peak oil

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pages: 127 words: 51,083

The Oil Age Is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil, 2005-2050 by Matt Savinar

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, clean water, disinformation, Easter island, energy security, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, invisible hand, military-industrial complex, new economy, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, post-oil, Ralph Nader, reserve currency, rolling blackouts, Rosa Parks, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Y2K

If the media was to publicly announce the truth about Peak Oil, investment in the stock market would evaporate, the economy would plunge, chaos would ensue, and the whole deck of cards would come crashing down before our leaders and corporate elite have a chance to secure their own well-being. B. Ramifications of Peak Oil are Too Shocking to Deal With The ramifications of Peak Oil are so serious that it is hard for anybody, including journalists and politicians, to accept it as reality. C. Why Bother? People will Just Kill the Messenger The average American may not be emotionally prepared to deal with Peak Oil. Peak Oil is a literal death sentence to much of our population as well as a figurative death sentence to the energy-intensive American way of life.

Bush's Energy Advisor, Matthew Simmons, addressed this issue at the Paris Peak Oil Conference, stating: I think it is human nature, basically, to say that we really like to have pleasant thoughts. The one crying wolf is abandoned unless the wolf turns out to be already at the front door, and by then, the cry is generally too late. And crises are basically problems, by definition, that have gone ignored. And all great crises were ignored until it became too late to do anything about it.70 Peak Oil isn't "Y2K Reloaded." Peak Oil differs from previous “end of the world” scenarios such as Y2K in the following ways: 1. Peak Oil is not an “if” but a “when.”

These are just some simple steps you can begin taking immediately. 1. Educate yourself about Peak Oil and its ramifications. 2. Educate others. If you're not sure how to go about doing so, consider lending them this book or emailing them a link to lifeaftertheoilcrash. 3. Seek out like-minded folks. There are Peak Oil groups forming all over the country. I have a list of these groups available on my site, http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/groups 4. Perform Google searches for Peak Oil whenever you get the chance. As more people search for "Peak Oil," the folks at Google will take notice. This may result in increased mainstream media coverage. 5.


pages: 235 words: 65,885

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines by Richard Heinberg, James Howard (frw) Kunstler

Adam Curtis, addicted to oil, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, carbon tax, classic study, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, demographic transition, ending welfare as we know it, energy transition, Fractional reserve banking, greed is good, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, land reform, Lewis Mumford, means of production, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, the built environment, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, urban planning

Her workshops are designed to help participants process more thoroughly, quickly, and effectively the grief they feel over the destruction of people and planet, and to overcome the psychology of denial and helplessness that keeps them mired in the status quo. Workshop tools include ritualistic exercises and guided creative processes. In the past few years Joanna has been supportive of Peak Oil education and I’ve been delighted to offer public presentations with her on a couple of occasions. Some Peak Oil groups in North America and Australia have offered workshops based on her work, including one called “The Heart of Peak Oil” held in Melbourne in 2006. More than once I’ve heard the comment that at least some Peak Oil and Climate Change activists seem strangely happy despite the dire nature of their message. Perhaps the Kübler-Ross formula, though useful, is insufficient for the purpose of describing the full cycle of psychological reactions among environmental activists.

If We Do This Well Chapter 3 - (post-) Hydrocarbon Aesthetics Designing for the Tragic Interlude of Cheap Abundance Hydrocarbon Style: Big, Fast, and Ugly Oh, To Be Hip Again Manifesto for a Post-Carbon Aesthetic ON NATURE’S LIMITS AND THE HUMAN CONDITION Chapter 4 - Five Axioms of Sustainability History and Background Five Axioms Evaluation Chapter 5 - Parrots and Peoples Chapter 6 - Population, Resources, and Human Idealism THE END OF ONE ERA, THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER Chapter 7 - The Psychology of Peak Oil and Climate Change Explaining Our Incomprehension Acceptance and Beyond: Peak Oil Grief Collective PTSD A Model for Explanation and Treatment: Addiction and Dependency Proactive Application: Social Marketing Chapter 8 - Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism Differing Perspectives Differing Recommendations Supply Side, Demand Side Common Ground Chapter 9 - Boomers’ Last Chance? What Made the “Greatest Generation” Great The “Me” Generation The Boomers’ Defining Moments The Path Taken Another Fork in the Road Chapter 10 - A Letter From the Future Chapter 11 - Talking Ourselves to Extinction Language and Religion Grammar, Reason, Logic, and Evidence Language and the Ecological Dilemma Can Language Help Us Now?

According to one recent US government-sponsored study, if the peak does occur soon replacements are unlikely to appear quickly enough and in sufficient quantity to avert what it calls “unprecedented” social, political, and economic impacts.2 This book is not an introduction to the subject of Peak Oil; several existing volumes serve that function (including my own The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies).3 Instead it addresses the social and historical context in which Peak Oil is occurring, and explores how we can reorganize our thinking and action in several critical areas to better navigate this perilous time. Our socio-historical context takes some time and perspective to appreciate. Upon first encountering Peak Oil, most people tend to assume it is merely a single isolated problem to which there is a simple solution — whether of an eco-friendly nature (more renewable energy) or otherwise (more coal).


pages: 257 words: 94,168

Oil Panic and the Global Crisis: Predictions and Myths by Steven M. Gorelick

California gold rush, carbon footprint, energy security, energy transition, flex fuel, Ford Model T, income per capita, invention of the telephone, Jevons paradox, meta-analysis, North Sea oil, nowcasting, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, price elasticity of demand, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, statistical model, stock buybacks, Thomas Malthus

The oil analysts focus not on when the last drop of oil will be pumped from the ground but rather the time when oil production will reach its peak (“peak oil”). It is their belief that the occurrence of peak oil production marks the beginning of the end, that is, the point when production can no longer keep up with demand. The argument goes that at the peak of oil production, the 4 End of the Oil Era end is in sight, and it is urgent that a fundamental restructuring of our oilbased society begin. So, when do analysts say that “peak oil” will occur? Surprisingly, the projections do not differ by much. The average collective estimate is that global peak oil production will occur before 2025, with the more pessimistic analysts suggesting that the peak has already occurred and we just do not know it, and the optimists pushing the date out to almost 2050.

The date corresponding to this peak (actually occurring in 1970) is the time of maximum oil production, or “peak oil” production. Beyond peak oil, supplies presumably become depleted more rapidly than production from new discoveries can be brought on line. The curve after the peak falls back toward a level of nominal production. Eventually, the resource is exhausted when cumulative production nears the value of the oil endowment. One might wonder how robust the curve-fitting procedure might be. That is, perhaps it is possible to fit the historical data with a variety of curves, each showing a different time to peak oil. It turns out that, even though the shapes of various curves that fit these data might be a bit different, the time of peak oil estimated using the approach does not vary by much.

Also shown is a fit to production data using Hubbert’s approach but assuming an oil endowment value of 3 trillion barrels. The time of peak oil does not change substantially under these scenarios. (Data: EIA and Hubbert (1969)23) Many analysts have followed in Hubbert’s footsteps and made predictions of their own. There are various studies of the timing of peak oil production that show how different assumed oil endowment values and other factors, such as the growth of demand, affect the timing of global oil depletion. A 2004 study of global oil depletion in the journal Energy by Hallock and others looked at peak oil timing under a range of assumptions of oil endowment and future demand.


pages: 372 words: 107,587

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Richard Heinberg

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, computerized trading, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Elliott wave, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, green transition, happiness index / gross national happiness, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, income inequality, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Kenneth Rogoff, late fees, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, naked short selling, Naomi Klein, Negawatt, new economy, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, price stability, private military company, quantitative easing, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, short selling, special drawing rights, systems thinking, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade liberalization, tulip mania, WikiLeaks, working poor, world market for maybe five computers, zero-sum game

Jeremy Gilbert, “No We Can’t: Uncertainty, Technology, and Risk,” presented at the ASPO-USA 2010 Peak Oil Conference, Washington, DC, October 9, 2010. 5. Jessica Bachman, “Special Report: Oil and Ice: Worse Than the Gulf Spill?” Reuters.com, posted November 8, 2010. 6. Charles Maxwell, quoted in Wallace Forbes, “Bracing For Peak Oil Production by Decade’s End,” Forbes.com, posted September 13, 2010; Eoin O’Carroll, “Pickens: Oil Production Has Peaked,” The Christian Science Monitor, posted June 18, 2008. 7. Clint Smith, “New Zealand Parliament Peak Oil Report: The Next Oil Shock?” Energy Bulletin, posted October 1, 2010, energybulletin.net/stories/2010-10-14/next-oil-shock; Stefan Schultz, “Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis,” Spiegel Online, posted September 1, 2010; UK Industry study; US Joint Forces Command, The Joint Operating Environment 2010 (Suffolk, VA: USJFCOM, 2010). 8.

In the years following the turn of the millennium, many pundits claimed that new technologies for crude oil extraction would increase the amount of oil that can be obtained from each well drilled, and that enormous reserves of alternative hydrocarbon resources (principally tar sands and oil shale) would be developed to seamlessly replace conventional oil, thus delaying the inevitable peak for decades. There were also those who said that Peak Oil wouldn’t be much of a problem even if it happened soon, because the market would find other energy sources or transport options as quickly as needed — whether electric cars, hydrogen, or liquid fuel made from coal. In succeeding years, events appeared to be supporting the Peak Oil thesis and undercutting the views of the oil optimists. Oil prices trended steeply upward — and for entirely foreseeable reasons: discoveries of new oilfields were continuing to dwindle, with most new fields being much more difficult and expensive to develop than ones found in previous years.

Crucially, in this chapter we will see how and why the most important of these non-financial limits to economic expansion are matters of concern not just for future generations, but for markets and policy makers — indeed, for everyone — today. Oil In the Introduction we briefly surveyed the Peak Oil scenario and the events surrounding the oil price spike of 2008. It is tempting here to launch into a lengthy discussion of Peak Oil and what it means to industrial society. I’ve been writing about this subject for over a decade, and it would be easy to fill the space between these covers simply with updates to existing publications. But that’s not what is required here; for our immediate purposes, all that is needed is an overview of some main points regarding oil depletion that are relevant to the question of whether and how economies can continue growing.


pages: 422 words: 113,830

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Phillips

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency peg, diversification, Doha Development Round, energy security, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mobile money, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, peak oil, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route

., chapter 1. 3 “World Will Face Oil Crunch ‘in Five Years,’ ” Financial Times, July 10, 2007. 4 “High Prices Threaten to Linger,” Financial Times, July 18, 2007. 5 Toni Johnson, “Reading Oil’s Tea Leaves,” Daily Analysis, Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org, July 26, 2007. 6 “Total Chief Warns on Oil Output,” Financial Times, October 31, 2007. 7 “Chevron CTO Says Peak Oil Will Not Be a Disaster,” Energy Bulletin, www.energybulletin.net, October 24, 2007. 8 Energy Watch Group, “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society, www.yubanet.com, October 23, 2007. 9 “Why ‘Peak Oil’ May Soon Pique Your Interest,” Christian Science Monitor, August 16, 2007. 10 “Libya Oil Head: Global Oil Output Can Only Reach 100 Million B/D,” Dow Jones Newswire, October 30, 2007. 11 Dave Cohen, “The Perfect Storm,” Energy Bulletin, www.energybulletin.net, October 31, 2007. 12 Energy Watch Group, “Peak Oil Could Trigger.” 13 Case Western Peak Oil Initiative, “Peak-Oil When?”

