Oil and gold buoyed by Middle East tensions

* Sugar rallies, cocoa sinks as softs dominate big moves * U.S. data points to moderate growth * Market focus shifting to Fed policy meeting next week NEW YORK, June 14 (Reuters) – Oil prices rallied to nine-month highs and gold prices rose on Friday after news that the United States had authorized sending U.S. […]

The Shrinking Road, Part 1: Have We Hit ‘Peak Cars’?

Remember the concept of “peak oil”–that the world will soon achieve the maximum rate of petroleum extraction possible, if it hasn’t already? Now the question may be have we reached an era of “peak cars”? In a recent webinar held by Navigant Research, “Peak Cars: Flattening Vehicle Sales & Their Implications for Automakers, City Planners […]

Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation

Below is an excerpt from Samuel Alexander’s new book, Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation. This book is a creative work of fiction – a ‘utopia of sufficiency’ – which brings to life a simple living community that became isolated on a small island after the collapse of industrial civilisation. Looking back from the future, the […]

World oil demand to peak in 2030 -Statoil

World demand for oil will peak around 2030 and will not exceed 100 million barrels per day by 2040, Norway’s Statoil (Xetra: 676685 – news) said in its annual market outlook on Friday. “Fossil fuels are here to stay, but gas is growing the most. For oil demand, we see a peak around 2030,” Eirik […]

Australia’s oil vulnerability

Listen now Download audio While some predict peak oil will soon be the end of industrial society, others shrug it off as scaremongering. But if we are running out of oil, is intervention needed to mitigate the impact of peak oil – or will market forces and technological innovation be a sufficient response? This discussion […]

Slower Global Agricultural Production In Next Decade

Global agricultural production is expected to grow 1.5% a year on average over the coming decade, compared with annual growth of 2.1% between 2003 and 2012, according to a new report published by the OECD and FAO released this week. FAO Graziano Silva: agriculture increasingly market-driven sector as opposed to policy-driven as in the past […]

Rising energy prices will challenge western way of life – MoD report

South-east Asian economies’ growing demand for energy and resources could lead to long periods of recession in the UK A little-known Ministry of Defence (MoD) report published earlier this year warns that converging global trends will dramatically affect UK economic prosperity through to 2040. The report says that depletion of cheap conventional “easy oil”, along […]

Peak Oil: preparing for the ‘second half of the age of oil’

In the journal, Science Omega, James Morgan has published an interview with me where we discuss how we can prepare for “the second half of the age of oil”. In light of the fact that so many articles in the last half year have tried to convince us that we do not need to worry […]

Crop Models Predict World Food Production when Population Touches 9 Billion

The world’s population is expected to reach about 9 billion by 2050. Now, a team of researchers has developed computer models that can help predict how much food the world will produce in the next few decades. Previous research on the subject has shown that by the end of the century, half of the world’s […]

High Oil Prices are Starting to Affect China and India

The US Energy Information Administration recently released its report showing oil consumption by country updated through 2012. Based on this report, it appears that at current high oil prices, demand in both China and India is being reduced. Thus, for those who are wondering how high oil prices need to be, to be “too high,” […]

What permaculture isn’t — and is

Permaculture is notoriously hard to define. A recent survey shows that people simultaneously believe it is a design approach, a philosophy, a movement, and a set of practices. This broad and contradiction-laden brush doesn’t just make permaculture hard to describe. It can be off-putting, too. Let’s say you first encounter permaculture as a potent method […]

Gas Prices, Consumption, And Why The Average American Is Being Left Behind

The summer driving season is upon us. For many, that means vacations, barbeques, and of course, higher gas prices. For 23 out of the last 35 years, gas prices have risen an average of 14.7% from one summer to the next, while 12 decline years have only averaged -8.1%. Prices tend to be highest in […]

Saudi Arabia to maintain natural gas self-sufficiency

Saudi Arabia will remain self-sufficient in natural gas, with production rising from an estimated 116.2bn cubic meters (bcm) in 2013 to 152bcm by 2022, Business Monitor International said in its quarterly updates. Efforts to tap the Red Sea and continued efforts to extract tight gas could surprise to the upside. With industry estimates placing the […]

Transportation Woes Keep US Oil Prices High

Given increasingly abundant supplies of natural gas and crude in the U.S., some consumers scratch their heads at the sight of high gas prices, which aren’t expected to sink much as the summer season gets under way. Yet some observers point a finger at inefficiencies in the U.S. transportation system, which forces oil companies to […]

