Oil Exporters Focus On Supply, But What Of China Demand?

Major oil exporters clearly would like higher crude prices and may even be getting closer to some sort of coordinated action, but they should be careful what they wish for as they may choke off demand growth in top importer China. On the surface, China’s appetite for imported crude has seen robust gains this year, […]

Peak Oil: Are We Ready To Act?

U.S. crude oil production is falling because investments into shale oil production dried up as the price of crude oil fell below $60/bbl. Companies aren’t interested in putting new capital to work, and because these oil fields deplete, that means crude production is falling. Why is that significant? Because most of the world’s new oil […]

Only a new system can bring real democracy

Bernie Sanders was right that the system is rigged. But he did not go far enough. The problem is not simply that pro-establishment politicians are stealing the vote or organizing the elections in a way that gives them an advantage. Capitalist democracy is paper thin. The unemployed have a right to vote every two or […]

No, Capitalism Isn’t Making Us All Richer and Richer

If you frequent mainstream right-libertarian publications on anything like a regular basis, you’ve probably seen more than one of those breathless articles about how capitalism is making the ordinary poor person richer than a medieval king. For example Calvin Beisner: “No matter how rich you might have been” 150 years ago, “You could not have […]

The Seneca Effect: Soon to Become a Book!

“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Lucius Anneaus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, n. 91 This is very early as […]

Farmed fish could solve pending population crisis

  (Photo: World Fish Center) MONTEREY, Calif. — Farmed fish has gotten a bad rap, but it’s the only way the world is going to feed the additional 2.4  billion people expected to be added to the Earth’s population in the next 34 years, experts told a sustainable food conference. With the world’s arable land maxed out and wild seafood […]

Farmland: An Increasingly Popular Alternative Investment

A new report from Prequin found that more investors are buying agricultural/farmland assets to diversfy portfolios and profit from the growing global demand for food “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.” Mark Twain’s advice isn’t lost on the growing number of institutional investors scouring the earth for new opportunities.  According to a new study […]

Forging Alternatives to the Growth Economy — Examples from the Real World (315)

The growth economy is historically relatively recent, and is now consuming 1.5 Earths and growing. Compound interest is sucking the lifeblood out of the real economy, from households to countries. Mike Lewis, co-author of The Resilience Imperative, tells the story of the successful JAK Cooperative Bank in Sweden, which is based on saving on behalf […]

Addicted to oil: US gasoline consumption is higher than ever

August was the biggest month ever for U.S. gasoline consumption. Americans used a staggering 9.7 million barrels per day. That’s more than a gallon per day for every U.S. man, woman and child. The new peak comes as a surprise to many. In 2012, energy expert Daniel Yergin said, “The U.S. has already reached what […]

What if Everyone Lived in Just One City?

What if everybody in the world, all 7.4 billion of us all lived together in the same city? How big or small would this city have to be and how close together or far apart would we all be living from each other? This video explores those concepts and visualizes what a massive global city […]

Why lower gasoline prices begin the end of the world oil age.

  Traditional economics teaches that increasing cost caused by the declining supply of an essential commodity will be supported by fewer wealthy consumers. Further reflection and twenty-twenty hindsight shows what actually occurred in the past decade while the world consumed another 300 billion barrels of oil (about one-fourth of the total 1.2 trillion barrels used […]

Kingdom Comedown: Falling Oil Prices Shock Saudi Middle Class

Mohammed Idrees used to travel to London once or twice a year, but these days the Saudi civil servant is asking his wife and children to cut back on using the family car to save fuel and has installed a solar panel for the kitchen to reduce electricity costs. For decades, Saudi nationals such as […]

Capitalism and (De)Growth

By Christopher Laughton What is capitalism? A kind of state? An institution? Some values? A power structure? Ideology? A Culture? What governs capitalism? Supply and demand Invisible hand Enclosure of land The drive to expand Market mechanism Class schism Racism The moral virtue of productivism. Innovation! Invest! Impress! Progress! Entrepreneurial quest for Technological success in […]

Venezuela says global oil supply exceeds demand by 10 percent

Global oil supply of 94 million barrels per day needs to fall by about a tenth if it is to match consumption, Venezuela’s Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino said on Monday. Del Pino, whose country is pressing for OPEC and non-OPEC producers to reach a deal to bolster crude prices, said a “fair price” would […]

Marginal Productivity Theory

Economists tell us how consumers on the market, “voting” with their purchasing power got what they wanted and wealthy landowners got the economic theory that they wanted. It was economists like J.B. Clark that were necessary if your economics department was to become well-funded. Clark moved to Columbia University in 1895. The university was blessed […]

