Mexico Requests To Join IEA

Mexico submitted on Monday a request to join the International Energy Agency as the energy policy adviser to industrialised countries seeks to expand its member base. Mexican Secretary of Energy Pedro Joaquín Coldwell presented IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol with a letter requesting to join the organisation that currently includes 29 member countries, the IEA […]

Coalition Strikes Pound IS ‘capital’ in Syria, Oil Tankers

US-led coalition warplanes have pounded the Islamic State group in Syria after the Paris attacks, with French raids hitting IS stronghold Raqa and another strike destroying dozens of oil tankers. In its first major military response to Friday’s attacks in Paris, France said 12 of its warplanes had hit IS positions in Raqa, the jihadists’ […]

China welcomes IMF backing to make yuan world reserve currency

China on Saturday welcomed backing from IMF experts that the yuan should be included in its reserve currencies, saying the move would strengthen the world’s financial system. Now the world’s second-largest economy, China asked last year for the yuan to be added to the elite basket of SDR currencies, but until recently it was considered […]

U.S. Approves Sale of Smart Bombs to Saudi Arabia

The U.S. State Department has approved the sale of $1.29 billion in smart bombs to Saudi Arabia to help replenish supplies used in its battle against insurgents in Yemen and air strikes against Islamic State in Syria, the Pentagon said on Monday. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which facilitates foreign arms sales, notified […]

Kunstler: There Are No Safe Spaces

I ’m not persuaded that world opinion will ever “make sense” of the Paris attacks. The non-linear rules the day. So-called Fourth Generation Warfare works because there are so many small arms loose in the world and any band of maniacs with a few machine guns and a pound of Semtex plastic explosive can create […]

Paris Terror Attack: ISIS Celebrate “Paris In Flames”

ISIS adherents celebrated the horrific terror attacks across Paris late Friday creating hashtags declaring “Paris in flames” well before the devastating scope of the worst attacks to hit Paris since World War II was clear to the world. Vocativ deep web analysts discovered ISIS extremists praising the sophisticated and well-coordinated attacks within minutes of the initial explosions and gunfire that […]

New EPA Rules Could Raise Energy Prices

Critics of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan say the new regulation will cost up to $292 billion and potentially raise electricity prices in 47 states. “States should be braced to pay higher costs,” said Laura Sheehan, senior vice president for communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “Consumers only lose in the Clean […]

Saudi Arabia’s manifesto for change in the face of rumours of coup plots

In rare public statement, advisers to all-powerful Prince Mohammed bin Salman tell Telegraph of plans for opening up country’s economy and society Saudi Arabia has issued a manifesto for change in the face of rumours of coup plots and international pressure, ranging from economic reform to the role of women and allowing human rights groups […]

Lessons from the Icelandic vs Greek collapse

Greek protesters clash with policemen during riots at a May Day rally in Athens May 1, 2010.  Credit: Joanna CC-BY-SA 2.0 Debt = theft from future generations All economic activity requires energy to perform useful work. Without an increasing flow of net energy to society the economy starts to contract. The extraction of finite fossil […]

On the Verge of the Great Unraveling

The figures are staggering. In what looks like a vast population transfer from a disintegrating Greater Middle East, nearly 200,000 refugees passed through Austria in September alone. About half a million desperate refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have arrived in Greece since 2015 began (those, that is, who don’t die at sea), and the […]

Saudi Arabia Preparing To Fuel Its $100 Billion Oil War With Debt

Saudi Arabia has probably spent around $100 billion of its foreign reserves by now to prosecute its war against American shale and other low-cost oil producers. The oil kingdom’s decision one year ago not to cut production to support oil prices has driven the price of both Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate down below […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Next ‘Keystone’ Debate

Unless a Republican wins the the Presidential election in 2017, the 7-year debate over whether to build the Keystone pipeline is probably over. Gone will be the endless TV and newspaper ads describing the dangers of either building or not building it. Waiting in the wings, however, is another energy/climate debate that will make the […]

The Left should Embrace Degrowth

Degrowth is a frontal attack on the ideology of economic growth. Some call it a critique: a slogan or a ‘missile word’. Others talk of the ‘theory of’ – or the ‘literature on’ – degrowth; or of degrowth policies’. Many see themselves as the ‘degrowth movement’ or claim they live ‘the degrowth way’. What is […]

Rebel Media in an age of crisis

We live in tumultuous times. Our world is wracked by a convergence of destabilizing and devastating wars, soaring levels of inequality, and mass waves of human displacement. Battered by increasingly erratic weather patterns, we are haunted by the terrifying spectre of ecological collapse. Ours is an age of crisis. This crisis takes many forms: from […]

Shale revolution is irreversible

Since 2010, American oil production has grown by about four million barrels per day (almost all of it extracted from shale formations), irreversibly changing our own, and the global, energy landscape. Our daily production now exceeds that of Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer and its key member, now struggling to understand the North American shale […]

