President Hugo Chavez blames the inadequate power production by Venezuela's hydroelectric plants on low rainfall. But Vollmer says the problem has deeper roots.

The hens' owner, Jennifer Rudin, wasn't sure at first whether her city neighbor would appreciate the chickens' free-ranging, which has become routine for them since Portland approved backyard chicken farming earlier this year. But having seen how adaptable chickens are, Strauss is planning to get a few of his own.

Mexico’s daily El Universal reports that the contracts are the result of concern over output generally, but especially at Cantarell, which represents a loss of 272.425 billion pesos/year ($20.859 billion) in tax revenue for the country, or 2% of estimated gross domestic product for 2009, at current oil prices.

...Considering our current economy, what will happen when another extreme weather event like Hurricane Katrina hits a major US city? What will happen when storms, droughts and fires continue to spread with increasing intensity? How many have to die before even modest actions are taken to prevent environmental catastrophe?

Sporting a delicate windmill as a lapel pin, Simmons started off by reflecting on the concept of sustainability, a current buzzword among energy development experts. "More and more people around the world are beginning to wonder, "Does the globe have a sustainable strategy?'" Simmons said. "It's all about sustainability. Sustainability means protecting or improving our living standards. And without abundant water and energy, we are not sustainable," he said. "There's no question that our oceans are energy's last frontier."

The report found that although existing laws of war — including aspects of the Geneva Convention — address environmental protection, their wording is imprecise. Strengthening, enforcing and clarifying existing legislation could help protect “natural assets” during wars, the study says."

But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy — a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases — rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor — just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.

Of course there’s another side to history that’s more hopeful: something that worked well in the past can be a useful guide to what might work well in the future. I’d like to spend a little time discussing one example of this, partly because it ties into the theme of the current series of posts – the abject failure of current economic notions, and the options for replacing them with ideas that actually make sense – and partly because it addresses one of the more popular topics in the ongoing peak oil discussion, the need for economic relocalization as the age of cheap abundant energy comes to an end.

The bilateral relationship between the United States and China has begun to take on a more pragmatic and secure quality under the Obama Administration, a welcome contrast to the past, when the U.S. was mostly uneasy about the rise of China and China was often uncertain about assuming its emerging role as an economic and political center of gravity. Though disagreements over the value of the Yuan, trade restrictions and human rights issues will continue to be present in the Sino-U.S. relationship, the exigencies of the worldwide economic downturn and the opportunities for cooperation in the development of a new energy future, are paving the way for a sustainable and productive bilateral relationship."

Executives from gas, oil and power generation firms said at a UN conference here that they were delaying and cutting back investments due to the credit crunch, the economic downturn and volatile oil and gas prices.