Human Population: Population Growth

World Population Growth, 1950–2050 Source: United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects, The 2008 Revision. Teachers Guide: Discussion questions Question and Answer: Has the world’s population changed much over time? For the last 50 years, world population multiplied more rapidly than ever before, and more rapidly than it is projected to grow in the future. […]

Is Moscow bluffing on redirecting European gas supplies?

Moscow says it’s planning to build a pipeline to the Turkish-Greek border and no longer ship natural gas to Western Europe through Ukraine within 3 years. The project is far more about political competition than economics. Russia has announced that it will stop supplying Europe directly with natural gas via pipelines that transit through Ukraine […]

Are limits to growth real?

In 2002, global warming denialist and anti-environmental gadfly Bjørn Lomborg consigned the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, to “the dustbin of history.” However, 42 years of data now appear to vindicate the book’s premise, that the human enterprise must accept some limits on economic growth. Research published in 2014 by Dr. Graham Turner at […]

Argentina: Oil and trouble

THE enemies of Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have accused her of all sorts of transgressions during her seven years in power, from cronyism to pushing through unconstitutional laws. On January 14th a federal prosecutor leveled what may be the gravest accusation yet: that she obstructed justice in the investigation of the country’s deadliest […]

Ruin is America’s future

Neoconservatives arrayed in their Washington offices are congratulating themselves on their success in using the Charlie Hebdo affair to reunite Europe with Washington’s foreign policy. No more French votes with the Palestinians against the Washington-Israeli position. No more growing European sympathy with the Palestinians. No more growing European opposition to launching new wars in the […]

Get Ready For Life Without Oil

Saudi Arabia isn’t the nicest ally to have. The desert kingdom just handed out  a sentence of  1,000 lashes to a blogger for running a website devoted to freedom of speech. Not exactly the kind of regime we want to have in our circle of friends, especially once you figure in their financial support for […]

What’s So Bad About Cheap Oil?

The sharp drop in oil prices will benefit American consumers, many of the nation’s businesses and the economy as a whole. So why are stock market investors behaving as though oil under $50 a barrel and gasoline prices hovering around $2 a gallon are bad news? The overall market’s recent decline reflects more than just […]

Price of Electricity Hit Record High

Even as gasoline prices plummeted and the overall energy price index calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics declined, electricity prices bucked the trend in the United States in 2014. Data released today by the BLS indicates that the electricity price indexes hit all-time highs for the month of December and for the year. 2014 […]

Price of Meat, Chicken, Fish, and Eggs Hits Record High

Despite a decline in the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) in December, the food index increased and the price index for meats, poultry, fish and eggs hit a record high, according to data released today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). A basket of grocery goods. (AP) According to the BLS, “The Consumer Price […]

Is “resilience” the new sustainababble?

Suddenly, “resilience” is everywhere. It’s the subject of serious books and breezy news articles, of high-minded initiatives and of many, many conferences. After Superstorm Sandy, it was triumphantly plastered on city buses, declaring New Jersey “A State of Resilience.” What’s going on? Does all this talk about resilience mean that we’ve basically given up on averting climate change and other environmental […]

Gail Tverberg: This Is The Beginning Of The End For Oil Production

With the recent collapse in the price of oil, Gail Tverberg, returns to discuss the likely impact on the US shale oil industry, as well as the global market for oil. Gail is a professional actuary who applies classic risk assessment procedures to global resources: studying issues such as oil & natural gas depletion, water […]

Falling Oil Price: An Opportunity for Asia?

The major cause of the recent oil price fall is the increasing oil production in the United States as advanced technology enables US oil companies to extract previously untapped shale oil and gas. Although remaining a major oil importer, the US now produces more than half of the oil it consumes. One salient consequence which […]

Shale Debt and its Implications

We have all been held spell bound by the recent precipitous plunge in oil prices. The implications are the stuff of conjecture, conspiracy theories and just plain interesting conversation. Adding to this conversation, it would appear that another troubling trend has possibly emerged. It is well known that the Fed has kept interest rates artificially […]

Peak phosphorous is not happening

Phosphorous is an essential ingredient of fertilizer and is a basic building block of all life. Without phosphorous, it’s impossible to grow crops or plants of any kind. Phosphorous has no substitutes, because phosphorous specifically is required for plant DNA, and it would take hundreds of millions of years (if ever) for life to evolve […]

World Economic Forum Report Cites ‘Interstate Conflict’ as #1 Risk

The World Economic Forum Global Risks 2015 report, released at a press conference in London yesterday, singled out potential “interstate conflict with regional consequences” as the number one global risk in terms of likelihood, and the fourth most serious risk in terms of impact. Water crises were ranked highest in terms of impact. The report […]

