Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Nobody wants to be the last person into a community in disarray. Nobody wants to come skating in, unknown by the neighbors, when the food and water are running low. Nobody wants to be known at the new kid in town, regardless of her age. So there’s the central issue of building community in the community. As if that’s not difficult enough, in a culture anathema to community, there’s more.
Recent discoveries of oil and gas in the deep-water offshore region of the Gulf of Mexico may have recoverable resources of up to 15 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
The failed Christmas plane bomber’s links to Yemen brought that country back under the geopolitical microscope. But a dark headline about Yemen the day before Christmas went virtually unnoticed. The below-the-radar message: “Yemen Reports Disastrous Drop in Oil Revenues.” Yemen’s oil production, and the national budget it has recently propped up, is cratering. And the plane bomber’s training on Yemeni soil will likely add a risk premium to the very investments needed to help slow down Yemen’s oil slide.
-Oil and gas exploration falls to lowest level in five years
-World Future Energy Summit-Christophe de Margerie: Big Oil’s Straight Talker
-Have we reached peak oil?
-Oil Shortages to Reappear in 2011, Goldman Sachs Says
In one of my favorite non-science fiction novels, “Freddy and Fredericka“, the future King and Queen of England are dropped naked from an airplane into America as sort of a rite of passage. Though heir to the throne and infinitely wealthy back home, Freddy must use only his wits, skills of persuasion and physical abilities to somehow rise to the unlikely position of the leader of the USA – if he manages this, basically from scratch, he will then have earned the throne of England not only due to hereditary decree but via his own merits.
A weekdly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Record Asian demand
-The Alberta oil sands
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
-Emissions from UK food industry far higher than believed
-Poachers Arrive at Egg Farms
-Striking a bargain: With supply limited, state targets water demand
-Will Anyone Stand Up For American Industry?
-The Key to Local Food Systems’ Survival: Strong Community Support
‘Eco’ packaging
-Google defies Chinese censors after cyberattacks on Gmail accounts of activists
-Public Produce: Filling the Sidewalks with Fruit Trees
-As the World Burns
-Movie Review Friday: The Road
-A New Eden, Both Cosmic and Cinematic
-Photo Gallery: Homes for a Changing Climate
It has been 18 months since we all worried very much about high oil prices. Starting in July 2008 gasoline prices took an historic plunge dropping from a U.S. average high of $4.11 a gallon all the way down to $1.70 in January 2009.
Oil prices began the year with a rally, reaching nearly $84 a barrel as temperatures across much of the northern hemisphere required the heating to be turned up a notch.
As others have pointed out, many of Haiti’s problems have been related to its population density, associated environmental degradation and its need for cheap energy. Now, with the worst earthquake shaking the Caribbean in 200 years, we must sadly add another chapter to the Haitian book chronicling the linkage between its human and ecological disasters.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-China’s Economy
