News update

California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth
The New York Times
For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, aerospace, agriculture and vineyards. But now a punishing drought is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature.

Global Energy Trends and Implications for India: The Need to Consume Less Oil
Tobias Engelmeier, The Energy Collective
Oil consumption will rise in India as the economy and the population grows. This is a major headache for the government, since India imports almost all of this fuel. Currently oil prices are fairly low, but if they rise again, they will drive inflation and open up a large trade deficit.

China’s Fuel Demand to Peak Sooner Than Oil Giants Expect
Bloomberg Business
China’s biggest oil refiner is signaling the nation is headed to its peak in diesel and gasoline consumption far sooner than most Western energy companies and analysts are forecasting. If correct, the projections by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, a state-controlled enterprise with public shareholders in Hong Kong, pose a big challenge to the world’s largest oil companies. They’re counting on demand from China and other developing countries to keep their businesses growing as energy consumption falls in more advanced economies.

How changing driving habits are changing the oil and gas industry
Omar Mouallem, Alberta Oil Magazine
For 100 years, the automotive and energy sectors were like two wheels on the same axle, continually spinning forward. Young North Americans are delaying getting their licenses, driving fewer kilometers and buying fewer cars. Given that transportation makes up two-thirds of refined petroleum consumption, the trend has some wondering if the biggest threat facing the oil industry is peak car, not peak oil.

How the climate change debate got hijacked by the wrong standard of proof
Kurt Cobb
The deniers in the fossil fuel industry and elsewhere are attempting by sleight-of-hand to get both the public and policymakers to abandon the preponderance of evidence standard used primarily in civil trials–and which is similar to evidence-based public policymaking–in favor of another judicial standard designed for criminal trials, namely, beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Problem of Human Population
Javier, Peak Oil Barrel
Since the growth rate is declining naturally, if not intervene any new factor human population on Earth would peak slightly above the 10 billion people by 2062 according to the United Nations. This is the problem size. Political campaigns to reduce the growth of the human population are decreasing, not increasing. The question therefore is not to analyze whether the Earth is able to support 10 billion people, as it most likely can, but if it can do it indefinitely. (Note: Translated from Spanish by computer and contains grammatical errors.)

Eco-Socialism or Barbarism – 11 Theses
Bruno Kern, Eco-Socialist Blog
(Message from Saral Sarkar, Eco-Socialist Blog: For those who do not have enough time to read the books and texts written by myself and Bruno Kern (of the Initiative Eco-Socialism) – texts that thoroughly expound our fundamental argumentation and perspective for/on eco-socialism – we now offer a very short text written by Bruno. In it, Bruno has summarized the essential points of our argumentation and perspective in 11 theses.)

Socialism, Capitalism and Anarchism in a collapsing world economy
Peter Goodchild, Survive Peak Oil
The irony is that the present world of global capitalism cannot be considered governed in any democratic sense. If we stretch the definition of ”democracy” to equate it with ”legitimacy” — i.e., the sanction of the governed, the ”social contract” — then one could almost say that it is global capitalism that should be regarded as ”anarchism.” The world is governed, but it has ”no government” (an-archia) in any legitimate form.