In the meantime, the School of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland published its second survey of oil economists, geologists, investors, and political decision makers from around the world, taken between May and August 2007. This updated its first “Peak-Oil When?” survey conducted in 2005. In that first compilation, geologists had warned about peak oil, but the others had dissented. In the follow-up, all of the respondent categories saw global peak oil by 2010. Among all the participating oil experts, 47 percent thought it virtually certain and another 31 percent chose highly likely. 13 No one can definitively prove that this six-month barrage of conferences, surveys, agency and advisory group reports, and press stories—followed with increasing attention by hedge funds and brokerage firms—helped to loft the price of oil futures (Brent and West Texas Intermediate) between April and December 2007.

In terms of voter sentiment, however, polls show that the Democrats have the cutting edge of the public-opinion blade. With respect to hits on the Internet, one June 2007 sampling found global warming pulling far, far ahead of peak oil, although this came just before the surge in conferences where peak oil was discussed.30 To be sure, there is some overlap between ardent believers in peak oil and persons worried about emissions, global warming, and a dangerous climatic tipping point. Many in both camps agree on the need to cut back on the 50 percent of U.S. oil consumption that is required to gas up fuel-guzzling automobiles.


The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World by John Michael Greer

back-to-the-land, Black Swan, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, David Strachan, deindustrialization, Easter island, European colonialism, Extropian, failed state, feminist movement, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Santayana, hydrogen economy, hygiene hypothesis, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, Jevons paradox, Lewis Mumford, mass immigration, McMansion, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, post-industrial society, Project for a New American Century, Ray Kurzweil, Stewart Brand, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog, Y2K

Community Preparations for this role, interestingly enough, are already taking place. More than a dozen US municipalities are already at work on their own peak oil contingency plans and many more are considering it. The seismic shift that has placed municipal and local governments out in front on several other issues, leaving national governments behind them in the dust, seems to be under way in the peak oil field as well. Several movements outside local government, furthermore, have begun to work along these lines to organize cities and towns for the world after peak oil. The most widely known of them, and the most successful so far, is the Transition Town movement.2 The core of this approach is that a small geographical area — ​a town, a village, an urban neighborhood or the like — ​can make the transition to a post-petroleum world by harnessing the ideas and efforts of local people.

The idea of mimesis can also be used to make sense of a great many other social phenomena in today’s world. One theme that runs through many of today’s peak oil discussions, for example, is the complaint that so few people are willing to do anything about the end of the age of cheap abundant energy. Even within the peak oil community, surprisingly few people have taken the simple practical steps that will make their own lives easier as energy becomes scarce and expensive — ​growing a vegetable garden, learning to get Culture by on less energy and so on. Outside the peak oil community, very few people are listening at all. From Toynbee’s perspective, this is simply another failure of mimesis.

Petroleum, the most energy-rich and economically significant of the fossil fuels, is also the most depleted, and the consequences are already beginning to affect the world’s economic and political systems. Talk about “peak oil” — ​the point at which roughly half the world’s conventional petroleum reserves have been pumped out of the ground and production worldwide begins to decline — ​is finding its way into the media and popular culture. Most official estimates place the arrival of peak oil sometime between 2020 and 2030, close enough that efforts to deal with the resulting energy crisis ought already to be under way, but these estimates have already been overrun by events.


pages: 415 words: 103,231

Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence by Robert Bryce

addicted to oil, An Inconvenient Truth, Berlin Wall, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, Colonization of Mars, congestion pricing, decarbonisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, financial independence, flex fuel, Ford Model T, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it's over 9,000, Jevons paradox, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, low earth orbit, low interest rates, Michael Shellenberger, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, peak oil, price stability, Project for a New American Century, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, SpaceShipOne, Stewart Brand, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas L Friedman, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize, Yom Kippur War

And while the U.S. is telling those foreign companies to leave the Gulf, perhaps it should ask BP to leave as well. BP, Statoil, and all of the other energy companies on the planet are well aware of the concept of peak oil. But the fact that peak oil looms at some date in the future does not support any of the arguments for energy independence. Instead, it’s just the opposite. As peak oil gets closer, the world energy market will become even more tightly integrated as energy producers and energy consumers work to ensure adequate supplies. A final point about peak oil and energy availability: As world oil supplies grow tighter and demand continues to rise, prices will rise, and that will squeeze the demand coming from the poorer countries.

American oil traders are not going to voluntarily sell their domestically produced crude in the U.S. if they can get a substantially higher price in, say, London or Rotterdam. Traders always seek the best price for their commodities. Thus, the U.S. cannot isolate itself from the rest of the global oil market. PEAK OIL Since September 11, 2001, Americans have seen a deluge of books, documentaries, and magazine articles about peak oil—the concept that the world’s oil producers have reached the limit of their ability to produce ever larger amounts of crude. Of those many reports, five deserve to be mentioned. 34 GUSHER OF LIES In 2001, just three weeks after September 11, Kenneth Deffeyes, a geologist from Princeton University, published Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage.

Oil production is going to shrink.”51 After his book was published, Deffeyes got enormous amounts of attention from the media. He even was so bold as to predict the actual date when the world would hit peak oil production: Thanksgiving Day, 2005.52 Another book that falls roughly into this category is Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Petroleum Dependency, written by Michael Klare, a professor at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Published in 2004, Klare’s book does not address peak oil directly. Instead, it focuses on America’s militarization of the Middle East and claims that America’s thirst for oil and its reliance on foreign oil are “increasing the risk of turmoil and conflict” in the world’s oil-producing countries, locales that, he points out, are, in many cases, already unstable.53 Klare’s book offers an excellent primer on the ongoing militarization of the oil sector, from the Middle East to Colombia.


pages: 436 words: 114,278

Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices by Robert McNally

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, collective bargaining, credit crunch, energy security, energy transition, geopolitical risk, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, Ida Tarbell, index fund, Induced demand, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, joint-stock company, market clearing, market fundamentalism, megaproject, moral hazard, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, price stability, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, transfer pricing, vertical integration

Some warned (rightly so, as geologists later confirmed) that frenzied drilling could permanently decrease the amount of recoverable oil.15 As early as 1861, some drillers fretted that excessive drilling would soon exhaust oil supplies and bring the oil industry to a crashing halt.16 Waves of what today is called “peak oil” fear occasionally swept through the industry. But neither peak oil nor waste worries held sway for long or led to regulation in the early decades.17 After the turn of the century and amid general interest in regulations to improve industry practices, mounting government focus on conservation of resources dovetailed with growing industry concerns that rampant competition and overproduction destabilized oil markets and prices. For their part, drillers were more concerned with economic waste in the form of financial losses due to price crashes. Peak oil worries picked up as oil’s importance in transportation grew.18 Thus, government anxieties about conserving resources and industry’s worry about ruinous price decreases converged on a dual definition of waste—physical and economic.

In the case of peak oil, the timing and pace of peak production is not just an academic matter. While economists believe people could adjust to steadily rising prices, and abrupt spike caused by unexpected peaking would be catastrophic, economically and politically. Modern transportation, agriculture, defense, and other core systems depend on oil, and there is no near term alternative to oil in these vital sectors. Peak oil adherents warn against assuming that past, smooth energy transition such as from wood to coal in the 1800s or coal to oil in the 1900s are a model for peak oil, which will be “abrupt and revolutionary.”

But OPEC was trying to manage a global market, which was especially challenging because data are notoriously incomplete and patchy, especially in the emerging markets. THE PEAK IS NIGH! As they had in the past, shock and uncertainty caused by unexpected price increases after 2003 rekindled perennial fears of an imminent limit in global oil production growth.26 “Peak oil” fears resurfaced. Despite their checkered history at predicting past peaks, peak oil disciples emerged from the woodwork as oil prices soared.27 In 2005, the late veteran energy investment banker Matt Simmons published Twilight in the Desert, warning that Saudi Arabia was overstating its production potential and was closer to tapped out than widely believed.


The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future by Michael Levi

addicted to oil, American energy revolution, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business cycle, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, crony capitalism, deglobalization, energy security, Exxon Valdez, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, hiring and firing, hydraulic fracturing, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, Jevons paradox, Kenneth Rogoff, manufacturing employment, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, South China Sea, stock buybacks

The combination of rising oil prices and stagnant production, so evident by 2007, seemed to vindicate the arguments from Simmons and his allies. Oil supplies appeared 180 • THE POWER SURGE to have hit a wall. The idea of peak oil—that world oil production had maxed out and was now headed downward—was hot. Then, just as prices peaked and plummeted beginning in the summer of 2008, the talk of peak oil largely disappeared. The pendulum swung toward the bears. Ed Morse, a top Wall Street energy analyst, wrote an essay for the journal Foreign Affairs titled “Low and Behold: Making the Most of Cheap Oil.” Peak oil, he and others triumphantly declared, had been proven wrong. Instead, with Saudi production climbing and prospects from Canada to Brazil on the rise—an incipient U.S. oil boom was still not on most people’s radars—the world was in for a new period of oil market ease.

By the early 1970s, armed with complex models and impenetrable mathematics, the peak oil prophets were predicting impending shortage of oil. Yet once again, when oil prices crashed in the early 1980s, their arguments were crushed too. Today, peak oil fears persist. Writing in the preeminent scientific journal Nature in early 2012, David King, previously the science advisor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, marshaled a wealth of trends and figures to assert that “oil’s tipping point has passed.”5 Others sound similar notes. But the definitive-sounding arguments for impending peak oil are invariably shaky. The fact that conventional oil production largely flatlined over the first decade of the twenty-first century, a frequent talking point, does not necessarily say anything fundamental about how much oil (or even how much cheap oil) is left in the ground.

