The End of Babies

In the fall of 2015, a rash of posters appeared around Copenhagen. One, in pink letters laid over an image of chicken eggs, asked, “Have you counted your eggs today?” A second — a blue-tinted close-up of human sperm — inquired, “Do they swim too slow?” The posters, part of a campaign funded by the […]

The Future of Food Security

Professor Susanna Hecht (Professor of International History and Associate Faculty at the CIES) and Professor Tim Swanson (Professor of International Economics and Academic Co-Director at the CIES) started the discussion by highlighting how the current food system affects ecosystems and biodiversity. Addressing the challenge of food security will necessarily imply changing how we produce and […]

The Ramifications of Global Oil Demand Hitting a Plateau

Global oil demand will hit a plateau around 2030 as the use of more efficient cars and electric vehicles ends an expansion that dominated the past century, the International Energy Agency predicts. The prospect of “peak demand” has spread in the oil industry in recent years as countries seek to avert catastrophic climate change by […]

How big a problem is idling?

Idling your car — at home, in a drive-thru line, at a red light — is environmentally harmful, and also largely unnecessary. How bad is idling? When a gasoline-powered vehicle is idling, it is in its least efficient mode. It’s doing nothing but sitting there, burning fuel and sending emissions into the atmosphere. Natural Resources […]

Mist Showers: Sustainable Decadence?

The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels. The mist shower, a satisfying but forgotten technology which uses very little water and energy, could be a solution. Designer Jonas Görgen developed a do-it-yourself kit to convert almost any shower into a mist shower and sent me one to try […]

OPEC Braces For Drastic Drop In Oil Demand

OPEC admitted that demand for its oil over the next few years could be drastically weaker than it previously thought, due to a combination of a weakening economy, rising supply elsewhere, and pressure from climate activists. In its World Oil Outlook, OPEC said that demand for its oil may only reach 32.8 million barrels per […]

Is China Facing A Natural Gas Crisis?

1. China’s gas needs growing – China’s consumption of natural gas is rising faster than its production, with the gap met by rising volumes of imports. In 2018, imports accounted for 45 percent of China’s gas supply, up from 10 percent in 2010, according to the EIA. – China has tried to scale up shale […]

The first map of America’s food supply chain is mind-boggling

My team at the University of Illinois just developed the first high-resolution map of the U.S. food supply chain. Our map is a comprehensive snapshot of all food flows between counties in the U.S.—grains, fruits and vegetables, animal feed, and processed food items. To build the map, we brought together information from eight databases, including the Freight […]

The oil age is coming to a close

The oil industry faces an uncertain future. The world is rapidly waking up to the severity and immediacy of the threat from climate change. At the same time, electric vehicles are getting cheap enough to compete with internal-combustion engines. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects electrics to begin taking over in about a decade: Meanwhile, concerns […]

Megadam: ‘Obsolete Technology’ Wreaks Havoc across the Americas

It’s a technology that’s been all but abandoned in wealthy countries, where costs began outpacing benefits decades ago. Yet a global boom in major dam construction, mainly in developing countries, is currently underway, with an estimated 3,700 now under construction or in the planning stages. Latin America is ground zero for much of this development, with nearly 400 […]

The Myth That People Work Harder Under Capitalism

In the not so distant past, people didn’t work hard, but not for the reasons the ahistorical or socialists think. There were no happy peasants laboring a few hours in the fields and spending the rest of the day in leisure. They were starving and had no energy to work hard. Far from an idyllic […]

Venezuela’s Water System is Collapsing

Fetching water from a mountainside in the Venezuelan capital Caracas.CreditCreditMeridith Kohut for The New York Times By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Isayen Herrera Oct. 19, 2019, 10:13 a.m. ET     The brick shack on the outskirts of Venezuela’s capital is crowded with tubs, jugs and buckets. The water they hold must last the family of […]

The Mythology of Overconsumption

As a species, our lives have been made better throughout the ages because we have consistently consumed more. If we were to reverse our consumption habits, which is not possible, humankind would not flourish. Life would not get better for anyone if we suddenly consumed less. Nor should we expect the ecology to be magically […]

How do we feed the world without destroying the planet?

