The Post Carbon Institute has been responsible for a couple of great viral videos recently. Who killed economic growth? is a pithy introduction to post growth arguments, and 300 years fossil fuels in 300 seconds has now been watched over a million times on Youtube. Perhaps emboldened by the success of the latter, PCI has gone [...]
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The government’s other peak oil report
A couple of years ago the government released The Wicks Report on energy security. It was an almost stunningly complacent piece of work from the former energy minister, claiming in the first paragraph that “there is no crisis”. Using the IEA’s rosiest figures and ignoring the government’s own cross-party working group on peak oil, Wicks [...]
The oil crunch: are we there yet?
In November last year I highlighted the fact that the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook was already talking about peak oil in the past. By their estimate, conventional oil production peaked in 2006. It didn’t make the news, which surprised me, and the International Energy Agency did not elaborate. So I was pleased to see [...]
Welcome to the world of peak gold
This week the price of gold burst through the $1,500 an ounce mark. It’s a new record in a long run for gold over the last five years. This week’s spike is at least partly due, once again, to a credit ratings agency. Standard and Poor’s passed judgement on US debt on monday, and some [...]
The best cure for a hangover is not to sober up
Today’s newspapers are all reporting on yesterday’s budget. Fairly predictably, most of the front pages champion the change to fuel duty. The chancellor’s speech was written to highlight that very measure, saving it to the end. ”We have put fuel into the tank of the British economy”, he concluded, and the nation’s journalists looked no further [...]
A dispatch from the New Home Front
A few months ago I was inspired by a great exhibition called The Ministry of Food, at the Imperial War Museum. The exhibition, which has now finished, documented the huge social movement that mobilised the British population during the war. The country was far too dependent on imported food, and people had to learn to [...]
Parliamentary report: Fuel rationing may be necessary by 2020
This morning the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil are launching their new report, with a warning that Britain needs to prepare for a future of constrained energy supplies. The report outlines a strategy for dealing with energy shortages, through Tradeable Energy Quotas (TEQs). I wasn’t able to make the launch, but I have [...]
BP oil spill increases chance of oil supply crunch
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has increased the chance of an oil supply crunch in the near future, the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES) has warned. The loss of the Macondo oil field where the accident took place will not significantly reduce the amount of oil available. However, the six month [...]
IEA: peak oil happened in 2006
Honestly, you wait years for the International Energy Agency to admit that peak oil is a reality, and then they tell you it’s already happened. This year’s World Energy Outlook came out on Tuesday, and it says the peak came in 2006. The agency mentions this almost as an aside. In projecting energy supply over [...]
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