China hikes electricity rates to counter shortages

China has raised electricity rates for some industrial users as parts of the country grapple with their worst energy crisis in years, despite concerns higher costs may add to inflation. Residential rates were unchanged, the government announced late Monday. It gave no details of where the changes would be imposed. The increase of about 20 […]

Preparing Emotionally And Spiritually: Carolyn Baker and Margaret Emerson

Carolyn Baker and Margaret Emerson at Boulder Book Store, May 4, 2011

Everything you’ve heard about fossil fuels may be wrong

Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition […]

Down and dirty: Is peak soil more pressing than peak oil?

Filmed as part of the 2011 Ideas Festival, Brisbane. Visiting the US ‘Dust Bowl’ in 1929, future President Roosevelt observed: “a nation that destroys its soils destroys itself”. Vegetarianism and veganism are on the rise as ethical dietary choices. However, the undiscussed consequence of this trend is the increase of large-scale cereal agriculture and its […]

Gasoline Gangsters Episode 23: Peak Oil & Christianity

What do oil and Christianity have in common? In this episode I explore the idea that as people use more energy they become less religious. According to Matt Savinar we all worship oil as our new god. As oil leaves our economies what will we worship then?

Food prices will double in 20 years causing mass world hunger, says Oxfam

The prices of some staple foods will more than double by 2030 unless world leaders reform the global food system, Oxfam has warned. The aid charity warned that millions more people could suffer food shortages in two decades due to a ‘perfect storm’ of ecological and sociological factors. A combination of population growth, climate-hit harvests […]

Beware Malthusians in reasonable clothing

The ambient jazzy, folky music – possibly nicked from a nearby Starbucks – had been turned to mute. The lights were dimmed. And the effect was near instant. The postgraduate-dominated audience under-populating the Bloomsbury Theatre in London was finally settling down in glum anticipation of ‘My vision for the future’, the first public event of […]

The CIA Accurately Predicted How Long World Oil Supplies Would Last—in 1978

Perhaps I am atypical, but I’ve always been hypersensitive to what’s going on around me in the real world. Among my earliest childhood memories are the gas lines that followed the 1973 Arab oil embargo; the event which probably planted the seed that sprouted into awareness of peak oil during my fifth decade on this […]

The future doesn’t have to suck

Saul Griffith is one of those people with whom you know you are not going to win a mine-is-bigger-than-yours argument. Certainly not when it comes to the size of your brain. The graduate from University of NSW and the University of Sydney, Dr Griffith completed a PhD in programmable assembly and self-replicating machines at the […]

Canada on Secret Oil Offensive: Documents

The Canadian government has been carrying out a secret plan in Europe to boost investment and keep world markets open for the Alberta tar sands, collaborating with major oil companies and aggressively undermining European environmental measures, documents obtained by The Dominion reveal. In 2009 the federal government launched a strategy to “protect and advance Canadian […]

Overshoot, We Are Here

If we don’t blow ourselves off the face of the earth in the struggle for diminishing scarce resources, humanity will survive. We are a powerfully resourceful and inventive animal. However, if we don’t address the issues below then in the long run it will be same old, same old. We will repeat what all animals […]

Facing The New Dark Age: A Grassroots Approach

Despite four decades of detailed warnings, industrial civilization has failed to turn aside from self-destructive policies of exponential growth and dependence on nonrenewable resources. At this point, stark limits of time and resources as well as a failure of political will make attempts to prevent the fall of industrial society an exercise in futility. Individuals, […]

Gail Tverberg: Observations based on my Trip to China

One of the first things I discovered on the China trip was that I couldn’t write posts on Our Finite World from China, thanks to China’s censorship. I could, however, read posts that I had previously written on Our Finite World. The impression I got was that China allows a moderately free expression of opinion, […]

Feeding the world isn’t easy

With the world population expected to increase by almost 3 billion people by 2050, a Muscle Shoals organization will be at the forefront of ensuring farm production increases accordingly. Scientists at IFDC’s Muscle Shoals headquarters and at outposts around the world are searching for new ways to produce fertilizer that costs less, is more environmentally […]

Derik Andreoli: The Fundamental Problem with Oil Prices

It has been a tumultuous month when it comes to oil and fuel markets. As of the writing of my Oil and Fuel column in the May issue of Logistics Management, which was submitted on the 15th of April, WTI (the crude stream traded on the NYMEX) was at $109.66 per barrel, up 19.8% from […]

