Degrowth by Designed Disaster?

The degrowth movement has been developed in response to neoliberal reality, neoliberalism’s comically reductive view of human nature, its ecological blindness and the rise in social inequality it has brought about. Austerity politics embodies one of the most aggressive manifestations of neoliberalism, but curiously, the degrowth movement has been exposed to criticism from the (both […]

Why China Is Running Out Of Water

80% of China’s underground water is not suitable for drinking and many rivers are too polluted to touch. Will China run out of clean water? A wave of recent reports from China make it clear that the country is now facing a water crisis of massive proportions. As Jules Suzdaltsev explains in today’s Seeker Daily […]

Southern California Time Bomb: The Ground Surrounding The San Andreas Fault Is ‘Rising And Sinking’

If you reside on the west coast, you are living on borrowed time.  As you will see below, stress has been building up along the San Andreas fault for more than a century, and scientists tell us that southern California is way overdue for a major earthquake.  When that stress is finally released, the U.S. […]

Apple’s energy bombshell

Apple will soon be selling more than MacBooks, iPhones, iPads and watches to consumers. It may also be selling electricity. In what is being regarded as something of a bombshell in the energy markets – albeit a long predicted one – Apple has quietly has created a new subsidiary called Apple Energy, and asked to […]

The Rotten State of U.S. Oil Reserves

Bryan Mound, nestled in a 500-acre marshland south of Houston, is among the heavily guarded salt caverns on the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. There, the government keeps the national emergency oil stash, known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), stored more than 2,000 feet underground. The pipelines at Bryan Mound are capable of […]

Saudi Arabia has declared an end to its oil war with the US

Two years after quietly declaring war on upstart US shale, Saudi Arabia says the need for the fighting is over. In remarks to journalists while on a US visit, Saudi Arabian energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said that the worldwide oil glut has vanished, signaling an end to Saudi Arabia’s strategy of flooding the global market […]

Will Peak Oil Meet Peak Coal?

The world’s coal resources are clearly huge. How could China, or the world in total, reach peak coal in a timeframe that makes a difference? If we look at China’s coal production and consumption in BP’s 2016 Statistical Review of World Energy (SRWE), this is what we see: Figure 1. China’s production and consumption of coal based on […]

EIA Annual Outlook Misses The Mark On Threat To Utilities, Generation Revolution

So many studies, so little time. Just in the past couple of weeks analyses from DoE’s Energy Information Administration, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, British Petroleum and the International Renewable Energy Agency have hit my inbox (thank goodness we have moved beyond the old hardcopy stage, just those reports alone would have contributed to the world’s […]

The Dithering Age: Holocene, Anthropocene, and Chthlucene

A sword age, axe age, shields are cloven, a wind age, wolf age, ere the world sinks — Volupsa There is no question that anthropogenic activity has profoundly damaged the vast interrelated web of ecological systems that maintain the’ conditions for life on this planet. Similarly there is an increasingly agreement among climate scientists that […]

Saudi energy minister says oil glut has vanished

Saudi Arabia’s new energy minister said the supply glut that kindled a crippling oil rout around the world and thrashed Houston’s biggest business for two years has finally vanished. “We are out of it,” Khalid Al-Falih said in his first newspaper interview since his rise to the most powerful job in the global energy industry […]

The Humanity Party

Anons throughout the world united together to form a first-of-its-kind Anonymous Political Party they have named The Humanity Party®, http://www.humanityparty.com. In March of 2015, various Anons discreetly met via the Internet and Skype to vote on a Board of Directors to lead the movement. The Board appointed one of its Anons as its Voice of […]

Heinberg: Our Renewable Future

The next few decades will see a profound and all-encompassing energy transformation throughout the world. Whereas society now derives the great majority of its energy from fossil fuels, by the end of the century we will depend primarily on renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power. Two irresistible forces will drive this historic […]

Neither “Peak Oil” Nor “Peak Oil Demand”

“Peak oil demand” has become a fashionable concept among climate campaigners but the evidence suggests oil consumption is growing at the fastest rate for a decade and shows no sign of letting up. Global oil consumption increased by nearly 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2015, the largest annual increase since 2004, apart from […]

One Way to Solve Fracking’s Water Problem: Don’t Use Water

The shale gas revolution brought the U.S. both energy-superpower status and a short list of headaches. There are engineering challenges, many wells have a disappointingly short productive lifetime, and those lifetimes can vary even within the same field. Then there are the much-debated environmental trade-offs. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, requires copious water. And while gas-fired power plants […]

California In Power Grid Emergency: “All Customers Should Expect 14 Days Without Power”

The entire Los Angeles metropolitan area and most of Southern California can expect blackouts this summer. The power grid is under direct threat as a result of the unprecedented, but little reported, massive natural gas leaks at Alisco Canyon that was ongoing for  four months as an intense summer heat wave sets in. According to […]

Low Oil Prices Fuel Reconsideration Of Petroleum Reserves

The U.S. Department of Energy is considering the future of a public asset worth tens of billions of dollars: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The SPR was created after a 1973-’74 oil embargo of the United States and other countries. Arab oil-producing countries stopped selling crude to the U.S. because they were upset over its support […]

What happens to oil if there’s a Brexit?