Spurred by high prices, entrepreneurial spirits discovered and developed vast and easily accessible reserves of oil in Texas and Oklahoma; the United States would rest easy for a while. But peak oil fears returned two decades later in the wake of World War II. Military demand and pessimistic government audits of U.S. resources once again catalyzed fears of impending ruin. Yet surprise production gains, from California and the Rockies to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, quickly reversed the trend.4 Combined with the rise of the Middle East as a critical source of oil, fears were again put to rest. The next peak oil scare would arrive like clockwork a couple of decades later. This time, though, a patina of scientific logic accompanied it.


pages: 520 words: 129,887

Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce

Abraham Maslow, addicted to oil, An Inconvenient Truth, Apollo 11, Bernie Madoff, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, flex fuel, Ford Model T, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Hernando de Soto, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jevons paradox, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, Thomas L Friedman, uranium enrichment, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

(The Megatrends Favoring Natural Gas and Nuclear) IN AUGUST 2009, Fatih Birol, the chief economist for the International Energy Agency, did something that has become almost commonplace: He predicted a date for peak oil. In an interview with the British newspaper, the Independent, Birol said that his agency now believes “peak oil will come perhaps by 2020.”1 Birol is one of dozens of prognosticators who have offered an opinion on the question of peak oil—the moment when the world reaches the limit of its ability to produce ever-increasing amounts of petroleum. Is Birol right? Maybe. We won’t know for certain until about 2020 whether his prediction was right or wrong. The importance of Birol’s prediction is not that he picked a date for peak oil; rather, it’s that he and so many other leading energy analysts are forecasting a peak.

For comparison, the reserves-to-production ratio for natural gas is 60.4, meaning that at current extraction rates—and assuming no more gas is discovered—the world has more than 60 years of proved natural gas reserves left in the ground.55 And those numbers will undoubtedly grow in the years ahead as more gas resources get moved into the reserves category. The megatrend of increasing natural gas consumption and natural gas availability could scarcely be occurring at a better time. Over the past few years, worries about peak oil, and another possible peak—peak coal—have emerged as serious concerns. And that leads us to our next megatrend. Peak oil is one of the most emotional and hotly debated issues in the energy business. There is widespread disagreement about when the world will hit peak production. For instance, former Princeton University geology professor Kenneth Deffeyes claims the peak was hit on Thanksgiving Day, 2005.56 Veteran Houston-based energy analyst Henry Groppe says it occurred in 2006, and that the increases in production since then are due to production of natural gas liquids, not of crude.57 Houston stock analyst Marshall Adkins, of the brokerage firm Raymond James, contends the peak was hit in 2008.58 Other energy watchers claim that the global economic downturn has delayed any discussion about peak oil for the time being, perhaps until 2020 or so.59 What will reaching peak oil mean?

For instance, former Princeton University geology professor Kenneth Deffeyes claims the peak was hit on Thanksgiving Day, 2005.56 Veteran Houston-based energy analyst Henry Groppe says it occurred in 2006, and that the increases in production since then are due to production of natural gas liquids, not of crude.57 Houston stock analyst Marshall Adkins, of the brokerage firm Raymond James, contends the peak was hit in 2008.58 Other energy watchers claim that the global economic downturn has delayed any discussion about peak oil for the time being, perhaps until 2020 or so.59 What will reaching peak oil mean? Well, it will almost certainly mean higher prices. But how much higher? Groppe, the dean of the Houston energy analysts, with more than five decades of experience in the sector, provides a succinct prediction: “The price of oil will have to be whatever is required to cause total consumption to decline.”60 Put another way, oil prices will rise to whatever level is needed in order to make alternative energy sources more economic and thereby cut demand for oil products.


Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community by Diana Leafe Christian

back-to-the-land, dumpster diving, en.wikipedia.org, hive mind, intentional community, Lewis Mumford, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shock, peak oil

Richard Heinberg is a journalist, editor, lecturer and the author of The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Civilizations, Powerdown, and The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse. His is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators. Introduction Ecovillages and Other Intentional Communities I f you ’ re seeking to create more of a “sense of community”in your life, or to live a more sustainable lifestyle in the good company of friends — especially now with the emergence of Peak Oil issues — this book can offer valuable insights and how-to advice. While you may know little about ecovillages or other kinds of intentional communities, the men and women you’ll meet in these pages will show you what these communities are about and why they’re increasingly appealing.

We’ll consider these issues, and many others, in Chapter 22, “Choosing Your Community.” You also may be considering how life could be during the Peak Oil period of energy decline and ever-escalating costs of fuel, food, and everything else. Maybe you’re thinking a community would be a good place to live during hard times. For a consideration of the pros and cons of living in community relative to self-reliance and safety, see Appendix B, “Can Living in Community Make a Difference in an Age of Peak Oil?” Let’s assume you’ve considered these self-reliance issues, and you’re satisŠed with your course of action. Let’s say that in the communities you’ve visited and are considering further, you resonate with their values and mission and purpose, the people seemed friendly enough, you liked their lifestyle, the place met your aesthetic standards, there were several people you thought you could become good friends with, and you could live with these communities’ housing options, both physically and Šnancially.

Keep in mind that there are about ten times the number of people on the planet now as there were when humanity last depended entirely on wood for energy! Although things look bleak for current generations, Peak Oil offers humanity an opportunity to learn and prepare for the inevitable Peak Coal that will impact generations to come. It’s too late to 232 F I N D I N G C O M M U N I T Y hope for a pleasant decline from Peak Oil, but if we pay attention, humanity may choose to plan for a long and orderly Peak Coal. Is Intentional Community the Answer? Julian Darley, author of High Noon for Natural Gas and founder of the Post Carbon Institute, believes civilization is necessarily headed down the path of “re-localization”; that is, reversing the energy-fed globalization trend that has wracked the Earth for the past century or so.


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More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next by Andrew McAfee

back-to-the-land, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, congestion pricing, Corn Laws, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, DeepMind, degrowth, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, humanitarian revolution, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Khan Academy, Landlord’s Game, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, market fundamentalism, means of production, Michael Shellenberger, Mikhail Gorbachev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, precision agriculture, price elasticity of demand, profit maximization, profit motive, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, telepresence, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Veblen good, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, World Values Survey

It took seriously the idea of “peak oil,” a phrase coined in 1956 by M. King Hubbert, a geologist working for Shell Oil. As originally conceived, peak oil referred to the maximum amount of oil that we could annually produce for all of humanity’s needs. The first oil wells pumped out the crude oil that was closest to the earth’s surface or otherwise easiest to access. As those wells dried up, we had to drill deeper ones, both on land and at sea. As the world’s economies kept growing, so did total demand for oil, which kept getting harder and harder to obtain. Peak oil captured the idea that despite our best efforts and ample incentive, we would come to a time after which we would only be able to extract less and less oil year after year from the earth.

As a result of the fracking boom the United States has experienced peak coal rather than peak oil. And the peak in coal is not in total annual supply, but instead in demand. Fracking made natural gas cheap enough that it became preferred over coal for much electricity generation. By 2017 total US coal consumption was down 36 percent from its 2007 high point. The phrase peak oil is still around, but, as is the case with coal, it usually no longer refers to supply. As a 2017 Bloomberg headline put it, “Remember Peak Oil? Demand May Top Out Before Supply Does.” Even though the extra supply from fracking has helped push down oil and gas prices, many observers now believe that energy from other sources—the sun, wind, and the nuclei of uranium atoms—is getting cheaper faster and becoming much more widely available.

By 2017 total US coal consumption was down 36 percent from its 2007 high point: “Independent Statistics and Analysis—Coal Data Browser,” US Energy Information Administration, accessed March 25, 2019, https://www.eia.gov/coal/data/browser/#/topic/20?agg=0,2,1&geo=vvvvvvvvvvvvo&freq=A&start=2001&end=2016&ctype=map<ype=pin&rtype=s&maptype=0&rse=0&pin=. As a 2017 Bloomberg headline put it, “Remember Peak Oil?”: Javíer Blas, “Remember Peak Oil? Demand May Top Out Before Supply Does,” Bloomberg, July 11, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-11/remember-peak-oil-demand-may-top-out-before-supply-does. as a 2018 article in Fortune about the future of oil hypothesized: Jeffrey Ball, “Inside Oil Giant Shell’s Race to Remake Itself for a Low-Price World,” Fortune, January 1, 2018, http://fortune.com/2018/01/24/royal-dutch-shell-lower-oil-prices/.


pages: 306 words: 85,836

When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbus A320, airport security, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, feminist movement, food miles, George Akerlof, global pandemic, information asymmetry, invisible hand, loss aversion, mental accounting, Netflix Prize, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, Pareto efficiency, peak oil, pre–internet, price anchoring, price discrimination, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Richard Thaler, Sam Peltzman, security theater, sugar pill, Ted Kaczynski, the built environment, The Chicago School, the High Line, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, US Airways Flight 1549

Which is exactly why we don’t need to panic over peak oil in the first place. So why do I compare peak oil to shark attacks? It is because shark attacks mostly stay about constant, but fear of them goes up sharply when the media decides to report on them. The same thing, I bet, will now happen with peak oil. I expect tons of copycat journalism stoking the fears of consumers about oil-induced catastrophe, even though nothing fundamental has changed in the oil outlook in the last decade. Betting on Peak Oil (SDL) John Tierney wrote a great New York Times column in response to Peter Maass’s Times article about peak oil that I criticized.

One thing is for sure: if I ever see a passenger pull an umbrella out of her carry-on bag while a flight is airborne, I will tackle her first and ask questions later! “Peak Oil”: Welcome to the Media’s New Version of Shark Attacks (SDL) This post was published on August 21, 2005. It would have been difficult to find anyone then willing to predict that ten years hence, technological advances in petroleum extraction would allow the U.S. to overtake Saudi Arabia as the biggest oil producer in the world. But that is exactly what happened. A recent New York Times Magazine cover story, by Peter Maass, is about “peak oil.” The idea behind peak oil is that the world has been on a path of increasing oil production for many years, and now we are about to peak and go into a situation where there are dwindling reserves, leading to triple-digit prices for a barrel of oil, an unparalleled worldwide depression, and as one oil-crash website puts it, “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.”

