The Politics of Extinction

Maybe baby steps will help, but the world needs a lot more than either the United States or China is offering to combat the illegal traffic in wildlife, a nearly $20-billion-a-year business that adds up to a global war against nature. As the headlines tell us, the trade has pushed various rhinoceros species to the […]

Your Wallet Isn’t Getting Fatter as Economics 101 Comes Unhinged

 Six years into the U.S. expansion, the link between falling unemployment and rising wages — once almost as basic to economic theory as supply and demand — seems to be coming unhinged. The disconnect is puzzling to people like Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. With one of the best growth rates among the 50 states, a […]

Heinberg: Only Less Will Do

When I’m not writing books or essays on environmental issues, or sleeping or eating, you’re likely to find me playing the violin. This has been an obsessive activity for me since I was a boy, and seems to deliver ever more satisfaction as time passes. Making and operating the little wooden box that is a […]

Kunstler: truthinesslessness

Nothing is stable, nothing is straightforward, everything is fixed, and nothing is fixed. O nation of busboys and WalMart greeters, awake and sing! Can an empire founder on sheer credulousness? After last Friday’s jobs report, I think so. For a culture that luxuriates in statistical analysis (and the false idea that if you measure enough […]

Debunking America’s Energy Fantasy: Shale Gas and Tight Oil Peak in Next Decade

We’ve written from time to time on how reports of America’s coming energy independence and continuing access to lots of affordable domestic shale gas and oil are based on studies that more careful geological work have demonstrated to be optimistic, and by a large margin. We’ve repeatedly pointed out, for instance, that shale gas production […]

Technology revived, will sustain oil industry

Technological innovation revived the nation’s oil and gas production after decades of decline, and innovation will help the industry through the current oil price slump. That was the key message of Jon Olson, newly named chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Department within the University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering. Participating in the “UT […]

The US is producing oil that has nowhere to go

Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan appeared on Bloomberg TV Friday to talk about the oil market. Specifically, he zeroed in on the problem going on in the US market: basically, production hasn’t dropped like people expected it to, and it’s largely illegal to export American crude, so all of the excess oil is building up […]

Sadly, fossil fuels are about as sustainable as my chocolate supply

WHAT exactly is Transition about? asks Sally Elias. “No, I still don’t get it,” said a good friend, exasperated. “What exactly is Transition all about?” We Dorking Transitioners have always struggled with the challenge of a succinct explanation – a lift-pitch. If you say “We are trying to save the planet”, you sound “boring and […]

The U.S. Oil Bust Just Got Worse

The price of oil did today what it has been doing for a while: it waits for a trigger and plunges. As I’m writing this, West Texas Intermediate is down 4.4%, trading at $44.99 a barrel, less than a measly buck away from this oil bust’s January low. It’s down over 20% from the peak […]

Lipstick on a pig: America as the world’s swing producer of oil

Most people have heard the old saying: “You can put lipstick on a pig. But it’s still a pig.” That’s sort of what is happening in the American oil patch as producers try to put a positive gloss on the devastation that low oil prices are visiting on the industry. Perhaps the most inventive redefinition […]

US Energy Department to Buy Oil for Strategic Reserves

The Energy Department on Friday announced it was buying up to five million barrels of oil for the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve, a federally owned stockpile of oil that is available in case of an emergency or sudden disruption in oil supply.  In March 2014, the Energy Department announced it was selling five million barrels […]

Fukushima’s 4th Anniversary Brings Hope

The catastrophe that began at Fukushima four years ago today is worse than ever. But the good news can ultimately transcend the bad — if we make it so. An angry grassroots movement has kept shut all 54 reactors that once operated in Japan. It’s the largest on-going nuke closure in history. Big industrial windmills […]

Fatal Ignorance

Figure 1: The Triangle of Flop: (chart by TFC Charts, click on for big). Industrial economies are set to go the way of the Dodo as cost of credit proves to be too great for customers to bear. As oil prices fall the drilling industry calls for more support. The rationale is that drillers borrow […]

Peak Oil Pulled a Fast One on Me

I’ll admit that I was completely caught off guard by the recent (and ongoing?) crash in oil prices. It’d be a stretch to say I’m embarrassed by my lack of foresight, although perhaps “dumb-ass” would be a bit deserving. I would say I’m well enough versed with the reality of peak oil: I’ve read perhaps […]

