Yves here. We’ve written repeatedly about how short-lived shale gas wells are compared to conventional oil wells. The fact that the much-touted shale gas play will in aggregate abate relatively quickly is not something its proponents want the greater public to hear.
Read more...Yves here. This post by Gaius not only reports on the latest rumors surrounding the Fukushima clean up (such as it is) but also the huge danger the site poses to Japan and the US if it is not stabilized.
Read more...I really enjoy speaking with Harry Shearer, both for his engaging manner and his thorough preparation. I also hope you’ll see fit to circulate this interview, since the more attention we can bring to this plan to legalize corporate pillage, the better.
Read more...Yves here. One of the things on our very long list of important issues we’d like to write about is the way Google, an unregulated information-screener, can dictate companies’ business models and keep information out of the public eye by how they handle search queries. Richard Smith give an example below.
Read more...I’m generally very taken with Ian Welsh’s work, particularly two recent posts, A New Ideology and How to Create a Viable Ideology. He then continued with 44 Explicit Points on Creating a Better World. And I hate to say it, but the last piece was no where near as well thought out as the preceding pieces. What troubled me about his latest piece was its combination of confidence (as opposed to modesty and soliciting reactions and input) in combination with it having internal contractions and a lack of precision of language. But perhaps the biggest shortcoming was trying to finesse the question of governance.
Read more...Yves here. Given the almost innate bullish bias of equity investors, when they start worrying about something, that means it actually has non-trivial odds of happening. So the idea that investors think it’s possible that a lot of current proven fossil fuels won’t be lifted is an unexpected bit of good news on the climate change front. Whether this comes to pass soon enough to save our collective bacon is another question entirely.
Read more...For years, energy analysts had been anticipating an imminent decline in global oil supplies. Suddenly, they’re singing a new song: Fossil fuels growing scarce? Don’t even think about it! The news couldn’t be better: fossil fuels will become ever more abundant.
This movement from gloom about our energy future to what can only be called fossil-fuel euphoria may prove to be the hallmark of our peculiar moment.
Read more...If we don’t “stop now” — meaning, hit the carbon brake hard and stop the carbon car — we risk going over a cliff whose edge could be as near as five to ten years away.
Read more...This post debunks the idea that reducing military spending would be damaging to the economy.
Read more...Yves here. While this post focuses on a newly-released Department of Energy forecast, and forecasting is always a fraught exercise, there’s good reason to see it as realistic. It reflects the power of inertia and entrenched interests. If anything, you’d expect the DoE to present a hopeful outlook on the growth of eco-friendly power sources, given how often Obama talks about “green energy” and “green jobs,” but the authors appear to have steered clear of undue optimism.
Read more...By Michael Hoexter, a policy analyst and marketing consultant on green issues, climate change, clean and renewable energy, and energy efficiency. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives.
Lambert here: NC Readers may wish to consider the implications of Hoexter’s plan for the financial system and the FIRE sector generally, as well as its fiscal aspects.
The largest-scale, most important and time-sensitive challenge facing humanity is the climate crisis. The capitalist industrial societies of the last two hundred years and the command-and-control industrial economies of mid-20th Century Communist regimes are and were both premised on the idea that the environment is an infinitely capacious dumping ground for the physical by-products of industrial production and consumption. One class of those byproducts that was overlooked in the first waves of concern about the environment in the 1960’s and 70’s, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, has turned out to be the most potentially damaging in the longer term and among the most difficult to bring under control.
Read more...I have often railed against the economic approach to social organisation problems which can be described as ‘assume first ask questions later’. There are too few good economists following more scientific methods of sound reasoning and the reliance on evidence in light of real world institutional structures.
The first approach is often called ‘thinking like an economist’.
Read more...Yves here. Let me underscore that the source for this article is not a granola-head organization but the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is one of the US national labs, or more formally, the United States Department of Energy national laboratories and technology centers.
Read more...By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor-in-chief of The Automatic Earth, Cross posted from Automatic Earth
No, I wasn’t going to write a third article on shale in 2 weeks, absolutely not. But what I’ve read these past few days doesn’t leave me much choice.
Read more...Yves here. The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is ten days away. Brace yourself for the reminisces, most of which will be genuine, heartfelt, and insightful, while others which will treat the occasion as an opportunity for brand identification.
McKibben, a well-known and effective climate change activist, raises the question of leadership in movements to promote social change. He argues that the charismatic chieftain is out, and the model now is that of distributed leadership, with lower level “leaders” being more critical to movement success than ever before.
Read more...