. / 103 “My research on child safety seats”: See Levitt and Dubner, SuperFreakonomics (William Morrow, 2009); and Dubner and Levitt, “The Seat-Belt Solution,” The New York Times Magazine, July 10, 2005. / 103 “When I first told him about my work on teacher cheating”: See Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics (William Morrow, 2005). 109 “‘PEAK OIL’”: “A recent . . . cover story”: See Peter Maass, “The Breaking Point,” The New York Times Magazine, August 21, 2005. 114 “BETTING ON PEAK OIL”: “John Tierney wrote a great . . . column”: See Tierney, “The $10,000 Question,” The New York Times, August 23, 2005. / 116 “Sadly, Matthew Simmons died”: See Tierney, “Economic Optimism? Yes, I’ll Take That Bet,” The New York Times, December 27, 2010. 116 “DOES OBESITY KILL?”


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The End of Growth by Jeff Rubin

Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deal flow, decarbonisation, deglobalization, Easter island, energy security, eurozone crisis, Exxon Valdez, Eyjafjallajökull, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, flex fuel, Ford Model T, full employment, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Hans Island, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, illegal immigration, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, Kickstarter, low interest rates, McMansion, megaproject, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, new economy, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

But the minute the economy recovers, so too does demand, giving rise to the very same price hikes that trigger another recession. How does this ride end? PEAK OIL IS REALLY ABOUT PRICES, NOT SUPPLY When oil prices start to climb, the peak-oil debate inevitably moves back into the spotlight. In brief, the idea of peak oil holds that geological limits to the amount of oil that can be tapped means global oil production will eventually top out and then embark on an irreversible decline. It’s a contentious topic. The message that oil’s days are numbered is clearly not something the energy industry wants to hear. At the same time, the shrill tone taken by some peak-oil proponents, who see a coming oil crisis unleashing a doomsday scenario on us all, doesn’t do their position any favors with the rest of the energy world.

Focusing on this relationship casts the debate in a very different light. Like Mayan predictions for the end of days, predictions for peak oil come and go with some regularity. To the great consternation of peak-oil proponents, the oil industry continues to confound projections by getting better at pulling oil out of the ground. Better technology has kept the oil industry a step ahead of the best estimates of the peak-oil geologists. That’s a familiar story for the peak-oil movement, which got its start after an American geophysicist, M. King Hubbert, predicted in 1956 that conventional oil production in the lower forty-eight states would peak by the early 1970s.

As new sources of oil are discovered, and the definition of what counts as oil has expanded to include new sources of supply such as bitumen from the tar sands, the peak crowd has been forced to roll back predictions for the dreaded peak to points further in the future. A popular view now held by many peak-oil advocates sees oil production reaching an undulating plateau, sparing the world from the sharp drop-off in production foreseen in earlier predictions. It’s easy to get caught up in the semantics of the peak-oil debate. Just what is oil? Are new sources of supply really producing effective substitutes for the conventional oil we’re losing to depletion? But the issue that should be at the forefront of peak-oil discussions isn’t physical supply but economic cost. World supply may continue to defy peak-oil predictions, but that’s just a geological sideshow.


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The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World by Jeremy Rifkin

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Albert Einstein, American ideology, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bike sharing, borderless world, carbon footprint, centre right, clean tech, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate governance, decarbonisation, deep learning, distributed generation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Ford Model T, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, income inequality, industrial cluster, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, job automation, knowledge economy, manufacturing employment, marginal employment, Martin Wolf, Masdar, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open borders, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, purchasing power parity, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tech billionaire, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban renewal, Yom Kippur War, Zipcar

This is a hard reality to accept because it would force the human family to quickly transition to a wholly new energy regime and a new industrial model, or risk the collapse of civilization. The reason we have hit the wall in terms of globalization is “global peak oil per capita,” which is not to be confused with “global peak oil production.” The latter is a term used among petro-geologists to denote the point when global oil production reaches its zenith on what is called the Hubbert bell curve. Peak oil production occurs when half of the ultimately recoverable oil reserves are used up. The top of the curve represents the midpoint in oil recovery. After that, production drops as fast as it climbed.

US oil production peaked in 1970 and began its long decline.8 For the past four decades, geologists have been arguing about when global peak oil production will most likely occur. The optimists believed, based on their modeling, that it would probably happen sometime between 2025 and 2035. The pessimists, which included some of the leading geologists in the world, projected global peak oil to occur between 2010 and 2020. The International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based organization that governments rely on for their energy information and forecasts, may have put the issue of global peak oil production to rest in its 2010 World Energy Outlook report. According to the IEA, global peak production of crude oil probably occurred in 2006 at seventy million barrels per day.9 The admission stunned the international oil community and sent shudders down the spine of global businesses whose life line is crude oil.

For most of the twentieth century, the price of oil was so low that little attention was given to thermodynamic efficiency in the production and distribution of goods and services. And before scientists understood the relationship between burning carbon fuels and global warming, there was little concern about entropic flow. This has now changed. Peak oil per capita and global peak oil production have been reached, forcing a dramatic rise in the price of energy. At the same time, the accumulated entropic emission of industrial-based CO2 into the atmosphere has altered the temperature of the planet and put the world into real-time climate change, with dramatic effects on agriculture and infrastructure.


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Aerotropolis by John D. Kasarda, Greg Lindsay

3D printing, air freight, airline deregulation, airport security, Akira Okazaki, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, big-box store, blood diamond, Boeing 747, book value, borderless world, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, conceptual framework, credit crunch, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, digital map, disruptive innovation, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Easter island, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, financial engineering, flag carrier, flying shuttle, food miles, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frank Gehry, fudge factor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, General Motors Futurama, gentleman farmer, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, global supply chain, global village, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, hive mind, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, inflight wifi, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invention of the telephone, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, Joan Didion, Kangaroo Route, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, kremlinology, land bank, Lewis Mumford, low cost airline, Marchetti’s constant, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Network effects, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Calthorpe, Peter Thiel, pets.com, pink-collar, planned obsolescence, pre–internet, RFID, Richard Florida, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, savings glut, Seaside, Florida, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, spinning jenny, starchitect, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Suez canal 1869, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, tech worker, telepresence, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, thinkpad, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Tony Hsieh, trade route, transcontinental railway, transit-oriented development, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, walkable city, warehouse robotics, white flight, white picket fence, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Once a fringe topic, peak oil is now the subject of intense mainstream discussion. Perhaps the most searingly honest look at life after peak oil is James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency, which imagines America’s future as a sort of Antebellum Dark Ages. Two books arguing that peak oil will be good for us are Christopher Steiner’s $20 Per Gallon and Jeff Rubin’s Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller. Online, “The Oil Drum” (www.theoildrum.com/) offers daily discussion and dissection of oil prices and production; the website of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) is also worth visiting at (www.peakoil.net).

How could he have imagined the sweet crude yielding light, flight, locomotion, and the Green Revolution? Peak whale ended when whalers “ran out of customers before they ran out of whales,” quipped the environmentalist Amory Lovins, who was charting paths to a renewable future before Jimmy Carter wore cardigans in the White House. So how will peak oil end? The Reckoning: Peak Oil You couldn’t ask for a more ominous example of the Jevons Paradox circa 2020 than the prospect of a hundred million tourists and traders transiting the Gulf on the New Silk Road. Anyone paying close attention to oil prices and carbon footprints might reasonably conclude that a Middle East remade in Dubai’s image is a looming catastrophe.

We may choose to fly—or not to—but from a carbon perspective, the obvious choice is not necessarily the most meaningful one, or the most destructive. Remember the sun-drenched Kenyan roses and their hothouse-bred Dutch cousins—computing carbon’s bottom line requires calculus, not simple addition. Calculating peak oil requires different equations. When we talk about peak oil, we’re really talking about two things. One is Hubbert’s Peak, the moment when global oil supply reaches a maximum production rate—eighty-six million barrels a day and climbing (for now)—and then plunges into irreversible decline. It’s named for M. King Hubbert, the Shell-employed geophysicist who formulated the theory in 1956.


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Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower

"World Economic Forum" Davos, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, bonus culture, California energy crisis, corporate governance, credit crunch, energy security, Exxon Valdez, falling living standards, fear of failure, financial engineering, forensic accounting, Global Witness, index fund, interest rate swap, John Deuss, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, kremlinology, land bank, LNG terminal, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, megaproject, Meghnad Desai, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nelson Mandela, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Oscar Wyatt, passive investing, peak oil, Piper Alpha, price mechanism, price stability, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, transaction costs, transfer pricing, zero-sum game, éminence grise

The image he drew — a bell-shaped curve showing the rise and fall of oil production — was unusually accurate. In 1970, oil production in the Lower 48 did peak at nine million barrels a day, and then declined. Hall was impressed by that accuracy, and by a wave of other predictions, based upon Hubbert’s assessment, published under the umbrella of the “peak oil theory.” Like-minded petroleum experts and environmentalists grasped at peak oil to support their campaign against the excessive use of fossil fuel, and in particular against what President George W. Bush would call America’s “addiction to oil.” Emboldened by his new fame, Hubbert had predicted in the early 1970s that production in the North Sea would peak in 1985 at 2.5 million barrels a day, and global crude production would peak in 2000 at 12.5 billion barrels a year.

Caruso’s forecast depended on the national oil producers expanding production; his optimism was shared by Peter Davies, BP’s chief economist. Pessimism in the industry, said Davies, an authoritative spokesman against peak oil, stemmed from weak demand causing less oil to be produced. Scientifically, he felt, there was no proof that the world was approaching “peak production.” Caruso’s and Davies’s optimism was rejected by Peter Wells, a former BP engineer and peak oil believer, as “highly unlikely.” While OPEC producers, Wells argued, had failed to invest, and their spare capacity had fallen from 10 million barrels a day in 1987 to 1.5 million in 2004, the non-OPEC producers had also failed to replace depleted reserves.

Campbell’s credibility had been reinforced over the previous 18 months by the conversion of some senior oil executives to the oil peakists’ camp. Leading that group were the senior executives of Total. French mathematical geologists had become adamant adherents of peak oil. With the state providing generous subsidies for biofuels, the country’s oil executives, tainted by suggestions of chicanery, understood the financial advantages of embracing peak oil. Thierry Desmarest, Total’s chairman, had said in 2006, “The opinion of our geologists is we can go a bit beyond 100 million but not to 120 million.” One year later, he sharply retreated. Oil production, he forecast, would peak in 2020: “This is the great secret everyone knows about and governments are too terrified to discuss because they don’t know what to do and oil companies don’t want to frighten their shareholders.”


