Local Currencies To Replace Dollar For 5 Countries’ Dealings

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the BRICS group of fastest growing economies – Thursday signed an agreement to use their own currencies instead of the predominant US dollar in issuing credit or grants to each other. The agreement, the first-of-its-kind, was signed at the 3rd BRICS summit here attended by Indian Prime […]

Is algae biofuel too thirsty?

Biofuel produced from algae, essentially pond scum, has long titillated green energy boosters as a potential big time player in the U.S. renewable fuels portfolio. Now, a-first-of-its-kind look at industrial-scale freshwater farming of algae suggests it could indeed make a sizeable dent in U.S. oil imports, but drain water resources. Specifically, the U.S. could produce […]

Shale gas: the problem with EROEI

The depletion problem of fossil fuels derives from their energy return (EROEI) becoming lower as the “easy” resources are used up. However, there is a subtle problem with some fuels: their EROEI is high enough that production does not decline but, at the same time, the environmental damage increases with the exploitation of progressively more […]

Latest military activity in Libya

* Libyan rebels made a renewed effort to push toward the oil port of Brega Saturday while Muammar Gaddafi’s forces pounded besieged Misrata to the west with rockets and mortars, insurgents said. * Six were killed and 16 wounded when Gaddafi loyalists fired rockets at a group of insurgents driving along the exposed coastal highway […]

Sprawling From Grace

This feature length documentary explores the ravages of American suburban sprawl, what America has lost as a result

Fukushima Exposure Levels Going Up Everywhere

“Radiation is continuing to leak out of the reactors, the situation is not stable at all, radiation continues to leak,” says Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York and top graduate of Harvard. “We are looking at a ticking timebomb. It appears stable but the slightest disturbance, a […]

WSJ Interviews Chevron’s CEO

It’s the day after President Obama delivered his most recent vision of America’s energy future, and I’m sitting in the sunny corporate offices of Chevron, the country’s second-largest oil company. Let’s just say John Watson has a different view. The Chevron CEO is a rare breed these days: an unapologetic oil man. For decades—going back […]

Solar Power: Desert Dawn

The Economist has an article on Brightsource’s solar thermal power power project(which recently received a US$168 million investment from Google) at Ivanpah in the Mojave desert – Solar Power: Desert Dawn. IT LOOKS like a planetary tattoo designed to be seen from space, a vast set of concentric circles inscribed in the skin of southern […]

Dave Meslin: The antidote to apathy (TED VIDEO)

Local politics — schools, zoning, council elections — hit us where we live. So why don’t more of us actually get involved? Is it apathy? Dave Meslin says no. He identifies 7 barriers that keep us from taking part in our communities, even when we truly care. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the […]

Oil shale, tar sand development limits economic growth, depletes water resources

The Peak Oil era model of economic growth is circular in function and most likely has developed as a way to sustain the global economy’s dependence on oil until the last drop is pumped out of the Earth. The peak era models looks something like this: Increasing GDP and oil demand, new low EROI energy […]

Emotional Resilience In Traumatic Times, By Carolyn Baker

While mainstream media has been encouraging collective dithering over a possible U.S. government shutdown, the chilling realities of off-the-chart levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, escalating upheavals throughout the Middle East, and surging oil prices have been simmering in the background, remaining the lethal environmental, geopolitical, and economic time bombs that […]

Richard Heinberg: Specialization and globalization: Genies at our command

Economic efficiency doesn’t flow from energy efficiency alone; it can also be achieved by increasing specialization or by expanding the scope of trade so as to exploit cheaper resources or labor. Both of these strategies have deep and ancient roots in human history.[1] Division of labor increases economic efficiency by optimizing the use of people’s […]

Peak oil stage

The economy of most countries in the 20th century was built on oil. For some, oil brought unprecedented wealth and power. For others it brought repression and new forms of economic colonialism. Few oil producing countries have used their wealth wisely. But in many countries oil has been a curse. But in the 21st century, […]

Interview with Bob Chapman about Peak Oil (april 2011)

Part 5: In this interview Richard de Feber from http://Goud-Portal.nl and Koen Dil from http://Biflatie.nl are talking with Bob Chapman about peak oil.

