly different rhetoric to describe what’s growing, along with the spill, as part of an epic clash of government and industry.
The demise of BP?
As someone who has argued that the U.S. needs to invest in more offshore drilling lest we face oil shortages and increasing dependence on other countries for our energy, I can’t make that argument in light of this sort of disaster. We may need drilling, but we also need our coastlines.
Peak oil means deepwater drilling is business as usual
With Federal regulators approving a new Gulf of Mexico oil well and the Canadian government continuing to support deepwater drilling off its own coasts, it looks like business as usual for the oil industry despite media coverage of BP’s ongoing ecological disaster. Even if the media debate switches to the realities of peak oil and the need for renewable alternatives to declining fossil fuels – or indeed the lack of regulation of the oil industry in the US, which has been compared to the financial sector before the 2008 credit meltdown – it seems a fair bet that it won’t dull our appetite for oil.
ODAC Newsletter – June 4
As the leaking Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico continues to defy BP’s efforts, the crisis now looks existential for the company. This week the share price collapsed further, and commentary went far beyond the usual concerns over the fate of the chief executive and the dividend. One Clinton era official even suggested taking BP’s US assets into temporary administration…
Under pressure to block oil, a rush to dubious projects
In response to the widening disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, government officials have approved a plan to intercept the oil by building a 45-mile sand berm. But scientists fear the project is a costly boondoggle that will inflict further environmental damage and do little to keep oil off the coast.
