Paving land that feeds us

The News Advertiser’s assertion in an editorial last week that, “There’s no doubt that an airport would be a huge economic benefit …. creating countless jobs” shows breathtaking ignorance of the facts. The complete lack of information from Ottawa is what last Monday’s council motion was all about. No business case has been made by […]

Future food; We can grow enough, but how will we distribute it?

When we talk about the future of food, we usually start with world population growth. Estimates say we’ll pass the 8 billion-people mark around the spring of 2024. The worry for decades has been if we will be able to feed all those hungry mouths. The number of hungry mouths may not be the problem. […]

The US Economy Is Growing Much Slower Than You Think

Deceptive and Fraudulent … “Products are paid for with products,” said French economist and free-trade proponent Jean-Baptiste Say. He meant that if you want to get something, you better have something you can trade for it. What would Say make of the latest US GDP report? Last week brought two important pieces of news: one […]

The moral of the natural gas/winter weather story

If the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop were alive today, he might have written a fable about North American energy markets. Aesop’s sheet of papyrus may have ended with the moral: “If you wait long enough, gas prices will go up.” Last week, the ticker showed the highest continental natural gas prices in four years, momentarily […]

Oh no! The oil price could fall

While I rarely agree with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard I do appreciate his continual columns on the energy industry and related topics. One recent column of his looked at oil price movements in the near term, predicting that oil prices may fall due to a surge in supply (and moving on to the even less likely conclusion […]

The shareable economy: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good

Last fall at the Shareable Cities Summit in Portland a panelist from Getaround, the car sharing service, made the astounding statement that car sharing had the potential to reduce the number of cars on the road by an order of magnitude–for the math-impaired that means 90 percent. What makes this seemingly fantastical development possible is […]

Production of Natural Gas From Shale: A Resource Blessing or Curse?

By Jason P. Brown – Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City The extraction of natural gas from shale and tight gas formations is one of the largest innovations in the U.S. energy sector in several decades. According to the Energy Information Agency’s (EIA) 2013 Annual Energy Outlook, total U.S. recoverable natural gas resources […]

A Forecast of Our Energy Future; Why Common Solutions Don’t Work

In order to understand what solutions to our energy predicament will or won’t work, it is necessary to understand the true nature of our energy predicament. Most solutions fail because analysts assume that the nature of our energy problem is quite different from what it really is. Analysts assume that our problem is a slowly […]

Today’s Peasant Movement – Sophisticated, Threatened, and Our Best Hope for Survival

(Image: La Via Campesina)The term peasant often conjures up images of medieval serfs out of touch with the ways of the world around them. Such thinking is out of date. Today, peasants proudly and powerfully put forward effective strategies to feed the planet and limit the damages wrought by industrial agriculture. What’s more, they understand […]

Commuting To Distant Oil Fields: Good Money, At A Price

Credit: A train at the station in Williston N.D., prepares for departure. (Annie Flanagan for NPR) Think your commute is bad? Try 580 miles, one-way. Door to door, that’s how far Rory Richardson travels between his home in western Montana and his job on the oil fields near Williston, N.D. Often, he makes the trip […]

Why the world needs Transition

  New Economy interactive infographic from New England Transition. Click and explore. There are many approaches to the three main crises threatening civilization today, namely, climate change, peak oil and economic crisis. The problem is that most of them won’t work. Weak and cowardly Most are too little, too late. Even though stimulus and austerity […]

How much natural gas is enough?

Oh, to be in the fuel oil or propane business these days (!), I think to myself every time I hear the boiler in the basement ignite with a shudder or listen to the whoosh of the blue enamel propane heater in our drafty kitchen. Of course, I realize it is no fun delivering fossil […]

Simpler ways to stay warm

Every day, it seems, acquaintances send me articles about how to live better or save energy, many of which neglect the most obvious answers. They often report inventions that could increase fuel efficiency by 10 percent, ignoring the 500 percent increase you get from packing more people in a car. Others praise the junk foods […]

Oil price volatility undermines economic growth

Report co-authored by the former government chief scientific adviser says fossil fuels damage more than the environment   Professor Sir David King was chief scientific adviser to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and advises William Hague these days. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian Governments need to deter oil speculators, set aside reserves of crude […]

The Coming Economic Collapse Will Be Far Worse Than Most Realize

Citizens of the U.S. and world are heading into a future that few have prepared.  It will also turn out to be much worse than most realize as it will be unlike anything we have witnessed in the past. Part of the reason we are in such a bad fix has to do with the […]

Italy’s slow collapse: how declining energy consumption affects GdP

This article is an addendum to an earlier post The other side of the peak: Italy’s collapse of oil and gas consumption. This graph compares the historical consumption of oil and gas in Italy (summed together in energy units, Terajoules) and the decline in GdP (in constant 2000 US$). The data for Italy’s GdP are […]

