China Is Ending Its “One-Child Policy” — Here Are The Implications

Back in 1978, the Chinese politburo enacted the “one-child policy”, whose main purpose was to “alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems” in China as a result of the soaring population. According to estimates, the policy prevented more than 250 million births between 1980 and 2000, and 400 million births from about 1979 to 2011. And […]

Ivan Illich and the contemporary commons movement

For the past three days I’ve been attending a fantastic conference, “After the Crisis:  The Thought of Ivan Illich today,” in Oakland, California, at the Oakland School for the Arts.  Illich was an iconoclastic social critic, Jesuit priest, radical Christian, historian, scientist and public intellectual who was especially famous in the 1970s and 1980s for […]

The Future of Energy: Why Power Density Matters

  This is the first column in The Energy Transition series by Robert Wilson. This series, exclusive to theenergycollective.com, will take a critical look at the prospects of a transition away from fossil fuels, and promises to abide by the advice of Richard Feynman that reality must take precedence over public relations. The twenty first […]

What did Henry Ford say about history?

The short answer is “history is bunk.” The more accurate answer is what he told the Chicago Tribune in 1916: “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make […]

Robert Rapier: From Peak Oil to Peak Fracking?

It is hard to overstate the shift that has taken place in the energy markets since 2005. That was the year the late Matt Simmons published Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy and set off a fierce debate about whether Saudi Arabia — and the world as a […]

Shale gas – not shale oil – primary long term challenge for Saudis

On July 27th Prince Alwaleed bin Talal publicly opened Pandora’s Box, by releasing an open letter to the Saudi Minister of Petroleum, Mr Ali Al-Naimi, voicing his concerns about the longer-term implications on the Saudi economy of the US shale gas boom. The concerns are both real and relevant – in fact it is something […]

Industrial Civilization’s Psychotic Break

The most deadly criticism one could make of modern civilization is that apart from its man-made crises and catastrophes, [it] is not humanly interesting. . . . In the end, such a civilization can produce only a mass man: incapable of spontaneous, self-directed activities: at best patient, docile, disciplined to monotonous work to an almost […]

Why is Saudi Arabia not a Threat to Fracking?

Several media outlets have recently carried a story about a prominent Saudi prince warning that Saudi Arabia is increasingly vulnerable to competition from the US shale revolution, as a result of fracking in tight/shale plays. I would turn the question around and ask why is Saudi Arabia not a threat to fracking? Note that as […]

Farming on the suburban edge

When most of us think of a typical farm, we probably imagine sprawling fields in an idyllic countryside, but many farmers have made a go of it in unexpected, underutilized, and challenging locations, sometimes within or on just outside of urban centers. Last Sunday, CUESA organized a tour to two Ferry Plaza farms in unique […]

CFTC’s Chilton to Fed: Cut banks’ ties to commodities

The U.S. Federal Reserve should reverse its policy of allowing investment banks to own metals warehouses and commodity infrastructure assets, a top U.S. derivatives regulator said on Monday. Banks potentially have a conflict of interest when they trade commodities while also controlling supply, said Bart Chilton, a Democratic member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. […]

US energy regulator threatens BP with $28m fine over irregular gas trades

FERC steps up action against powerful trading firms as BP eyed one week after $410bn settlement reached with JP Morgan The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is threatening energy giant BP with a $28m fine over alleged irregular trades in natural gas, just a week after it reached a $410m settlement with JP Morgan. In a […]

The world water shortage looks unsolvable

Many nations are experiencing unprecedented strain on water supplies, but few are coming up with solutions As we have been hearing, global water shortages are poised to exacerbate regional conflict and hobble economic growth. Yet the problem is growing worse, and is threatening to deal devastating blows to health, according to top water officials from […]

Of boiling frogs and oil prices

Many readers will know about the claim that a frog plopped into boiling water will hop right back out if it can, while one put into cold water which is then slowly heated will remain until it is cooked. The claim is wrong, but the story is quite useful in understanding some human behavior. Gradually […]

Update on Coal Ash Pollution: In Words and on Film

The story of coal ash keeps going nowhere. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about coal ash. A Whole Lot of Ash Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel we’ve got. BTU to BTU, we get more pollution from coal than from petroleum and way more than from natural gas. Most of the pollution goes up in […]

Fracking CEO Receives ‘Death Threat’

Cuadrilla Resources CEO Frances Egan said Sunday that he has received an email threatening his company’s premises with pipe bombs amid a high-profile anti-fracking protest that is ongoing at the firm’s Balcombe site in West Sussex, southern England. The UK-focused unconventional oil and gas firm began exploration drilling for oil at Balcombe Friday morning. But […]

Maugeri Misses Bakken ”Red Queen”

In this post I will, amongst other things, present the results from my review of the Bakken portion of Leonardo Maugeri’s discussion paper “The Shale Oil Boom: A U.S. Phenomenon” Leonardo Maugeri is an ex-ENI executive now with the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center which receives funds from BP. His discussion paper presents his findings […]

America’s Urban Distress: Which States And Regions Set Up Their Cities To Fail?