If the U.K. public votes to leave the European Union (EU) on Thursday, Societe Generale’s head of oil market research predict the price of would fall — but not for long. In the week leading up to the vote, global markets are firmly focused on the British vote on EU membership with a positive reaction […]

Fukushima meltdown apology: “It was a cover-up”

The utility that ran the Fukushima nuclear plant acknowledged Tuesday its delayed disclosure of the meltdowns at three reactorswas tantamount to a cover-up and apologized for it. Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Naomi Hirose’s apology followed the revelation last week that an investigation had found Hirose’s predecessor instructed officials during the 2011 disaster to avoid […]

Food: Trading Away our Future

Because of productivity gains in developed countries, agriculture prices dropped by some 60% in the period 1960-2000. As the productivity of the poorest farmers remained much the same, it is obvious that they have lost out. Their value of production, regardless if they eat it themselves or sell it, has gone down considerably, making them […]

Peak Oil Consumption Dead Ahead

I have no idea nor will I take any guess as to the price of oil going forward. There are too many variables to make an educated guess. If you want a bullish or bearish POV on price…this isn’t likely the article for you. All I do know is the world is likely very near […]

Hindsight 10 Years After Peak Oil

All views expressed here are those of Verwimp Bruno and do not necessarily represent those of WAKE UP HOMOSAPIENS. 1. Introduction Peak Oil is the moment in time when, on a global scale, the maximum rate of oil production is reached. The moment after which oil production, by nature, must decline forever. Since Earth is a closed […]

The end of the “population problem”? Another Seneca cliff in our future

Image from “National Geographic” If the demographic projections by the United Nations will turn out to be true, the world population should reach over 11 billion people by 2100. Some think that it will be a disaster, others see it as a good thing as it would bring more economic growth. But is it really possible to […]

World Energy 2016-2050

World Energy 2016-2050: Annual Report “Political Economist” June 2016 The purpose of this annual report is to provide an analytical framework evaluating the development of world energy supply and its impact on the global economy. The report projects the world supply of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, and other energies from 2016 to 2050. […]

The Sky Is Falling

My years of research for I’m Right, You’re an Idiot, as well as decades of experience in public relations, have persuaded me that we humans have a fickle relationship with facts. We paint a picture of the world according to facts that appeal to us, and we unconsciously blur the edges or use brushstrokes of […]

Get Ready for $80 Oil

Rebounding after a two-year collapse, it’s only this month that oil prices have pushed up past $50 a barrel, but Raymond James & Associates says this is just the beginning for higher prices. In a note to clients, analysts led by J. Marshall Adkins say West Texas Intermediate will average $80 per barrel by the end of next year — that’s higher […]

Kunstler: Burnt Toast

At a most troubled moment in history, both major political parties appear set to nominate time-bomb candidates for president with a fair percentage chance of blowing up their own campaigns and the parties themselves. We’ve been living in the era of anything goes and nothing matters — that is, the era of no consequences — […]

China: Is peak coal part of its problem?

The world’s coal resources are clearly huge. How could China, or the world in total, reach peak coal in a timeframe that makes a difference? If we look at China’s coal production and consumption in BP’s 2016 Statistical Review of World Energy (SRWE), this is what we see: Figure 1. China’s production and consumption of […]

Noam Chomsky on the Breakdown of American Society and a World in Transition

The US is facing uncertain times. While it remains the only global superpower, it is no longer able to influence events and outcomes to its liking, at least not for the most part. Frustration and worry about the risk of upcoming disasters seem to far outweigh US voters’ hopes for a more rational and just […]

ERoEI is unimportant and is being used incorrectly

In this article I will show that ERoEI is almost totally unimportant by itself. It does not matter if ERoEI is increasing or decreasing. ERoEI provides no guidance about which sources of energy we should pursue, nor does it offer any guidance about how much net energy will be available to us in the future. […]

The Battle of the Holocene

“The end results are definite and dire, that much is known.” 7,827 PEOPLE DIED TODAY.  Men, women, children, and all religions alike.  It was avoidable, it was unnecessary, and the same thing will happen again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and every single day that we chose to do nothing about […]

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