Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Conventional wisdom might suggest that as oil prices rise, developing countries would be less able to afford oil, leaving wealthier countries to bid against each other for increasingly higher-priced supplies. But that is not at all what happened over the past decade, and the trend may give developed countries a reason for concern.
When you go to the mountains, you go to the mountains. When it’s the desert, it’s the desert. When it’s the ocean, though, we generally say that we’re going “to the beach.” Land is our element, not the waters of our world, and that is an unmistakable advantage for any oil company that wants to drill in pristine waters.
In the US we may be staring at our own fate in India’s crisis. I’d suggest getting ready for it to come to a neighborhood near you sooner rather than later. Even the recent derecho was a reminder that, in fact, electricity doesn’t come from the switches on our walls, and that even our grid can look like spit balls and duct tape when an angry Mother Nature comes calling.
The bad news is that it is very difficult to get the American public to embrace household energy reduction despite the promise of financial savings. Local government and utility programs designed to tap into these savings rarely achieve even a 1–2 percent household sign-up rate. However, in the offing could be a game changer to unlock the latent green premium in our homes: an energy-efficiency label equivalent to a miles-per-gallon rating for vehicles. This could provide homeowners and prospective buyers with a straightforward understanding of household energy efficiency relative to similarly sized homes in the community and region.
-Saudis, Emirates push nuclear power plans
-No easy substitutes for fossil fuels
-BP Statistical Review 2012 Part 2 Australia proved oil reserves overreported by a factor of 2
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Middle East
-The Eurozone
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Today’s article is the 5th and final installment of my graphical look at the recently released 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. This article looks at the explosive growth of renewable energy, but also places it in the context of our overall energy demands.
-High oil prices are caused by consumers, not speculators
-Oil Price Spike Exacerbated by Wall Street Speculation?
-Crude truths about oil prices
-James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won’t Save Us
-Power by the People
-Nuclear power vs. people power
-Breakthrough Material for Carbon Capture Developed
-Effect of Global Warming on U.S. Energy Consumption
-The missing link to a $7 billion market
In the first installment of this series, I reviewed U.S. and global oil reserves according to the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The second installment covered oil production, and the third looked at global consumption trends. Today, I look at the growth of global carbon dioxide emissions since 1965. A great deal has changed over the past 46 years.
Climate hawk Bill McKibben has a terrific new piece in Rolling Stone, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” It is getting monster social media numbers of the kind usually reserved for pieces on HuffPost about Kim Kardashian in a bikini: 66k FaceBook likes and an astounding 6300 retweets.
– Canadian Couple’s Kitchen Garden Targeted By Authorities
– The world is closer to a food crisis than most people realise
– Small Farmers Creating a New Business Model as Agriculture Goes Local
– Online Solution for Home Gardeners to Profit from Bumper Crop
