peak oil
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How Obama kinda completely missed the boat in his jobs speech
Let's you and me sit down and have some RealTalk™ for a minute: President Obama's jobs speech last night was about as good as it could get -- in the absence of any mention of the core driver of our ongoing global economic recession, which, need I remind you, is probably going to go double-dip.
Here's what he left out, neatly described in a hip, watchable video produced by the folks at the Post Carbon Institute.
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The dilemma of growth, as dramatized by the voices in my head
Is continued economic growth inevitable and necessary to drive improvements in the human condition? Or is continued economic growth impossible, constrained by biophysical limitations? I let the two sides battle it out in my brain.
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One thing the fall of Tripoli won't get us is cheap gas
It would be natural to imagine that the fall of Tripoli would mean a significant decrease in the cost of oil and the pain that the average consumer feels at the pump. After all, in February, when unrest in Libya commenced, oil prices hit a two-year high. Libya is only the 15th biggest oil exporter in the world, but the oil it exports is of a particularly desirable type.
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Sing along to this awesomely cheesy theme song for energy wasters
The musical "Seein' the Light" was written in 1978, but nothing has really changed: People still deny there's a fuel or climate crisis, and they still put on their Serious Thespian black turtlenecks and sing about it. The guy singing is kind of super-intense — he regularly goes 20 seconds or more between blinks — […]
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North Korea runs on wood-burning trucks
If you've ever wondered what we'll do after we've run out of cheap oil, other than eat each other, you have only to look to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a.k.a. North Korea. Ever since the shipments of crude from the USSR and China dried up, they've had to improvise.
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From “peak oil” to “unburnable carbon”
Recall one version of the peaker story – peak oil as a repository of hope. This is the take in which, despairing of other avenues to rapid, large-scale changes, we look to peak oil to at least save us from the more extreme forms of climate disaster. The idea is that, as we burn our […]
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Why Poughkeepsie is a great place to wait for the end of the world
Towns like Poughkeepsie, New York may appear charmless, but they could be ideal places to live in a post-peak oil world.
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A three-step plan to solve the fossil fuel crisis
(from Fake Science) Brilliant in its simplicity. Even better: Since we may be approaching the carbon levels that killed the dinosaurs in the first place, we could just let the fossil fuels we burn kill the cloned dinos all by themselves.
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Three energy developments that are changing your life — and not in a good way
This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. Here’s the good news about energy: Thanks to rising oil prices and deteriorating economic conditions worldwide, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global oil demand will not grow this year as much as once assumed, which may provide some […]