Oil

Tough Oil: Five public health challenges of petroleum scarcity

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“There are no solutions, only responses,” says EHS professor Brian Schwartz, co-director of the Program on Global Sustainability and Health and a nationally recognized expert on the health consequences of peak oil. “You can deny climate change forever, but you can’t deny the rising price of oil. The limitations to ever-increasing production are a geologic reality.”

The coming era of petroleum scarcity is “probably the most underreported issue of our time,” says Schwartz, MD, MS. He and Bloomberg School colleagues have spent much of the past decade looking at how ever-more-costly petroleum will affect some of the key drivers of public health, and what strategies we should adopt now to minimize future health consequences.

ODAC Newsletter – Sep 30

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The debt crisis and the war in Libya continued their push and pull on the oil price this week with the outlook currently weakening over fears of a Eurozone recession. Despite this Brent continues to trade at over $100/barrel – around double the price at which any previous economic recovery has occurred. The rising cost of energy is playing out in a number of ways…

Peak oil – Sept 30

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– “Rome didn’t collapse in a day” – adult comic about one man’s awakening to peak oil
– Is Yergin Correct about Oil Supply? by Gail Tverberg (an Opinion the WSJ did not run)
– Forget about peak oil (Yergin interviewed by “Salon”)
– The UK’s North Sea production declines below 1 million barrel per day

Peak Oil keynote by Randy Udall and sustainability conference call for participants

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Randy Udall’s humorous and poignant presentation on peak oil was published today, recorded at the Local Future conference. Local Future invites visionaries, activists, and leaders to apply to the 2011 International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change: Vision, Action, Leadership. Confirmed speakers include Nicole Foss, Dr. Steve Keen, T.S. Bennett, Sally Erickson, Guy McPherson, Jan Lundberg, Gregory Greene, Kurt Cobb, Stephanie Mills and Aaron Wissner. [The Udall video is posted here.]

Review: The Global Warming Reader, edited and introduced by Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben’s latest book is a well-chosen and arranged collection of climate-related writings by the likes of James Hansen, Al Gore and George Monbiot, which McKibben edits and introduces. Significantly, the book contains writings by Inhofe and his ilk as well, the better to understand “the lines of attack climate deniers have used over and over,” in McKibben’s words,

“The Quest” questioned – the series

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Journalist Mason Inman does what the mainstream media won’t: he gives a balanced, critical look at the claims of energy historian Daniel Yergin about peak oil. (Latest in a series. )

#3 – We’re finding oil faster than we’re using it?
#4 – Only the pessimists have been wrong?
#5 – Peak oil = running out of oil?

A brief economic explanation of Peak Oil

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Unless and until adaptive responses are large and fast enough to constrain the upward trend of oil prices, the primary adaptive response will be periodic economic crashes of a magnitude that depresses oil consumption and oil prices. These have the effect of shifting consumption from incumbent consumers—the advanced economies—to the new consumers in the developing economies.