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Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community by Karen T. Litfin

active transport: walking or cycling, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, car-free, carbon footprint, clean water, collaborative consumption, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, congestion pricing, corporate social responsibility, degrowth, glass ceiling, global village, hydraulic fracturing, intentional community, megacity, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planetary scale, publish or perish, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the built environment, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, urban planning, Zipcar

If America’s car culture goes global, we can only wonder what kind of world we will inhabit. Box 3.5 “Peak Oil” Demystified “Peak oil” refers to the bell curve of oil production over time, a phenomenon that occurs for specific oil fields, producing-countries’ production, and globally. US oil production peaked in 1970, and other countries are now reaching theirs. Most analysts put the date for world peak oil somewhere between 2005 and 2015. Current oil production has indeed plateaued, lending credence to the idea that peak oil is on schedule. A key consequence of “peak oil” is that more energy is required to extract the last half of the oil.

Europe, the birthplace of the sovereign state and the epicenter of two world wars, is now home to a particularly intriguing post-sovereign entity, the European Union. The 2008 economic meltdown highlights the same lesson that the even thornier issues of climate change and peak oil challenge us to learn: we now live in an era of planetary interdependence (for an explanation of peak oil, see Box 3.5). No longer relegated to a collection of objects to be consumed, nature (albeit a profoundly altered nature) emerges as teacher and we her students. When we grasp the meaning of “nonrenewable,” we learn to favor bicycles over cars.

Unconventional hydrocarbons and biofuels are less attractive: tar sands and shale oil are 2–5, while ethanol and biodiesel from conventional US agriculture barely break even.8All fossil fuels warm the planet but coal, the most abundant, also happens to be the dirtiest. Practically speaking, “peak oil” means “peak cheap oil,” which makes petroleum the Achilles heel of globalization. Today, most manufactured goods travel long distances from China and other low-cost producers. Plastics and fertilizer are made from oil and natural gas. Further, the world food economy is highly dependent on cheap oil. A typical US meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to fork. Most importantly, “peak oil” is occurring just as demand for “First World” lifestyles is skyrocketing among the 80 percent humanity living in the global South.


pages: 397 words: 112,034

What's Next?: Unconventional Wisdom on the Future of the World Economy by David Hale, Lyric Hughes Hale

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, classic study, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, diversification, energy security, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global reserve currency, global village, high net worth, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Rogoff, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage tax deduction, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, passive investing, payday loans, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precautionary principle, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tobin tax, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, yield curve

Is “peak oil” a reality that should inform today’s investment decisions and prices, as the three-digit oil prices of mid-2008 seemed to suggest, or is the depletion of oil reserves a mirage that is likely to remain, for many years, a couple of decades away as it has been in the past? Peak oil scenarios could materialize as a result of two very different causes. Under the most extreme scenario, as popularized by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil,2 the world may be on the verge of running out of the reserves needed to prevent oil production from declining—or at best from plateauing for a while before collapsing. Alternatively, in a softer version of peak oil, a large share of “oil in place” may not be accessible due to “aboveground” geopolitical constraints.3 On both accounts, the recent period has provided important information on the plausibility of both types of causes.

Climate Negotiations and the Move to a Lower-Carbon Energy Mix With peak oil concerns alleviated until at least 2020 (subject to the quadrupling of Iraqi oil production, and therefore to peace in the Iraqi Shiite region), the other long-term consideration for the global supply-demand balance is about the implications of the transition to a low-carbon energy economy. For a brief period, considerations of energy security, peak oil, and climate security converged to make the transition to a new energy mix appear inevitable. As we have seen when assessing peak oil realities, 2009 spelled the end of this convergence, depriving climate negotiators of the broad-based consensus that this convergence could have fostered.

Let us reflect, therefore, on what has been learned since the financial crisis of 2008–2009 regarding the longer-term market determinants. We shall begin with the move toward a post-oil economy that some think could be imposed by geological limits—“peak oil” and the assumed twilight in the desert1—or by concerns for climate change. We shall then turn our attention to the energy investment scene and its implications for spare production capacity, and conclude with an examination of the short-term determinants of energy prices, including investment in “paper barrels.” Peaks on the Horizon: Wall or Mirage? Is “peak oil” a reality that should inform today’s investment decisions and prices, as the three-digit oil prices of mid-2008 seemed to suggest, or is the depletion of oil reserves a mirage that is likely to remain, for many years, a couple of decades away as it has been in the past?


pages: 417 words: 109,367

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century by Ronald Bailey

3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climatic Research Unit, commodity super cycle, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic transition, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, double helix, energy security, failed state, financial independence, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Neolithic agricultural revolution, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, pattern recognition, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, phenotype, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, rewilding, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, systematic bias, Tesla Model S, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, women in the workforce, yield curve

In a 2005 bet consciously modeled on the Simon-Ehrlich bet, New York Times columnist John Tierney and peak oil proponent Matthew Simmons wagered $5,000 on whether the price of oil in 2010 would average above $200 per barrel. When the bet was made, the price was $65 per barrel. When the bet was settled on January 1, 2011, the price of oil had increased to a 2010 average of $71 per barrel. Colin Campbell, a former petroleum geologist who founded the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, had warned way back in 2002 that we were headed for peak oil production, and that this would lead to “war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction of homo sapiens.”

Hubbert’s Peak Hubbert argued that oil production grows until half the recoverable resources in a field have been extracted, after which production falls off at essentially the same rate at which it expanded. This theory suggests a bell-shaped curve rising from first discovery to peak and descending to depletion. Hubbert calculated that peak oil production follows peak oil discovery with a time lag. Globally, discoveries of new oil fields peaked in 1962. The time lag between peak global discoveries and peak production was estimated to be around thirty-two years, but peak oilers claim that the two oil crises of the 1970s reduced consumption and thereby delayed the peak until now.

As the IEA 2013 report succinctly notes, “Fossil fuels are abundant in many regions of the world and they are in sufficient quantities to meet expected increasing demands.” The fundamental error made by the peak oil disciples of Hubbert is now clear; they substantially underestimated the actual amount of petroleum reserves and resources and the oil industry’s ever-increasing technological prowess to exploit them. The notion that once half of the oil in a field has been produced, the only direction is down seems intuitively obvious. And oil is, after all, an exhaustible resource of which there is only so much. Peak oil theorists ominously point out that since the 1980s the volume of new discoveries has been smaller than the amount of oil extracted.


pages: 289 words: 77,532

The Secret Club That Runs the World: Inside the Fraternity of Commodity Traders by Kate Kelly

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Alan Greenspan, Bakken shale, bank run, Bear Stearns, business cycle, commodity super cycle, Credit Default Swap, diversification, fixed income, Gordon Gekko, index fund, light touch regulation, locking in a profit, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, oil-for-food scandal, paper trading, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, Sloane Ranger, sovereign wealth fund, supply-chain management, the market place

In China, the most severe winter weather in fifty years had damaged power sources throughout the country, and poor government planning in South Africa had spurred power outages that affected the entire continental region. Amid all the demand and lack of supply, there was also an overarching fear of “Peak Oil,” a 1950s theory now experiencing a renaissance, which held that the availability of global oil was soon to be maxed out, after which global supplies would be on an ever-diminishing decline. Believers in Peak Oil felt that crude oil was certain to grow more expensive. The Peak Oil theory had some weaknesses, given the promising advancements in drilling that were being made in such hard-to-reach areas as deep ocean water in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Circle.

“supercycle”: Bilge Ertan and Jose Antonio Ocampo, “Super-cycles of Commodity Prices Since the Mid-19th Century” (working paper, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, 2012), http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2012/wp110_2012.pdf. “Peak Oil”: The term refers to a theory, first put forth in 1956 by scientist M. King Hubbert, which argued that oil production in the U.S. would reach its highest point in the latter half of the twentieth century and would decline thereafter. In the 2000s, the concept of Peak Oil took on new meaning, defining a generalized fear of running out of oil, and the global consequences that would bring. See M. King Hubbert, Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels (Shell Development Company Exploration and Production Research Division, 1956), http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf.

Those economies, which were driving up the price of raw materials around the world, were widely seen as the harbingers of what the buzzier banking analysts referred to as a new “supercycle,” a period of sustained world growth the likes of which had not been seen since World War II. There was also a prevalent theory known as “Peak Oil” suggesting that the world’s petroleum supplies were well on their way to being tapped out—a situation that would make crude oil, the engine of so many economies, frighteningly scarce. Both hypotheses augured a continuing climb in the price of oil. But during the second half of 2008, the belief in higher commodity prices vanished.


pages: 222 words: 50,318

The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream by Christopher B. Leinberger

addicted to oil, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset allocation, big-box store, centre right, commoditize, credit crunch, David Brooks, desegregation, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, edge city, Ford Model T, full employment, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, McMansion, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, New Urbanism, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, postindustrial economy, RAND corporation, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, reserve currency, Richard Florida, Savings and loan crisis, Seaside, Florida, the built environment, transit-oriented development, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, value engineering, walkable city, white flight

The future higher price for imported oil will put an even greater strain on the U.S. economy, compounding the continued balance of trade deficits, which are running at historically high levels (more than six percent of the gross domestic product) during the 2000s.57 The value of residential and commercial real estate that can be reached only by cars will certainly be significantly devalued when peak oil is reached, whenever that may be. The dollar will probably fall in value, making imported goods much more expensive, and the dollar 82 | THE OPTION OF URBANISM may lose its status as the world’s reserve currency. Some forecasters have suggested that peak oil, if it occurs without alternative energy sources under development, could trigger a global depression similar to the 1930s. The U.S. economy will have painted itself into a corner if peak oil arrives and the only option is drivable sub-urban development. James Kunstler, the author of The Long Emergency,58 painted a bleak picture of the United States’ future due to a “prodigious, unparalleled misallocation of resources” for drivable sub-urban development, which he forecasted will result in the collapse of the U.S. economy to a medieval level of output.

James Kunstler, the author of The Long Emergency,58 painted a bleak picture of the United States’ future due to a “prodigious, unparalleled misallocation of resources” for drivable sub-urban development, which he forecasted will result in the collapse of the U.S. economy to a medieval level of output. Although Kunstler’s is doubtless an extreme and overly pessimistic view, the trauma caused to the U.S. drivable sub-urban economy when peak oil is reached, particularly if this realization happens suddenly, which many forecasters predict is possible if not probable, would be severe. There is one conclusion on which nearly all oil production forecasters, including most of the major oil companies, agree: it is not a matter of whether peak oil production arrives, it is only a matter of when, and the majority of forecasters feel that the peak will occur in the first third of the twenty-first century.59 F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.

