News from December 2011

Sharon Astyk: 2012 Predictions The More Things Change…

First of all, I owe y’all an apology for the radio silence. Somehow this month I’ve felt a deep need for some quiet, rest and offlineness. It was quite an autumn here – it started with the destruction of Irene and Lee (and dealing with those disasters are still a major part of life in [...]

Oil’s Uncertain Forecast for 2012

Oil is the bad boyfriend of the international economy: we can’t live with it, and we can’t live without it. We complain about the price of gas—which really is crippling middle-class America—and worry about the threat of oil spills and all the greenhouse gases released by the 30 some billion barrels of oil we burn [...]

Plummeting Population in 2050?

With a world population higher than 7 billion, it’s only a matter of time before the decrease, in the increase, is fully realized. Then population “maximum” can be calculated. Even the United Nation population increases are beginning to fall slowly, but faster as time proceeds. Unfortunately, mankind will realize too late the population freefall bound [...]

Lindsey Williams Predicts: Total Collapse of The Dollar and Skyrocketing Oil Prices in 2012

Alex also talks with pastor Lindsey Williams about the crisis now threatening to erupt in the Middle East and the possibility of skyrocketing oil prices that will decimate national economies. http://www.lindseywilliams.net/ Lindsey Williams, an ordained Baptist minister went to Alaska in 1970 as a missionary. While in Alaska, Pastor Williams found out about the Trans-Alaska [...]

In with the new: part III of “As economic growth fails, how do we live?”

We need a map for uncharted territory as we enter this New Year, as the realization is dawning we are dealing with an economic crisis of an entirely different character than ever before. Our industrial civilization is reaching limits to growth, and we don’t know how to live with that. Part I of this series of three articles addressed the four major challenges [...]

Venezuela to Open up Massive Natural Gas Field with European Investment

On 23 December Spain’s biggest oil firm Repsol YPF, S.A. and Italy’s Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi S.p.A., better known by the acronym ENI, signed a $1.5 billion deal with state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, (PDVSA) to develop a huge new gas reserve in Venezuela. Repsol YPF, S.A. Chairman Antonio Brufau, ENI S.p.A. Chairman Paolo [...]

Global maps show human impact on Earth

On the last day of October 2011, the U.N. says the world population will hit seven billion people — an increase of one billion since 1999. To show some of the impacts of this vast human upheaval, Canadian anthropologist Felix Pharand has created a series of visualizations mapping the presence of technology onto a selection [...]

Renewable energy still not cost effective

Sooner or later, the laws of economics prevail, even in heavily subsidized industries such as solar power. The latest evidence that government manipulation cannot overcome economic reality is the decision by BP PLC, the giant British energy company, to leave the solar power business. BP has developed solar energy for 40 years and for more [...]

How New Financing Models Could Make Solar the Facebook of the Energy Industry

Rapidly dropping polysilicon prices over the past year have inspired several utility-scale solar developments to move forward after many months’ pause. At the same time, those in favor of distributed generation (placing solar on every available rooftop to supply energy locally) have also made strides in improving the business case for small-scale solar, particularly with [...]

Rare earth crisis: Innovate, or be crushed by China

Laptops, cars, smartphones, TVs, MRI scanners, LCD displays, light bulbs, optical networks, jet engines, cameras, headphones, nuclear reactors. It might seem like a random selection of high-tech gizmos, but every single object on that list has one very important thing in common: Their manufacture requires one or more rare earth metals. Rare earths — a [...]