IEA Sees Oil-Price Recovery; Cuts 2015 Non-OPEC Output Estimate

Non-OPEC oil producers will increase output this year at a slower rate than previously forecast, aiding a recovery in crude prices, the International Energy Agency said. The adviser lowered its non-OPEC supply growth estimate by 350,000 barrels a day, the first cut since the 2015 forecast was introduced in July. Half the cut is from […]

Renewable Resources Reach Their Limits

Can the world continue expanding its use of renewable resources at an increasing rate? Most likely not. Using a data set of over 25 resources researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Yale University and Michigan State University demonstrate that several key resources have recently passed, at around the same time, their “peak-rate […]

Population: Not Leveling Off

When it comes to the party that is planet Earth, we might need to plan for a few extra guests, according to scientists. A new statistical projection concludes that the world population is unlikely to level off during the 21st century, leaving the planet to deal with as many as 13 billion human inhabitants—4 billion […]

Declining Population Could Reduce Global Economic Growth By 40%

Declining population growth that shrinks the pool of available labor over the next 50 years will reduce by 40% the rate of growth in global economic output for the world’s 20 largest economies compared to the past 50 years, according to a new study. The report from the McKinsey Global Institute says that to compensate […]

How Middle Eastern Governments Are Buying Off the U.S. Political Process

The quaint notion that the U.S. political system remotely resembles either a Republic or a Democracy should have been abandoned long ago. Any lingering illusions were surely extinguished last year, when an academic study empirically proved that the USA is nothing more than a corrupt oligarchy. I highlighted this groundbreaking piece of research in the post: New Report […]

The Unintended Consequences of Cheap Oil

Cheaper oil is  good for the economy — it’s basically the equivalent of a tax cut. Unless it’s bad for the economy, which can be the case if falling prices spur deflation and hurt countries and companies that depend on oil exports. Whether the impact is good, bad, or a little of both, will depend on how […]

Arctic Explorers Retreat From Hostile Waters With Oil Prices Low

When Statoil ASA (STL) acquired the last of three licenses off Greenland’s west coast in January 2012, oil at more than $110 a barrel made exploring the iceberg-ridden waters an attractive proposition. Less than two years later, the price of oil had been cut by almost half and Norway’s Statoil, the world’s most active offshore […]

The Newly Launched Commons Transition Plan

The P2P Foundation recently launched a new website, the Commons Transition Platform,  as a central repository for policy ideas that help promote a wide variety of commons and peer-to-peer dynamics.  The site represents a new, more coordinated stage of activism in this area – collecting practical policy proposals for legally authorizing and encouraging the creation […]

Russia Cuts Off Ukraine Gas Supply To 6 European Countries

Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian state energy giant Gazprom to cut supplies to and through Ukraine amid accusations, according to The Daily Mail, that its neighbor has been siphoning off and stealing Russian gas. Due to these “transit risks for European consumers in the territory of Ukraine,” Gazprom cut gas exports to Europe by 60%, […]

EIA forecasts temporary peak in US crude output in May

US crude production is set to rise by another 300,000 barrels per day to a temporary peak in May, according to the US Energy Information Administration, before declining over the summer. The forecast is contained in the latest edition of the EIA’s closely watched Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). Most of the commentary on the STEO […]

Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar

Back in November, before most grasped just how serious the collapse in crude was (and would become, as well as its massive implications), we wrote “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed“, because for the first time in almost two decades, energy-exporting countries would pull their “petrodollars” out of world markets in 2015. This […]

Iran out billions of dollars in oil revenue

A decline in oil exports, largely because of Western economic sanctions, has cost the Iranian economy more than $100 billion, a senior official said. Iran under the terms of a November 2013 agreement is allowed some oil exports in exchange for commitments to curb some of its nuclear research activity. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the […]

Oil traders to store millions of barrels at sea as prices slump

Some of the world’s biggest oil traders have booked supertankers to store at least 25 million barrels at sea in recent days, seeking to take advantage of the crash in crude prices and make a profit down the line. Floating storage levels are expected to increase further in coming weeks as trading companies adopt a […]

More Than Half of Africa’s Arable Land ‘Too Damaged’ for Food Production

A report published last month by the Montpellier Panel – an eminent group of agriculture, ecology and trade experts from Africa and Europe – says about 65 percent of Africa’s arable land is too damaged to sustain viable food production. The report, “No Ordinary Matter: conserving, restoring and enhancing Africa’s soil“, notes that Africa suffers […]

Saudi Oil Minister Holds Talks With US Energy Deputy

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi met U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall on Tuesday in Riyadh where they discussed oil markets, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported. SPA gave no specific details about the meeting in a brief statement but said the officials looked into cooperation on energy and environmental issues, climate change, solar […]

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