Congressman Bartlett said that this situation poses a historically “unprecedented risk management problem” for the country that could fundamentally disrupt our economy and way of life.55 As reported in a U.S. Department of Energy–funded report in 2005, there is a growing minority opinion that oil production is approaching or may even be at peak production worldwide,56 just as the United States hit peak oil production in 1970. Chevron, the major oil company, had a massive advertising campaign in 2007 pointing this out to consumers. Whenever peak production is reached and the markets know for a fact that the supply will be on a future downward trajectory, the price will probably dramatically increase due to continued worldwide economic growth and demand for oil.


pages: 369 words: 94,588

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, call centre, capital controls, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, failed state, financial innovation, Frank Gehry, full employment, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, interest rate swap, invention of the steam engine, Jane Jacobs, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, land reform, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, means of production, megacity, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, place-making, Ponzi scheme, precariat, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, special economic zone, statistical arbitrage, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, technological determinism, the built environment, the market place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, white flight, women in the workforce

The fact that capitalism has, in the past, successfully navigated around natural barriers, and that it has often done so profitably since environmental technologies have long been big business and can certainly become much bigger (as the Obama administration proposes), does not mean that the nature question can never constitute some ultimate limit. But in terms of the immediate crisis of our time that began in 2006, the question of natural limits cannot, on the surface at least, be accorded primacy of place, with the possible exception of the role of so-called ‘peak oil’ and its impact on energy prices. The issue of peak oil requires, therefore, some commentary. As background it is worth noting that what began to appear as the greatest of all potential natural limits to capitalist development in eighteenth-century Britain was neatly transcended by the turn to fossil fuels and the invention of the steam engine.

While the situation elsewhere, particularly in Saudi Arabia (where there are rumours that peak production has already been achieved), the Middle East generally, Russia (where President Putin recently declared, though almost certainly for political rather than factual reasons, that peak oil has been passed) and Africa, is harder to monitor, the rise in oil prices from less than $20 a barrel in 2002 to $150 a barrel (and a doubling of gas prices at the pump for US consumers) by the summer of 2008 provided all the popular evidence needed to show that peak oil had arrived and was here to stay. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your view, oil prices suddenly plunged to less than $50 a barrel by the end of 2008, putting a big popular question mark over the relevance of the theory and opening the path towards central bank relaxation of fears over an oil-price rise led inflation and a consequent reduction of interest rates to close to zero in the United States at the end of 2008.

Those countries which relied heavily upon the US as a primary export market, particularly in east and south-east Asia, were ultimately pulled down, as were their stock markets, while raw material and commodity producers, which were riding high in early 2008 and considered themselves immune to the crisis, suddenly found themselves in serious difficulties as commodity and raw material prices plunged in the second half of 2008. Oil prices, which had risen to near $150 a barrel in the summer of 2008 (prompting a lot of chatter about ‘peak oil’), were back down to $40 within a few months, causing all manner of problems for Russia, Venezuela and the Gulf States. The collapse of the oil-revenue based building boom in the Gulf saw thousands of migrant workers from India, Palestine and south-east Asia sent home. Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti and Kerala in India, which depended heavily on remittances from those employed elsewhere, suddenly found household incomes drying up as overseas jobs in construction were lost and female domestic workers were cast off.


Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice by Molly Scott Cato

Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, Bretton Woods, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, carbon footprint, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, congestion charging, corporate social responsibility, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, deskilling, energy security, food miles, Food sovereignty, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, gender pay gap, green new deal, income inequality, informal economy, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job satisfaction, land bank, land reform, land value tax, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Money creation, mortgage debt, Multi Fibre Arrangement, passive income, peak oil, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Rupert Read, seminal paper, the built environment, The Spirit Level, Tobin tax, tontine, University of East Anglia, wikimedia commons

Heinberg (2006) ‘Threats of peak oil to the global food supply’, paper presented at the FEASTA Conference, ‘What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?, 23–25 June, Dublin, Ireland: www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/159. C. Tudge (2003) So Shall We Reap: What’s Gone Wrong with the World’s Food – And How to Fix It, Harmondsworth: Penguin. D. A. Cleveland, F. Bowannie, D. F. Eriacho, A. Laahty and E. Perramond (1995) ‘Zuni farming and United States government policy: The politics of biological and cultural diversity in agriculture’, Agriculture and Human Values, 12/3: 2–18. Heinberg, ‘Threats of Peak Oil’. 13 Summary and Further Resources Chapter 1: Green Economics: Economics for People and the Planet Green economics broadens the perspective of ‘economics’ beyond the concerns of the ‘rational economic man’.

Deskilling and reskilling Greening production and distribution 55 56 59 61 64 vi GREEN ECONOMICS 5 Money The politics of money Money and global injustice Money creation: Financially and ecologically unstable How money wastes people Local currencies for a localized world Conclusion 71 72 74 77 79 81 85 6 Green Business: From Maximizing Profits to a Vision of Conviviality Limitations of market and technological solutions Issues of scale and ownership Learning to switch the lights off Low-carbon growth as the flourishing of the convivial economy 89 90 92 95 98 PART III POLICIES FOR A GREEN ECONOMY 7 The Policy Context The ecological modernization discourse Policy responses to climate change What’s wrong with GDP? Measuring what we value 105 106 109 113 116 8 Globalization and Trade Whose comparative advantage? How free is free trade? Trade in the era of climate change and peak oil Greening trade locally Greening trade globally 123 124 126 129 131 134 9 Relocalizing Economic Relationships Localization to replace globalization Political protection for local economies Self-reliant local economies on the ground The next step: The bioregional economy Conclusion 139 139 142 144 150 153 10 Green Taxation Theory of green taxation Strategic taxation Taxes on commons Ecotaxes 157 157 160 162 164 CONTENTS vii 11 Green Welfare Green approaches to social policy What is poverty?

For reasons of security as well as dignity, green economists call for reskilling and the rediscovery of craft in work: ‘In the era of quality, work must recover its craft dimension.’ In the UK ‘reskilling’ is one of the aims of the Transition Towns movement – a community response to economic life in the era of climate change and peak oil. The Transition Towns offer training in skills such as vegetable growing, darning and mending, preservation of surplus crops, spinning and weaving – the skills that will be needed in a sufficient WORK 63 Source: Cartoon by Clay Butler; for more visit www.sidewalkbubblegum.com economy. This approach is in tune with the emphasis on sufficiency and selfprovisioning that is an underlying principle of green economics: Who is richer?


pages: 258 words: 83,303

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization by Jeff Rubin

addicted to oil, air freight, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, big-box store, BRICs, business cycle, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, energy security, food miles, Ford Model T, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jevons paradox, Just-in-time delivery, low interest rates, market clearing, megacity, megaproject, North Sea oil, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, profit maximization, reserve currency, South Sea Bubble, subprime mortgage crisis, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, work culture , zero-sum game

King Hubbert, who seems to have been the first person to figure out that there is only so much oil in the ground—gives us a pretty good visual impression of what we can expect from a finite resource: a peak, followed by a decline. In 2002, Campbell first helped convene a loosely connected organization called the Association for the Study of Peak Oil to take an objective look at world oil supply. Pooling the experience of lifetimes in the field, the group of largely retired senior geologists who had explored the world for Shell, BP, Total, and all the other big majors built a massive database that tracked the depletion of every major producing oil field in the world.

American production peaked at just shy of 10 million barrels per day in 1971. It has fallen steadily since then. Today it is barely half that amount, at 5.1 million barrels. Tomorrow it will be even less. And I was right too. One thing I’ve learned from years of being on the opposite side of the peak oil debate from just about everyone else is that it is pretty much impossible to convince anyone of something they just don’t want to believe. Campbell’s forecast of a production peak was of course dismissed by the industry just as Hubbert’s initial projections of a production peak were ignored decades earlier.

Despite every incentive to pump more, despite calls for OPEC to open the spigots and President Bush’s personal pleas to the Saudis, world production has hardly grown at all since 2005. Suddenly the textbooks seem to be describing some other world than the one we live in. It is hard to say which possibility is more alarming to economists—that the world has reached its peak oil production plateau, or that the rules of their vocation don’t seem to be working any more. It is funny how a recession looks like good news to some people. When global credit evaporated in the wake of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, oil prices tumbled along with the values of the world’s stock markets.


pages: 326 words: 48,727

Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard

addicted to oil, An Inconvenient Truth, Berlin Wall, business continuity plan, carbon footprint, clean water, climate change refugee, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, congestion pricing, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, defense in depth, disinformation, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fixed income, food miles, Great Leap Forward, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Kickstarter, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, ocean acidification, peak oil, Port of Oakland, precautionary principle, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, the built environment, transatlantic slave trade, transit-oriented development, two and twenty, University of East Anglia, urban planning

But the region's farmers are by no means surrendering in the face of climate change, and they may yet survive it if the outside world does its part and slashes greenhouse gas emissions. Global warming is not the only reason our civilization must shift to low-carbon energy sources: there is also the threat of "peak oil." As recently as five years ago, the theory of peak oil—which holds that humanity has already consumed half of the oil on the planet—was derided as nonsense from the fringe. No longer. As stalwart a member of the energy establishment as James Schlesinger, a former director of the CIA and secretary of the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, said in 2007, "The debate is over—the peakists have won."

There is still lots of oil to be had on this planet, but it "will get harder and costlier to find," Ronald Oxburgh, the former chairman of the British arm of Royal Dutch Shell oil, told me. (Peak oil is one reason BP was drilling so deeply in the Gulf of Mexico in the first place.) Meanwhile, global demand for petroleum continues to climb. If and when global demand outstrips supply, analysts warn, the imbalance could bring debilitating shortages, soaring prices, crashing economies, resource wars, and social breakdown. The car-dependent lifestyle that millions of Americans (and growing numbers elsewhere) take for granted will become impossible. Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, is another insider worried by the approach of peak oil. "We should leave oil before it leaves us," Birol wrote in 2008.

