Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
aced with lofty world crude oil prices, reflecting a perception of tight fundamentals and threats to supplies, Paris-based Institut Français du Pétrole recently examined how the situation might evolve over the next 18 months.
It will take more than a few extra pounds on our gas bills to make us do something about global warming
Oil prices are at record highs, production may well have peaked, yet demand continues to soar. So why aren`t the oil companies panicking?
The San Francisco Chronicle, in 1971, carried a small item: “The Texas Railroad Commission announced a 100% allowable for next month.” It was a very cryptic report and, knowing newspapers, it was probably simply used as a filler.
What will be the alternative to today’s consumerism and fear of material insecurity? This essay looks toward the next mainstream culture: Life after petroleum-culture collapse. To help explain today’s lack of preparation for fundamental change, we examine historical practices particularly in Europe. This installment focuses on the history of food production vis-à-vis political power and worldview.
Transcript of exchange in New Zealand Parliament re oil depletion.
Reeling from record oil prices, the Philippines yesterday launched a countrywide campaign to limit energy consumption that includes halting government car purchases and switching off air conditioning for an hour in government offices.
‘Never again,” the Texas oil baron and corporate raider T Boone Pickens announced this month, “will we pump more than 82m barrels.” As we are pumping 82m barrels of oil a day at the moment, what Pickens is saying is that global production has peaked. If he is right, then the oil geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, who announced to general ridicule last year that he was “99% confident” it would happen in 2004, has been vindicated. Rather more importantly, industrial civilisation is over.
Americans are addicted to the joys of the open road. But the joys come at too high a price and we’re about to hit bottom. We can get around without oil. Here’s the 12-step program to do it.
One hangover from the ultraliberal 1980s (during which the New Economy emerged from the wreck of ” Keynesian economics “) is the myth or pious belief in so-called ‘supply side solutions’. The myth itself, however, was built on the real world, realpolitik process of first destroying demand.
China’s dramatic increase in energy consumption – coupled with political problems in the oil-producing countries of Iraq, Russia and Venezuela – could have dramatic negative effects on the U.S. and world economies.
THE federal Government is reviewing its powers to protect people from a major disruption to oil imports, as crude prices soar towards $US50 a barrel.
China’s needs for oil – and soon, water – are propelling the world’s most populous country on a collision course with the United States and its neighbors, while threatening civil unrest at home.
