Crippling plastic addiction

Plastic waste is choking the environment — with the world’s population consuming enough each year to wrap 10 layers around the Earth. Once he learned of the dangers of plastic waste, I Gede Ari Astina persistently campaigned to reduce the use of plastic bags. Popularly known by his moniker JRX, the drummer of punk rock […]

Canada Economy Grows Fastest Since 2011 on Oil Exports

A surge in Canadian oil exports to the U.S. helped propel the country’s economy in the first quarter to its fastest growth pace since 2011, even as domestic demand expanded at the slowest rate since the 2009 recession. Gross domestic product grew at a 2.5 percent annualized pace from January to March, the fastest in […]

Richest 1% control 39% of world’s wealth and growing

The wealthiest 1 percent now control 39 percent of the world’s wealth, and their share is likely to grow in the coming years, according to a new report. The world’s total private wealth grew 7.8 percent last year to $135 trillion, according to the Boston Consulting Group’s Global Wealth report. The top 1 percent control […]

Chile wants Canada’s natural gas

Chile wants to buy Canadian liquefied natural gas to feed its energy-hungry mining industry as it bolsters its efforts to transform into a developed industrial nation and drag its citizens out of poverty. Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, speaking to The Globe and Mail editorial board on Friday, said his government’s mission is to make Chile […]

Population growth erodes sustainable energy gains – UN report

The world has made important progress towards improving energy efficiency, using more renewable sources of power and providing basic electricity to every household over the last two decades. But the gains have barely been enough to keep up with population growth and surging energy demand and are far short of what is needed to curb […]

Busting Big Oil Myths on the RFS and Ethanol, Part II: Food Prices

Last week I kicked off a short series of posts examining some of the biggest myths perpetuated by the oil industry in its crusade against biofuels and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). As part of an aggressive push to repeal the RFS, oil industry trade groups and their allies have used a well-stocked arsenal of […]

The New Suburban Poor: More at Risk to Rising Gas Prices

A new book by authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution has highlighted an unexpected new trend in poverty in America today — the poor are moving to the suburbs. Enticed by more affordable housing, better schools, safer neighborhoods and new low-wage employment opportunities, this shift has taken the formerly solid middle-class […]

World car production grows 3 times faster than global oil supplies

As Ford Australia announced the closure of its factory in 2016, the Sydney Morning Herald ‘s headline was: 24/5/2013 Era of the Aussie car over http://www.smh.com.au/business/era-of-the-aussie-car-over-20130523-2k48f.html Right. There is an overproduction of cars worldwide. Let’s have a look at the numbers. In the last 10 years the world’s annual car production went up from 41 million […]

Iraq Minister: Shale to Have Minimal Effect on Oil Demand

Rising U.S. shale oil production will have only minimal effect on demand for crude oil from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, meaning most members of the group want to leave their output ceiling unchanged at 30 million barrels a day, said Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaiby Thursday. OPEC members will discuss the […]

International Power Outage Comparisons

The above (Fig 1.2a of Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System) shows a measure of total electric grid outage duration across a sample of countries in the world.  The measure is SAIDI = System Average Interruption Duration Index.  This is the total number of minutes per year of outage experienced by an average customer, but […]

US agricultural sector in the US uses less than 2% of total energy usage.

It has been just shy of two years since the USDA came out with its last report on energy use in agriculture. The title of this month’s new report is, “Agriculture’s Supply and Demand for Energy and Energy Products.” This time they presented the subject by saying that energy inputs no longer have a linear relationship […]

Less Growth = More Happiness

The nuclear catastrophe will have positive economic effects according to some economists since every destruction brings reconstruction and thus growth. This shows the madness of the dominant “magic of growth” (Harald Welzer, “Blaetter,” 16/2010). Rudolf Hickel criticizes the misguided measurement of prosperity. The nuclear catastrophe in Japan and the revolutions in Arabia have one enormous […]

Difference Engine: Fuel for the future?

AMERICA’S unexpected, and most welcome, bonanza of natural gas from its vast shale deposits seems to be doing as much to reduce pollution as many of the efforts introduced over the years to restrict emissions from vehicles, power stations and other sources. The biggest breakthrough the energy industry has seen in decades, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) […]

Memorial Day Driving By The Numbers

Following CAP’s piece yesterday that details exactly what it means to use gasoline to travel this Memorial Day weekend, here is an infographic that shows the cost of Big Oil. Gas prices are rising in the Midwest and spot crude oil prices for the West Texas Intermediate benchmark is nearly $5 per barrel higher than […]

Attenborough: endless growth ‘lunacy’

One of the world’s leading naturalists Sir David Attenborough has cautioned Australia against pursuing further population growth, labelling an unlimited expansion a kind of madness. Speaking before touring Australia next month, Sir David questioned why the country still found itself actively debating whether it needed to grow its population. ”Why would you want to do […]

