ABSTRACT This is a response to the two sets of articles written by Sajai Jose on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and on the world’s and India’s hunger crisis. It is…
In the fight to address climate change, renewable energy companies are often assumed to be Jedi Knights. Valiantly struggling to save the planet, wind and solar interests are thought to…
by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox Time is fast running out. The world’s affluent nations, with their abundant greenhouse emissions, have to finally drag themselves across the starting line…
by Don Fitz and the Green Party of St. Louis People the world over are opposing fossil fuel extraction in an incalculable number of ways. It is now clear that…
Thanks to its very name — renewable energy — we can picture a time in the not-too-distant future when our need for non-renewable fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal…
Bear with me, scrupulous historians, as I try to run through some questions and parallels between centuries that I hope will enrich the essential debate on how to confront the…
What is capital? The recently deceased economist David Fleming suggests that it is comprised of financial, natural, social, material, human and scientific/cultural assets. I, myself, would add energy assets in…
Collapse is a frightening subject. The question of why collapse occurs is something I have pieced together over many years of study from a number of different sources, which I will attempt…
Strangely enough, the limit we seem to be reaching with respect to fossil fuel extraction comes from low prices. At low prices, the extraction of oil, coal, and natural gas becomes…
I think we need to talk openly and calmly about the possibility of societal or civilizational collapse arising from humanity’s present predicaments. And that’s mostly what I want to pursue…
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the excessive weight that our total human population and economy has imposed on…
Many people are concerned today with the low price of oil. Others are concerned about slowing or stopping COVID-19. Is there any way forward? I gave a few hints regarding…
Do you remember the story of the straw that broke the camel’s back? It is an illustration of how overloaded systems are sensitive to small perturbations. Could the COVID-19 epidemic…
Citizens seem to be clamoring for shutdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19. There is one major difficulty, however. Once an economy has been shut down, it is extremely difficult…
This July 2019 photo provided by Peter Westley shows carcasses of chum salmon lie along the shore of the Koyukuk River near Huslia. Alaska scientists and fisheries managers are investigating…
This is meant to be an article for activist education and therefore on the one hand it starts with explaining basic concepts; on the other hand it avoids academic references.…
Iran is a country that maintains something of the fascination it had in ancient times, when it was both fabulous and remote. In our times, it remained somewhat remote, but…
Many people are concerned that we have an oil problem. Or they are concerned about recession and the need to lower interest rates. As I see the situation, we have…
We often hear the statement, “When oil supply is lower, oil prices will rise because of scarcity.” Now, we are getting to see firsthand whether oil prices really do rise,…
There was a time, long ago, when the term "Europe" was a vague definition for the lands north of the Mediterranean Sea, a vast regions of fog and swamps, inhabited…
One of the great misconceptions of our time is the belief that we can move away from fossil fuels if we make suitable choices on fuels. In one view, we…
In Europe, Greta Thunberg has smashed all the memetic barriers succeeding in doing what nobody else had succeeded before: bringing the climate emergency within the horizon of the public and…
A simple but important study by Luciano Celi shows what is the real energy return that oil companies manage to attain. Much smaller than you would have believed, in several…
The idea that a collapse is awaiting our civilization seems to be gaining ground, although it has not reached the mainstream debate. But no civilization before ours escaped collapse, so…
Most people expect that our signal of an impending reduction in world oil or coal production will be high prices. Looking at historical data (for example, this post and this post), this is…
Flavius Theodosius Augustus "The Great" (347- 395 CE) was the last emperor to rule over the whole Roman Empire. His success was probably due in large part to his habit…
A few years ago, especially in the 2005-2008 period, many people were concerned that the oil supply would run out. They were concerned about high oil prices and a possible need…
As long as investors continued to plow money into U.S. shale oil companies, the industry seemed unstoppable. But with the flow of those funds all but stopped, has the U.S.…
As the current global oil glut shakes up petro states around the world, oil prices are becoming more volatile than Donald Trump tweets. Neither Canada, now the dumb owner of…
I am always delighted to read another piece by Gail Tverberg. Her articles are consistently highly informative, and the information she presents to us is without exception well documented, clear, and…
