OilSupplyLimitsAndTheContinuingFinancialCrisis

a b s t r a c t
Gail E. Tverberg
Since 2005, (1) world oil supply has not increased, and (2) the world has undergone its most severe economic crisis since the Depression. In this paper, logical arguments and direct evidence are presented suggesting that a reduction in oil supply can be expected to reduce the ability of economies to use debt for leverage. The expected impact of reduced oil supply combined with this reduced leverage is similar to the actual impact of the 2008e2009 recession in OECD countries.

If world oil supply should continue to remain generally flat, there appears to be a significant possibility that oil consumption in OECD countries will continue to decline, as emerging markets consume a greater share of the total oil that is available. If this should happen, based on these findings we can expect a continuing financial crisis similar to the 2008-2009 recession including significant debt defaults. The financial crisis may eventually worsen, to resemble a collapse situation as described by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies (1990) or an adverse decline situation similar to adverse scenarios foreseen by Donella Meadows in Limits to Growth (1972).

Village Vancouver and Vancouver Peak Oil are pleased to welcome Richard Heinberg to Vancouver as part of the CoDev World Community Film Festival. Richard is one of the world’s most effective exponents of the urgent need to move away from fossil fuels and towards a post-growth economy.

Author of 10 books, including 2010′s The End of Growth, his wry, unflinching approach addresses challenges such as climate change, peak oil, economic instability, and food insecurity.

He exposes the tenuousness of our current way of life, while exploring governmental responses and promising grassroots models in community resilience, including the Transition Town Movement and the Occupy Movement. Heinberg offers a radical vision for a truly sustainable future.

More information about Richard Heinberg can be found on his website: richardheinberg.com.

JOIN US – FEB 10, 2012 5pm – 7pm
Langara College – Theater 5, Room 130
100 W 49th, Vancouver, BC
Admission to the festival opening lecture is by donation
Please register thru Langara 604.323.5322 (CRN 50966) or RSVP here.

The event is cosponsored by Village Vancouver and Vancouver Peak Oil. You don’t need to attend the film festival to attend Richard’s presentation. (Though we encourage you to go – it’s a great festival!)

Village Vancouver and Vancouver Peak Oil are pleased to welcome Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleigh, of The Automatic Earth back to talk about the future of our economy. She packed a lecture hall at Langara College last year with tales of impending economic collapse.

Now, after the Occupy Movement launched last fall, she has a new upbeat tone and theme, The Storm Surge of Decentralization. This is the 99%’s reaction to what we now know about the Ponzi schemes embedded in our modern financial systems, and changes have already begun.

Nicole Foss is a globally-sought issues leader on transition and an expert on the macro-economics of resilience.

JOIN US TO HEAR NICOLE
Thursday Feb. 2, 2012
7pm – 9pm
Langara College – Theater 5, Room 130
100 West 49th Avenue, Vancouver, BC
By donation at the door.
Please register thru Langara 604.323.5322 (CRN 50965) or
RSVP here.

How to Boil a Frog
Saturday, January 21, 2012
by Jon Cooksey

Up here in Canada, we’re in the middle of a sort of “dirty tricks” campaign by the federal government that’s so lame that even our right-tilting newspapers have called them out on it. The campaign is ostensibly designed to pre-empt opposition to the Enbridge pipeline, which would carry 550,000 barrels a day of unrefined tar sands crude oil to Kitimat, British Columbia, where it would then be taken by tanker through some of the most dangerous straits in the world on its way to China. The potential downside, aside from twenty more nails in the coffin of catastrophic global warming, would be oil spills in pristine BC waters that would make the Exxon Valdez seem like the aftermath of a Mormon grad night party, as well as innumerable pipeline leaks and spills throughout some of the world’s last great wilderness.

So how do you put lipstick on that zombie pig while it’s munching on the brains of our hapless children? Part 1 was the “Ethical Oil” campaign, arguing that the Middle Eastern countries (the ones that Eastern Canada imports its oil from) are less ethical sources of oil than the tar sands because they’ll kill you for adultery, as opposed to making you the Republican presidential candidate. The other argument has been that “foreigner billionaires” are “hijacking” a home-grown Canadian process – a National Energy Board review that’s hearing from people along the pipeline route – these alleged billionaires being distinct from the foreigner billionaires (Rex Tillerson of Exxon, Richard Kinder of Enron, etc.) who are doing everything they can to expand the tar sands and profit off shipping it to China through these pipelines. Read the complete Post.

A Whistleblower’s Open Letter to the Citizens of Canada

My name is Andrew Frank. I grew up in a small town in the Okanagan valley of British Columbia. My granddad taught me how to fish. My father was a well‐respected lawyer known for his unwavering integrity, and my mother was a favourite kindergarten teacher.Both have always impressed upon me the importance of telling the truth.

Today, I am taking the extraordinary step of risking my career, my reputation and my personal friendships, to act as a whistle blower and expose the undemocratic and potentially illegal pressure the Harper government has apparently applied to silence critics of the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil tanker/pipeline plan.As I have detailed in a sworn affidavit, no less than three senior managers with Tides Canada and Forest Ethics (a charitable project of Tides Canada), have informed me, as the Senior Communications Manager for Forest Ethics, that Tides Canada CEO, Ross McMillan,was informed by the Prime Minister’s Office, that Forest Ethics is considered an “Enemy of the Government of Canada,” and an “Enemy of the people of Canada.”This language was apparently part of a threat by the Prime Minister’s Office to challenge the charitable status of Tides Canada if it did not agree to stop funding Forest Ethics, specifically its work opposing oilsands expansion and construction of oil sands tanker/pipeline routes in Canada.

This is especially concerning because Forest Ethics is a legally registered intervenor in the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel process, currently examining the Enbridge oil tanker/pipeline proposal. By attempting to silence a registered participant in the review, I fear the Harper government may have permanently damaged the integrity of this process. Read the complete Post.

By Terry Glavin, The Ottawa CitizenJanuary 12, 2012

China is gaining control of Canada’s natural resources. Carbon bomb for the planet. Energy insecurity for Canada. Vandy

If there were a global competition for the most brazen and preposterously transparent attempt by a ruling political party to change a necessary subject of national debate with alarmist distractions and hubbub, the Conservative escapade engineered in Ottawa these past few days really deserves some kind of grand prize.

First it was Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself, carrying on about some sort of conspiracy involving jet-setting American radical billionaire eco-saboteurs who are intent upon blocking Canada’s vital bitumen semi-fluids by ambuscading the Enbridge pipeline hearings that began this week in the Haisla village of Kitimat on British Columbia’s north coast.

Then Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver got in on the act. “These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. … They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest.” A problem: when he went dredging around for evidence, Oliver came up with a two-month delay in approving some skating pond in Banff National Park. Then he tried backtracking. He’d suddenly found himself keeping company with conspiracy theorists who like making dirty insinuations about Ducks Unlimited. You had to feel sorry for the guy.

But if we’re seriously supposed to be going all villagers-with-torches about foreign outfits with weird ideologies undermining Canada’s national economic interests, let’s review what’s really going on, shall we?

The $5.5-billion Enbridge pipeline project is all about sending Alberta bitumen in huge oil tankers to China. Beijing’s own state enterprises are among the project’s major backers, and Beijing has been buying up Alberta’s oilpatch at such a dizzying pace lately it’s hard to keep up. In the spring of 2010, China’s state-owned Sinopec Corp. took a $4.65-billion piece of Syncrude. Then the China Investment Corporation, which is run by the Chinese Communist Party, took possession of a $1.25-billon share of Penn West Petroleum. Last summer, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation gobbled up Opti Canada for $2.34 billion. And so on. Read the complete Post.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 1:27 AM
Mish Shedlock

Great summary of Peak Oil and Overpopulation in relation to each other. Vandy

“In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.” says Professor Stephen Hawking as reported by Edward Morgan in Looking at the New Demography.

Suffice to say the rate of population growth will not continue, and Morgan makes the case we are already in stage 5 of The Demographic Transition Model

Peak Oil Implications on Population Growth Read the complete Post.