An Energy Crisis of Tsunami Proportions Rushes Toward America

America is already experiencing energy problems, but they are nothing compared to the energy crisis that will descend upon this nation in the not too distant future. The question is not if this crisis will actually occur, because it is inevitable; the only question is when. Such a crisis has long been predicted, but now […]

Biofuels to cause more food price gains

“Rising Prices on the Menu,” says the title of an article in an International Monetary Fund magazine that predicts an extended increase in the price of food. Until recently, food prices were historically low. In 1977-79 dollars, an IMF global index of food prices even now is about where it was in the Great Depression. […]

Peak oil and the third demographic transition: A preliminary model

The growth of the human population cannot continue forever—there is a limit to our numbers, even if we cannot specify what that limit might be.  There is also a limit to how much oil can be extracted from our planet, even if we don’t know exactly how much oil there really is.  These two variables […]

Film The Economics of Happiness Tackles Economic Localization

“Buy Local” has long been a catchphrase for environmentally focused advocacy organizations. But how exactly does the action of buying locally address issues like climate change, peak oil and the economic turbulence of the past three years? That’s the nexus of a multimedia event being held Tuesday night at the Mill Valley Community Center. Transition […]

Kuntsler: Make No Mistake

Taking in Charles Ferguson’s excellent documentary, Inside Job, about the dark doings of Wall Street in our time, I confess I was awestruck all over again at the complete surrender of Obama to the very characters who embodied the corruption that rotted our system from the heart outward. Summers, Rubin, Geithner, and a host of […]

Can Electric Vehicles Take Off? A Roadmap to Find the Answer

Yale Environment 360 has an article on how to ensure the success of electric vehicles – Can Electric Vehicles Take Off? A Roadmap to Find the Answer. As instability in the Middle East pushes oil prices past $100 per barrel and gasoline prices toward $4 a gallon in the U.S., the need to find better […]

WSJ, Financial Times Raise Issue of Oil Prices Causing Recession

The idea that high oil prices cause recessions shouldn’t be any surprise to those who have been following my writings, or those of Dave Murphy, or those of Jeff Rubin. Last month, though, the Wall Street Journal finally decided to mention the idea to its readers, in an article called “Rising Oil Prices Raise the […]

Stuart Staniford: Long Term Crop Prices

The above shows prices for the three main grain crops in the US since 1920, adjusted for inflation (using the CPI).  A few basic points for future reference: Food crops have been getting gradually cheaper for many years.  With a couple of major excursions due to world events (price drops in the depression, and rises […]

Modes of Transportation

Because of my interest in energy, I have a long-standing interest in different modes of transportation. One of the reasons that I am not overly pessimistic about a future in which I foresee even higher long-term oil prices is that I believe we can make a shift from modes of transportation requiring a lot of […]

Relating Per Capita GDP to Petroleum Consumption and Exports for the MENA Countries

In a previous article, I reproduced a plot relating per capita oil consumption to per capita GDP for selected countries, from a presentation, Energy and the Economy, by Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank.   Sieminski’s plot showed a linear correlation between per capita oil consumption and per capita GDP for a selection of […]

How to avoid a global food price crisis

Recent news stories have stoked fears about rising global food prices. But today, only a few years after a devastating food crisis, we can avoid the mistakes of 2007 and 2008 and respond to this challenge as a country and a globe. To do so we must work with other governments to help those most […]

OPEC sees “acceptable” oil peak at $120

OPEC believes the oil price is approaching $120 per barrel but unlikely to go higher, a level that is “acceptable” and will not hinder global growth, Iraqi oil minister Abdul-Kareem Luaibi said on Tuesday. “Global oil prices are moving towards $120 a barrel. We consider this an acceptable price that will not harm global growth,” […]

Heinberg: Won’t Innovation, Substitution, and Efficiency Keep Us Growing?

I want to believe in innovation and its possibilities, but I am more thoroughly convinced of entropy. Most of what we do merely creates local upticks in organization in an overall downward sloping curve. In that regard, technology is a bag of tricks that allows us to slow and even reverse the trend, sometimes globally, […]

Radiation discovery fans food fears in Japan

At a bustling Tokyo supermarket Sunday, wary shoppers avoided one particular bin of spinach. The produce came from Ibaraki prefecture in the northeast, where radiation was found in spinach grown up to 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Another bin of spinach — labeled as being from Chiba prefecture, west of […]

Peak Oil = Persistent, Unsolvable, Wrenching Stagflation

America is addicted to oil. We deem it a constitutional right to drive Hummers and have $4 a gallon gasoline. But there is an Achille’s heel to our lifestyle—oil is a finite resource, and one day we will run out of cheap oil. The story of peak oil Let’s say that you live in New […]

When the Lights Go Out

The first three articles in this series, Part I – The Math is Different at the Top, Part II – Financial Threats to Power, Part III – Will Water Set the World on Fire, discussed the impacts of financial deterioration and ecosystem degradation (specifically water-based) on the ability of financial elites to retain economic and […]

How Close Are We to Peak Water?

