How to live in a Transition Town

Philippa Young Although the term €˜Transition Town has stuck, what we are talking about are Transition suburbs, Transition islands, Transition valleys, Transition anywhere-you-find-people. (Transition Towns New Zealand Aotearoa) Decreasing oil supplies, climate change and the unpredictability of future food production have driven the idea of Transition Towns. HOW DID THE TRANSITION MOVEMENT START? The concept […]

The hidden reasons behind slow economic growth: Declining EROI, constrained net energy

It should seem obvious that it takes energy to get energy. And, when it takes more energy to get the energy we want, this usually spells higher prices since the energy inputs used cost more. Under such circumstances there is less energy left over for the rest of society to use, that is, for the […]

The Oil Price, Total Global Debt And Interest Rates

In several posts I have presented my exploration of any relations between total global debt, interest rates and the oil price. Sometimes I am left with the impression that when societies’ are looking for a scapegoat for its ills, their reactions bring forth memories from a scene of the movie “Casablanca”, where Captain Renault confronted […]

Crude oil could hit $15

CNBC “Fast Money” panelist and financial expert Dennis Gartman has bad news for oil: It’s going to go “stunningly” lower. In an interview with CNBC.com’s “Futures Now,” the “Commodities King” said that a combination of a rapidly rising inventories and a strong dollar could lead to $15 oil by the end of the year. “For […]

California Farmers On Drought: ‘You’re Going To See Higher Prices’

Governor Jerry Brown’s mandatory statewide water restrictions, announced Wednesday amidst escalated effects of the state’s historic drought, mean big changes for the residents of California. As water continues to become more scarce and the state grows drier, Governor Brown’s goal is to reduce water usage by 25 percent. Instrument’s such as NASA’s Soil Moisture Active-Passive […]

It’s Time to Get Serious About Systemic Solutions to Systemic Problems

It’s getting harder and harder to be an optimist. A deep economic crisis has given way to a profoundly unequal recovery. Climate catastrophe is steadily unfolding across the globe. And the work of building a racially inclusive society appears to be stalled — indeed, in many areas, to be losing ground. All of this in […]

What Will Determine If Oil Prices Go Up Or Down

It appears as if oil prices could be on the verge of a rebound, with new data showing that the U.S. oil patch is hitting an inflection point. While specific shale regions – such as North Dakota’s Bakken and Texas’ Eagle Ford – have posted production declines, overall U.S. oil output managed to edge up […]

Collision Course (Endless Growth on a Finite Planet)

This informative book is about the rise of economic growth to the status of the number one goal of nations; the short-lived challenge to that dogma from the book The Limits to Growth (1972); the solidity of the Limits position as confirmed by subsequent data and the analyses of others; the intellectual poverty and dishonesty […]

Why $30 a Barrel Oil Is Unlikely

ROBERT RAPIER: As the price of West Texas Intermediate went into free fall in the second half of 2014, nobody had a clue where the price might stabilize. After all, in mid-2008 a similar free fall began that took WTI from nearly $150 a barrel into the $30s. As the price dipped below $50 a […]

What If An Oil Rebound Never Comes?

Oil prices will remain subdued for the next 20 years. That comes from a new policy brief from Stanford economist Frank Wolak, who says that a series of phenomena – surging U.S. shale production, a weakening OPEC, the shale revolution spreading globally, efficiencies in drilling, and more natural gas substitution for oil – will combine […]

China’s Fuel Demand to Peak Sooner Than Oil Giants Expect

China’s biggest oil refiner is signaling the nation is headed to its peak in diesel and gasoline consumption far sooner than most Western energy companies and analysts are forecasting. If correct, the projections by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, a state-controlled enterprise with public shareholders in Hong Kong, pose a big challenge to […]

Here’s why a 60% drop in US crude oil prices resulted in a 33% drop in gas prices

Crude oil prices have dropped dramatically since last summer. Strangely, over the same time period, gasoline prices have fallen much less. If a barrel of oil today costs less than half what it did last summer, why hasn’t the price people pay at the pump decreased a similar amount? Sweet or sour? It’s tough to […]

The global oil price drop may last for the next couple decades

Stanford economist Frank Wolak says the drop in oil prices and demand reflects heightened energy production in North America, better technologies and the declining market power of the OPEC countries. Global oil prices may stay low for the next 10 or 20 years, according to Stanford economist Frank Wolak. The most likely medium-term outcome is […]

Why Oil Could Be Facing A 20-Year Bear Market

In the past, the usual “oil crisis” was caused by self-serving news items of an oil shortage, causing soaring prices. Just 2-3 years ago, the fear mongers said that the world had “seen peak oil,” meaning that oil production would be on a long term decline and there would be big shortages. Instead, oil production […]

Cargo Bikes Are the Perfect Mode of Transportation

  With Americans driving less and more cities encouraging people to bike, the humble cargo bike has quietly gained traction in the U.S. Parents are pedaling their kids to school in front-loading “bakfiets” (or “box bike” in Dutch), and food vendors are zipping through traffic to deliver coffee and other goodies.   Cargo bikes are […]

