Japan, oil and the fragility of globalization

“No society can have a population that is hooked on progressively larger numbers of energy slaves and whose members are also autonomously active.” — Ivan Illich Sometimes it takes an earthquake followed by tsunami accompanied by a nuclear meltdown to catch people’s attention. Explosion at Fukishima nuclear plant in March. Addiction to oil paved way […]

Economic Resilience #2. Expect Contraction

In our Oct 2010 session about the economy here in Los Angeles, we discussed “Conservation of cash.” In other words: in these times of economic contraction, make the most of the U.S. dollars you do have.  In that session we talked about budgets and getting by on less.  So often in American culture when money […]

Can the Earth Feed a Population of 9 Billion People?

Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, looks at past rates of food production to explain why it should eventually be possible to produce enough food to feed a global population of 9 billion people.

Kunstler: Gaming Our Own Asses

A wicked vibe rattles the mental furniture in men’s minds these days. Against the dreadful normality of American life – the morning traffic on I-495, the mayhem awaiting in some school cafeteria or motor vehicle office, the household awakenings to a new dawn of foreclosure here, there, and everywhere – all this ceremony of the […]

Sprawling From Grace

This feature length documentary explores the ravages of American suburban sprawl, what America has lost as a result

Richard Heinberg: Specialization and globalization: Genies at our command

Economic efficiency doesn’t flow from energy efficiency alone; it can also be achieved by increasing specialization or by expanding the scope of trade so as to exploit cheaper resources or labor. Both of these strategies have deep and ancient roots in human history.[1] Division of labor increases economic efficiency by optimizing the use of people’s […]

Kurt Cobb: Could High Oil Prices Cause A Global Economic Deflation?

As the European Central Bank (ECB) prepares to raise interest rates to prevent inflation, the bank cites rising commodity prices, particularly oil prices, as a sign of that inflation. What the bank and other market participants don’t seem to understand is that high commodity prices and, in particular, high oil prices are deflationary. The logic […]

Robert Rapier Radio Interview on Rising Gas Prices

Following my recent article in the Washington Post on Five Myths About Gas Prices, I received several inquires for additional commentary on the story. Below is an interview that I did with KSL NewsRadio in Utah that allowed me to expand upon the points from the Post article (as I also did in an expanded […]

EIA analysis: no drop in US gasoline demand

US gasoline stocks fell seven million barrels to 209.679 million barrels for the week ending April 8, with a rebound in demand keeping inventories on a downward trajectory, an analysis of the data released Wednesday by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed. Analysts polled by Platts had projected a more modest decline of 1.25 […]

The Economy: Possible Scenarios for the Future 2

Given that we’re entering a prolonged period of economic contraction, what comes next?  In the big picture, what are some of the possible routes forward?  In the last post I critiqued some of the economic thinkers mentioned by the UK’s Rob Hopkins.  In this post, I highlight several — including a U.S. source — which […]

Is Japan Experiencing Peak Oil First?

There’s a very good piece in the Guardian about the ways that Eastern Japan’s energy crisis is a model for experiences we might have in the future: For large parts of eastern Japan that were not directly hit by the tsunami on 11 March 2011, including the nation’s capital, the current state of affairs feels […]

Nicole Foss on Peak Oil with Jim Puplava

Nicole M. Foss is co-editor of The Automatic Earth, where she writes under the name Stoneleigh. She and her writing partner have been chronicling and interpreting the on-going credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of our current multi-faceted predicament. The site integrates finance, energy, environment, psychology, population and real politik in order to explain […]

Nitrogen Helps Feed World But Pollution Costly

The growing world population relies on the help of nitrogen for our food supply, yet its very use pollutes the air, soil and water. The first European Nitrogen Assessment (ENA), launched at a conference today, estimates that nitrogen pollution will cost Europe an annual of €70 to €320 billion ($100-$460 billion USD) in damages. It […]

A Double Dip Recession? Only If We Are Lucky

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently warned that the U.S. is likely headed back into recession: The Economic Truth That Nobody Will Admit: We’re Heading Back Toward a Double-Dip Why aren’t Americans being told the truth about the economy? We’re heading in the direction of a double dip — but you’d never know it […]

The Economy: Possible Scenarios for the Future 1

Part I of this document took a hard look at the realities ahead. Part II critiques what several economic theorists see as possible routes forward for the “big picture” economy.  In today’s post, we’ll look at some of the sources Rob Hopkins listed. In Part III, we’ll go through what we can do at the […]

