The Gift Economy: What It Is And Isn’t

It’s been a long time since I’ve written an essay. A number of projects are demanding my attention, but recently, I have encountered so many misconceptions about not only the Gift Economy, but the role of money in the new paradigm, that I must respond. In current time, the term “Gift Economy” is frequently used […]

As winter arrives, natural gas is becoming less expensive

Natural gas, the nation’s most prevalent heating fuel, is getting cheaper just as winter is arriving because supplies are plentiful and temperatures have been mild. The price of natural gas has dropped 30 percent in a month, to $3.14 per 1,000 cubic feet on Tuesday from $4.50 in late November. That’s a steep drop even […]

Oil price drop to persist, help global growth

The recent drop in oil prices should persist, helping to boost global economic activity by up to 0.7 percentage points next year, two senior IMF economists wrote in a blog on Monday. Brent prices have fallen more than 46 percent since the year’s peak in June of above $115 per barrel, sped up by the […]

Cheap oil just keeps on coming

The stunning plunge in oil prices – almost 45% since June – has roiled the global oil markets; creating new winners and losers almost overnight. It has also unlocked a number of potential problems and opportunities we would be wise to consider. In our consumer-based economy, savings at the gas pump provide a direct stimulus […]

Heating New England Homes: The Good And Bad News

Falling oil prices are perhaps nowhere more welcome than in northern New England, where most homes burn heating oil in their furnaces. But cheaper heating oil is refilling consumers’ pockets just as high electric prices are emptying them out. For example, a heating oil truck delivers 600 gallons of heating oil every two weeks to […]

Oil could drop as low as $20 per barrel

How low can it go — and how long will it last? The 50 percent slump in oil prices raises both those questions and while nobody can confidently answer the first question (I will try to in a moment), the second is pretty easy. Low oil prices will last long enough for one of two […]

Degrowth – A Vocabulary for a New Era

Degrowth. A Vocabulary for a New Era, just published by Routledge, is quite a slim volume of 220 pages and 51 short chapters. Before anything else it seems important to say that there are lots of chapters in this book that I think are quite excellent as short pithy descriptions of the key concepts of […]

The True Cost of Food

Forget about the presents and the TV specials, without a doubt my favourite part of Christmas is the food. When it’s this cold outside there’s nothing better than sitting down with some loved ones and eating yourself into a merry stupor. But this year won’t be quite the same for me. For the past 12 […]

The “Unequivocally ‘Not’ Good” Reality Of Lower Oil Prices & Jobs

The drop in oil prices is certain to cause some incremental unemployment in the U.S. energy industry; the question is simply how much and what that means for the American economy as a whole.  To begin the search for answer, you have to go to the wellhead and consider how many individuals work in American […]

Oil Price Scenarios For 2015 And 2016

A couple of weeks ago I had a post titled The 2014 Oil Price Crash Explained that was cross posted to over 20 other blogs including The Automatic Earth and Zero Hedge. In this post I use the empirical supply and demand dynamic described in that earlier post (Figure 1) to try and constrain the oil […]

Where Are Oil Prices Headed In The Long Run?

Global benchmark crude oil prices have declined sharply this year on slower demand growth and rising supplies. The growth in demand for crude oil has slowed down significantly this year due to moderating economic growth in emerging markets, such as China and India, and a slower than anticipated economic recovery in the Euro-zone. In China, […]

Oil Prices as an Indicator of Global Economic Conditions

West Texas Intermediate sold for $105 a barrel at the start of July, but ended last week at $58. The most important factor has been surging U.S. production. But another reason oil prices have slid so much is weakness in demand for the product, which may be related to a slowdown of overall world economic […]

How Technological Progress can Generate a Faster Collapse

The image above (from Wikipedia) shows the collapse of the North Atlantic cod stocks. The fishery disaster of the early 1990s was the result of a combination of greed, incompetence, and government support for both. Unfortunately, it is just one of the many examples of how human beings tend to worsen the problems they try […]

A Framework for New Economy Organizing

When I first got involved in the co-op movement I didn’t do it because I thought the co-operative model was an end in itself. It was a means to an end. This will be different for different people but for me that end was, and largely still is, an economy run for and by the […]

American Privilege

Limousine liberals are peddling the convoluted construct of “white privilege” to explain unequal achievement. This misguided notion fosters complacency and exacerbates inequality, preventing pursuit of something much more powerful – American privilege. Maybe there are some remnants of white privilege, but it is subsumed by American privilege which entices the venturesome into our cavernous vaults of […]

The Sci-Fi Farms That Grow Most of Our Food

According to the creation narrative, God made green plants on the third day, an idea that inspired the title of Henrik Spohler‘s project, The Third Day. His series documents industrial agriculture’s obsession with monoculture and large-scale farming across Europe and the US. The title isn’t a religious reference, but instead intended to comment on how […]