"We should leave oil before it leaves us," Birol wrote in 2008. Make no mistake: going green at the speed and scale needed to defuse global warming and escape peak oil will not be easy. We will have to abandon old ways of thinking, confront powerful interests, spend large amounts of money, adjust our material appetites, and stay focused on the mission for many years to come. But there are unsung heroes all over the world who are already working to make these changes a reality; you will meet some of them in this book. They deserve our help. The Double Imperative of the Climate Fight Chiara happened to be born at a momentous turning point in human history.


pages: 559 words: 169,094

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bank run, Bear Stearns, big-box store, citizen journalism, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, company town, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, DeepMind, deindustrialization, diversified portfolio, East Village, El Camino Real, electricity market, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, food desert, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, intentional community, Jane Jacobs, Larry Ellison, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Neal Stephenson, Neil Kinnock, new economy, New Journalism, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, oil shock, PalmPilot, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, peak oil, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, public intellectual, Richard Florida, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, smart grid, Snow Crash, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, too big to fail, union organizing, uptick rule, urban planning, vertical integration, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, white flight, white picket fence, zero-sum game

He stood up and said, “Since we’re all here advocating the same thing, and we’re going to go out and preach the gospel, one of the things that needs to be talked about is peak oil—because without it, nothing of what we’re doing makes any sense. How does the administration feel about peak oil?” Jones didn’t appear to be familiar with the Obama policy on peak oil, or even what peak oil was. He handed the question off to a woman from the Department of Energy, who spoke for half a minute, demonstrating that she didn’t know any more than Jones. Afterward, Dean decided that peak oil was just too hard for politicians to handle. It meant the end of suburban, fast-food, industrial America, including Wall Street—no wonder the White House didn’t have a position.

One day, Dean was sitting on a bar stool at his kitchen table, surfing a website called “Whiskey and Gunpowder: The Independent Investor’s Daily Guide to Gold, Commodities, Profits and Freedom” on the lousy dial-up connection that was all you could get in Stokesdale, when he read the words “peak oil.” It meant the point when petroleum extraction would reach its maximum rate and begin to fall off. A geologist with Gulf Oil named M. King Hubbert came up with the theory in 1956. Hubbert predicted that the United States, the world’s largest oil producer, would hit its high point in domestic production around 1970—which was what happened, and which explained why oil prices became so volatile throughout the seventies. Hubbert’s theory was that the rest of the world would reach peak oil right around 2005. Dean stood up at the table, went weak in his knees, and stumbled backward.

Dean stood up at the table, went weak in his knees, and stumbled backward. He had a vision of what peak oil would mean where he lived (Katrina had already given a glimpse): long-haul trucks coming to a standstill, food stranded on the highways, local people unable to eat or get to work or heat their homes. Riots, revolution. At least, things getting very chaotic very fast. People around here had guns, they had the Scotch-Irish mentality to fight. Then something like martial law, maybe a coup d’état. This was what America was facing. He knew that this moment would stay with him, just like discovering Napoleon Hill. Napoleon wrote about the power of concentration—that if you concentrated your mind on one subject for an extended period of time, things would start popping into your head and what you needed to know would be illuminated to you.


pages: 441 words: 113,244

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians by Joe Quirk, Patri Friedman

3D printing, access to a mobile phone, addicted to oil, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Celtic Tiger, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Colonization of Mars, Dean Kamen, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, failed state, financial intermediation, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kickstarter, low skilled workers, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open borders, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, peak oil, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, price stability, profit motive, radical decentralization, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, stem cell, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, young professional

Even assuming a 50 percent increase in agricultural efficiency, by 2050 we will need to increase the land space devoted to farmland 22 million square kilometers, or 8.5 million square miles, an area nearly equivalent in size to North America. Oil. Searching for consensus about “peak oil,” the point in time when the maximum global rate of crude oil extraction is reached became a fool’s errand when the hydrofracking revolution only further polarized the debate due to deep uncertainty about the actual size of undiscovered world oil reserves. Many of the most popular doomsdates refer to current economically available oil and not total physically existing oil, as if extraction technologies will never improve and prices never adjust. So let’s just say that the most pessimistic analysts say “peak oil” has already occurred, while the most optimistic analysts say 2050.

See also How to Feed the World in 2050, on the website of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, accessed March 7, 2012, www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf; “2050: A Third More Mouths to Feed: Food Production Will Have to Increase by 70%,” on the website of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, last modified September 23, 2009, www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/35571. “peak oil”: Ian Chapman, “The End of Peak Oil? Why This Topic Is Still Relevant Despite Recent Denials,” Energy Policy 64 (January 2014): 93–101. See also Nuno Luis Madureira, Key Concepts in Energy (London: Springer International, 2014), 125–26; Richard G. Miller and Steven R. Sorrell, “The Future of Oil Supply,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 372, no. 2006 (January 13, 2014), http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/372/2006/20130179.

The human race is faced with eight of what futurist Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, calls “humanity’s grand challenges.” The problems list is actually larger and scarier than the list he proposed, so we’ve updated it: Sea level rise, fish extinction, poisonous coastal “dead zones,” food shortages, peak oil, water crisis, resource wars, and poverty. Given the amount of time we have—5.3 billion scheduled to experience water shortages by 2025, and 8.1 billion set to fight over it—we don’t have time to find eight stately solutions to each of the eight grand challenges. We need to look at how all eight grand challenges interlock.


pages: 1,373 words: 300,577

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, book value, borderless world, BRICs, business climate, California energy crisis, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, clean tech, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial innovation, flex fuel, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global village, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, index fund, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, John Deuss, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, Malacca Straits, market design, means of production, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, new economy, no-fly zone, Norman Macrae, North Sea oil, nuclear winter, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, Piper Alpha, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, Suez crisis 1956, technology bubble, the built environment, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, trade route, transaction costs, unemployed young men, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, William Langewiesche, Yom Kippur War

That China was going to consume every barrel of oil that it could get its hands on—and then some. That Saudi Arabia was misleading the world about its oil reserves, and that Saudi production, the great balancer of world markets, would soon begin to decline. That the world had reached, or would soon reach, “peak oil”—maximum output—and the inevitable decline in output would begin even as the world wanted more and more oil. The last—“peak oil”—was the great unifying theme that tied all the rest together. As prices climbed, this view became more and more pervasive, especially in financial markets, and in a great feedback loop, reinforced bullish investor sentiment and helped to push prices up further.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, a fear has come to pervade the prospects for oil and also feeds anxieties about overall global stability. This fear, that the world is running out of oil, comes with a name: peak oil. It argues that the world is near or at the point of maximum output, and that an inexorable decline has already begun, or is soon to set in. The consequences, it is said, will be grim: “An unprecedented crisis is just over the horizon,” writes one advocate of the peak oil theory. “There will be chaos in the oil industry, in governments and in national economies.” Another warns of consequences including “war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction of homo sapiens.”

But these are not issues of physical resources, but of what happens above ground. Moreover, decision making on the basis of a peak oil view can create risks of its own. Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, declared that Iran needs its nuclear program because “fossil fuels are coming to an end. We know the expiration date of our reserves.” Such an expectation is surprising coming from a country with the world’s second-largest conventional natural gas reserves and among the world’s largest oil reserves.3 This peak oil theory may seem new. In fact, it has been around for a long time. This is not the first time that the world has run out of oil.


pages: 483 words: 143,123

The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters by Gregory Zuckerman

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, Bakken shale, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Icahn, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, energy security, Exxon Valdez, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, man camp, margin call, Maui Hawaii, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Peter Thiel, reshoring, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Timothy McVeigh, urban decay

Joshua Schneyer, Brian Grow, and Jeanine Prezioso, “Special Report: Lack of a Prenup Imperils Oil Billionaire’s Fortune,” Reuters, June 14, 2013. 16. Colin Campbell, ed., Peak Oil Personalities: A Unique Insight into a Major Crisis Facing Mankind (Skibbereen, Ireland: Inspire Books, 2012). CHAPTER TEN 1. Asjylyn Loder, “McClendon Eating Healthy No Help in Bet Undermining Chesapeake,” Bloomberg News, June 27, 2012. 2. Colin Campbell, ed. Peak Oil Personalities: A Unique Insight into a Major Crisis Facing Mankind (Skibbereen, Ireland: Inspire Books, 2012). 3. Steve Toon, “The Dash for Cash,” A&D Watch, February 2008. 4.

Later, when McClendon sat courtside at games with his relative, Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model Kate Upton, the jealousy and buzz grew. Hamm owned his own front-row seat close by. Few noticed him, though. Talk in the energy patch, in Washington, and on Wall Street in early 2008 was of “peak oil,” a popular and vaguely Malthusian notion that the growth of global energy supplies had reached its limit, a dreaded shift sure to lead to rising prices and global economic strains. McClendon’s company was among the few still making huge new discoveries by focusing its drilling on shale, a dense rock long ignored by oil giants.

“It’s quite a simple theory and one that any beer drinker understands,” explained prominent British petroleum engineer Colin Campbell, a Berlin native and a fan of Hubbert’s theory. “The glass starts full and ends empty and the faster you drink it the quicker it’s gone.”16 For years, Hubbert’s argument, a Malthusian notion that became known as the peak oil theory, was dismissed by the energy establishment. But when U.S. oil production did peak in 1970 and an energy crisis ensued, some began to suspect that Hubbert might have been on to something. By the time Greenspan issued his own warning, a consensus was emerging that the heyday of oil and gas production was over.


pages: 273 words: 93,419

Let them eat junk: how capitalism creates hunger and obesity by Robert Albritton

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Bretton Woods, California gold rush, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, Food sovereignty, Haber-Bosch Process, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kickstarter, land reform, late capitalism, means of production, military-industrial complex, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, South Sea Bubble, the built environment, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, upwardly mobile

Even so radical an innovation as transgenic organisms was rushed into use without adequate testing for their possible dramatically damaging and irreversible consequences, largely because corporations had invested so much in developing them that they could not afford a long delay in profiting from their use, and because these same corporations have enormous influence in government circles.5 A central problem with our current food system is its dependence on petroleum at a time when the price of petroleum will continue to climb because of dwindling supplies relative to demand, and at a time when burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming. Breaking the food system’s addiction to petroleum is both necessary and difficult. PEAK OIL AND BIOFUELS Over the past 40 years the US consumption of fossil fuel has increased 20-fold.6 Given the extent to which the US economy, 148 L E T T H E M E AT J U N K including agriculture and food, is tied to petrochemicals, and the likelihood that passing the “peak oil” point globally will lead to large and permanent price increases of petrochemicals, without radical changes, the prospects for the US economy are bleak. In the 1940s for every barrel of oil spent searching for oil, 100 barrels of oil were produced, and now for every barrel of oil spent, we get only 10 barrels.7 As we reach the point of “peak oil”, it takes almost as much oil to expand the supply as is gained by the new supply.

