Supply Shock: Ecological Economics Comes of Age

The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. John Maynard Keynes Of all the critiques […]

Thinking of starting a Transition Initiative?

Are you thinking about starting a new Transition initiative in your town, village or city? I was among those who initiated Transition Dartmouth Park, in North London, around a year and a half ago. We recently held a core group away day, and after a shared, home-made and home grown lunch, we sat down to […]

Energy Return on Investment

This essay comes from the book ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in collaboration with Watershed Media and Post Carbon Institute. Download Energy Return on Investment Post Carbon Institute/Foundation for Deep Ecology

Heinberg: Big Energy’s Misleading Promise of Plenty

Hi readers, This month has been a rush of deadlines as I work to complete the final chapters of my new book ‘SNAKE OIL! How Big Energy’s Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future’. This being the case I have no new writing to offer you this month — I did however give an extended interview, […]

Collapse Is The Transition Of Consciousness

“Gary, your website is so dark…do you ever publish positive news?” Well, I’m positive that environmental, energy, and economic systems are collapsing…not just some systems, but virtually all systems are crashing. You’d have to be in total denial not to recognize that everything’s not only about to change, but that it already is changing. There’s […]

Peak Oil: Decisions

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Jorge Madrid, Kate Gordon, Tina Ramos: The United States’ prolonged unwillingness to develop a long-term, sustainable energy strategy has left us with a daunting challenge—the need to run a 21st century economy using 20th century energy sources and infrastructure. Our energy choices, or lack thereof due to […]

Will the International Energy Agency’s oil forecast be wrong again?

The famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr once humorously observed, “Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future.” And so, as the world considers yet another rosy oil supply forecast, this time from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), it is worth reviewing the agency’s record. Back in the year 2000, the IEA divined that by […]

“Apocalyptic Journalism” and Why We Need Reporters to Face the Reality of Our Crumbling Society

For those who believe that a robust public-affairs journalism is essential for a society striving to be democratic, the 21st century has been characterized by bad news that keeps getting worse. Whatever one’s evaluation of traditional advertising-supported news media (and I have been among its critics; more on that later), the unraveling of that business model […]

What if there is Peak Oil?

The Spring 2013 Semester has just ended and I am beginning to see light in the tunnel. So I can restart writing my long-neglected blog.  Many things have happened in the four months since my last entry:  Thousands upon thousands of innocent people have died in wars and ethnic/religious strife. Most of these wars have […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Supply Shock

A new phrase, “supply shock,” entered the lexicon of the global oil business this week when the International Energy Agency reported that unexpectedly rapid growth in tight oil production from North Dakota and Texas is leading to profound changes in the global energy markets. U.S. oil production which grew by 800,000 barrels a day (b/d) […]

Bye-Bye Baby Boomers

A May 2 article in the New York Times “Suicide Rates Rise Sharply In US” informed us that not only have suicide rates increased in the past decade among teens and the elderly, but more surprisingly, they have surged among the baby boomers. Ten days later, an article on the Alternet website asks, “Is Cutthroat […]

The Reality & Effects Of Peak Oil

compilation video…

John Michael Greer: The Song Remains the Same

If you always do what you’ve always done, a popular saying nowadays has it, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. Most people accept that readily enough in the abstract.  It’s when they attempt to apply this logic to their own lives and thinking that they get tripped up, because self-defeating patterns very often arise […]

Doomsday Prophet Falls Off Peak Oil Bandwagon

In today’s rant, I attempt to explain once and for all why this former believer in the Peak Oil doomsday scenario has fallen off the Peak Oil bandwagon, and no longer believes that Peak Oil will bring down this global industrial civilization — as much as it pains me to say that.

All Empires Crash Soon After They Reach Their Peak

Thomas Edison said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”   And because I love my country, I frequently criticize America’s shortcomings in the hopes of making her better. But the truth is that the United States is not unusual … it is just like all other empires which have hit their peak and then quickly […]

Looking Back at Peak Oil

Peak Oil – the maximum sustainable rate of global oil production – happened in 2012. That’s one of the main conclusions of a new report, Fossil and Nuclear Fuels – The Supply Outlook, released in March 2013 by the Energy Watch Group (EWG). This event will have profound long-term implications for how advisors should manage […]

Should we be scared of peak oil?