In 2011, the four U.S. cities with the highest unemployment rates were: Stockton, California (20.2%) Detroit, Michigan (20.0%) Flint, Michigan (19.0%) San Bernardino, California (17.8%). Today, only one of those cities is still standing. Bankruptcy-free, I mean. Stockton went bust in June 2012, San Bernardino in August 2012 and Detroit last month. With facts like […]

James Howard Kunstler Describes the Social Changes to Expect in the Long Emergency

Class, Race, Hierarchy, and Social Relations in ‘The Long Emergency’ Reality does not have an ideology After the second novel in my World Made By Hand series (The Witch of Hebron) came out in 2010, I was beset by indignant reviews and angry letters from female readers over my depiction of gender and class relations […]

How natural gas is sparking Pennsylvania’s economy

There is one thing about our economy that everyone seems to agree about–things are looking up, but don’t be too optimistic. View full sizeSome natural gas pipeline companies are applying for eminent domain status in Pennsylvania. President Barack Obama is calling it “stability, not security” in his current rounds of economic talks. A recent Wall […]

Tech Talk – The latest Canadian Oil Spill

This post is seeded by a note from Luis de Sousa (h/t Luis) who noted a story in Mother Jones. That story, in turn, fed from one in the Toronto Star and is about surface contamination of oil, coming from the underlying tar sands and emerging as a watery bitumen mixture over at least four […]

Yemen’s main pipeline attacked, crude flow stops again

Tribesmen blew up Yemen’s main oil export pipeline late on Saturday, halting the flow of crude, the state news agency reported on Sunday. The pipeline started pumping crude oil again last week after repairs that took several days, following a similar attack by tribesmen. Earlier this year, the pipeline was pumping around 125,000 barrels per […]

Energy Infrastructure of the Post-Carbon Future

In 2008, The New York Times reported 56% of the energy generated in the United States was wasted. In electricity generation, 66% was lost as heat out the smoke stacks of remote power plants and another ten percent lost during transmission. Of transportation energy, 71% was lost from heavy, idling vehicles and cars carrying only […]

Is Egypt On The Verge Of Engineered Civil War?

Is Egypt On The Verge Of Engineered Civil War? For thousands of years, Egypt has been one of the primary pillars of the Eastern world. When Egypt falls into turmoil, a shockwave is felt by all other nations that heralds great change and perhaps even great catastrophe. The West’s longtime interest in maintaining a solid […]

A Hankering for Hybrids

When automakers rolled out their new electric cars three years ago, they had big plans. Even President Obama, in his State of the Union address in 2011, predicted there would be as many as a million of them on the nation’s roads by the middle of the decade. Results have, so far, fallen way short […]

Huge leak of tritium feared in Fukushima

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday that an estimated 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of tritium from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant may have flowed into the Pacific Ocean since May 2011. The utility reported the estimate Friday to the Nuclear Regulation Authority after recently admitting that toxic water from the emergency cooling […]

US airlines find fuel for less in 2013…but not everywhere

Years of consolidation, capacity cuts, fuel efficient planes and other cost controls helped jet fuel prices glide downward in 2013. But some US markets have still felt turbulence. US airlines are filling up planes with passengers at a record level. Despite that demand, the US Gulf Coast region, which produces half of the nation’s jet […]

Peak Oil, EROEI and the Muffled Drum

An interesting thing happened last month.  The Oil Drum, a well-regarded website + blog, announced it was ceasing operations and archiving itself for posterity.  Well, everything has its day – we can all list blogs that were thriving a few years back but are no longer with us. Some have suggested it was the extraordinary […]

Iran gets new president, vows ‘constructive’ foreign relations

Hassan Rouhani took office as Iran’s president on Saturday promising “constructive interaction with the world” after eight years under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked by diplomatic confrontation and damaging sanctions. The politically moderate 64-year-old cleric’s resounding victory at June’s election raised hopes of a negotiated end to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program and an easing of […]

The United States of OPEC

As someone who cheers for the success of this great country, I desperately want to believe in the concept of America’s energy independence. In the past decade we have been inundated with predictions of the U.S. becoming the next Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas production. Fracking, tar sands, shale gas, et al., are […]

World Solar Power Topped 100,000 Megawatts in 2012

The world installed 31,100 megawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2012—an all-time annual high that pushed global PV capacity above 100,000 megawatts. There is now enough PV operating to meet the household electricity needs of nearly 70 million people at the European level of use. While PV production has become increasingly concentrated in one country—China—the […]

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