Kurt Cobb: Could peak oil save the human species?

Nobody likes to hear a bleak diagnosis. But without a proper diagnosis, if you have a serious illness, your chances of survival become vanishingly small. Enter Guy McPherson, conservation biologist, climate scientist and blogger, who despite his gloomy outlook about the prospects for industrial civilization–he thinks it could disappear within his lifetime–regards himself as an […]

Canada Helps Create an Oil Sands World

Efforts to develop oil sands in Alberta are serving as a model for many other nations eager to exploit similar reserves within their borders. Huge unconventional fuel reserves — extra heavy crude, oil sands and oil shale — lie untapped across the globe. These resources emit much more carbon than regular oil, causing green groups […]

Austrailia’s PM to move quickly on climate change

Julia Gillard will move fast to try to reassert the government’s credentials on climate change when Parliament sits for the first time since the election tomorrow. The Prime Minister will announce as early as today the make-up of a committee to forge the way to a price on carbon, a signal of the government’s wish […]

Ex-BP boss to talk on banking crisis

PETER SUTHERLAND, the chairman of Goldman Sachs International and former European commissioner, said yesterday that the Government may need to cut the annual budget by more than 3 billion this year. Speaking to an Institute of Directors lunch in Dublin, Mr Sutherland said the alternative was much greater pain through higher borrowing costs if the […]

Managing Water as Scarcity Looms

Jean-Louis Chaussade, the chief executive of Suez Environnement SA, sees the world in terms of water: The map is becoming arid and full of opportunity. As the world’s population grows and migrates to cities, water shortages are happening in places where scarcity was unthinkable only five years ago, such as the Spanish coast. Even London, […]

Peak Oil Demand: The Beginning and End of Oil

It is demand for oil that may peak as governments adapt to the problems of global warming, security of supply and an amplitude of market volatility that could bring economic ruin to nations and then the world. Oil-demand may be reduced preemptively to the production peak (peak oil) through more efficient vehicle technologies and finding […]

How Hyperinflation Will Happen

Right now, we are in the middle of deflation. The Global Depression we are experiencing has squeezed both aggregate demand levels and aggregate asset prices as never before. Since the credit crunch of September 2008, the U.S. and world economies have been slowly circling the deflationary drain. To counter this, the U.S. government has been […]

Could climate change make Canada a future superpower?

In Laurence C. Smith’s new book “The World in 2050,” which focuses on the effects of climate change over the next 40 years, it is theorized that Canada could become a global superpower. Mr. Smith believes that the warmer temperatures will bring out more natural resources such as water, oil and gas. This will lead […]

Robert Rapier: The Lesson from Rising Ethanol Prices

I thought it was a bit humorous recently — when corn ethanol prices dipped and were cheaper than both sugarcane ethanol and gasoline (even when adjusted for lower energy content)  — that some corn ethanol proponents pointed to this as a watershed event. Their underlying message, which was repeated almost daily in the comments on […]

The Oil Drum: Clown Fest

The continued expansion of the internet has brought with it a surge in information, analysis, opinion and insight. At the same time the vast mental and social freedom in cyberspace has manifested an exponentially growing forum for self-expression – which ends up serving as virtual playgrounds for the human ego. This complex cyber landscape exists […]

UN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome

The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in […]

Peak Oil? Why not Peak Water

Peak Oil? Why not Peak Water, after all, water is much more crucial to life than oil ever will be and it’s being consumed in vast quantities by the same economic system that chows oil? In fact, water is a far more potent and relevant symbol of the way capitalism chows the planet than is […]

Shale Gas Means Flat Prices Till 2020

Oil production may have peaked in the U.S. in the early 1970s but fears of dwindling natural gas reserves, which were prevalent even a few years ago, have been demolished by the discovery of huge new shale-gas deposits. Gas prices will likely remain flat at around $5 per 1000 cubic feet through 2020, changing assumptions […]

China’s Clean Energy Future

It’s not hard to sense that the United States isn’t the superpower she used to be. From national and consumer debt to the stalled housing market, unemployment, energy dependence and a do-nothing-unless-it’s-for-reelection Congress, these past few years have made clear that we’d better get our act together… or risk being knocked from our global throne. […]

Ernst & Young: Energy Policy Future Shock

Marcela Donadio, Oil and Gas Leader from America, Ernst & Young, addresses the possibility of America having an extremely limited supply of energy in the future. Learn more about peak oil in this video. HowStuffWorks

Poor, violent Arab nations seen missing U.N. goals

Arab nations have made strides in boosting health and education but efforts to meet U.N. anti-poverty goals by 2015 are undermined by conflict, unemployment and insufficient aid, the United Nations says. World leaders gathered at the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York this week to assess how far the world has come toward meeting […]

Dick Lawrence Resigned from ASPO-USA

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Fellow Peak-Oilers, In the summer of 2005 I was one of three co-founders of ASPO-USA, with Steve Andrews and Randy Udall. We began the U.S. non-profit organization after Kjell Aleklett and other founders of ASPO (Europe) authorized the formation of national-level ASPOs, at the Lisbon ASPO conference in May 2005. ASPO-USA […]

Will the world achieve food security?

