Politics

The oil-economy connection

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Saudi Arabia’s oil production company is Saudi Aramco. Its former Vice President of oil exploration and production, Sadad al Husseini, recently made the following comment on oil prices at the 30th Oil & Money Conference, held in London on October 20-21: “…as you go up to say $90 a barrel, you’re consuming 4.5% of the global economy [for oil]. That in itself is a ceiling – you cannot go indefinitely into more expensive alternatives without destroying [the] economy and therefore destroying demand…”

A radical in the Age of Denial

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It’s all about community. The age of cheap fossil fuels allowed us to forget that. But communities are making a comeback, and we’ll need strong ones if we’re to get through the years ahead with minimal human suffering. We’ll also need tremendous doses of compassion, creativity, and courage.

Commentary: Moving Beyond Denial…Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

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In the last few months, the vigorous debate over the future of world oil supplies has hit the mainstream radar screen. The optimists closed ranks—they have to because their numbers are shrinking—and launched a barrage of misleading reports and opinion pieces, suggesting that supplies will grow from today’s 85 million barrels a day to as much as 115 mb/day by 2030.

Some predictions on the forthcoming Russian-Ukrainian gas ‘crisis’

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We’ve recently heard more veiled threats from Putin about Ukraine being unable to pay for gas (thus presumably leading to new attempts at cutting them off), which suggests that Russia is getting itself ready to start a new crisis.

Food Futures: Strategies for resilient food and farming (pdf)

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Our current food systems are precarious and vulnerable to external ‘shocks’. A combination of one or more external factors, such as extreme weather conditions, global conflict or trade disputes could easily disrupt the continuity of food supplies unless we make fundamental changes to the way we farm, process, distribute and eat our food over the next 20 years.