Hunger is the most awful and profound expression of poverty. It exists in every country. It is something that most people can identify with on some perhaps primordial level. The fear of hunger is etched into our DNA, passed down the generations from hungry, scared ancestors. It is in our bones. It is in my […]

IEA Cuts Oil Demand Forecast as Economy Eclipses Saudi Attack

The International Energy Agency cut forecasts for growth in global oil demand, noting that fears of an economic slowdown are overshadowing the loss of supply during last month’s attack on Saudi Arabia. The strike on the kingdom’s production facilities caused the biggest disruption in modern history, halting about 6% of world oil supply, the agency […]

The Baby Bust and the Global Economy

Growth has been slowing around the developed world — not just in recent months but for decades. One potential reason is that women are having fewer babies. On this week’s Stephanomics, reporter Jeannette Neumann visits a region in Spain with the lowest fertility rate in Europe to find out why this is happening and what it […]

China’s Worrying Oil Vulnerability

1. China’s Middle East vulnerability – China is the largest oil importer in the world and its vulnerability lies in its dependence on oil flows from the Middle East. China’s oil imports from the region have surged from 0.33 mb/d in 1998 to 4 mb/d in 2018. – The Abqaiq attack highlighted the stakes. “With […]

Peak energy, peak oil, and the rise of renewables: An executive’s guide to the global energy system

The McKinsey Podcast Global energy demand is headed toward a plateau over the next ten to 20 years, as the world focuses on electrification, energy efficiency, and more service-driven economic growth.

China’s development, governance set model for world

China’s remarkable political and socioeconomic achievements have created a development model illuminating to the whole world, said a Cypriot senior politician. “Despite the huge size of the country and its people, it has managed to improve the living conditions of its citizens to a very high degree,” Antros Kyprianou, secretary general of the AKEL, the […]

Peak oil demand is now

The theory of “peak oil demand” was a techno-utopian response to the supposed debunking of the peak oil theory first set out by M. King Hubbert in the 1950s.  Hubbert’s simple observation was that oil fields tend to reach peak production roughly 40 years after they are discovered.  Since most of the oil in the […]

The Delusion and Danger of Infinite Economic Growth

“Fairytales of eternal economic growth.” That’s how climate activist Greta Thunberg depicted the dominant mindset at the United Nations last week. “How dare you,” she said, admonishing them for “empty words” instead of concrete actions to preserve the planet. She’s right. One of the reasons nations fail to address climate change is the belief that […]

Oil and Gas is Here to Stay

OPEC’s research shows that oil and gas, and this industry as a whole, is here to stay. That’s what OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo revealed in a speech at the 12th Kazenergy Eurasian Forum on September 26. “The fact is, all forms of energy will be required to meet future demand,” Barkindo said in the speech. “It […]

How Many Humans Could the Moon Support?

It’s the year 3000. Having used up all of Earth’s natural resources, humans have become a spacefaring race and established colonies on the moon. Vast, sealed domes cluster across its surface, housing cities populated by hundreds of thousands of people. This cold, gray rock has somehow become humanity’s new home. Of course, this is pure […]

The Paradox of Growth

Credit: Princeton University Press Fifty years ago, shortly after we arrived in Pennsylvania from Europe, I came across D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s classic On Growth and Form (originally published in 1917, with a revised edition published in 1942), which looks at the role of mathematics in biology. I almost immediately thought about writing a similarly systematic […]

Food Security Becoming One Of Our Biggest Challenges For Humankind’s Survival

Biotechnology woman engineer with a clipboard and pen examining a plant for disease! Getty Food security is one of the biggest challenges we’re facing as we move further into this century. Changing climate, pests, stress on water and land are all limiting our ability to produce sufficient amounts of food. making food production an issue. […]

We just learned how easy it is to upend the oil market — and we’re going to pay for it

The attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities have done more than knock out some 5 per cent of global crude supplies, they have provided a myriad of lessons for all involved. There is still a high level of uncertainty as to who, what and how exactly Saturday’s attacks were carried out on Saudi Aramco’s facilities, […]

Our Energy and Debt Predicament in 2019

Many people are concerned that we have an oil problem. Or they are concerned about recession and the need to lower interest rates. As I see the situation, we have a problem of a networked economy that is not functioning well. A big part of this problem is energy-related. Strange as it may seem, energy […]

Debunking ‘Lower Oil Supply Will Raise Prices’

We often hear the statement, “When oil supply is lower, oil prices will rise because of scarcity.” Now, we are getting to see firsthand whether oil prices really do rise, as oil supplies become more scarce. Figure 1. Figure from the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report for August 2019 showing world and OPEC oil production by […]

Attacks in Saudi Arabia Are a Test of How Much the World Still Needs Its Oil

How dependent is the world on Saudi Arabian oil? That’s one of the many questions global oil markets are asking on Monday, after Saturday’s attacks on the Abqaiq oil refinery and the Khurais oilfield, the heart of the Kingdom’s crude production. The attacks highlight not just the rising tensions in the region, but serve as […]

Peak Oil Uncertainty: Crude’s Record-Setting Jump Roils Global Markets—and the Worst May Be Yet to Come

Crude oil prices soared and markets fell on Monday, and now there’s talk of what seemed impossible just last week—oil prices topping $75 a barrel. Nobody knows for sure how bad the prospect of suddenly expensive crude could get for a global economy that was already sputtering. That’s the upshot from this weekend’s drone attack […]

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