Shale sub-prime and the Ides of March

“Sub-prime” is the term by which became known the debt market segment that served low quality housing in the US. Essentially these were products supporting mortgages to low-middle class families, that in 2006/07, up against the simultaneous rise in interest rates and commodities prices, produced a wave of defaults that lead to the 2008 financial […]

Israel Seeks Casus Belli

THE UN Security Council has called an emergency meeting to discuss the flare-up of violence on the Israeli-Lebanon border. France requested the urgent talks in the 15-member council after two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish UN peacekeeper died in the exchange of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters. The violence raised fears of another […]

OPEC story is not over

Despite OPEC losing its influence, which might not be recoverable, people are still highly dependent on traditional fossil fuel which means the organization will still be important in the future, economist Max Fraad Wolff told RT. A new report by the World Bank claims the cartel of oil producing nations will lose its influence due […]

Kurdish oil deal with Baghdad unravels

A four-month-old oil deal between Iraq and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region is close to unraveling after payments from Baghdad dried up, prompting Arbil to threaten to sue buyers and ramp up independent oil exports. The dispute highlights fundamental differences between the two sides over who controls oil resources and revenues and will reinforce the views […]

Oil Prices Pushing Venezuela To Economic Collapse?

The Global Impact Since June 2014, a substantial decline in oil prices has occurred, bringing prices of oil down to a five-year low. While the slump in oil prices benefits consumers by increasing their real income and reducing costs of production, it presents a big challenge to the oil-rich economies around the globe that are […]

The Coming Chinese Crackup

 On Thursday, the National People’s Congress convened in Beijing in what has become a familiar annual ritual. Some 3,000 “elected” delegates from all over the country—ranging from colorfully clad ethnic minorities to urbane billionaires—will meet for a week to discuss the state of the nation and to engage in the pretense of political participation. Some […]

BP CEO: ‘It’s going to be very painful’

“We’re back into the normal world of volatility for oil and gas prices,” he said on a CNBC-hosted panel. “Anything that happens that fast can have unintended consequences.” BP was the first European major to sound the alarm on tumbling oil prices – on December 10, it warned that it was implementing a cost-cutting program […]

The Failure of Modern Industrial Agriculture

  Americans are being subjected to an ongoing multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign designed to “increase confidence and trust in today’s agriculture.” Food Dialogues, just one example of this broader trend, is a campaign sponsored by the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance—an industry organization whose funders and board members include Monsanto, DuPont, and John Deere. The campaign […]

Can the world get richer forever?

Since the dawn of the industrial age, the world has steadily been getting wealthier, despite setbacks such as the Great Depression and the more recent global financial crisis. We make more, sell more and consume more than ever before. Yet, according to the United Nations, nearly three billion people still live on less than $2.50 […]

Tax Per Mile Cometh!

Oregon – home of things uber trendy – has become the first state to begin dunning motorists by the mile rather than by the gallon. The “pilot” program begins July 1 — and will be implemented by the Oregon DOT in partnership with something called Sanef ITS Technologies America and Intelligent Mechatronic Systems. Sounds a […]

NASA Scientist Warns “California Has One Year Of Water Left”

Given the historic low temperatures and snowfalls that pummeled the eastern U.S. this winter, it might be easy to overlook how devastating California’s winter was as well. As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was […]

Adjusting the Fifth to a Finite Planet

Infinite-Planet Thinking is deeply embedded in our political economy. It’s there in the expectation that investments will pay off at a continually compounding rate. It’s there in the unquestioned consensus among elected officials that economic growth is always good–that it can’t possibly ever be uneconomic growth, costing us more in lost natural and social capital […]

Recycling in the Anthropocene

Recently I’ve been reading salvos in a raging debate about biological and ecological conservation. Traditionally, conservation has largely been about protecting “natural” environments by keeping human presence to a minimum. Now some observers have pointed out that there are no longer any environments untouched by human activity (especially if you include the effects of carbon […]

Peak oil explained with cartoons

Humor and peak oil

Why Care about Global Warming? Droughts, Poor Harvests, and Social Upheaval

In both industrialized countries and developing countries there may be those who ask “why should we care about global warming?” After all, many people may not feel that they are affected by warming, and may pay scant attention to reports showing the effects of extreme weather and climate events. Also, political leaders, especially in developing […]

Harold Hamm Dismisses IEA Shale Prediction

It might be discussed over coffee, at the gym, or when a group of friends gather on a Friday night. Analysts write about it, pundits prognosticate about it almost hourly on one cable news channel or another. And everyone probably thinks about it, consciously or unconsciously, when they pull into a gas station. Where is […]

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