Evaluating Fifteen Years of IEA Energy Forecasts

Highlights This article analyses historical IEA forecasts of global energy consumption. Three major forecasting challenges are observed and briefly analysed: Overprediction of oil consumption Underprediction of coal consumption Underprediction of other renewables Introduction The International Energy Agency tackles a monumental task every year when compiling its World Energy Outlook report: forecasting global energy consumption over the […]

Goldman: “Oil Prices Can Go Lower For Longer”

What a difference 5 months makes. It seems like it was yesterday when Goldman’s commodity strategist, Jeffrey Curie, wrote in a July 28, 2014 note that: The long-awaited global recovery appears to be getting on track, lifting commodity demand Apparently unaware that just 5 months later precisely the opposite narrative would be used by everyone, […]

Is China’s economy really the largest in the world?

For the first time in more than 140 years, the US has lost the title of the world’s largest economy – it has been stolen by China, according to the IMF. But how reliable are the statistics underpinning this claim? The BBC’s economics editor, Robert Peston, explains lower down why China matters to all of […]

Will $60 Oil Kill New CNG Cars From Honda, Ford, and Chevy?

Business magnate T. Boone Pickens has long advocated for NGVs. Source: T. Boone Pickens. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (NYSE: HMC  ) just released the 2015 version of its Civic Natural Gas, and by all accounts it’s the most feature-filled and capable natural gas vehicle that Honda has ever sold in the United States. However, oil prices […]

The high cost of low-priced oil

As a consumer of oil, you may regard recent sharp declines in the world oil price as a blessing. But… If you work in the oil industry, you will not. If you work in the renewable energy industry, you will not. If you work in the energy efficiency business, you will not. If you work […]

Can China’s Shale Gas Help It Reach Peak Coal by 2020?

China’s GDP has grown 670% from $1.2 trillion at the beginning of the century to $9.24 trillion in 2013. That’s mind-numbingly fast growth. Perhaps the only thing more amazing is how the country has accomplished the feat: with the help from coal, a lot of coal. Some estimates demonstrate that China has had to build at least one […]

Rapid fall in oil prices may portend global recession

Cratering crude-oil prices may be a blessing to cash-strapped American consumers, but it’s a double-edged sword when it comes to the overall economy. The problem for the overall economy is not so much the drop in oil prices as it is the velocity at which oil prices have fallen. The plunge from a peak of […]

How cheap oil changes the world

Like many Americans, Shernice Davis starts most days with a commute she wishes she didn’t have. The Trinidad native lives in Randolph, Mass., south of Boston, and drives 20 miles up Interstate 93, through the city, over the Charles River, and into Somerville, Mass. – a short distance from Harvard University. On a good day, […]

Energy Crunch: Oil Slide

hree things you shouldn’t miss this week Chart: Oil production break even prices: Click thumbnail to view full size Image source: Energy tracker via FT Article: Oil price plunge means survival of fittest – Crude at $70 puts at least 1.5m b/d of projects for 2016 at risk Article: Fracking could carry unforeseen risks as thalidomide and asbestos did, […]

What I learned from my garden in 2014

Two years ago, John Michael Greer posted A Wish List for Krampus to his blog TheArchdruid Report. After describing three technologies that he suggested would make the transition to a post-industrial, low-energy future a little less difficult, he asked his readers with scientific and engineering backgrounds to make suggestions of their own. To offer extra motivation, he […]

For Anyone That Still Believes Collapsing Oil Prices Are Good For The Economy

Are much lower oil prices good news for the U.S. economy?  Only if you like collapsing capital expenditures, rising unemployment and a potential financial implosion on Wall Street.  Yes, lower gasoline prices are good news for the middle class.  I certainly would rather pay two dollars for a gallon of gas than four dollars.  But […]

Exxon: Oil will account for 32% of world energy by 2040

North America, once a sponge that sucked in a significant portion of the world’s oil, will instead be supplying the world with oil and other liquid hydrocarbons by the end of this decade, according to ExxonMobil’s annual long-term energy forecast. And the “almost unspeakable” amount of natural gas found in recent years in the US […]

Ten Reasons Why a Severe Drop in Oil Prices is a Problem

Not long ago, I wrote Ten Reasons Why High Oil Prices are a Problem. If high oil prices can be a problem, how can low oil prices also be a problem? In particular, how can the steep drop in oil prices we have recently been experiencing also be a problem? Let me explain some of […]

The Case for $35 a Barrel Oil

Oil prices have plunged by $40 a barrel since late June, to about $66 last week. Some say the selloff is overdone, but Steve Briese, writer and publisher of the Bullish Review of Commodity Insiders, says crude’s decline is only three-fifths completed. Briese (pronounced “breezy”), whose bearish view of oil helped inform our March 31 […]

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