Why Shale Oil Boosters Are Charlatans In Disguise

Something has bothered me of late: why is the price of crude oil still elevated? Other commodities have taken a battering since 2011. Gold, copper and iron ore – all are way down off their peaks. But oil has seemingly defied gravity. And that’s despite increased supply from shale oil in the U.S., still soft […]

World buyers line up to buy US natural gas

Countries across the world have been quietly signing deals in recent months to import natural gas from the US, revealing a growing appetite for the fuel overseas as domestic output soars. Up to a dozen long-term deals, each worth billions of dollars, have been penned behind closed doors with companies in China, Japan, Taiwan, Spain, […]

UN report sounds alarm on farming land-use crisis

To feed the world’s burgeoning population while saving it from exhausting natural land resources, the United Nations today issued a report for policymakers, “Assessing Global Land Use: Balancing Consumption With Sustainable Supply,” published Jan. 24 by the International Resource Panel of the United Nations Environment Programme. “Over the past 30 years, we’ve been increasing production […]

The other side of the peak: Italy’s collapse of oil and gas consumption

Italy peak oil consumption. We are back to 1967.   All the data in this post are from BP statistical review up to 2012, updated to 2013 from various sources. Sometimes, peak oil looks like an intellectual game that people keep playing by arguing whether it has arrived or not. But the point with oil is […]

China’s Coal to Gas Plans: Old Wine in New Bottles

The Chinese coal industry has a plan to solve the nations air pollution crisis — consume more coal. Last week the Chinese chief energy planning agency, the National Energy Administration (NEA) concluded its annual work session with a plan for for a whopping 50 billion m³ coal-to-gas (CTG) output target for 2020. According to the […]

“Endless Growth” Is the Plan & There Is No Plan B

After five years of aggressive Federal Reserve and government intervention in our monetary and financial systems, it’s time to ask: Where are we?  The “plan,” such as it has been, is to let future growth sweep everything under the rug. To print some money, close their eyes, cross their fingers, and hope for the best. On […]

China Seen Retaking Lead From US in Oil Demand Growth

China will retake the lead over the U.S. in oil demand growth this year as its manufacturing and transportation industries expand, the International Energy Agency said. Chinese use is forecast to expand 3.6 percent, or 369,000 barrels a day, to 10.49 million barrels a day this year, the Paris-based energy adviser said in its monthly […]

Growing Up From The Need To Always Grow

    Photo: Lending Memo. In the Western World, growth is our mantra.  Our schools, our religions, our governments, our businesses, all our institutions bombard us with the same message that to be all that we are meant to be means we have to grow. Growth in and of itself can be a good thing, […]

Americans Driving Down Their Driving Miles

We may be witnessing a historic change in our driving habits. Americans love their cars and love to drive their cars. With each American traveling on average less than 10,000 miles a year and the country as a whole nearly three trillion total vehicle miles traveled per year (VMT), we are hands down the champs at racking up […]

Converting Coal to Synthetic Natural Gas in China

 With so much attention focused on China’s shale gas potential, its growing synthetic natural gas industry is a wild card. In light of China’s severe air quality problems,  trading smog for higher CO2 emissions is an understandable choice, but one with global implications. In its latest Medium-Term Coal Market Report the International Energy Agency (IEA) […]

African energy consumption

BP project that Africa will experience the world’s fastest regional energy demand growth, driven by urbanisation, rising populations, and strong GDP growth. The company also believes that Africa will remain a significant exporter of oil and gas. Below are a few reasons why: In 2035, Africa will have 21% of the world’s population compared to […]

‘Peak demand’ oil theory fails scrutiny test

Fall in US oil demand over 2008-12 was cyclical not structural Oil market commentators increasingly dismiss the very idea of supply-side constraints on the oil market, pointing to the recent surge in light-tight oil production from US shale deposits and the existence of vast shale formations elsewhere in the world. Instead, the “peak demand” argument […]

Crash on Demand: Welcome to the Brown Tech Future

n response to several articles that we have posted around David Holmgren’s latest important essay, Crash on Demand (see MacLeod, Heppenstall, Hopkins, Poyorouw, Bates, and Orlov) we are now pleased to be able to post the original essay with David’s permission. We will be reposting this essay in three parts. This is Part 1. Introduction […]

Iran looking at exporting natural gas to India via deep sea pipeline

Bangalore: Iran is focusing on exporting natural gas to India along a deep-sea route, its Ambassador to India Gholam Reza Ansari said today. “Indians are looking for deep-sea natural gas pipeline which seems to be feasible with regard to investment and available technology. We are seeing how we can go about this project,” Ansari told […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy