Thursday, Dec 15, 2011 11:05 AM PST
Emails show how a Washington lobbyist enlisted Canadian officials to beat back U.S. carbon standards

When President Barack Obama decided in early November to delay a decision on TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline until after the next election, America’s environmental movement celebrated one of its biggest victories in recent memory. And no doubt the news came as a blow to Alberta’s tar sands industry, and to Canada’s oft-stated dream of becoming the next global energy superpower.

But behind activists’ jubilation lurked a somber reality, an untold story with much wider implications. The broader fight to reform Alberta’s tar sands, the one which actually stood a chance of breaking America’s addiction to the continent’s most polluting road fuel, has been quietly abandoned over the past several years. For that we can thank the planet’s richest oil companies and their Canadian government allies, who’ve together waged a stealthy war against President Obama’s climate change ambitions. Read the complete Post.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

John Michael Greer

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-peak-oil-looks-like.html

There are times when the unraveling of a civilization stands out in sharp relief, but more often that process makes itself seen only in the sort of scattered facts and figures that take a sharp eye to notice and assemble into a meaningful picture. How often, I wonder, did the prefects of imperial Rome look up from the daily business of mustering legions and collecting tribute to notice the crumbling of the foundations on which their whole society rested?

Nowadays, certainly, that broader vision is hard to find. It’s symptomatic that in the last few weeks I’ve fielded a fair number of emails insisting that the peak oil theory—of course it’s not a theory at all; it’s a hard fact that the extraction of a finite oil supply in the ground will sooner or later reach a peak and begin to decline—has been rendered obsolete by the latest flurry of enthusiastic claims about shale oil and the like. Enthusiastic claims about the latest hot new oil prospect are hardly new, and indeed they’ve been central to cornucopian rhetoric since M. King Hubbert’s time. A decade ago, it was the Caspian Sea oilfields that were being invoked as supposedly conclusive evidence that a peak in global conventional petroleum production wouldn’t arrive in our lifetimes. Compare the grand claims made for the Caspian fields back then, and the trickle of production that actually resulted from those fields, and you get a useful reality check on the equally sweeping claims now being made for the Bakken shale, but that’s not a comparison many people want to make just now. Read the complete Post.

By ROBERT FROMER

Publication: The Day
Published 11/21/2011 12:00 AM

Daniel Esty, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, is on record pontificating that the country and state’s “dependence on oil carries a great cost” and that “what we really need is to address the full set of energy-related problems with a focus on spurring clean energy innovation” and with imposition of “an emissions charge of $5 per ton of greenhouse gases.”

Such approaches will not solve the energy problem because the energy, which must be invested to obtain the energy produced, is high compared to fossil fuels. In addition, such a tax won’t significantly curtail energy sinning as population grows and the public believes that sufficient natural resources exist to support perpetual economic growth for society’s desired conveniences and comforts.

Commissioner Esty possesses a misunderstanding of the prominent energy issues, misleading the public by proposing simplistic solutions.

In a finite world, fossil-fuel demand and production will peak or plateau and then decline at a variable rate dependent on many factors. Globally, the most dominant factors are population growth and per-capita consumption. Read the complete Post.

by Dr.Jim Stephenson
NSUC 13 November 2011

This article helps us understand our unwillingness to change and how and why we must.

Over the last few years I have become increasingly aware that the path of our society is not sustainable in several ways.
We won’t be able to continue as we are. Sooner or later, stuff will hit the fan.

Naturally, I set out to help my society recognize the dangers and to make the necessary changes. Employing a naive view of the political process, I wrote articles, gave presentations, and ran for political office. It was encouraging having people like Bill McKibben, James Hanson, and Al Gore helping me.

However, as time went by, I noticed that this approach was not leading to the necessary actions. Citizens were not studying the issues, considering the tradeoffs, and electing politicians to do the right thing. Most people were not interested, thought the complexity was too great, fell for the most simplistic campaign slogans, and reacted emotionally.

Intrigued by this dysfunctional behaviour, I set out to explore the ability of humans to practice foresight. After all, one of the characteristics which distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species is an awareness of the future and an ability to plan actions today which affect tomorrow. Today I will share some of my findings about this ability and its past, present, and future use. Read the complete Post.

Enbridge and Kinder Morgan each aim to pump more tar sands gunk to our coast.

By: By Rafe Mair, 14 November 2011, TheTyee.ca

View full article and comments: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/11/14/Oil-Spill-Threats/

Now that the Obama administration has delayed its decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in Texas, we had better gear up for quite a fight here in British Columbia. The pressure just rose to push through two dangerous oil sands pipeline projects running through our own province.

Before I take you through my thinking, let me address two questions I am frequently asked. Are you now a socialist? And, are you against all progress?

My answer to the first question is simple — socialism no longer exists in its original form other than in the minds of theorizing college professors. I believe in a mixed economy, a welfare state in the best sense of that term, and would be a Democrat in U.S. terms and a Social Democrat in Europe. I would be part of New Labour in the U.K.

I’ve done a lot of thinking on where I stand now and when I was in government, and I see a progression towards more social ideas but can, and do, make the case that my record in government shows a leftish tinge.

As to progress, let’s talk about this in a bit of depth, not one-liners.

I am NOT against “progress,” but say that what is and what is not “progress” has to be judged case by case. Just because it’s new and fashionable doesn’t make it progress.

To boil it down to cases, let’s look in some depth at the projected Enbridge pipelines proposal. It is two parallel lines, one carrying the tar sands gunk, known as bitumen, and the other to take the condensate, the stuff they use to transport the bitumen, back to the tar sands. Two potential disasters for the price of one. Read the complete Post.

Mon. Oct. 24, 2011
San Francisco Chronicle

This is a long article, but I think it’s worth your time to read it.
Vandy

What was the real cause of the Great Recession? More importantly, in a country accustomed to robust rebounds from burst bubbles, why is our economy stuck in neutral?

In his latest book, The Third Industrial Revolution, economist and author Jeremy Rifkin argues that the crash of the US housing market was not the proximate cause of the Great Recession, but was instead an aftershock of crude oil hitting a price of $147 per barrel oil in July 2008 – 60 days prior to the crash of the financial markets.

Mr. Rifkin makes a compelling case that our economy reached the end of the second industrial revolution in the 1980’s, and has been largely sustained by debt and the consumption of savings ever since. He argues that the kind of growth witnessed after the first and second industrial revolutions will be impossible to achieve without a third energy-communications revolution – one that leverages Internet-esque smart grids to transition from a centralized “elite” energy paradigm to a highly granular, lateral model. He contends that, as was the case with the first two industrial revolutions, the third revolution will be the foundation of the next great wave of economic growth.

Our energy infrastructure may not be the only thing that requires a rethink. In his book, Mr. Rifkin takes on Adam Smith, challenging classical economic theory with the contention that it does not take thermodynamics into account. The Third Industrial Revolution presents economic theory that incorporates entropy and the relationship between commerce and the planet. Read the complete Post.

Published by Falls Church News-Press on Wed, 10/12/2011 – 08:00
Original article: http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/10285-the-peak-oil-crisis-contagion.html
by Tom Whipple

With every passing day it is becoming more apparent that the crisis of the depletion of cheap oil has become deeply enmeshed in the European debt crises.

The sequence of events is well known. Greece’s economy is imploding; the government can no longer pay its bills without continuing bailouts from the EU; at some point Greece will have to default on at least part of the $430 billion it owes to mostly European banks. Such a default would in turn do severe damage to the viability of many major European Banks which are already suffering a liquidity shortage from the slowing global economy. It is widely believed that these problems quickly would spread to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and now Belgium which are too large to ever be bailed out by France and Germany. Credit Default Swaps would kick in and, taken to the extreme, the world could conceivably not have much of a banking system left. Read the complete Post.

By Agence France-Presse October 12, 2011

A dead shag soaked in oil from the grounded container ship Rena lies on Papamoa Beach near Tauranga on Oct. 12, 2011.
Photograph by: BRADLEY AMBROSE, AFP/Getty Images

PARIS – A container ship stuck on a New Zealand reef risks breaking up and releasing more oil into a pristine bay, escalating the nation’s worst maritime pollution disaster, authorities said Wednesday.

The Liberian-flagged Rena, which hit the Astrolabe Reef 22 kilometres (15 miles) off the North Island coast a week ago, has already leaked up to 300 tonnes of heavy fuel into the environmentally sensitive Bay of Plenty.

There are concerns that the Rena, which has developed cracks in its hull, could break up and release all 1,700 tonnes of oil on board.

Here are some of the world’s worst oil spills over the past 40 years. Read the complete Post.

October 3, 2011

Economist Lester Brown, in the latest book of his Plan B series, states that “socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.” In its frenzy for more consumers and an apparently equal frenzy to ravage ecosystems, capitalism ignores the obvious truth that human overpopulation may already have reached plague status.

Dr. Alan Watt once told a New York City audience that, “You didn’t come into this world at all. You came out of it, in just the same way that a leaf comes out of a tree… Our world is peopling, just as the apple tree produces apples, and the vine grapes.” He explained that, if we are intelligent beings, it must be that we are the fruits of an intelligent Earth, symptomatic of an intelligent energy system, for one “doesn’t gather grapes from thorns.” We should realize that we are intelligent products of a sentient Earth. If we wish to “survive” in what is likely an intelligent cosmos, we must heal planet Earth, which we have been steadily maiming. Reducing our population is essential.

Today’s economic problems will remain unsolvable as long as the illusion is maintained that Earth can support an infinite number of people. Scientists understand that a species can remain healthy only as long as its population does not exceed the environment’s carrying capacity. World population five centuries ago, in 1500, was just 400 million. It quadrupled to 1.6 billion by 1900, and in little more than one century has now mushroomed to seven billion. Read the complete Post.

Only 31 per cent of British Columbians support the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which carries crude oil from northern Alberta to a terminal in Burnaby, according to a new poll.

I think it’s time for government listen to the people and stop all pipeline expansion.

VANCOUVER SUN OCTOBER 11, 2011

Only 31 per cent of British Columbians support the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which carries crude oil from northern Alberta to a terminal in Burnaby, according to a new poll.

The survey, conducted by the Mustel Group and financed out of the office budget of Burnaby-Douglas NDP MP Kennedy Stewart, also found that 35 per cent of respondents support keeping the existing single oil pipeline. Eleven per cent of respondents favoured removing all Trans Mountain oil pipeline infrastructure and 22 per cent didn’t have an opinion. Read the complete Post.