EROEI and the Collapse of Empires

The above video is a discussion with Dr. Charles Hall of the Dept. of the SUNY-Environmental and Forest Biology. He is the primary creator behind the concept of EROEI in the field of biophysical economics. He also cowrote the new book ”Energy and the Wealth of Nations“. I just heard about this book, but from the reviews […]

Rwanda: Quest to Feed World’s Growing Population

President Paul Kagame has said that it is time to globally re-think the optimal use of vital resources such as land, water and energy and one of the major approaches the world needs to take to ensure food security – for the rapidly growing population – is increasing investment in agriculture. He made the remarks […]

Why aren’t electric rates falling along with natural gas?

A plunge in the price of natural gas has made it cheaper for utilities to produce electricity. But the savings aren’t translating to lower rates for customers. Instead, U.S. electricity prices are going up. Electricity prices are forecast to rise slightly this summer. But any increase is noteworthy because natural gas, which is used to […]

A look at forecasts for peak oil – and the end of civilization

Summary:  A common concern in the comments expresses fear of resource exhaustion, perhaps even leading to collapse of civilization. Here we examine the theory, evaluate the risks, and point to sources of more information. Such one to a Question Time:  “how do you think the US will cope with the return to a preindustrial lifestyle?” […]

IEA: 2013 Oil Demand Growth Higher On Muted Recovery

Global oil demand is expected to rise by 1 million barrels a day next year, faster than growth this year, but “well below” the levels seen before the financial crisis as economic recovery remains muted, the International Energy Agency said Thursday. The IEA also said that demand from emerging economies will for the first time […]

Peak Oil’s Impact: Lawn Care

[M]y problem with the peak oil argument is that it isn’t really very clear in itself as to what it means. From what I understand at some point we get to the end of cheap oil, we’ve only expensive oil left and then, well, and then apparently something terrible happens. [1] Very few of us […]

John Michael Greer: The Distant Sound of Tumbrils

I’ve commented more than once in these essays about the echoing gap between the fantasies of elite omnipotence so common in contemporary America, and the awkward realities of a nation where power has become so diffuse that constructive action is all but impossible. The diffusion of power over time is a commonplace in the history […]

The Myth of Smart Growth

Dear Friends and Colleagues, Thanks to some generous support I finally had the opportunity to write what I really think about Smart Growth.  I hope you will enjoy the commentary, which is available on my website at the link below. While this piece is overdue, it’s better late than never! Feel free to share it, […]

OPEC sees 2013 oil demand growth slowing

World oil demand growth will slow in 2013 from the already weak 2012, OPEC said on Wednesday, citing Europe’s debt worries, a faltering U.S. economic recovery and deceleration of growth in emerging markets. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which produces a third of global oil, said daily average demand for its crude […]

The U.S. enters the 20th century: why we can’t keep the electricity on

No, the title of this article is not a typo.  We did enter the 20th century – the early 20th century – last week.  All it took was a thunderstorm. Sometimes I am struck by how phenomenally shortsighted our national leaders are.  In just 45 minutes last week, a single storm brought the capital of the U.S. […]

Coal Rising in Europe While Gas Eyes the Throne in the US

Despite highly touted climate policies, European utilities are rushing to capitalize on the cheapest and dirtiest source of electric power in the continent: coal. A combination of low carbon permit prices under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and increased coal imports from the United States has made coal the most profitable fuel for power […]

Are Natural Gas Liquids as Good as Oil?

Technical details sometimes turn out to be just that – details. Sometimes, though, they turn out to be much more. A longstanding technical debate over how to think about natural gas liquids (NGLs) may be in the process of moving from something marginal to something that really matters. NGLs are the light hydrocarbons other than […]

The Collapsing US Economy and the end of the world

In a recent column, “Can The World Survive Washington’s Hubris,” I promised to examine whether the US economy will collapse before Washington in its pursuit of world hegemony brings us into military confrontation with Russia and China. This is likely to be an ongoing subject on this site, so this column will not be the […]

Efficiency, conservation, and the Jevons Paradox

Given the preponderance of government energy policies aimed at promoting technical efficiency, a careful consideration of the Jevons Paradox is in order. I’ve spent some time this summer reading about William Stanley Jevons, one of the three 19th-century economists co-credited with sparking the marginal revolution, and especially Jevon’s book The Coal Question. Most recently I’ve been reading […]

You Can’t Get There from Here

If I told you you can’t get there from here, you’d probably laugh at me. If I insisted that you can’t, you’d probably, to humour me, pull out the road atlas and point out the route. But wait a moment. What if you couldn’t drive? We lived in Europe (in the Netherlands) for a year. […]

