The Fourth Turning – An Interview With Neil Howe

Neil Howe is a historian, economist and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generations, the economy and social change. He is America’s leading thinker on who today’s generations are, what motivates them and how they will shape the nation’s future. He has authored nine books on American generations, many co-authored with William Strauss, including […]

The Dream of the Machine

As I type these words, it looks as though the wheels are coming off the global economy. Greece and Puerto Rico have both suspended payments on their debts, and China’s stock market, which spent the last year in a classic speculative bubble, is now in the middle of a classic speculative bust. Those of my […]

If We Have No Future, Why Grieve?

Edward Abbey famously said, “Action is the antidote to despair.” Clearly, if we find ourselves engulfed in despair, anger, fear, or any other painful emotion, one way to move through it is to “minimize” it on the screen of our emotional operating system and take action on behalf of whatever cause is calling us. What […]

Collapse Part 3: No Institutional Path To Contraction

Collapse is not an event, it is a process. One poorly understood source of collapse is the lack of pathways to contraction and a reduction of complexity/cost. The only pathway that is clearly marked is the one to expansion–of production, debt, credit, government, income, benefits, costs and complexity: more agencies, more regulations, more committees, more staff, […]

Kunstler: History in Free Verse

H istory might not rhyme, exactly, but it’s not bad for free verse. Greece is this century’s Serbia — a tiny, picturesque backwater nation blundering haplessly into the center stage of geopolitics. And the European Union is, whaddaya know, Germany in drag, on financial steroids. Nobody knows what will happen next in the struggle to […]

PeakOil.com Mobile App

Peakoil.com is now available through tapatalk, the #1 forums app for iOS and Android. Now you can: -Follow peakoil.com posting timeline anywhere, any time. -Easily keep track of all your forums in one place. -Get alerts so you never miss replies. Long-time member Autonomous has also published an open-source alternative to Tapatalk called “Forum Fiend […]

Peak Oilists are the new Flat Earthers

Apparently it is necessary to point out that Peak Oil doctrine is still wrong. Ronald Bailey explains Hubbert’s Peak Refuted: Peak Oil Theory Still Wrong.  He points out an author who has written multiple books defending Peak Oil. I just checked Amazon and can find four books from the mentioned author, written in 2001, 2005, […]

The Era of Dissolution

The last of the five phases of the collapse process we’ve been discussing here in recent posts is the era of dissolution. (For those that haven’t been keeping track, the first four are the eras of pretense, impact, response, and breakdown). I suppose you could call the era of dissolution the Rodney Dangerfield of collapse, […]

Implications of the peak oil crisis

Implications of the peak oil crisis

There Must Not Be Peak Oil

In this post, I explain the logic of wishful thinking and plain denial that rules on the Earth in most matters that matter (population growth, power – energy per unit time – supply, water supply, food supply, progressing destruction of planetary ecosystems, and so on). I imply throughout that without an ample and continuous supply […]

Peak Sweet and Peak Easy : Twenty Years to Transition

It may not be immediately obvious that significant change is underway in the energy sector. Heavily-capitalised and strongly-invested petroleum oil and gas companies stride the lands and seas, seeking what still fruitful part of the Earth’s lithosphere they may devour. Billions of overweight road and air vehicles incessantly burr and rattle, draining the carbon lifeblood […]

Orlov: Crazyland

A long time ago—almost a quarter of a century—I worked in a research lab, designing measurement and data acquisition electronics for high energy physics experiments. In the interest of providing motivation for what follows, I will say a few words about the job. It was interesting work, and it gave me a chance to rub […]

Death of Peak Oil? Not so fast.

From Earth Insight by Nafeez Ahmed, hosted by the Guardian, Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will ‘break economies’: Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among […]

Cuba: Figuring Out Pieces of the Puzzle

Cuba is an unusual country for quite a few reasons: The United States has had an embargo against Cuba since 1960, but there has recently been an announcement that the US will begin to normalize diplomatic relations. The leader of Cuba between 1959 and 2008 was Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro is a controversial figure, with some […]

The future of humankind after the great crash: extinction or the human hive?