ASPO-USA Asks: “What Are We Missing?” – Part 2

RICHARD HEINBERG “Peak Oil and Peak Coal are by themselves seldom acknowledged, but there is a further problem that gets even less attention in the media. It’s one that could have greater short-term impact than anything else (short of a truly apocalyptic natural disaster). And that is the impact of Peak Resources upon the world’s […]

Germany to abandon nuclear power by 2022

The country’s seven oldest reactors already taken off the grid pending safety inspections following the catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March will remain offline permanently, Norbert Roettgen added. The country has 17 reactors total. Roettgen praised the coalition agreement after negotiations through the night between the governing parties. “This is coherent. It […]

TEPCO now admits that three Fukushima reactors have melted, large holes present in containment vessels

The Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) house of cards is toppling, as it has now been revealed that three reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility all melted shortly after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit them on March 11 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…). TEPCO also now admits that holes likely exist in the reactors’ containment […]

Spain’s Irish Spring

“Spain is now as forked as Ireland. It not only has all the problems of a crumbling paradigm — the religion of endless growth — but it has elevated the high priests of that paradigm to its seats of power.” Twenty-one and a half years ago we wrote: “What will it be like when this […]

EU to decouple energy from growth

The European community needs to find ways to decouple economic growth from the rate of resource consumption to advance a green economy, an official said. A report from the European Commission and the U.N. Environment Program finds that without significant reform, natural resource consumption could triple by 2050. This would result in an annual consumption […]

Gasoline Gangsters Episode 22: Peak Oil in the Land Down Under

Australian peak oil production was reached over ten years ago and Australia now imports over 40% of its oil consumption from abroad. But coal and natural gas production have kept growing over the last 30 years and the nation is a net energy exporter. I went to Australia a number of years ago to figure […]

Prices at pump build demand for natural gas cars

With the future of gasoline prices uncertain, cars and trucks that run on compressed natural gas — fuel that’s about half the cost of gasoline — are getting another look. Los Angeles commercial real estate broker Ted Simpson recently snapped up a Honda that runs on CNG, which in the U.S. has been better known […]

Natural gas is not exactly environmentally clean

If you live in the United States — almost anywhere in the U.S. — there may be a gas well coming to a site near you. Even on property you think you own, a gas well may be on its way. Then there is the problem of how much air and water pollution that neighborhood […]

Permaculture, Peak Oil, Climate Change and the Soul of the World

Anima Mundi official trailer 2011 – Permaculture, Peak Oil, Climate Change and the Soul of the World. Will you survive the transition of human industrial civilization happening now due to peak oil and climate change? Can you see the forest for the trees, the earth for the dream, the universe for the seed? Anima Mundi […]

Memorial Day cookout will cost you 29% more this year thanks to inflation

Those thinking of hosting a BBQ – even a modest one – can expect to fork out an extra $45 on food to serve a dozen guests. The total cost comes to $199, or around 29 per cent more than last year… and that’s before soda and alcohol, according to the latest data for metro […]

Alwaleed: Saudi Arabia Ideal Oil Price $70-$80

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said an oil price of $70 to $80 a barrel is in the best interests of Saudi Arabia because it diminishes the urgency in the U.S. and Europe to develop alternative energy sources. “We don’t want the West to go and find alternatives,” Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah, said […]

Shale Boom in Texas Could Increase U.S. Oil Output

Until last year, the 17-mile stretch of road between this forsaken South Texas village and the county seat of Carrizo Springs was a patchwork of derelict gasoline stations and rusting warehouses. Now the region is in the hottest new oil play in the country, with giant oil terminals and sprawling RV parks replacing fields of […]

Pricey oil fuelling dirtier projects

It has often been said that even without a price on carbon there will be a meaningful shift to renewable energy sources once global oil supply peaks. At that point, the idea is that crude prices — along with the price of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — will begin to shoot up, making biofuels, […]

Peak coffee: A cup of trouble

On a mountaintop estate in the rugged coffee-making region of Quindio, Colombia, Juan Pablo Villota is at war with the weather. For three years, abnormally wet conditions have caused massive flooding in the county’s flatlands and damage to his crops. Even the road to his 40-hectare plantation gives testament to his fight: The swollen La […]

China’s coal production up

China’s coal production and traffic volume has maintained double-digit growth, and the national coal reserves stood at 200 million tons by the end of April, helping the nation meet the increasing demand for coal, officials said. China produced 1.12 billion tons of coal by the end of April, an increase of 11.1 percent year-on-year, according […]

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