Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-Oil Demand Seems to be Moving Up – Are Higher Prices around the Corner?
-To Slow Growth, China Raises an Interest Rate
-Chinese Transportation Growth
-US raises concern over China oil policy
The American West at Risk’s 13 chapters examine some of the major human-caused environmental problems now threatening the 11 contiguous Western states…Citing trustworthy, peer-reviewed studies in support of its arguments, and written by three trained scientists, this book has every claim for credibility—and is an enlightening and gripping read for scientists and laypeople alike.
On December 2, 2009, the Bloomington City Council overwhelmingly approved the report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force entitled Redefining Prosperity: Energy Descent and Community Resilience (PDF 13.36 MB). The report is the product of a seven-member task force and outlines the community’s vulnerability to a decline in cheap oil and proposes numerous mitigation strategies.
-2020 vision: Second-hand Prius, anyone? Car use declines across Europe as society returns to medieval values
-America’s New Year’s resolution: Break our addiction to oil
-Retired, no, refired, yes: on call for collapse
-Portland ratchets up volunteer-led ‘tool libraries’ that lend tools for free
-Nine meals from anarchy
-Boiler scrappage scheme offers £400-off vouchers
Taped in late 2005 before Peak Moment began, this conversation feels eerily prescient about the effects of the 2008 financial collapse. William Stewart reflects on the shadow side of the fossil fuel bonanza, which enabled hyper-individualism and mobility that have shredded our connections to community and place, along with increased violence and dysfunction. Likening our oil-dependent culture to an addict who must first bottom out, he suggests there may be a silken lining after collapse: the possibility of more communal and connected ways of life.
The top ten sustainability stories of the past decade was my last post. What trends are likely the next ten years? One thing for sure, 2010 through 2019 will be one day looked at as 1.) the turning point for addressing climate change by using effective urban management strategies, or it will be remembered as 2.) the time when we collectively fumbled the Big Blue Ball.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Gasoline prices rising
-Venezuela
-China rolls on
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
-Interview with BP’s chairman of the board Carl-Henric Svanberg
-In New Gas Wells, More Drilling Chemicals Remain Underground
-Low-Carbon Recovery
-Is the United Kingdom facing a natural gas shortage?
-National Grid appeals for more gas as imports fail to arrive
-Saudi craving for oil comes at a price
-Iraq Could Delay Peak Oil a Decade
-Here’s something about North Dakota worth imitating
-The Other Plot to Wreck America
-America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels
-Can Farming Save Detroit?
-The Visual Du Jour – What If…?
-Economists start to consider that money can’t buy happiness
-Peak oil demand funds
In his 1865 book “The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal-Mines,” English economist William Stanley Jevons made the observation “Of the Economy of Fuel” that when improvements in technology make it possible to use a fuel more efficiently, the consumption of the fuel tends to go up, not down.
Because forecasts of abundant fossil fuel supplies far into the future have been embedded in public policy and business planning worldwide, we have made our entire global society dependent on getting these forecasts right. If they turn out to be too optimistic, then we could all be in for serious trouble. Since long-term energy forecasts–and really any long-term forecasts–are difficult if not impossible to get right, perhaps we should consider making society forecast-proof insofar as that is possible.
There is a train crash about to happen from an energy point of view. But politicians everywhere seem to have entirely missed the scale of the problem… [G]overnments and multilateral agencies have failed to recognize the imminence and scale of the global oil supply crunch, and most of them remain completely unprepared for its consequences.
