Kevin Carson’s response to John Michael Greer

John Michael Greer (“The Flight to the Ephemeral,” The Archdruid Report, Oct. 2) was kind enough to address an earlier post of mine on this blog a few weeks back (“When Ephemeralization is Hard to Tell From Catabolic Collapse,” P2P Foundation Blog, Sept. 19). Here are my responses, in no particular order of importance.   […]

Bad advice: Why the future won’t be like the past

It’s easy to get bad advice from successful people. Here’s why: Successful people assume that the same circumstances that prevailed while they were achieving their success will generally prevail while you are pursuing yours. But, your circumstances will almost surely be different, probably in major ways. The second mistake successful people make is that they […]

This ain’t your average survival shelter

There’s nothing new about predictions that the end of the world is upon us. But there’s plenty new about how some people are preparing for it. What began as a pipe dream for Ron Hubbard has become big business…underground “We call this the backyard bunker,” Hubbard said as he showed us one of his survival […]

Peak oil enthusiasts might be giving up too soon

Proponents of peak oil should not capitulate too soon, as the days of oil – like those of horses – are numbered, writes Vincent Kaminski The closure of The Oil Drum website after eight years – a move announced by the site’s administrators in a blog post on July 3 – is a sad moment […]

Peak Oil Was A Lie

According to M. King Hubbert’s Hubbert peak theory, Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline. Global production of oil fell from a high point in 2005 at 74 mb/d, but has since rebounded setting […]

Peak Oil: Energy Education

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Jesse Parent: Energy at times is most easily seen through its manifestations or consequences: the environmental impact of the BP oil spill or pending Keystone XL pipeline, or the economic impact of US domestic shale gas production or advanced  nanotechnology R&D. Of course, the price of gas, […]

Review: The Five Stages of Collapse by Dmitry Orlov

At some point, those of us who accept the inevitability of a complete societal collapse, driven by resource depletion and rapid climate change, have to wonder what more can be gained by our continued attempts to persuade the masses. Granted, our efforts do succeed in enlisting a steady trickle of new recruits into the ranks […]

Peak Oil Denial: Abundant Nonsense 9

We don’t like bad news, particularly when it has very long term implications. Individually and collectively we tend to slip into denial mode, focus on diversions, become numbed to the reality of the situation, cling to anyone willing to assure us it just ain’t so, that things are going to get better. You can’t live […]

John Michael Greer: The Flight to the Ephemeral

I’d meant to devote this week’s post to exploring the way that new religious movements so often give shape to emerging ideas and social forms during the decline of civilizations, and to sketch out some of the possibilities for action along those lines as industrial society moves further along its own curve of decline and […]

Tumbling Tide: Population, Petroleum, and Systemic Collapse

Some afterthoughts on Tumbling Tide: Population, Petroleum, and Systemic Collapse (London, Ontario: Insomniac Press, 2013) EXPLANATIONS, LEVEL OF: I always try to keep in mind my targeted audience. And that targeted audience is what I call “the educated general reader.” That may sound like an oxymoron, but I mean that I’m not writing for academics, […]

Postcard from the frontline: a Canadian family physician on peak oil

I’m a small town family physician in Ontario, Canada with an unremarkable practice consisting mainly of obesity, diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, anxiety / depression and the “worried well” who want to know why they feel tired all the time.  Nothing unusual, nothing particularly glamorous.  One thing which is different about my practice is that I became […]

What Collapse Feels Like, Part 3 of 5: Resilience Begins With The Heart: All Roads Lead To Grief

According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, “CHF [congestive heart failure] occurs most frequently in those over age 60 and is the leading cause of hospitalization and death in that age group. In over 50 percent of cases, sudden death occurs due to a cardiac arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat. Unfortunately, anti-arrhythmic medications may not be […]

“Collapse” Author, Michael Ruppert on Dorner, Peak Oil and more

GUEST BIO: Michael Ruppert is an investigative journalist and author of two books, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil and Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World. In the 1970s, Ruppert was a narcotics officer for the […]

Peak Oil Denial Abundant Nonsense # 8: And…?