Growing Rice in Vermont and Designing for Peak Oil

I don’t know much about growing rice, but I do know that it tends to be a warm climate crop. So when fellow TreeHugger Mat emailed me about an outfit trying to grow rice in Vermont, I was intrigued. But it turned out that growing rice was just one small part of what Whole Systems […]

A different kind of supply-side economics

In the wake of the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami, an instructive story is unfolding about the manifold vulnerabilities of the modern industrial world. Robin Young of the radio show “Here and Now” reported yesterday on the too-often overlooked phenomenon of industrial supply lines. Her guest, Jeffrey Karrenbauer, a supply-chain expert with Insight Inc., said […]

What is “our” oil doing in their economy? — Saudi oil consumption trends

Oil importing nations have long treated Saudi Arabia as an infinitely deep well of crude oil supplies. In 2005, Matt Simmon’s book Twilight in the Desert did much to call attention to the possibility of diminishing production from the desert kingdom’s aging wells. More recently, cables released by wikileaks highlight the possible overstatement of Saudi […]

gasoline demand in the US starts to slide

A 357,000-barrel decline in US gasoline inventories to 216.679 million barrels for the week ended April 1 fell short of analyst expectations, an analysis of the oil data released Wednesday by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed. Analysts polled by Platts had projected a drop of 2.1 million barrels. This analysis and commentary is […]

Yamani: Oil could reach $300/bbl over unrest in Saudi Arabia

Fears of rocketing oil prices were stoked when former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Yamani told a conference Apr. 5 that serious unrest in his homeland could push oil prices as high as $300/bbl. “If something happens in Saudi Arabia it will go to $200 to $300[/bbl]. I don’t expect this for the time being, but […]

Bill Mollison’s 1981 Permaculture Lecture Notes

In 1981, Bill Mollison gave a Permaculture Design course for which Dan Hemenway produced lecture notes. While these originally were made available as a set of pamphlets for a small copying fee, they have been available on the web for quite some time, in PDF form, like here (6mb PDF), for example. While the social […]

As population increases, so does demand for food

Food — its availability and its price — is becoming a major concern around the world, and this time it includes the United States where citizens have seldom had to worry about their food supply. We are more concerned over the second highest obesity rate in the world. The current situation is due to a […]

Debunking Five Myths about Gas Prices

I will discuss each particular myth in detail below, but the five myths I addressed were: Fighting in Libya is sending gas prices higher. Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a smart way to reduce gas prices. Oil companies produce less in the spring to make gas prices increase. The Obama administration is driving up […]

A Fatal Addiction to Plastic

“Be fantastic, don’t use plastic!” chanted a troop of 10-year- olds from President Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Honolulu at the conclusion of an international conference on the millions of tonnes of trash that enter the oceans every year, with serious consequences for marine life and habitats as well as to human health and the […]

Financial Totalitarianism

A particularly annoying question I am often asked and have come to hate is: “How do I invest my money for it to survive financial, political and commercial collapse?” The short answer is: “Nohow. Money will not survive collapse; not yours, not anyone else’s.” But that answer is not acceptable, because accepting it would require […]

Japan’s Liquid Fuels Crisis

There are so many issues that the Japanese must deal with in the immediate aftermath of their huge quake and tsunami — humanitarian relief, damaged nuclear reactors, and general disruptions and shortages of all kinds. While the ongoing troubles at the Fukushima reactors generate global attention, several recent articles have touched on shortages of liquid […]

Joel Salatin: Breaking Free From Factory Farms

In this twelfth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, American farmer, lecturer and author Joel Salatin outlines the key issues America faces as its citizens increasingly rely on factory farms, concentrated animal feeding operations that require cheap energy in order to operate profitably. […]

Garden as if Your Life Depended On It, Because It Will

Spring has sprung—at least south of the northern tier of states where snow still has a ban on it—and the grass has ‘riz. And so has the price of most foods, which is particularly devastating just now when so many Americans are unemployed, underemployed, retired or retiring, on declining or fixed incomes and are having […]

Peak oil angst and the lure of techno-utopia

In the sixties and seventies, Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes were a trendy symbol of a better society — hipper, physically and culturally transparent and much, much more logical than the hodgepodge of architecture styles handed down to us by history. In America, where youth were aflame over Vietnam, the civil rights movement and the sexual […]

Think local, buy local won’t feed the world

Denying global free trade will prevent farmers from supplying the food to feed the world, John Allen, the chief executive officer of the New Zealand ministry of foreign affairs and trade, told delegates at the International Farm Management Association congress in Methven, New Zealand. “Farmers are faced with extraordinary opportunities. Opportunities presented by a growing […]

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