Richard Heinberg dips into the economic realities of oil prices. How do we reconcile oil industry claims that there's plenty of oil out there with a lived reality of ever-rising prices?
Former Airbus insider, Kristen Lagadec, explains to GlobalPublicMedia why high oil prices are even more painful for aircraft manufacturers than for the airlines, who are already suffering.
China is the world's foremost coal producer and consumer, surpassing the United States by a factor of two on both scores and accounting for 40 percent of total world production. Museletter #195.
If the peak oil balloon really is going up, we should expect to see world leaders, politicians, business chiefs and the mainstream media in general realizing and admitting that something new is happening. But are we really at the tipping point for peak oil? Julian Darley answers: Yes, no and maybe.
Richard Heinberg: No one knows the long-term carrying capacity of planet Earth for
humans, absent cheap fossil fuels, but it’s likely a lot fewer than
seven billion. The implication is not just sobering; it’s paralyzing. So what to do with such traumatic knowledge?
The United States has the world's largest coal reserves. With energy prices constantly rising and coal considered a "cheap" alternative, Richard Heinberg's survey of the literature on coal reserves is important reading. There's reason to believe that reserves are being overestimated, as they have been through the industry's history. Museletter #194.
Richard Heinberg muses on the passing of the days of cheap air travel: The airline industry has no future. The same is true for airfreight. No
air carrier has a viable plan to make a profit with oil at current
prices—much less in years to come as the petroleum available to world
markets dwindles rapidly.
As
U.S. gasoline prices crest the astronomical price of four dollars a gallon, many Americans are complaining that prices are too high to bear. They might
spare a thought for the Scottish who would be grateful to pay $8.30 a
gallon, if only they could get it.
In this article for HopeDance Magazine, Post Carbon Institute founder Julian Darley
discusses the connections between food and energy, both globally and as locally as your kitchen table.