Pakistan’s growth in electricity access phenomenal

Pakistan has made substantial progress in electrification both in absolute terms and relative to the size of its population over the past two decades, World Bank’s report on ‘Global Tracking Framework showed. According to the report, 60 percent of Pakistan’s total population had access to electricity in 1990, 80 percent in 2000 while 91 percent […]

Food prices to stay high

Agricultural production is expected to slow down over the next decade, due largely to limited expansion of arable land, rising production costs, environmental pressures and resource constraints, the U.N. food agency said. “Although relatively resilient to economic downturns, the agricultural markets continue to reflect the impact of a two speed global economy with weak recovery […]

The Abundance of the Commons

Silke Helfrich: Roberto, when you talk about “abundance in the commons,” what are you talking about? Roberto Verzola: I am talking of three things: the abundance of free – or low-cost information and knowledge, thanks to new information and communication technologies (ICTs); the abundance that continually asserts itself in biological systems despite human abuse and […]

Has Peak Oil Newbie “Bought the Farm”?

Dr. K., I only leaned about peak oil about a year ago. I’ve discussed it with my husband and family and at least my daughter and her husband have bought a small farm and are starting to re-calibrate.  My husband and I hope against hope to sell our home so we can be near them […]

Sustaining a City in a Long-Term Power Outage

A few comments on this fascinating study from Pittsburgh (site of Carnegie Mellon, which is a center of excellence at studying critical infrastructure issues).  The key theme that emerges for me is the interaction of the liquid fuel system (particularly diesel) and the electricity system.  In a short outage, lots of critical infrastructure has diesel […]

Cities of the Future

Globalisation has meant urbanisation, and by 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities. What should we do to survive and thrive in this brave new world? In just half a century, the island nation city-state of Singapore has transformed itself from a fishing village to a global financial centre, hailed […]

China’s Growing Hunger for Meat Shown by Move to Buy Smithfield, World’s Leading Pork Producer

Half the world’s pigs—more than 470 million of them—live in China, but even that may not be enough to satisfy the growing Chinese appetite for meat. While meat consumption in the United States has fallen more than 5 percent since peaking in 2007, Chinese meat consumption has leapt 18 percent, from 64 million to 78 […]

Food vs. Fuel: Oil and Rising Food Prices

Last week, the World Bank released a new report that further confirms what most of us have known for a long time — that rising crude oil prices are the biggest contributor to rising food prices. This may come as a shock to the growing hordes who believe the myth that corn for ethanol is […]

The “Chinese Dream” Come True: Gobbling Up Assets Overseas

The “Chinese dream” is the dream of the whole nation and also of every individual Chinese, explained Fu Ying, chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress. The slogan had been coined by President Xi Jinping after he’d ascended to the throne of the Communist Party. It would benefit the world, she […]

How to Feed the World

Oliat Mauramba is a farmer from the small, arid village of Topora in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. He produces organic tomatoes, spinach, and sugar beans, using local knowledge and traditional skills. Oliat meets other farmers from different villages at least twice a week to exchange farming tips. The local market for organically grown products is steadily […]

The audacity of starting something new

I’m currently involved in the coolest and most important new venture in the Transition universe, the Transition Free Press. The TFP is a newspaper like no other, wielding the power of the pen and the pixel for good, telling the stories that must be told and spreading important ideas, like the simple, beautiful idea that […]

About Those Plunging Oil Prices

Over the past three weeks, there have been numerous headlines insinuating that a freefall in oil prices is underway. Last week I read that the various causes were a slowdown in China’s economy, OPEC’s decision not to cut production, and America’s growing oil production. Based on the headlines, one might suspect that we were right […]

18 Signs That Massive Economic Problems Are Erupting Everywhere

This is no time to be complacent.  Massive economic problems are erupting all over the globe, but most people seem to believe that everything is going to be just fine.  In fact, a whole bunch of recent polls and surveys show that the American people are starting to feel much better about how the U.S. […]

IMF Recycle Peak Oil Theory

OIL AT $750 PER BARREL Since late 2012, on several occasions, the deputy chief of financial modeling at the IMF (International Monetary Fund), Michael Kumhof, has said in interview that: “Ignoring the peak oil issue would be highly unscientific, even irresponsible”. While the IMF remains officially neutral on the subject, Kumhof and his colleagues claim […]

China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom

Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer. China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon […]

Oil guru says US shale revolution is ‘temporary’

The oil trader known by rivals as “God” predicts the US shale revolution will only “temporarily” boost production and oil prices will remain high, siding with Saudi Arabia and the Opec cartel in a debate gripping the energy market. Andy Hall, whose lucrative bets on oil prices earned him a $100m salary at Citigroup in […]

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