News update
Trader Who Scored $100 Million Payday Bets Shale Is Dud
From Bloomberg News
Andy Hall, who was once awarded a $100 million trading bonus, has not seen his good fortune carry over to his bet on shale.
How Did Oil Make a Comeback?
Michael T. Klare, The Nation
Just five years ago, experts were predicting an imminent peak and decline in global oil production. Instead, we’re in the middle of a historic boom. What happened?
Oil rush in America
By Michael T. Klare, TomDipatch.com
Considering all the talk about global warming, peak oil, carbon divestment, and renewable energy, you’d think that oil consumption in the United States would be on a downward path. By now, we should certainly be witnessing real progress toward a post-petroleum economy. As it happens, the opposite is occurring. U.S. oil consumption is on an upward trajectory, climbing by 400,000 barrels per day in 2013 alone — and, if current trends persist, it should rise again both this year and next.
Ozone layer shows signs of recovery after 1987 ban on damaging gases
From The Guardian
The ozone layer that shields life from the sun’s cancer-causing ultraviolet rays is showing its first sign of thickening after years of dangerous depletion, a UN study said on Wednesday. But continued rises in other greenhouse gases, as well as illicit usage of carbon tetrachloride, still has potential to undo gains.
India: The Deafening Silence On Climate Change
By Avinay Umesh-Saiyogita, Countercurrents.org
India is the third largest country in terms of carbon emission. India is the second largest country in terms of population. India is the the country to hold the biggest democratic elections in the world! To exclude the rest, these three factors are enough to highlight the rising importance of India globally. Still, why is there a deafening silence on climate change in India, not only by the media but also by the politicians, subsequently followed by the people as the two former agencies are responsible for prioritizing any agenda.
Three Limits To Growth
By Herman Daly, Steadystate.org
As production (real GDP) grows, its marginal utility declines, because we satisfy our most important needs first. Likewise, the marginal disutilitiy inflicted by growth increases, because as the economy expands into the ecosphere we sacrifice our least important ecological services first (to the extent we know them). A look at these rising costs and declining benefits of growth.
Can supermarkets ever be sustainable?
By Rob Hopkins, Transition Network
Walmart’s new boss is on a mission. Will his drive for renewable energy and waste reduction transform the supermarket model?
On becoming a Ecomodernist
From Peakoil.com
The last few years have seen the emergence of a new environmental movement — sometimes called ecomodernism, other times eco-pragmatism — that offers a positive vision of our environmental future, rejects Romantic ideas about nature as unscientific and reactionary, and embraces advanced technologies, including taboo ones, like nuclear power and genetically modified organisms, as necessary to reducing humankind’s ecological footprint.