News from March 2007

Quiet desperation

As the Toronto International Film Festival program put it when the film debuted there in September, Radiant City sets out to show that “there’s something more desperate about suburbs than their housewives.” This desperation lies in everything from the white boards on the fridge organizing after-school gymnastics and French lessons with military precision to the [...]

Cost, consumption of gas both up

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Residents encouraged to take part in power discount plan

Southern California Edison is encouraging customers to enroll in its Summer Discount Plan now so that they can be eligible for bill credits during the summer months, June through September, in return for allowing SCE to interrupt their air conditioner during powersupply emergencies. There are already more than 213,000 customers participating in the program, but [...]

Former MBNA waterfront complex sold

…Simmons is pressing ahead in creating what he calls an “Ocean Energy Institute.” “Initially, it will not take much of the building space,” he wrote. “Ideally, over time, this center will be the ‘Silicon Valley’ headquarters for Ocean Energy expertise and [spawn] many growing business activities for what might become the only real way to [...]

The Energy Report

…Holy Peaks! The Peak Freaks – if you believe the government – had it right all the time! First global warming then peak oil! What catastrophe awaits us next! In fact the world is getting so scary I am afraid to get out of bed in the morning. But there it is in black and [...]

The Dirt on Coal

The peak of world production is only ten to fifteen years away. The peak of U.S. production is in the past. Reserves have been overstated by as much as 90%. There are serious implications for our entire way of life. And the media are still reporting that there will be abundant supplies for another 150 [...]

Alternative Energy

This morning, as CNBC devoted wall-to-wall coverage to the corn-crop report, stirring old memories of Trading Places, a couple of anchors astutely wondered if all the unusual attention being paid to this typically mundane report wasnAnd if you believe the old saw that when a trend finally makes it to popular magazine covers, the trend [...]

Protests disrupting Ecuador oil flow end

QUITO, Ecuador – Protests that led the Brazilian state oil company to halt production in the Ecuadorean jungle have ended, Ecuador’s Energy Ministry said late Friday. Officials did not say whether the company had resumed production. In a statement, the Ministry said losses from the production freeze totaled more than $40 million, a loss of [...]

Sydney dims lights to protest emissions

SYDNEY, Australia – Australia’s largest city dimmed on Saturday night as businesses and homeowners switched off the lights to draw attention to global warming. The normally gleaming white sails of the Sydney Opera House darkened, and so did the iconic harbor bridge and chunks of the city skyline. Security and street lights, as well as [...]

James Howard Kunstler: Remarks to the Commonwealth Club of California

Two years ago in my book, The Long Emergency, I wrote that our nation was sleepwalking into an era of unprecedented hardship and disorder As the American public continues sleepwalking into a future of energy scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also continued dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid ones [...]