All hail Gazpromia: UK gas supply six hours from running out in March

Britain came within six hours of running out of natural gas in March, according to a senior energy official, highlighting the risk of supply shortages amid declining domestic production and a growing reliance on imports. “We really only had six hours’ worth of gas left in storage as a buffer,” said Rob Hastings, director of […]

Sharing as a Solution to Global Crisis

The social, environmental and economic crises that continue to reap havoc across the globe provide a critical opportunity for ordinary people to demand economic reform and political transformation says STWR’s director, Rajesh Makwana, in an interview with John Habets & Henk Gloudemans. 13th May 2013 – Published in the Dutch magazine of the WereldDelen Foundation […]

Difficult Truths about ‘Difficult Oil’

As the global economy switches to heavier, messier and costlier hydrocarbons, Robert Skinner is getting a bit worried about the future of his three grandchildren. It’s all about the story of “difficult oil,” a term the highly respected energy expert and geologist first coined nearly a decade ago. Now, Skinner, a 67-year energy veteran, has […]

Bound by the Chains of Oil: The Need for Energy Innovation

We all know that when the price of oil goes up Americans are negatively affected. High oil prices increase our gasoline expenditures, constricting household budgets, and cause the price of everything that is transported or produced using oil (which is basically everything) to escalate. Nationally, our trade deficit rises and often a recession is close at […]

China’s SUV Fleet to Drive Oil Demand Growth

China’s growing fleet of sport utility vehicles will offset gains in fuel efficiency and continue to drive oil-demand growth, according to Sanford C. Bernstein Research. Chinese oil consumption will increase at an average annual pace of 5 percent to reach 12.9 million barrels a day in 2018, from 9.6 million barrels a day in 2012, […]

Energy bills ‘could overtake mortgages in five years’

Energy bills are rising so steeply that they could overtake mortgage repayments in parts of Britain in just five years’ time, the chief executive of supplier, First Utility, has claimed. Ian McCaig issued the stark warning as he said energy policies must be reviewed to minimise the impact on bills and said consumers should think […]

The Rise of the Suburban Poor

In 2004, a documentary called The End of Suburbia predicted that the suburbs were potentially “destined to become the slums of tomorrow” thanks to the impending threat of peak oil. That didn’t happen–the threat of peak oil has now been replaced by out-of-control climate change–but suburbs are declining, just for a different reason. According to […]

Predicting the Weather, Corn, Ethanol and Oil Production

News of the future was, in my youth, something that one found by crossing the palm of a lady in a dark tent with a piece or two of silver (or the modern equivalent) at one of the fairs that came to town. Such opportunities still exist, with all the caveats that existed back then […]

Are Natural-Gas Cars Next?

A consortium of North American energy producers plans to showcase half a dozen natural-gas-powered vehicles, including a BMW X3 SUV and a Ford Mustang coupe, in an effort to drum up interest in use of the fuel in passenger cars. America’s Natural Gas Alliance, a trade group representing more than two dozen North American oil […]

How to Meet the World’s Food Needs in 2030

In 2012 the global population reached 7 billion. The planet faced severe droughts, soaring commodity prices, and lagging food production. Are we staring down the Malthusian food and population disaster predicted in 1798? Or can innovation and technology come to the rescue? While the answer is too complex to know fully, it seems certain that […]

Mexico Aims to Triple Natural Gas Imports from U.S.

The construction of a natural gas pipeline from southern Texas to central Mexico will allow for a tripling of imports from the U.S. to meet increasing demand from industry, an official from Petroleos Mexicanos has said…. WSJ

Counting the Calories and calories

Read Part 1, Read Part 2, Read Part 3, Read Part 4, Read Part 5 We Americans spend almost 50 percent of our household food budgets on eating outside the confines of our homes, and we derive more than 30 percent of our caloric intake from those meals and snacks.25 It only makes sense that researchers and market […]

Are Electric Cars Green? The External Cost of Lithium Batteries

One of the more fashionable concepts that one hears among people who regard themselves as environmentalists, is that the world would be much better off if only we could make the electric car mainstream.   Without having engaged in any kind of systematic survey among serious thinkers on the environment, I certainly feel this is the […]

What Would it Take to Get to a Steady State Economy?

Humans live in equilibrium with other species in a finite world. In such a world, there is never really a Steady State. Instead, there is a constant ebb and flow.  One species may be dominant in an area for a while, and then another. If populations are closely matched in “ability,” then the ups and […]

10 Scenes From The Economic Collapse That Is Sweeping Across The Planet

When is the economic collapse going to happen?  Just open up your eyes and take a look around the globe.  The next wave of the economic collapse may not have reached Wall Street yet, but it is already deeply affecting billions of lives all over the planet.  Much of Europe has already descended into a […]

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