We don’t like bad news, particularly when it has very long term implications. Individually and collectively we tend to slip into denial mode, focus on diversions, become numbed to the reality of the situation, cling to anyone willing to assure us it just ain’t so, that things are going to get better. You can’t live […]

On Gender, Collapse, & Communities We Can All Abide

A Response to Dmitry Orlov Writing, blogging, and “prepping” for collapse has become a cottage industry over the last ten years.  The proliferation of websites, books, articles, and conferences devoted to analysis and speculation about what will happen, learning to grow and preserve food and other survival skills, and storing up supplies, are based on […]

The Oil Drum: The Last Post

The Oil Drum (TOD) was an internet energy phenomenon that ran for over eight years from April 2005 to September 2013. The site was founded by Prof. Goose (also known as Professor Kyle Saunders of Colorado State University) and Heading Out (also known as Professor Dave Summers formerly of the University of Missouri). The site […]

What Collapse Feels Like, Part 2 of 5: Anger: When Rage And Cynicism Aren’t Enough

Anyone who doesn’t feel angry, make that enraged, about what is being done to the earth community by its human inhabitants and what they are doing to each other has been totally anesthetized by the soporifics of civilization. If you aren’t angry, not only are you not paying attention, as the bumper sticker adage goes, […]

The House that Randy Built

One of the nice aspects of the 7+ years I have been involved with The Oil Drum has been attending conferences and meeting with some of my cyber friends, who by and large figure among the nicest bunch of folks I ever met. In 2007 I attended the ASPO meeting in Houston and it was […]

AFTERMATH – World Without Oil

What would our world look like if we ran out of oil? The lifeblood of our high-tech, highly mobile world won’t last forever. Watch one scenario of what happens when one day oil does run out. How might our world change and how would we adapt? Aftermath follows the chaotic days and months after this […]

Author Jeff Rubin on Energy Independence and Peak Oil

In his new book The End of Growth, the straight-talking Jeff Rubin, bestselling author and former chief economist of CIBC World Markets, paints a grim picture. He argues that triple-digit oil prices are here to stay, making it impossible for developed nations to return to the days of rapid growth built on cheap energy. In […]

Peak Oil: What’s Going On?

A recent spate of articles [with facts and everything!] discussing some of the problems encountered by the major oil companies all seem to be [more than just] hinting at some related issues. Might we be having a problem or two with maintaining levels of oil production? Shocking! Many of the oil industry’s big players wrote […]

Heinberg: Ten Years After

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of my book The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, which has seen two editions and many printings, translations into eight languages, and sales of roughly 50,000 copies in North America. The end of The Party’s Over’s first decade coincides with a […]

The Travesty of the Anti-Commons

In his 1968 essay “The tragedy of the commons,” Garrett Hardin argued that unrestricted access to resources held in common, and, likewise, unrestricted ability to dump waste, inexorably leads to the destruction of the commons. At the time, he may not have suspected that the term would become a formidable propaganda weapon in the hands […]

Ugo Bardi: The next ten billion years – II

Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art a part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt […]

U.S. oil group says FBI warns fuel storage operators to be on alert

U.S. officials have warned energy companies to be on the alert for “potential terrorist activities” at fuel storage plants but there were no immediate threats, an oil industry group told members on Friday. The Petroleum Marketers Association of America told members the Federal Bureau of Investigation “is concerned about terrorists attempting to purchase or steal […]

This is what collapse feels like: Becoming a student of fear

Lest anyone assume that this series is a rehash of my 2011 book Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition, let’s dispense with that assumption immediately. Two years and a boatload of human and ecological suffering since the publication of that book have produced much more to explore beyond what I wrote in […]

Peak Oil Wars

Informational animation on the world’s depleting oil supply created for the Post Carbon Institute. Software Used: Illustrator, After Effects, C4D CREDITS Client: Post Carbon Institute Company: Monstro Animation, Direction, and Design: Alexander Perry and Michael Wilson Producers: Dalton Crosthwait and Todd Brilliant Sound Design: Ben Roider – Creative Commons by Michael Wilson ( http://vimeo.com/user6525563 )

Trying to stay sane in an insane world

In the first three parts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) of this disheartening look back at a century of central banking, income taxing, military warring, energy depleting and political corrupting, I made a case for why we are in the midst of a financial, commercial, political, social and cultural collapse. In this final installment […]

Albert Bartlett – a tribute

Professor Albert Bartlett has died at the age of 90.   Al Bartlett accomplished a lot in his 90 years—inspiring thousands of students, helping shape Boulder, Colorado’s development policies, and providing the word sustainability with a meaningful definition. But he was best known for The Lecture. In an hour, using simple arithmetic and irrefutable logic, […]

Paradigm Shifts And Tipping Points

The term, paradigm shift, was coined by Thomas Kuhn in 1962 in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Kuhn argued that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but is a “series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions”, and in those revolutions “one conceptual world view is replaced by another.” For the purpose of […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy