Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In a few decades, many OPEC nations in the Middle East will have such large populations that they could end up consuming much or all of the energy they now export, suggests Matthew Simmons, an oil consultant in Houston.
Fossil fuels, so easily set alight! Yes, and as Bush and Kerry are out campaigning, we are presently touching off nearly the very last whiffs and drops and chunks of them. All lights are about to go out.
Dennis Meadows warned 32 years ago that the world would run short of resources within a century, putting the planet at risk of expanding hunger as well as economic and social disaster. Today, that danger is more imminent, says Mr. Meadows, one of the authors of “The Limits to Growth,” a book published in 1972 and now just updated.
People are consuming the earth’s natural resources 20
percent faster than nature can renew them–a dangerous imbalance that is
fueling the loss of species and may lead to critical resource shortages
in the years ahead, according to a World Wildlife Fund study released on
Thursday.
Just like rising energy demand, global warming, and racial distrust, America’s population boom is escaping serious attention from both presidential candidates. This is happening —or rather, not happening — even though the United States is growing more rapidly than it ever has before.
Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update brings data on overshoot and global ecological collapse to the present moment. It provides a short course in the World3 computer model, types of growth, and the various kinds of overshoot likely to occur in the current century.
Derrick Jensen thinks the collapse of civilisation, be it deliberate or through oil depletion or any other means, can only be a good thing for the planet.
When Bush seized Iraq – using Saddam as an excuse – it was the first step in an endgame for the remaining oil reserves necessary for the American way of life. According to Stan Doffish, this horrible logic may lead the Bush administration to attempt to ‘depopulate’ Asia
Southern Africa faces major challenges to feed its swelling populations and to keep its wells from running dry, a study showed.
In Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky suggested that our leaders, facing the choice in the book’s title, might well opt for hegemony over survival.
More than 6,000 species of butterflies and other insects, as well as mites, fungi and assorted unloved but important species, will also be wiped out when listed endangered species go extinct, scientists said.
The possible consequences of peak oil are gigantic and involve nothing less than a forced, massive, radical and sustained change in our way of life as we transition to alternative energy sources and the economic/political order they support. Our current oil fed, growth based, globalised industrial civilisation will not survive the transition, something new must take its place.