  “Hellstrom’s Hive,” written by Frank Herbert in 1973, is one of the few sound explorations of how an “eusocial” human society could be patterned on the lifestyle of social insects, such as bees and ants. Could this be what the remote future has in store for humankind? It is impossible to say but I, […]

The Era of Impact

Of all the wistful superstitions that cluster around the concept of the future in contemporary popular culture, the most enduring has to be the notion that somehow, sooner or later, something will happen to shake the majority out of its complacency and get it to take seriously the crisis of our age. Week after week, […]

EIA Redesigns Web Portal

In an effort to improve access to international energy data and trends in global energy markets, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Monday launched a redesigned version of its International Energy Portal. The expanded portal provides increased access to data, including historical information on country-level energy use dating back, in many cases, more than 30 […]

Civilization Collapse 3.0

What is Working? I started a kind of list. I had been tracking a number of institutions (like higher education) and organizations (like the US government) and casually chronicling their growing dysfunction. The list was getting long and the seriousness of the dysfunctionalities was getting extreme. It occurred to me that it would be easier […]

What’s Max mad about? Peak oil

No matter how it does at the box office this weekend, “Mad Max: Fury Road” joins its three predecessors in the series in being a different kind of apocalyptic movie. Instead of nuclear war or pandemic illness, in the “Mad Max” universe, the End was brought about by — a bad economic theory. It’s the […]

Richard Heinberg Defines Peak Oil

Richard Heinberg, Global Public Media

Dmitry Orlov Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union

Dmitry Orlov Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union

Peak Oil: One-Track Minds

One could argue that the most dangerous push in our energy/environment discussion is that which seeks to stop/limit oil production and/or divest from oil companies. That’s because our primary fuel has nowhere near a significant substitute. As such, publicly-traded oil companies are the lone bastion between us and a complete reliance on OPEC. [1] Well […]

Humanity needs to live in space or die out

Humans should go and live in space within the next 1,000 years, or it will die out, Stephen Hawking has warned. “We must continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” Mr Hawking said. “I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.” Hawking issued the warning […]

Do we have 10, 20 or 50 years of oil left?

On today’s show: The Oil Alarm! Do we have 10, 20 or 50 years of oil left? The answers will make you reach for your garden trowel. We’ll talk about the failure of the modern oil state to think ahead and look out for itself, and Liam will introduce a new machine to help you […]

One Last Look At The Real Economy Before It Implodes: Solutions

All problems, all crises, have at least one solution, if not many solutions. There is no such thing as an unwinnable scenario. Some may not be smart enough or courageous enough to see it, but the solution is always there, waiting to be discovered. The only fight that cannot be won is the fight in […]

Overview of Our Energy Modeling Problem

We live in a world with limits, yet our economy needs growth. How can we expect this scenario to play out? My view is that this problem will play out as a fairly near-term financial problem, with low oil prices leading to a fall in oil production. But not everyone comes to this conclusion. What […]

Peak Oil: Still The Problem And Not The Answer

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 understand […]

Heinberg: Afterburn

We live in a time of what might be called The Great Burning. However, we tend to ignore the tremendous inferno blazing around us. Most of the combustion occurs out of sight and out of mind, in hundreds of millions of automobile, truck, aircraft, and ship engines; in tens of thousands of coal or gas-fired […]

Survive Collapse: Some Paradoxes

If you enjoy paradoxes, then here are a few you might like. I’m referring to the topic of “post-Collapse survival,” with specific reference to the imminent decline in fossil fuels. But let us look at these events as two phases: (a) before complete anarchy sets in and (b) after complete anarchy sets in. I call […]

Yergin: Why the oil-price collapse changes everything

It was not long ago that $100 per barrel oil was accepted as the new normal. China’s strong economic growth (and energy demand) would continue apace, and OPEC and Saudi Arabia would continue to play the traditional role as swing producer in support of oil prices. Events have proved otherwise. Oil markets have entered a […]

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