The Road to Fukushima: The Nuclear Industry’s Wrong Turn

Nuclear researchers knew long ago that reactor designs now in wide use had already been bested in safety by another design. Why did the industry turn its back on that design? Imagine a nuclear reactor that runs on fuel that could power civilization for millennia; cannot melt down; resists weapons proliferation; can be built on […]

Saudi Arabian Oil Rig Count

The other day, I wrote, concerning the failure of Saudi Arabia to increase oil production in March, The burning question is: why? Back in 2006, when their production started to gradually decline from 9.5mbd even as global oil prices were in the worst spike since the 1970s, I was an advocate of the view that […]

Review of IMF analysis, “Oil Scarcity, Growth, and Global Imbalances”

The International Monetary Fund recently released its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO), April 2011. Chapter 3 of this document is titled, “Oil Scarcity, Growth, and Global Imbalances” (36 pgs). As far as this author is aware, the IMF has not done any previous work on peak oil, and the new Outlook seems to be the […]

Kurt Cobb: Could High Oil Prices Cause A Global Economic Deflation?

As the European Central Bank (ECB) prepares to raise interest rates to prevent inflation, the bank cites rising commodity prices, particularly oil prices, as a sign of that inflation. What the bank and other market participants don’t seem to understand is that high commodity prices and, in particular, high oil prices are deflationary. The logic […]

Robert Rapier Radio Interview on Rising Gas Prices

Following my recent article in the Washington Post on Five Myths About Gas Prices, I received several inquires for additional commentary on the story. Below is an interview that I did with KSL NewsRadio in Utah that allowed me to expand upon the points from the Post article (as I also did in an expanded […]

Gasoline Gangsters Episode 13: Canadian Peak Oil Thinkers

Canada is producing a large number of great peak oil thinkers including Nicole Foss, David Hughes, Greg Green, Jeff Rubin, Ed Schreyer, Randy Park and Barry Silverthorn. This episode covers their exploits.

No, Japan’s Nuclear Reactors Are Not “Stable”

“It’s only stable in the sense that you’re dangling from a cliff hanging by your fingernails. And as the time goes by, each fingernail starts to crack. That’s the situation now.” The Japanese government and Tepco claim that the nuclear reactors are “stable” and that radiation releases have subsided to low levels. But world renowned […]

US govt to review plans to develop oil shale, tar sands

Green groups oppose tar sands, oil shale as polluting * About 1.9 mln acres opened for oil shale development (adds BLM comment, opposition to tar sands) WASHINGTON, April 13 (Reuters) – The Obama administration said on Wednesday it will “take a fresh look” at plans issued under the prior Bush administration to develop commercial oil […]

U.S. Keeps Quiet over Repression in Bahrain

If President Barack Obama wanted to place Washington “on the right side of history” during the ongoing “Arab Spring”, his reaction to recent events in Bahrain will likely make that far more difficult, according to a growing number of analysts and commentators here. While his administration has become ever more outspoken against repression in Syria […]

The Economy: Local Resilience Through Collapse

As we consider the likelihood of long-term economic contraction, what can we do about it? Like anything in the Transition movement, we need to consider the appropriate scale. In Part II of this series we examined what several thinkers had to say about our Big Picture economy, yet most of us have little-to-no ability to […]

Peak Oil, Part 1: Alternative Energy and Government

one thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over. What we all do next will determine how well we meet the energy needs of the entire world in this century and beyond.” – David J. O’Reilly, Chairman & CEO of Chevron. This popular perception says, “Sure, we might be running out of the […]

An audacious new theory to compete with “Peak Oil”: Hydrocarbons forever.

New companies say pulling carbon dioxide straight from the air could solve global warming and provide an infinite source of gasoline. Really? FORTUNE — What if scientists could transform coal-fired power plants from giant carbon dioxide emitters into giant carbon sinks? Some say that they can, and will. Graciela Chichilnisky, a founder of Global Thermostat, […]

EIA analysis: no drop in US gasoline demand

US gasoline stocks fell seven million barrels to 209.679 million barrels for the week ending April 8, with a rebound in demand keeping inventories on a downward trajectory, an analysis of the data released Wednesday by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed. Analysts polled by Platts had projected a more modest decline of 1.25 […]

U.N. Decries Stagnant Funding For Population Goals

As the international community readies to cope with a rising world population of some seven billion people by the middle of this year, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns that financial assistance for population-related activities has made no visible gains since 2008. A strong upward trend – with 10.40 billion dollars in 2008 – stalled in […]

Exxon’s CEO received $29 million

The chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, received $29 million in total compensation in 2010, a 6.6 percent increase from the previous year, a regulatory filing showed on Wednesday. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s pay included $2.2 million in salary, a $3.4 million bonus, and stock awards valued […]

Radioactivity in the ocean: Diluted, but far from harmless

With contaminated water from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear complex continuing to pour into the Pacific, scientists are concerned about how that radioactivity might affect marine life. Although the ocean’s capacity to dilute radiation is huge, signs are that nuclear isotopes are already moving up the local food chain. Over the past half-century, the world has […]

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