Record traffic is boosting U.S. fuel demand

Traffic on U.S. highways has hit a new record as the economy recovers and the lower cost of gasoline and diesel encourages more travel. Cars and trucks drove a record 3.050 trillion miles on U.S. highways in the 12 months ending in January, passing the previous peak of 3.039 trillion set in the 12 months […]

China’s crude storage nearly full

China’s commercial and strategic oil storage is almost full, a Sinopec trading executive said on Wednesday, leaving little room for Asia’s top oil consumer to keep up its soaring import growth and adding downward pressure to an already oversupplied market. China’s purchases to fill its strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) was one of the main drivers […]

New England New Economy Transition

On Saturday, March 21, fifty organizers and activists from all six New England states (plus one intrepid Californian) gathered in Keene NH to discuss resilience, Transition, and the future we want to create. It was an amazing chance to realize that we are not alone in this work! After introductions, Cheryl King Fisher kicked us […]

Lessons From The German Hyperinflation Of The 1920s

The German hyperinflation episode in the early 1920s is often quoted as an example of the dire consequences of excessive money printing – a leading industrial economy succumbing to the dangers of currency debasement promoted by incompetent central bankers. Alas, the reality is more complex than that, particularly when certain geopolitical and economic constraints of […]

John Michael Greer: Planet of the Space Bats

As my regular readers know, I’ve been talking for quite a while now here about the speculative bubble that’s built up around the fracking phenomenon, and the catastrophic bust that’s guaranteed to follow so vast and delusional a boom. Over the six months or so, I’ve noted the arrival of one warning sign after another […]

Peak Oil, The Hubbert Theory In One Graph

But, like global warming, the discussion on Peak Oil is closed. And now there’s so much oil being produced, the oil industry is voluntarily cutting back production — because the price is too low. ************************************* Gasoline Prices Here And There, Then And Now From the March 10, 2015, EIA report (a dynamic link): U.S. average […]

Heinberg: Goldilocks Is Dead

Five years ago I wrote an article for Reuters titled “Goldilocks and the Three Fuels.” In it, I discussed what I call the Goldilocks price zone for oil, natural gas, and coal, a zone in which prices are “just right”—high enough to reward producers but low enough to entice consumers. Ever since the start of […]

This Changes Everything. So Now What?

“Economic Power is always tied to Political Power. And what is happening is that we want political power, but we put ourselves into economically powerless situations and wonder why we aren’t more empowered.” -Ashley Sanders Blog post submitted by Russell Evans, Transition Lab In the last year, I’ve read and enjoyed the discussions coming out […]

King Coal faces the end of its reign

The coal industry is in crisis. It has failed to recognize the structural shift in power generation driven by regulation rather than price and has missed the window of opportunity to invest in clean coal technologies. Now it faces a slow King Canute style demise, as elaborated by Ross McCracken, managing editor of Platts Energy Economist. […]

Americans Drove 3 Trillion Miles Last Year, Prove ‘Peak Car’ Was Hype

  This is The Morning Shift, our one-stop daily roundup of all the auto news that’s actually important — all in one place every weekday morning. Or, you could spend all day waiting for other sites to parse it out to you one story at a time. Isn’t your time more important? 1st Gear: It’s […]

Sorry, but there was never an oil storage crisis

Crude oil storage inventories in the US are at their highest levels in decades. Is that going to cause the price of West Texas Intermediate crude to crash? Probably not, according to Robert Rapier of Energy Trends Insider. In fact, we’re not even close. Rapier writes that “oil producers could continue to add a million […]

Chinese Economy Dangles on a Cliff

China’s money supply had a net increase of 11 percent from 2013 to 2014, an increase that is significantly higher than the country’s economic growth. In 2014 it reached 122.84 trillion yuan (US$18.05 trillion), compared with 110.7 trillion (US$17.71 trillion) by the end of 2013. Of China’s 12.14 trillion added currency (US$1.94 trillion) in 2014, […]

Retrofuturism

“Virtual solutions can seem very virtuous when a metaproblem is resource depletion.” In our previous post we delved into the Socratic dialog known as The Laches, as told by Plato. The Laches ends in aporia, or an unresolved bit of logic. While we can give Socrates his point — that to predict the future you […]

Cheap oil, complexity and counterintuitive conclusions

It is a staple of oil industry apologists to say that the recent swift decline in the price of oil is indicative of long-term abundance. This kind of logic is leading American car buyers to turn once again to less fuel efficient automobiles–trading efficiency for size essentially–as short-term developments are extrapolated far into the future. […]

Pickens: Oil Will Rebound to $70

Oil has plummeted 60 percent since late June, falling to a six-year low of $42.75 a barrel Thursday amid sluggish demand and bountiful supply. But legendary energy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens doesn’t think the bad times will last for black gold. In an interview with CNBC, he predicted a price of $70 by year-end and […]

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