Third time’s a charm?

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Kurt Vonnegut often described World Wars I and II as western civilization’s first and second attempts, respectively, to commit suicide. He hinted at peak oil as our third attempt in his memoir, Man Without a Country, which was published shortly before his death. After burying our collective heads in the sand for two years, peak [...]

Talking about oil in Oil City, USA

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

46 Comments

I presented in Austin, Texas, 9 January 2011 under the title, Durable Living: Preparing for Climate Change and Energy Decline. Free and open to the public, the event was sponsored by Design~Build~Live and Crude Awakening Austin, and attended by about 30 people. I was shooting video of this presentation, but my camera failed 15 minutes [...]

Techno-optimism meets its match

Monday, November 15, 2010

68 Comments

According to the extremely conservative International Energy Agency (IEA), we’ve passed the world peak for conventional oil (in 2006, they say). In a stunning nod to reality, even the New York Times agrees. In a bizarre case of committee-style cognitive dissonance, the IEA follows up on the admission that peak oil has come and gone [...]

Empire of lies

Sunday, October 31, 2010

44 Comments

Benny and the Inkjets are tossing the money around, but it didn’t pump up the industrial economy the last time and QE2 will be no better, even if the next version is expectedly gihugic. He’s destroying the dollar in the process of printing fiat currency, but he cannot keep up with the ongoing economic contraction. [...]

A presentation with audio and another about bioenergy

Friday, October 1, 2010

31 Comments

Two presentations follow. The first focuses on the twin sides of the fossil fuel coin and what we can do about it, as presented in Louisville, Kentucky earlier this week. It’s similar to many presentations I’ve given recently and it includes an audio file, so you can follow along with the slides. The second was [...]

Typical presentation

Saturday, September 18, 2010

31 Comments

The pages below are excerpted from the presentation I delivered to the Sixth Annual Gila River Festival in Silver City, New Mexico on Friday, 17 September. Click on one of the seven pages to view it. With apologies for the awkward format, click again to make it large enough to read. As always, questions and [...]

A review before the exam

Monday, August 16, 2010

104 Comments

Actually, this review is too late for the many people who have already endured economic collapse. As any of those folks can tell the rest of us, we do not want to receive the lesson after the exam. I’ve written all this before, but I have not recently provided a concise summary. This essay provides [...]

Muddling along

Monday, August 2, 2010

28 Comments

After a woefully inept introduction, this essay forces me to stare into the abyss of planet-destroying myth. If you believe we’re headed for a muddle-through future in which we correct massive ecological overshoot with the tranquility of Buddhist monks, this is the essay you’ve been waiting to read. Come on along, if you dare, keeping [...]

Economic and environmental consequences of expensive oil

Friday, July 16, 2010

17 Comments

What are the causes and consequences of expensive oil? The first question is posed in this article, and answered surprisingly well by a neoclassical economist. He understands the relationship between the price of oil and economic growth, and he hints at constrained supply while also expressing irrational exuberance about continued economic growth. As an economist, [...]

Warning shots

Thursday, April 29, 2010

39 Comments

How many do you need? I still keep hearing, “If things get bad, I’ll move to ….” And then fill in the blank with your favorite fantasy or nightmare, including these and many more: “my sister-in-law’s property in Kansas” “Mexico” “the wilderness” “a central America country” “southern Europe” “the coast” First, let’s consider how “bad” [...]

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