CLIMATE CRISIS
Goldilocks Is Dead Richard Heinberg Five years ago I wrote an article for Reuters titled “Goldilocks and the Three Fuels.” In it, I discussed what I call the Goldilocks price zone for oil, natural gas, and coal, a zone in which prices are “just right”—high enough to reward producers but low enough to entice consumers….
Read More about News updateCLIMATE CRISIS
Arctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter maximum The Guardian, UK Arctic sea ice has hit a record low for its maximum extent in winter, which scientists said was a result of climate change and abnormal weather patterns. The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) said on Thursday that at its…
Read More about News updateCLIMATE CRISIS
Can Solar be the Backbone of India’s Energy System by 2035? Tobias Engelmeier, The Energy Collective Around 70% of India’s power comes from coal, less than 1% from solar. Will that change in the next 20 years? Can solar become the new backbone of the Indian energy system? I think there is a good possibility…
Read More about News updateEconomy
The German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist Max Weber (1864-1920) is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of sociology. Weber is best known for his contention that ascetic Protestantism was the driving force behind market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal nation-state in the West. Against Marx’s “historical materialism”, Weber emphasised…
Read More about Max Weber on energy and industrial civilisationCLIMATE CRISIS
Lester Brown: ‘Vast dust bowls threaten tens of millions with hunger’ The Guardian, UK Vast tracts of Africa and of China are turning into dust bowls on a scale that dwarfs the one that devastated the US in the 1930s, one of the world’s pre-eminent environmental thinkers has warned. Over 50 years, the writer Lester…
Read More about News updateCLIMATE CRISIS
India’s 100 GW Solar Target Could Create 1 Million Jobs by 2022 The Energy Collective Delhi is abuzz as the first renewable energy-financing summit organized by the Indian government, RE-Invest 2015, wrapped up with commitments totaling a whopping 266 GW of renewable energy in the next 5 years. For context of the magnitude of these…
Read More about News updateENERGY
In 1977, Time magazine asked science writer Isaac Asimov for his vision of an energy-poor society that might exist at the end of the 20th century. The following portrait, Asimov noted, “need not prove to be accurate. It is a picture of the worst, of waste continuing, of oil running out, of nothing in its…
Read More about Isaac Asimov: The Nightmare Life Without FuelConflict/Dispossession
What is Saudi Arabia not telling us about its oil future? Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights What if the Saudis are acting now to undermine U.S. and Canadian oil production because they realize that Saudi production will soon reach a peak? What if the Saudis fear that energy efficiency, fuel substitution (say, toward natural gas), and…
Read More about News updateEcologise Events
Transition Towns is a world wide living experiment in how to shift our current system of unequal, growth based consumption, to one where all are living well in times of change and within our planetary boundaries. The transition movement now has many examples of how local, small scale change can influence social and political systems. Naresh Giangrande, co founder of…
Read More about Bangalore meeting with Naresh of Transition Town TotnesALTERNATIVES
The Industrial Society or the Carbon Society The present social system that we are living is called Industrial Society. It began with the Industrial Revolution (1760 -1830) in the West and was followed by social revolution in various countries – Holland, France, England and the USA, ending the age old feudal society and ushering in…
Read More about T. Vijayendra: Post Carbon Society And TransitionCLIMATE CRISIS
The Fracking Bust Hits Home Wolf Richter, Wolf Street In the latest reporting week, drillers idled another 84 rigs, the second biggest weekly cut ever, after idling 83 and 94 rigs in the two prior weeks. Only 1056 rigs are still drilling for oil, down 443 for the seven reporting weeks so far this year…
Read More about News updateENERGY
Timo Grossenbacher Labs This interactive visualization, based on very recent data by BP, allows the reader to quickly grasp the temporal and spatial differences in oil consumption and production. On one hand, during certain periods of history, some nations consumed almost as much oil as the rest of the world together. On the other hand, the data…
Read More about Interactive Chart: Global Oil Production & ConsumptionENERGY
When William R. Catton Jr., American sociologist and author of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, passed away on January 5th, it went unnoticed by the mainstream media, or even the alternative press. This was expected, too. His work shaped the views of many activists and writers on issues like Peak Oil, resource depletion…
Read More about Obituary: William R. Catton Jr. (Jan 15, 1926 – Jan 5, 2015)Ecologise Events
Date: 21 Feb 2015 , Time: 3.00pm-6.00pm Venue: A.V Hall, Don Bosco High School, Sirsi Speakers: Mansoor Khan and Sagar Dhara Growth is considered to be the fundamental characteristic of any healthy economic system. This growth is fuelled by the easy availability of fossil fuel, which is a limited natural resource formed over millions of years. We have now reached a stage where half…
Read More about Living in a World with Limited Resources – Sirsi, Feb 21Economy
OPEC Chief Claims Oil Could Rebound to $200 a barrel Oilprice.com OPEC’s secretary-general says the 7-month-old plunge in oil prices finally may have bottomed out and may be ready to rise again. In fact, Abdullah al-Badri hypothesized that a decision by his cartel to cut production conceivably could lead to oil at $200 a barrel….
Read More about News updateCLIMATE CRISIS
Climate change inaction pushes ‘doomsday clock’ closer to midnight The Guardian, UK The symbolic doomsday clock moved to three minutes before midnight on Thursday because of the gathering dangers of climate change and nuclear proliferation, signalling the gravest threat to humanity since the throes of the cold war. It was the closest the clock has…
Read More about News updateCLIMATE CRISIS
2014 Warmest Year on Record The New York Times Last year was the hottest on earth since record-keeping began in 1880, scientists reported, underscoring warnings about the risks of runaway greenhouse gas emissions and undermining claims by climate change contrarians that global warming had somehow stopped. Groundbreaking Study Confirms: We Must Leave Fossil Fuels “In…
Read More about News updateCLIMATE CRISIS
DISCUSSION – JAN 17 “The shape of post carbon society and the hazy road to get there” Time and date: 6.30 pm, Sat, 17 Jan 2015 Place: Cerana Foundation office, D-101 Highrise Apartments, Lower Tank Bund Road (next to Courtyard Marriott Hotel), Hyderabad. Tel: 2753 6128. Message from the organiser (Sagar Dhara): Some of our friends were in…
Read More about Upcoming events in HyderabadDigests/Specials
“He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.” – Bertolt Brecht (Editor’s Note: As a necessary corrective to the unbridled optimism of the mainstream media, here’s a selection of forecasts for 2015 by some of the most insightful alternative voices on world politics, energy and the economy. For those in a hurry, here’s a one-line…
Read More about Special: 2015: The bad newsENERGY
The First Shale Casualty: WBH Energy Files For Bankruptcy; Many More Coming Zero Hedge While the mainstream media continues to chant the happy-clappy side of lower oil prices, now, we have the first casualty of the shale oil leverage debacle as WSJ reports, on Sunday, a private company that drills in Texas, WBH Energy LP,…
Read More about News update
