Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As a military conflict rages in Ukraine between Russia and what the Russian government calls “the West” (apparently meaning NATO allies and particularly the United States), there is a parallel economic battle between “stuff” and “finance.” Both categories are affected by economic sanction regimes imposed by each side. But there is a striking difference in what each side has to sell.
Why is the financial community so complacent about peak oil and the relationship between increasing energy scale and growth? Can we make predictions about the future by looking back at history?
In order to understand power, we have to look not just to the fields of extraction and their ruined landscapes, nor only at the immediate effects on water, air, wildlife, and the nearby communities that rely on all three. We also have to look up and down the commodity chain. Attention is currently fixed downstream, at the politics and power manifesting in decisions about who and what is expendable in order to get the bitumen to market.
We citizens have a lot of work to do. We delegated too much, we have assumed experts can do it and have ended up in an exploitative relationship. We need to develop our own expertise.
If oil prices remain low Iraq will not get out of its current budget deficit. That will worsen all other problems this country is already suffering from.
Here’s a statistic that ought to alarm anyone interested in rebuilding local economies and redirecting the flow of capital away from Wall Street and toward more productive ends
Sandy tells of localism, emergence, a new type of financial system, and more…
One of the key recommendations is the feed in tariff which is probably inspired by the successful German implementation of solar energy.
The financial system as an accelerator and multiplier of the economic and social impacts of energy depletion.
With Jim Rickards author of The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System, and behavioral economist Colin Camerer.
Money can be looked at as a marker for energy (alternatively; money is a claim on energy). As energy prices rise and/or energy supplies decline, this will depreciate the purchase value of money (and other paper constructs representing money).
Author Richard Heinberg on geopolitics, finance, and environment of the slow crash. Global Crossing and Green Festivals President Kevin Danaher on transition to green economy. Unicyclist for climate Joseph Boutelier.