Urban Transition Cities Movement

Our Transition Initiative is called Urban Transition Cities Movement (UTCM). It is an intergenerational and multi-disciplinary movement that integrates informal, mediating, and formal service delivery units in a vertical and horizontal manner. My first encounter with Transition Towns was in 2009 when I met Tina Clarke in Pittsburgh during a Transition Town Training. I became […]

Turns Out That Oil Prices Don’t Matter

Oil is not just the fuel that runs our cars. It’s also the fuel that runs our economies. Petroleum is a feedstock for plastics and petrochemicals. It provides heat and electricity. And of course, it provides the primary means by which we move all of the goods we produce, and the workers who produce them, […]

The Elephant In The Low-Growth Room

The global economy is stuck in low gear, signaling more years of subpar yields and risk-on/risk-off market skirmishes. So we offer some ideas on how equity investors can get their portfolios battle ready. The potential GDP growth of the developed world has halved over the past 20 years, from just below 2% per year to […]

Global Oil Demand Slowing Faster Than Predicted, Glut To Last Well Into 2017

One day after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) released a report stating that global demand for oil will be lower than expected in 2017, the International Energy Agency‘s Oil Market Report for September states essentially the same thing: that global demand is slowing at a faster pace than predicted. The IEA predicts […]

If Everything’s Doing So Great, How Come I’m Not?

Are you better off than you were 10 years ago? by Charles Hugh Smith We’re ceaselessly told/sold that the U.S. economy is doing phenomenally well in our current slow-growth world — generating record corporate profits, record highs in the S&P 500 stock index, and historically low unemployment (4.9% in July 2016). While GDP growth is […]

The global economy will never be the same again

The current economic era is coming to an end, and over the next 30 or so years, the global economy is going to change massively, according to research from Deutsche Bank. In the bank’s latest Long-Term Asset Return Study, strategists Jim Reid, Nick Burns, and Sukanto Chanda argue that the current economic age, which began […]

The Transition Town Movement with Rob Hopkins

My guest for this episode is Rob Hopkins the creator of the idea of Transition Towns, a way for us to move from oil dependency to local resilience. That lead to his writing The Transition Handbook, something every permaculture practitioner should have in their library and which serves as a good introduction, along with Toby […]

Apocalypse Tourism? Cruising the Melting Arctic Ocean

On Aug. 16, the Crystal Serenity set out from Seward, Alaska, carrying 1,700 passengers and crew, and escorted by a comparatively minuscule, 1,800-ton icebreaker. She circled west and north around the Alaska Peninsula and through the Bering Strait before heading east into the maze of straits and sounds that constitute the Northwest Passage. For centuries, […]

Art Berman: Central Bankers Don’t Understand – The Economy Runs on Energy, Not Money

The following is a summary of our recent interview with Art Berman, which can be listened to in full on our site here or on iTunes here. There’s a lot of confusion when it comes to energy markets and the idea of peak oil, according to Art Berman, a well-known geological consultant, director of Labyrinth […]

Daniel Yergin Thinks The Worst Is Over

Summary Daniel Yergin thinks the worst is over for oil prices. Prices are too low to ensure enough supplies for the rest of the decade. September volatility ahead as headline risk coupled with bearish maintenance season plays out. IHS‘s Vice Chairman and author of best-sellers like ” The Prize“, Daniel Yergin, thinks the worst is […]

The Flimsy Ladder to Solid Ground

Ed. note: Part 1 of this article can be found on Resilience.org here. Having arrived on Earth and become subject to her laws, I find it very hard to communicate with my friends and neighbours. Though we stand together on the same soil, nevertheless, we are subjects of very different realms. Theirs is the vast, […]

Driving to the end of the Oil Age

Falling demand — not an oil shortage — will create the energy industry’s next revolution, a futurist tells Grant Bradley. Oil consumption will peak within 15 years because of the penetration of electric vehicles, according to a futurist. The $8 trillion energy industry is about to be turned on its head, says a futurist and […]

Oil Prices Crash as Traders Brace for End of Peak Demand Season

Oil prices crashed on Thursday, extending their losses from the prior session as a larger-than-expected increase in weekly oil inventories, and the approaching end of peak oil demand season had traders readjusting their positions, anticipating future losses. Oil futures declined 3% on Wednesday, to close at a three-week low, but the commodity managed to gain […]

The Day The Lights Go Out And The Trucks Stop Running

What would happen if some sort of major national emergency caused a massive transportation disruption that stopped trucks from running? The next time you talk to a trucker, please thank them for their service, because without their hard work none of our lives would be possible.  In America today, very few of us live a […]

We Grow Enough Food. Getting It On To People’s Plates Is The Problem.

World leaders have agreed to the ambitious goal of eradicating hunger by 2030. The scale of the problem is daunting. Every day 800 million people go to bed with empty stomachs and more than 8,000 children die needlessly from conditions linked to under-nutrition. And by the time we reach 2030, the global population is likely […]

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