Resilience through simplification: revisiting Tainter’s theory of collapse

A society or other institution can be destroyed by the cost of sustaining itself. – Joseph Tainter Resilience through Simplification: Revisiting Tainter’s Theory of Collapse Samuel Alexander[1]   1. Introduction In 1988 Joseph Tainter published his seminal work, The Collapse of Complex Societies, in which he presented an original theory of social complexity that he […]

Civilization and the Price of Oil

I attended a lecture and workshop by Arizonan Guy McPherson last weekend that hit me like a kick in the head. McPherson, who posts at Nature Bats Last and recently published Walking Away from Empire: a Personal Journey, is on tour in New Zealand. According to McPherson and a growing number of prominent energy and […]

Oil and Illusions

The flaws of bad government, oppression, injustice and corruption, etc., can be masked by an unearned windfall. Take Saudi Arabia and its oil, for example, or the United States and its oil, which was first sucked from its own soil and sea, then everybody else’s, thanks to its status as an empire. With oil, even […]

Can China Follow U.S. Shift from Coal to Gas?

  Here’s an effort to look ahead from a promising American environmental trend to a prospect for the same in China, starting with two observations. First, the combination of abundant and cheap natural gas and tightening regulations on coal-burning power plants in the United States — along with a general intensification of efforts to conserve […]

Gail Tverberg: The Growing Part of the World in Charts

Some parts of the world pretty much sailed through the 2008-2009 recession, while other parts of the world had huge problems. The part that sailed through the recession is what I call the “Growing Part of the World.” I thought it would be interesting to see how the countries in the “Growing Part of the […]

Our Liberation: A Crashing Empire

The Empire is crashing! Hooray!!!! The exploding population has met the dwindling resources. For many centuries we of the “civilized” world have been the physical and mental captives of elite groups within our societies that control us physically and feed us mentally. Those who have always assembled themselves around the emperors for six thousand years; […]

The Godmother Ran Out Of Luck: Saudi And Global Oil

In a recent (29 June) Market Oracle article, Andrew Butter writes: “One suspects that behind the Saudi rhetoric about keeping oil prices fair for the sake of the world economy and world peace…like a modern day fairy-godmother-of-last-resort, there is the thought that if prices stay above $120 or so for long then some serious E&P […]

Energy, Economy and the Impending Rite of Passage

It’s the economy, stupid! Bill Clinton’s campaign used this phrase to defeat incumbent President George H. W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election. Bush had the misfortune of being president during the beginning of a recession, and Clinton’s campaign didn’t let him, or American voters, forget it; Clinton convinced enough Americans that he could turn things […]

Peak Blame

KMO welcomes Mark Robinowitz of OilEmpire.us back to the C-Realm Podcast to discuss why both the mainstream political left as well as the right in the United States cannot address the demands of Peak Oil in a realistic way. Republicans have rebuked Navy Secretary Ray Mabus for attempting to ween the Navy off of fossil […]

10 sobering realizations the Eastern U.S. power grid failure is teaching us about a real collapse

In the wake of violent storms, the power remains out today for millions of Americans across several U.S. states. Governors of Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio have declared a state of emergency. Over a dozen people are now confirmed dead, and millions are sweltering in blistering temperatures while having no air conditioning or refrigeration. As […]

Grinding Energy Shortage Takes Toll on India’s Growth

India is facing an energy crisis that is slowing economic growth in the world’s largest democracy. At stake is India’s ability to bring electricity to 400 million rural residents—a third of the population—as well as keep the lights on at corporate office towers and provide enough fuel for 1.5 million new vehicles added to the […]

Orlov: The Movement for Involuntary Complexity

Year after year, the Addbusters Magazine propagandizes “Buy Nothing Day”: On Nov 25/26th we escape the mayhem and unease of the biggest shopping day in North America and put the breaks on rabid consumerism for 24 hours. Flash mobs, consumer fasts, mall sit-ins, community events, credit card-ups, whirly-marts and jams, jams, jams! The idea, I […]

Natural gas liquids

According to the Energy Information Administration, in March the United States produced a “total oil supply” of 10.8 million barrels per day, which was 2.1 mb/d more than in January 2005. But if you just rely on those aggregate numbers, you’ll miss some very important trends. The EIA’s definition of total oil supply represents the […]

Peak Plastic: One Generation’s Trash Is Another Generation’s Treasure

In 1956, M. King Hubbert laid out a prediction for how oil production in a nation increases, peaks, and then quickly falls down. Since then many analysts have extended this logic and said that global oil production will soon max out—a point called “peak oil“—which could throw the world economy into turmoil. I’m a materials […]

Dramatic socio-economic paradigm shift is ahead: Interview with Nathan Hagen, ASPO-Vienna 2012

The current period can be undoubtedly characterized as an economical, ecological, cultural, political, but also moral crisis. The solution seems to be as far off as ever and problems seem to be getting worse by the day everywhere. Why is that, what can we expect in the future and what are the safe outcomes from […]

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