Financial markets have been behaving in a very turbulent manner in the last couple of months. The issue, as I see it, is that the world economy is gradually changing from…
"Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.” Ryan Zinke, U.S. Secretary of the Interior (source) "All Warfare is Based on…
Almost everyone seems to believe that our energy problems are primarily oil-related. Electricity will save us. I recently gave a talk to a group of IEEE electricity researchers (primarily engineers) about…
In a recent post, Antonio Turiel proposed that the global peak of diesel fuel production was reached three years ago, in 2018. Turiel's idea is especially interesting since it takes…
Many people, including most Peak Oilers, expect that oil prices will rise endlessly. They expect rising oil prices because, over time, companies find it necessary to access more difficult-to-extract oil.…
Abstract: In the context of growing gap between the demand and the availability of energy and fresh water in India, the close relationship between the usage of energy and water…
20 years ago, Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere published an article on "Scientific American" that was to start the second cycle of interest on oil depletion (the first had been started by…
The world economy seems to be seriously ill. The problem is not overly high oil prices, but that does not rule out energy as being a major underlying problem. Two…
In the period 1975 – 2018, world population increased at an average of 83 million per year, and reached 7.6 billion in 2018. The increase in 2017 was the difference…
After having been awarded the Nobel prize in economics of this year, William Nordhaus has been often presented as some sort of an ecologist (see, e.g. this article on Forbes). Surely,…
The world economy can appear to be operating quite well but can be hiding a major problem that causes it to be fragile. My presentation The World’s Fragile Economic Condition (PDF) explains…
A warlord named Sargon of Akkad was perhaps the first man in history to rule a true empire, around mid 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamia. Before him, humans had been…
To be completely honest I am not sure what more I can say; certainly nothing that would really help our situation. Here we are at the autumnal equinox, heading for…
Where is the world economy heading? In my opinion, a large portion of the story that we usually hear about how the world economy operates and the role energy plays is…
The Club of Rome is inextricably linked to the legendary report that it commissioned to a group of MIT researchers in 1972, "The Limits to Growth." Today, nearly 50 years…
The more I study the story of the Roman Empire, the more I see the similarities with our world. Of course, history doesn't always repeat itself, but it is impressive…
This is Part I of a 3-part essay that uses predation as a metaphor to unpack power relations in human societies. Introduction A lion runs down a gazelle; a raiding…
What exactly are ‘commons’? What resources should come under the umbrella idea of commons? Who owns them? Who should govern and regulate them? Who should it benefit and what has…
One hopes that human wisdom and ethics will continue to grow, but unlimited growth of population and industry on a finite earth is a logical impossibility. Today we are pressing…
Energy is a subject that is greatly misunderstood. Its role in our lives is truly amazing. We humans are able to live and move because of the energy that we…
In his article, “The Earth’s Carrying Capacity for Human Life is Not Fixed,” Ted Nordhaus, co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based energy and environment think tank, seeks to enlist…
This is a condensed and modified version of a paper of mine that appeared on "The Journal of Population and Sustainability" this year. The image above is the well…
Why is it so difficult to make accurate long-term economic forecasts for the world economy? There are many separate countries involved, each with a self-organizing economy made up of businesses,…
We know very little about Queen Boudica of the Iceni (20 AD (?) - 61 AD) and most of what we know is probably deformed by Roman propaganda. But we may…
Ten years ago this week—July 11, 2008 to be exact—the price of a barrel of oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit an intraday high of $147.27, its highest price…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke6UoG8WKU0 I keep reading more and more comments about overpopulation on the social media. It is not just an impression: the trend of increasing interest in population matters is visible…
BP recently published energy data through December 31, 2017, in its Statistical Review of World Energy 2018. The following are a few points we observe, looking at the data: [1] The world…
I'm going to lay it out straight because I get worried. ... I have no idea about the degree that this following assessment regarding India is accurate or not. I…
Many people, including myself, fear that the great acceleration (1, 2) of our consumption and destruction of resources such as land, biodiversity, soil, minerals, and fossil energy sources, could lead us…
Every night I hear trains, which are pulling stuff into Boston city, MA, USA. Oh wow, it's amazing. Some of the engines are pulling more than a hundred cars.…
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