The world has to increase food production by 50 percent by 2030 and double it by 2050 to meet future demand. This seems to be the consensus among economists, scientists, politicians and representatives of the agricultural industry. But does the world really have to do so? Even if the global population crosses 9 billion by […]

How to Run an Oil Industry into the Ground

Hugo Chavez is putting on a clinic in Venezuela. The theme is “How to Destroy a Domestic Oil Industry.” I have warned for years that this would be the end result of Chavez’s actions. As I wrote in 2007: So, can Chavez under-invest in the industry while diverting money to his pet causes? He can […]

Andrew Lucas speaks on transition towns

Andrew Lucas speaks at Moonee Valley Council Forum: Transitioning communities Mon, 6 September at the Council Chamber, Civic Centre, 9 Kellaway Avenue, Moonee Ponds. (Victoria Australia) The video was prepared to give local support to the growth of new transition networks in Melbourne with local content. Theres lots of content on Youtube but we need […]

Oil Dependence and Cuba

There is an anxiousness that I haven’t been able to shake and which is in fact changing my life. It hit me after reading about the Hubbert Theory of Peak Oil and becoming aware how little oil is left on the planet. It is striking how dependent we are on this fossil fuel whose extraction […]

Infographic: Peak Oil Consumption – How much oil is left?

Book review: Peak of the Devil

It has the greatest title of any peak oil publication I’ve yet come across – but does Peak of the Devil live up to the promise? The 232-page book will be published by Satya House Publications in October 2010, retailing at $14.95. Chip Haynes, longtime online peak oil writer, has taken the unusual step of […]

Amid Tension, China Blocks Vital Exports to Japan

Sharply raising the stakes in a dispute over Japan’s detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain, the Chinese government has blocked exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles. Chinese customs officials are halting shipments to Japan of so-called rare earth elements, preventing […]

South Africa is nearing peak coal

Research by international and local scientists has shown that coal, like other resources, is finite and can be expected to comply with peak resources theory. The theory shows that production in commodities such as oil grows until a peak is reached, whereafter production declines. In the case of South African coal, the studies show production […]

How mega-crises may unfold

In a world of proliferating threats and assertive emerging powers, what kind of global security system can best tackle increasingly complex trans-national crises? One way of answering that is to examine possible future disasters and their likely results. Below is a scenario devised by Chung Min Lee, a South Korean scholar and senior fellow at […]

China winning renewable energy race

Five miles off the coast of Shanghai, the Chinese recently completed the country’s first offshore wind farm. The project was completed before construction on the first American offshore wind farm has even begun. The Shanghai project is not just another wind farm. It’s the next generation in wind power technology and the latest example of […]

Rising Energy Demand Hits Water Scarcity ‘Choke Point’

“We are about to see water wars in the future,” said U.S. General Anthony Zinni. “We have seen fuel wars; we’re about to see water wars.” The study was carried out by Circle of Blue, a network of journalists and scientists dedicated to water sustainability, and could have implications not just for the relationship between […]

Obama’s fiscal stimulus no substitute for cheap oi

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with President Obama’s earmarking $50-billion (U.S.) for new transport infrastructure, or extending the Bush tax cuts to low- and middle-income American households—provided the country can afford them. But already burdened with a record budget deficit of over $1-trillion, most Americans probably think Washington’s already done far too much for the […]

T. Boone Pickens to natural gas drillers: stand down until prices rebound

Texas oilpatch veteran T. Boone Pickens has some advice for natural gas drillers: put the rigs away and wait for dismal prices to pass. “I’d kill the drilling, let the supply go down and then get a better price for the gas,” he told a Calgary business audience Wednesday. In his speech, Pickens also voiced […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Is It Time To Abandon the Idea of Phasing Out Oil and Gas?
• More than 20% of global refining capacity at risk of closure
• Charles Hugh Smith Blog: Fire, Then Ice Our Deflationary Future
• Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser says energy transition strategy ‘visibly failing’
• 100 million-degree ‘artificial sun’ sets new records in hunt for energy’s ‘Holy Grail’

• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy
• US seeks to buy up to 3 million bbls of oil for Strategic Petroleum Reserve
• Desertification: the world is losing healthy land at an astonishing rate
• US oil production will keep booming in 2024, setting up a possible showdown with Saudi Arabia
• Saudi Arabia piles pressure on UAE to shift COP28 focus away from oil and gas
• US Warship, Commercial Ships Under Attack In Red Sea