Biofuel pros and cons – Feb 3

-Shell stakes green future on sugar biofuel in $2bn Brazil venture
-Obama Set to Outline Biofuels Strategy
-Biofuel requirements for cars may help destroy the rainforest, watchdog says
-Biofuels: the Biggest Supply Response to the 2000s Oil Shock

China or the U.S.: which will be the last nation standing?

Silly me. Here I had thought that world leaders would want to keep their nations from collapsing. They must be working hard to prevent currency collapse, financial system collapse, food system collapse, social collapse, environmental collapse, and the onset of general, overwhelming misery—right? But no, that’s not what the evidence suggests. Increasingly I am forced to conclude that the object of the game that world leaders are actually playing is not to avoid collapse; it’s simply to postpone it a while so as to be the last nation to go down, so yours can have the chance to pick the others’ carcasses before it meets the same fate.

There is no return to self-sustaining growth (interview with James K. Galbraith)

James K. Galbraith belongs to the most distinguished economists in the United States today. In the following exclusive interview that was conducted for New Deal 2.0 in the USA and MMNews in Germany, he talks about the financial / economic crisis and the phenomenon of Peak Oil, points at future tasks and explains why he supports the Audit the Fed bill.

Economic Growth And Climate Change — No Way Out? (updated)

Humankind has reached a fork in the road. The business-as-usual path implies robust economic growth with a rise in the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to anthropogenic climate change…Considered alternatives invariably lay out a vision of the future in which emissions steadily decline while economies continue to grow. Is such a vision realistic? This essay questions standard assumptions underlying this “have your cake and eat it too” view.

Review: Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin

Jeff Rubin, former chief economist at Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, is not your typical economist. He gets peak oil…And now, in his bestselling book Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, he argues that oil prices, temporarily dampened by the deepest post-war recession on record, will soon be vaulted to new highs as the economy begins to recover, which in turn will thrust the world into yet another recession right on the heels of this one.

Are cities sustainable in a post-peak oil world?

-Depletion of Key Resources: Facts at Your Fingertips
-Cities, peak oil, and sustainability
-Reconsidering Cities
-Peter Newman: The Crash, Peak Oil and Resilient Cities
-Where do we go from here?