Rural America Is On The Verge Of Collapse

The Economic Innovation Group's (EIG) Distressed Communities Index (DCI) shows a significant economic transformation (from two distinct periods: 2007-2011 and 2012-2016) that occurred since the financial crisis. The shift of human capital, job creation, and business formation to metropolitan areas reveals that rural America is teetering on the edge of collapse. Since the crisis, the number of people living in prosperous zip codes expanded by 10.2 million, to a total of 86.5 million, an increase that was much greater than any other social class. Meanwhile, the number of Americans living in distressed zip codes decreased to 3.4 million, to a total of 50 million, the smallest shift of any other social class. This indicates that the geography of economic pain is in rural America. "While the overall population in distressed zip codes declined, the number of rural Americans in that category increased ...

Why it (sort of) makes sense for the US to impose tariffs

Nearly everyone wonders, “Why is Donald Trump crazy enough to impose tariffs on imports from other countries? How could this possibly make sense?” As long as the world economy is growing rapidly, it makes sense for countries to cooperate with each other. With the use of cooperation, scarce resources can become part of supply lines that allow the production of complex goods, such as computers, requiring materials from around the world. The downsides of cooperation include: (a) The use of more oil to transport goods around the world; (b) The more rapid exhaustion of resources of all kinds around the world; and (c) Growing wage disparity as workers from high-wage countries compete more directly with workers from low-wages countries. These issues can be tolerated as long as the world economy is growing fast enough. As the saying goes, “A rising tide raises all boats.” In this ...

IEA cuts oil-demand forecast, but sees market tightening on Iran

Global oil demand will grow more slowly than previously thought following an economic lull in Asia, the International Energy Agency said, while warning that supplies stand to tighten due to U.S. sanctions on Iran. Disappointing fuel consumption in China, Japan and Brazil meant 2019 started with a “tough quarter,” the agency said, lowering its global demand estimate for the first time since October. As a result, world oil inventories surprisingly swelled during the first three months of the year. Nonetheless, stockpiles are set to plunge sharply this quarter as demand picks up and as U.S. sanctions squeeze production in Iran, which could fall this month to the lowest since the country’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, the IEA said. “There is a modest offset to supply worries from the demand side,” the Paris-based agency, which advises major economies on energy policy, said ...

Global sea levels could rise far more than predicted

Global sea levels could rise by two metres and displace tens of millions of people by the end of the century if greenhouse emissions remain unchecked, according to a new study. The authors of the report, released on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, said this outcome is the worst-case scenario, in which global temperatures would warm more than five degrees Celsius by 2100. The new projections, which double benchmark estimates by the United Nations, suggest the melting of the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica will contribute to accelerating the rise of seas levels, adding that they contain enough frozen water to lift the world's oceans dozens of metres. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report suggested that in a "business-as-usual" scenario, sea levels would likely to rise by up ...

Saudi Arabia wants to buy tons of American natural gas

Saudi Arabia has placed a huge bet on American natural gas. In a sign of shifting energy fortunes, Saudi Aramco announced a mega preliminary agreement on Wednesday to buy 5 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year from a Port Arthur, Texas export project that's under development. If completed, the purchase from San Diego-based Sempra Energy (SRE) would be one of the largest LNG deals ever signed, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. Aramco, Saudi Arabia's crown jewel, would also inject a cash infusion into the Port Arthur development in exchange for a 25% stake. "This is a major statement about the Saudis entering the LNG market and about how price competitive the outlook is for US gas," said Ira Joseph, head of gas and power at S&P Global Platts. Although the agreement calls for Saudi Arabia to purchase LNG from the United States, ...

Nature On The Eve Of Destruction — The UN Extinction Report

One million species are close to extinction, thanks to Homo sapiens. Thus warns a landmark new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), presented at the 7th session of the IPBES Plenary meeting earlier this month in Paris. Sir Robert Watson, Chair of the IPBES, said, “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.” The Report highlights the urgency of global decarbonization and the need to increase nuclear power along with all other non-fossil energy sources. But while global warming will have a multiplier effect, this rapid decline in species is not just the result of climate change, but of humans all on their own. Watson did say that ...

North Sea Oil Production Struggling

North Sea oil production is struggling, according to independent energy research and intelligence business Rystad Energy. The company’s North Sea oil output forecast - which looks at crude and lease condensate production, including onshore, for Norway, the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands – projects that 185,000 barrels per day (bpd) of outages will be seen in May. Rystad Energy’s forecast also shows that 462,000 bpd of outages will be seen in June and reveals that further outages are set for July, August and September. Production is set to hit 2.526 million bpd in May, 2.275 million bpd in June, 2.660 million bpd in July, 2.457 million bpd in August and 2.453 million bpd in September, according to the forecast. “Currently we see unplanned outages at Oseberg and Flotta with combined impact of 160,000 bpd,” Rystad Energy said in a company statement posted on ...

9/11 connection remains cloaked in government secrecy, breeding suspicion of Saudi role in terror attacks

The facts and the treatment of former Sarasota, Fla., residents Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji are extreme but not unique. Saudi Arabian born, raised in the fringes of palace aristocracy, Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his family had lived for over a decade in a suburban home. In the hours after 9/11, Sarasota law enforcement was notified by al-Hijji’s neighbors that the couple had abruptly moved out of their home two weeks before the terrorist attacks – leaving behind their cars, clothes, furniture and food on the table. A subsequent investigation of the al-Hijji’s home by a state and local law enforcement anti-terrorism task force and the FBI, confirmed that the family appeared to have “fled” their home shortly before the attack with a sense of urgency. When it was ascertained that three of the four 9/11 hijack pilots had trained at an airport near ...

Helium is a finite resource—who knew?

Almost precisely 10 years ago I wrote about the likelihood of a shortage of helium in the not-to-distant future in a piece entitled "Let's party 'til the helium's gone." Last week worries about a helium shortage appeared in my news feed. It seems that we are indeed going to party 'til the helium's gone as no steps that I know of have been taken to avert the inevitable shortage. That the shortage comes as a surprise results from a certain scientific illiteracy about the makeup of the universe and the geology of the planet. More on that later. It also results from a peculiar type of economic thinking that is pervasive today that states that when shortages occur of any commodity, prices will rise to incentivize exploitation of previously uneconomical resources and automatically solve the problem. This intellectually lazy pronouncement does not ...

The Trump administration has already built its case for Iran war

President Donald Trump may not need Congress to go to war with Iran. That's the case his lieutenants have been quietly building as tensions between the two nations have escalated. The key elements involve drawing links between al Qaeda and Iran and casting Iran as a terrorist threat to the U.S. — which is exactly what administration officials have been doing in recent weeks. That could give Trump the justification he needs to fight Iran under the still-in-effect 2001 use-of-force resolution without congressional approval. That prospect is unsettling to most Democrats, and even some Republicans, in part because Iran didn't attack the U.S. on 9/11, in part because there is a reluctance to engage U.S. forces in another theater of war, and in part because many lawmakers believe Congress has given too much of its war-making authority to the president over the years. With Congress ...