Matthew Schneider-Mayerson: Resource Scarcity and Libertarian Political Culture

My dissertation uses the “peak oil” movement as a lens to analyze the convergence of apocalyptic environmental thinking and libertarian political culture in the recent United States. The “peak oil” movement was a twenty-first century American social movement of Americans who came to believe that oil depletion and other environmental problems would lead to the […]

Obama rejects Keystone XL project

President Obama rejected a presidential permit Friday for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, citing concerns about its impact on the climate. “America’s now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” Obama told reporters, standing in the Roosevelt Room beside Vice President Biden and Secretary of State John F. Kerry. […]

Importance of agriculture to US security scrutinized

The U.S. needs to stay a step ahead of key challenges faced by its agriculture sector, especially resource scarcity, the threat of bioterrorism and greater productivity as world population expands from about 6 billion people in 2015 to 9 billion by 2050, said Ambassador John Negroponte, former U.S. deputy secretary of state under President George […]

With Exxon Mobil Under Investigation, Is Climate Change Debate Becoming Criminalized?

Just to summarize, N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is reportedly investigating Exxon Mobil XOM -1.19% for deceiving the public about climate change, and leading environmental groups are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to do the same. Because, it seems, ExxonMobil has funded a wide variety of scientific research, most of which confirmed “liberal” views […]

Dear Fellow Americans: Do You Have Any Idea What’s Being Done In Your Name In Syria?

Americans have some vague understanding that the U.S. wants Syria’s Assad to go, while Russia wants him to stay. And Americans know that the U.S. “war against ISIS” hasn’t done much, while the Russians have been pounding Syrian targets with jets. But Americans have no idea that the U.S. is deploying fighter jets designed solely […]

Are resource wars our future?

Why the Paris Climate Summit will be a peace conference – averting a world of failed states and resource wars. At the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held.  Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of […]

Why We Need Private Property to Deal with Scarce Resources

Scarcity of resources exists in many forms and is the problem in economics. If resources were not scarce, there would be no need to economize. The existence of scarcity is true of all resources (such as time, human energy, and natural resources). However, it is not necessarily intuitive that allowing scarce resources to be owned […]

Heating oil vs. natural gas

HOPEFULLY, NEW ENGLAND WILL BE LUCKY this winter.  No Polar Vortex. No endless snowstorm piling nine feet of frozen fluff on Boston. But whatever our luck, there are certain unavoidable facts of life that every New Englander will experience this winter. Even the staunchest New England opponent of increased natural gas pipeline capacity cannot dispute […]

What is happening in Palestine?

Does the current conflict in the occupied territories make your heard spin? Then watch my interview with Palestinian anarchist Budour Hassan, to get some solid analysis from someone in the front lines of this struggle.

The Bottom Is About To Fall Out Of ISIS’ Vast Oil Welfare State

The Islamic State’s use of oil to fund welfare programs will cause big problems in the terror group’s future based on the experience of other petro-states. Aside from all the other problems ISIS faces — American and Russian airstrikes, general malaise of people living under their leadership, and Kurdish militias — oil economies breed their […]

How the Pentagon spent $43 million on a single gas station

John Sopko’s team of investigators has uncovered all kinds of wasteful spending in Afghanistan through its work as a U.S. government watchdog. Now the group has uncovered a $43 million gas station, which Sopko calls “gratuitous and extreme”—and possibly criminal. In a scathing report, Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, wrote that a similar compressed […]

The ‘Us Vs. Them’ Fallacy On Oil Exports

Lacking factual, substantial reasons for keeping the United States’ antiquated ban on crude oil exports, those who oppose letting U.S. crude reach the global marketplace are left to make a non-factual, unsubstantial case instead. In a letter to the editor in the New York Times, the Sierra Club’s Michael Brune offers up a couple of […]

How China’s one-child policy ended in failure

Desperate attempts by China to curb population growth in 1979 led the communist authorities to offer couples condoms, coils, sterilisation and financial rewards as part of its one-child policy. When this failed, fines and even forced abortions were said to have been used to enforce ‘family planning.’ Even in the 1950s, when China’s population was […]

Water, Sunlight, Oil, and Sectarianism

In a prior post in the International Affairs Forum, I tried to outline what Western and Eastern polities might want out of the ever-fractious Middle East, using the p5+1 deal with Iran as a focus point. Basically, this would be peace, prosperity, citizen-centered governance, and openness to global economic and social systems. In other words, […]

Venezuela is running out of cash

Venezuela is running out of money fast and has started selling its gold. The cash-strapped country could default by next year when lots of debt payments are due. Venezuela’s reserves, which are mostly made up of gold, have fallen sharply this year as the country needs cash to pay off debt and tries to maintain […]

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