We’ve all heard that water availability is and will continue to be a major issue and unlike oil, where we can look at the price per barrel or the price at the gas pump, or global warming, where we can keep track of the ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere relative to a stated goal […]

IEA warns high oil prices could hit growth

The International Energy Agency warned Tuesday of a “marked slowdown” in the global economy unless oil prices fall from current high levels as post-recession demand picks up. “If prices remain at current levels or rise further, by September 2011, if not before, the global economy may feature a marked slowdown,” the IEA said in its […]

Why an abundant supermarket is not the same as food security

The near-daily toppling of governments in the Arab world is rendering moot all arguments about whether peak oil is 10, 30 or 50 years away. Gas prices are up and still rising, and there is no guarantee they will come back down. More certain is that the governments that supplant the regimes that the West […]

Peak Trees (Video)

What were the Easter Islanders thinking prior to cutting down the last palm tree? Maybe it went something like this.

What would happen if we discontinued nuclear electricity?

We are very much reaching limits in the field of energy. This seems to mean that we ending up taking more and more risks, so that there is a greater risk of things going wrong. At the same time, the world’s population is so high that without a good deal of external energy, we cannot provide […]

Fuel For The Year

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, butduring the past few months oil prices have ramped up to levels which,as the financial crisis of 2008 had demonstrated, tend to crash theglobal economy. Even the International Energy Agency has recentlypicked up on this fact and sounded an alarm. That was before Libyaexploded, taking a couple of millions […]

Heinberg: Why growth won’t return – food

In addition to water, people need food for their very existence. Thus food is also essential to economic growth. Problems with maintenance of far-flung and intensive food production systems played a role in the collapse of previous civilizations, including the Roman Empire.[1] Mesopotamia, the green and lush center of the Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations, was […]

Urban Homesteading

Call me a day late and a dollar short.  Or maybe behind-the-times with respect to Facebook.  But I completely missed the posting blitz where Facebook fans used the “urban homesteading” term as many times as they possibly could in a single day.  In fact, I learned about the posting blitz via our Transition U.S. newsletter, […]

A Dark Warning on Global Oil Demand

Many top corporate and political figures gathered in Houston on Tuesday for the annual CeraWeek conference on the outlook for energy, and they got an earful from John B. Hess, chairman and chief executive of the Hess Corporation. “An energy crisis is coming, likely to be triggered by oil,” he predicted. “Demand is expected to […]

India’s Widening Energy Deficit

India’s energy crisis is set to deepen as top producers of coal, natural gas and oil recently said their output will grow little in the next few of years – not what the country wants to hear at a time when its thirst for fuel shows no sign of abating. This means more fuel imports […]

Saudis say shortage not behind oil price jump

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister on Tuesday denied the surge in oil prices reflects a shortage of crude on the market but said the kingdom is committed to tapping excess supplies if needed. The 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has so far held its official output quotas unchanged, even as massive protests across the […]

Oil could hit $200 if Arab unrest spreads to Saudi Arabia

Crude prices will touch $200 a barrel if the Arab revolution spreads to Saudi Arabia, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said on Friday. ‘… the revolutions around the Arab world have pushed up the price of oil which had temporarily stabilised at $116 yesterday. This is 38% above its average level for […]

Saudi Aramco Raises Crude Oil Prices for Asia, Northwestern Europe, Cuts U.S Price

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil exporter, raised official selling prices for all crude grades for customers in Asia and Northwest Europe for April shipments and cut prices for customers in the U.S. Saudi Arabia’s state-owned producer increased the formula prices for Arab Extra Light, Light and Medium crudes to Asia by 65 cents a […]

Israel’s natural gas supply cut off

Noble Energy, Delek and Isramco performed maintenance work at the reservoir Saturday as part of a plan to increase supply to Israel’s Electric Corp. and other power plants after Egypt’s EMG company postponed the resumption of gas supply. Following the malfunction, the National Infrastructure Ministry ordered the Electric Corp. to increase production at the coal […]

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