Peak oil is logically inevitable – one day the planet will either run out of fossil fuels, or they will become too expensive to extract. But what will that mean for us, and should we be worrying now? What can we do to avoid a catastrophe when oil production eventually slows down?

Approaching ‘peak oil’?

The idea of ‘peak oil’ – or the point in time when maximum petroleum extraction has been reached – is something that has been around since the 1950s. These days though, the debate centres on whether oil has or has not yet reached its ‘peak’, given that we have extracted so much of it, and […]

Falling World Population And The New Economic Prosperity

TWO PARADIGMS The so-called Trente Glorieuse years (1948-1975) of fast economic growth, low annual budget deficits, almost zero unemployment, cheap oil, small or zero national trade deficits, innovation and liberty in the Western countries – was also a period of population growth. Ever since, political thinking confused this result – population growth – with its […]

Principles for the Pulse that is Peak Oil

From PatternDynamics (TM) by Tim Winton A comment has just appeared below my post on The Wave/Pulse of Human History. “The Emergist” writes: Nice article. Fun to see you weave together the separate stories. I didn’t know Holmgren was into Odum. How do you see the idea of pulsing as changing your approach to design, […]

Saudi Oil Minister Calls US Energy Independence Idea ‘Naive’

Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi on Tuesday called the U.S. push for energy independence “naive,” saying the country will continue to need Middle Eastern oil long into the future. Naimi said he welcomed the surge in U.S. domestic energy production from shale oil and gas fields, which he said will add depth and stability to […]

Kunstler: We Wish

       Wishful thinking now runs so thick and deep across the USA that our hopes for a credible future are being drowned in a tidal wave of yellow smiley-face stories recklessly issued by institutions that ought to know better. A case in point is the Charles C. Mann’s tragically dumb cover story in […]

The Power of Community. How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

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http://globalvillageproject.com This is a project of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. Isolated geographically and politically, Cuba survived “peak oil”. Can their experiences help us be prepared?

Peak Moment 231: Columbia Ecovillage (part 2) — Shaping a Life Together

What’s it like, living in an urban ecovillage? Barbara Ford finds that this size community enables people to contribute while doing what they love. Dennis Karas and his wife had to adjust to noise levels with more children around, but enjoy having many friends with shared values. All community members are trained in consensus decision […]

Peak Oil Denial: Sticking To The Script (Pt 6)

This is the sixth in a series of posts [* links below] examining the latest entry straight from the playbook on peak oil denial—that seemingly never-ending attempt to ignore facts, mis-/under-inform readers, or create ever-rising levels of non-credible optimism. [NOTE: Any quotes in this series are taken from the above-referenced Manhattan Institute paper unless otherwise […]

Test Your International Oil IQ

In last week’s column, we examined some oil production trivia involving US states. This week, we look at some international oil trivia covering the 5-year period 2007-2011, as well as some individual trivia from 2012. In this case, the data sources are the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy and the Energy Information Administration. A table […]

Peak Oil Denial: Sticking To The Script (Pt 5)

This is the fifth in a series of posts [* links below] examining the latest entry straight from the playbook on peak oil denial—that seemingly never-ending attempt to ignore facts, mis-/under-inform readers, or create ever-rising levels of non-credible optimism. [NOTE: Any quotes in this series are taken from the above-referenced Manhattan Institute paper unless otherwise […]

Kunstler: Aftershocks

If the FBI can track down two homicidal Chechen nobodies inside of forty-eight hours of their Boston bombing caper, you kind of wonder how come the Bureau can’t detect the odor of racketeering, insider trading, and wire fraud in this month’s orchestrated smackdown of the gold futures markets, including the parts plaid by the Federal […]

Reflections on the Conference on “Peak Oil: Challenges and Opportunities for the GCC Countries”

By Robert L. Hirsch PhD, Senior Energy Advisor, MISI I was fortunate to be among the few westerners invited to attend and speak at this first-of-its kind “peak oil” (PO) conference in a Middle East. The fact that a major Middle East oil exporter would hold such a conference on what has long been a […]

Saudi Gazette – The falsehood of ‘Peak Oil Theory’

Dr. Sami Al-Nuaim Dr. Sami Al-Nuaim In the last few years, there were several attempts from several non-specialized writers in the Saudi media to advocate for what is called “Peak Oil Theory” that wrongly predicts dark future for oil production. This theory was introduced in the US after the oil embargo in early 70s by […]

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