Farmer George — Growing Animals Like Grandpa Did

“Our animals live in the pasture – birds, pigs and cows. Everybody gets to roam free in fresh air and sunlight…not only are they getting the food at its best, but they’re also leaving behind the waste products that rejuvenate that grass and keep the system going.” Farmer George Vojkovich keeps a close eye on […]

Getting from Here to There

World Scientific Publishing Co., 2014 Business-as-usual is sure to deliver us a future that is both unsustainable and undesirable, with climate change arguably our most pressing problem. Had we begun to tackle it when first identified, incremental changes and modest actions along the way might have done it. With all the procrastinating, transformative change is […]

Sluggish Oil Demand Emerges As A Potent Factor In The Peak Oil Debate

Peak oil isn’t what it used to be. That’s not simply because the theory of global oil supply peaking has been postponed courtesy of the U.S. production rebound, it is also because a second meaning to the expression is making a return, and that’s peak demand. A fresh glimpse of demand for oil peaking came […]

Oil Will Continue to Run the World

  While all the buzz surrounds oil prices, the global demand side remains on solid footing: up. Supplying 33% of all energy, oil is the world’s primary fuel. Oil is so important that global demand is ever-growing: 67 million b/d in 1990, 77 million b/d in 2000, and 91 million b/d in 2014. I’ll never […]

Heinberg: The Great Burning

In this short video, Richard Heinberg explores why The Great Burning — the combustion of oil, coal, and natural gas — must come to an end during the next few decades. If the twentieth century was all about increasing our burn rate year after blazing year, the dominant trend of twenty-first century will be a […]

John Michael Greer: The Retro Futureby

Is it just me, or has the United States taken yet another great leap forward into the surreal over the last few days? Glancing through the news, I find another round of articles babbling about how fracking has guaranteed America a gaudy future as a petroleum and natural gas exporter. Somehow none of these articles […]

Yergin Sees Prices Locked in ‘W’ Formation

Oil historian and economist Daniel Yergin has a forecast for where the price of crude is headed: all over the place. The much debated shape of the oil-price curve will take the form of a W as crude is whipsawed by mixed signs from a rattled U.S. shale boom, while Saudi Arabia refuses to balance […]

Global Oil Supply And Demand

Summary The global oil supply/demand balance is improving. The recent IEA report likely underestimates demand. Supply is abundant and the s&d balance is loose, but armageddon is not coming. Global Oil Supply And Demand Early 2015 Review The International Energy Agency recently published its Oil Market Report. In this, it highlights and examines recent global […]

Putting the Real Story of Energy and the Economy Together

What is the real story of energy and the economy? We hear two predominant energy stories. One is the story economists tell: The economy can grow forever; energy shortages will have no impact on the economy. We can simply substitute other forms of energy, or do without. Another version of the energy and the economy […]

From Firewood To Fracking – 250 Years Of Energy Sources

 With EIA forecasting $250/bbl crude oil in the next 20 years, one wonders how long before ‘muscle’ or ‘firewood’ returns as the world’s major energy source?     zerohedge

What Would You Do if Restaurants and Your Local Grocery Store Closed Tomorrow?

If all the supermarkets and restaurants in your neighborhood closed their doors tomorrow, would you know how to source your next meal? Would you be able to survive in a world without a local grocery store or eatery? While the thought of losing your local market may seem extreme, hundreds of thousands of people around […]

Saudis Ready To Help Improve Oil Prices

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi said on Tuesday that the kingdom stood ready to “improve” prices but only if other producers outside of OPEC joined the effort. Naimi said Saudi Arabia had pumped around 10.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in March, marking an increase from previous months. He did not say why output […]

US to become a net exporter of natural gas by 2017

The United States will transition from a net importer of natural gas to a net exporter of the fuel by 2017 as the nation’s shale gas production continues to grow, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday in its Annual Energy Outlook. In its 2014 outlook, the EIA forecast the U.S. would become a […]

Canada’s economy is a disaster from low oil prices

Low oil prices are threatening the health of Canada’s oil and gas sector, which in turn, is causing turmoil in Canada’s economy as a whole. The fall in oil prices is forcing billions of dollars in spending reductions for Canada’s oil and gas industry. In February, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) shelved plans for a tar […]

John Michael Greer: The God Of Technological Progress May Well Be Dead

As we often state here at Peak Prosperity, the narratives we hold are immensely important. The stories running our heads influence everything from our beliefs to our values to our actions. Which is why it’s so dangerous when a society clings onto a narrative that is no longer serving it well, a narrative divorced from […]

The Collapse phenomenon

Michael Ruppert’s last book, first starring film role and ascendancy to the national stage in 2009 Michael C. Ruppert, who died one year ago this week, was an icon of the peak oil and sustainability movements. A narcotics cop turned independent journalist, he distinguished himself as a determined and intrepid follower of the truth, wherever […]

Saudi Arabia’s Plan to Extend the Age of Oil

Last fall, as oil prices crashed, Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s petroleum minister and the world’s de facto energy czar, went mum. He still popped up, as is his habit, at industry conferences on three continents. Yet from mid-September to the middle of November, while benchmark crude prices plunged 21 percent to a four-year low, Naimi didn’t […]

Free fall in oil prices could fuel recession

At $10 a barrel of oil, your gas would be cheap, but your job could be gone. Oil producers would cease operations because they would not be able to turn a profit, which translates to a loss of jobs and a hit to the economy. After all, oil production is a driver of income growth, […]

Heinberg: Feed Yourself

Five percent of the world’s oil tanker capacity is waiting to load up near Basra Iraq, where production is way up. The United States has only one month of oil storage capacity left. After that, what comes in must go straight to market, likely for as little as $20 a barrel. Is peak oil dead? And […]

Colin Campbell: Changing Human Circumstances

Introduction Children are born to mothers, and most spend their early lives as family members. They gradually become aware of their circumstances which they perceive to be normal whether living in an African rain forest or Manhattan, but pressures for change mount as they grow older. Some try to find a successful role in their […]

Annual oil demand seen growing up to 1 mln bpd

The slide in oil prices is only temporary as global oil demand is expected to grow annually by up to 1 million barrels per day (bpd) while world consumption is likely to increase to 105 million bpd in 2025, an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s oil minister said on Thursday. “The current decline in oil prices […]

China Turns to the Sea for Fresh Water

The government plans to quadruple desalination by 2020 On the shores of Bohai Bay near the industrial city of Tangshan, construction has begun on an engineering project ambitious even by Chinese standards. Starting in 2019, the facility will remove salt from 120,000 tons of seawater each day. The result will be 50,000 tons of potable […]

Heinberg: The Law of Diminishing Returns

In this new short video Richard Heinberg explores how — in our economy, the environment, and energy production — we may well be. When previous societies have hit similar limits, they often doubled-down by attempting ever more complex interventions to keep things going, before finally collapsing. Will this be our fate too? And is there […]

Get ready for peak chocolate!

A GLOBAL chocolate shortage could see prices double by 2020, thanks to instability in West Africa, which drives world cocoa production. So far the looming “choc shock” is failing to deter Australians, like East Lismore’s Alexis Galea, 3, from enjoying plenty of Easter eggs. Australians this year spent an estimated $185 million on chocolate eggs. […]

Big Agriculture, Big Oil and the water crisis in California

The Los Angeles Times reports, “Gov. Jerry Brown [has] ordered cities and towns across California to cut water use by 25% as part of a sweeping set of mandatory drought restrictions, the first in state history. Emphasizing that the drought could persist, Brown said Californians must change their water habits.” The news article highlights, “The […]

Exhausted world stuck in permanent stagnation

The global economy is caught in a low-growth trap as innovation withers and the population ages across the Northern Hemisphere. It will not regain its lost dynamism in the foreseeable future, the International Monetary Fund has warned. The IMF said the world as a whole has seen a “persistent reduction” in its growth rate since […]

Rice 2.0? The search for a more sustainable staple food

Ten thousand years ago, China’s ancient inhabitants harvested the grains of wild rice, a perennial grass growing up to 15 feet tall in bogs and streams. The grains were small and red, maturing in waves and often shattering into the water. Their descendants transformed that grain into the high-yielding annual crop that today feeds half […]

In California, Farmers Rely on Oil Wastewater

The wet, white noise of gushing water rises above a background track of twangy guitar. Water is tumbling out of a pipe into a holding pond that looks as though it has sat nearly empty for ages, its sandy sides the color of parched desert. It looks like the California of recent headlines: drought so […]

Richard Heinberg’s New Book

by Richard Heinberg, Hal Ginsberg, originally published by Radio Monterey  | TODAY Download Richard Heinberg on his new book Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels. In the interview Richard talks about how we are living in an era that might be called “the great burning”.

California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth

For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, aerospace, agriculture and vineyards. But now a punishing drought — and […]

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