The paper may contain up to 70% post consumer waste. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England Contents Preface viii Part I Introduction 1 1 Introduction General introduction A framework for understanding capitalism Part II Understanding Capitalism 2 3 The Management of Agriculture and Food by Capital’s Deep Structures Capital’s profit orientation Capital, time and speed Capital, space and homogenization Capital and workers Capital and underconsumption Capital, oligopoly and globalization Capital and subjectivity Conclusions The Phase of Consumerism and the US Roots of the Current Agriculture and Food Regimes Consumerism’s profit orientation: petroleum, cars, suburbs and television Consumerism, time, and speed: unchecked toxicity and life on the run Consumerism, space and homogenization: suburbanization and monocultures [ v ] 2 3 10 17 18 26 30 33 37 41 43 46 49 51 56 61 64 vi CONTENTS Consumerism and workers: hiding the health costs of hazardous working conditions and low wages Consumerism and underconsumption: new forms of debt expansion and advertising Consumerism, oligopoly and globalization: a command economy of corporations Consumerism and subjectivity: the politics of fear Conclusions Part III The Historical Analysis of the US-Centred Global Food Regime 66 68 71 72 76 79 4 The Food Regime and Consumers’ Health Capitalist agriculture The case of tobacco The global food regime: a story of irrationality The obesity “epidemic” Sugar Meatification and fat consumption Hunger and starvation Salt Soy Pesticides Food additives Microorganisms Loss of nutrients Genetically modified organisms Supermarkets Fast food chains Conclusions 80 81 84 87 91 95 101 105 108 109 110 113 114 115 118 119 120 122 5 The Health of Agriculture and Food Workers Workers in the US agricultural and food systems Workers in the agricultural and food systems of developing countries Conclusions 124 125 Agriculture, Food Provisioning and the Environment Peak oil and biofuels 146 147 6 133 144 CONTENTS vii Global warming Land and deforestation Fresh water The oceans Species loss Genetically modified organisms Waste Conclusions 154 156 158 159 160 161 163 164 7 Food, Marketing and Choice in the United States Choice and the case of tobacco Marketing Marketing to children Choosing junk foods Consumer sovereignty Conclusions 165 167 171 172 177 178 180 8 Corporate Power, Food and Liberal Democracy Corporations and government Corporations and the legal system Corporations and science Conclusions 182 185 189 190 197 Part IV Conclusions 9 199 Agriculture, Food and the Fight for Democracy, Social Justice, Health and Sustainability Capitalism’s food failures Movements for change Toward a more effective and accountable public sector More accountable corporations Making markets democratically accountable Conclusions 200 201 203 204 205 208 210 Notes Bibliography Index 212 238 251 Preface On December 17, 2007 the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced at a press conference in Rome that 37 countries were in a food crisis requiring “urgent steps to protect the poor from soaring food prices.”1 One of the leading international business magazines, the Economist, published only minimal coverage of this crisis until its April 19, 2008 issue (four months later).

In the 1940s for every barrel of oil spent searching for oil, 100 barrels of oil were produced, and now for every barrel of oil spent, we get only 10 barrels.7 As we reach the point of “peak oil”, it takes almost as much oil to expand the supply as is gained by the new supply. For example, the ecological damage involved in retrieving oil from the Alberta oil sands, and the amount of energy it takes to produce a single barrel of oil from the tar sands, raise serious doubts about the desirability and viability of the entire project.8 The Canadian oil sands are enriching many people at immense long-term environmental costs.


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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

airport security, Alan Greenspan, behavioural economics, Broken windows theory, crack epidemic, desegregation, Exxon Valdez, feminist movement, George Akerlof, information asymmetry, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, longitudinal study, mental accounting, moral hazard, More Guns, Less Crime, oil shale / tar sands, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, pets.com, profit maximization, Richard Thaler, school choice, sensible shoes, Steven Pinker, Ted Kaczynski, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, twin studies, War on Poverty

We’ll be a little sad to have been wrong, but a lot happy to correct the mistake. A Freakonomics T-shirt goes to the first person who offers hard evidence of the dirty-socks theory. —SJD (May 20, 2005, and Aug. 5, 2005) “‘Peak Oil’: Welcome to the Media’s New Version of Shark Attacks” The cover story of the Aug. 21 New York Times Magazine, written by Peter Maass, is about “Peak Oil.” The idea behind “peak oil” is that the world has been on a path of increasing oil production for many years, and now we are about to peak and go into a situation where there are dwindling reserves, leading to triple-digit prices for a barrel of oil, an unparalleled worldwide depression, and as one web page puts it, “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.”

So even if high prices don’t cause a recession, the Saudis risk losing market share to rivals into whose nonfundamentalist hands Americans would much prefer to channel their energy dollars. As he notes, high prices lead people to develop substitutes. Which is exactly why we don’t need to panic over peak oil in the first place. So why do I compare peak oil to shark attacks? It is because shark attacks mostly stay about constant, but fear of them goes up sharply when the media decides to report on them. The same thing, I bet, will now happen with peak oil. I expect tons of copycat journalism stoking the fears of consumers about oil-induced catastrophe, even though nothing fundamental has changed in the oil outlook in the last decade.

So after a brief windfall for producers, oil prices would slide as recession sets in and once-voracious economies slow down, using less oil. Prices have collapsed before, and not so long ago: in 1998, oil fell to $10 a barrel after an untimely increase in OPEC production and a reduction in demand from Asia, which was suffering through a financial crash. Oops, there goes the whole peak-oil argument. When the price rises, demand falls, and oil prices slide. What happened to “the end of the world as we know it”? Now we are back to $10-a-barrel oil. Without realizing it, the author just invoked basic economics to invalidate the entire premise of the article! Just for good measure, he goes on to write: High prices can have another unfortunate effect for producers.


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The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth by Jeremy Rifkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, book value, borderless world, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, decarbonisation, digital rights, do well by doing good, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, failed state, general purpose technology, ghettoisation, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, impact investing, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Joseph Schumpeter, means of production, megacity, megaproject, military-industrial complex, Network effects, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planetary scale, prudent man rule, remunicipalization, renewable energy credits, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, union organizing, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Ron Bousso and Karolin Schaps, “Shell Sees Oil Demand Peaking by Late 2020s as Electric Car Sales Grow,” Reuters, July 27, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-demand-shell/shell-sees-oil-demand-peaking-by-late-2020s-as-electric-car-sales-grow-idUSKBN1AC1MG (accessed March 24, 2019).   5.  James Osborne, “Peak Oil Demand, a Theory with Many Doubters,” Houston Chronicle, March 9, 2018, https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Peak-oil-demand-a-theory-with-many-doubters-12729734.php (accessed March 24, 2019).   6.  “Daimler Trucks Is Connecting Its Trucks with the Internet,” Daimler Global Media Site, March 2016, https://media.daimler.com/marsMediaSite/en/instance/ko/Daimler-Trucks-is-connecting-its-trucks-with-the-internet.xhtml?

And studies and reports over the past twenty-four months—from within the global financial community, the insurance sector, global trade organizations, national governments, and many of the leading consulting agencies in the energy industry, the transportation sector, and the real estate sector—suggest that the imminent collapse of the fossil fuel industrial civilization could occur sometime between 2023 and 2030, as key sectors decouple from fossil fuels and rely on ever-cheaper solar, wind, and other renewable energies and accompanying zero-carbon technologies.21 The United States, currently the leading oil-producing nation, will be caught in the crosshairs between the plummeting price of solar and wind and the fallout from peak oil demand and accumulating stranded assets in the oil industry.22 Let’s be clear that this Great Disruption is occurring, in large part, because the marketplace is speaking. Every government will have to follow the market or face the consequences. Governments that lead in the scale-up of a new zero-carbon Third Industrial Revolution will stay ahead of the curve.

Now, double back to Bank of America’s claim that increased penetration of electric vehicles into the market “will likely start to erode this last major bastion of oil demand growth in the early 2020s and cause global oil demand to peak by 2030” and Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden’s similar claim that global peak oil demand will come by the late 2020s.26 Are they right? Do the other giant oil companies agree, or are they still bullish on a more extended future for their industry before stranded assets become a reality? We may already have an answer. Bernstein Research, one of the energy industry’s most respected market forecasters, warned in a research note in July 2018 that the global economy could experience an oil-price shock of $150 per barrel, topping even the $147 per barrel all-time high in July 2008 that, along with the subprime mortgage crisis, took the global economy into the Great Recession.


pages: 121 words: 36,908

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase

Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, Anthropocene, basic income, bitcoin, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, congestion pricing, cryptocurrency, deindustrialization, do what you love, Dogecoin, Donald Shoup, Edward Snowden, emotional labour, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, full employment, future of work, green new deal, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), iterative process, Jevons paradox, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kim Stanley Robinson, litecoin, mass incarceration, means of production, military-industrial complex, Occupy movement, pattern recognition, peak oil, plutocrats, post-work, postindustrial economy, price mechanism, private military company, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Gordon, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart meter, TaskRabbit, technoutopianism, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, Wolfgang Streeck

Readers today, however, may be familiar with the modern counterpart to Jevons’s speculations, the theory of “peak oil.” Originating with the mid-twentieth century geologist M. King Hubbert, this theory uses reasoning similar to Jevons’s. Noting the approaching peak and decline in easily accessible reserves, peak-oil theorists claim that the world is heading into a period of inevitable economic stagnation resulting from the exhaustion of oil reserves. The theory gained credence when Hubbert’s prediction that the United States would hit peak oil in the 1970s largely came true.6 Like Jevons on coal, peak oil depends on the idea that it is impossible to transition the economy away from oil and onto some combination of other, less limited energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, natural gas, and nuclear power.


pages: 337 words: 103,273

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, biodiversity loss, Bob Geldof, BRICs, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, data science, decarbonisation, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fear of failure, geopolitical risk, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuclear winter, Ocado, ocean acidification, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, purchasing power parity, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, systems thinking, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, University of East Anglia, warehouse automation

If we have to eliminate the fossil-fuel industry to cut CO2 emissions, we will have lost $3 trillion of economic activity. If we don’t eliminate them, we will face runaway climate change with the potential for the loss of the insurance industry, the collapse of the food supply, and geopolitical crises and instability over water and refugees. If we get growth back on track as it was before 2008, then we will face peak oil and food shortages with prices soaring to new highs that stop growth again. The issue is not therefore whether growth is stopping, the issue is how it will stop, when we will accept that it has, and how we will then adjust to our new reality. So when you hear arguments in defense of growth, consider them not as the case against ending it, because this is not a decision we will get to make.

It would require economic indicators that we were actually hitting the limits to really gain attention. The most obvious candidates for these were commodity prices, particularly food and oil. Oil was a good candidate for convincing evidence because it had long been predicted that we would at some point reach “peak oil”—the point after which oil extraction can no longer be increased. There was a clear and established link between economic growth and oil consumption that made the “growth hitting its limits” logic simple for people to understand. This would also be a good test of the techno-optimist view—that markets self-correct because as resources run out, prices rise and alternatives come onstream.

This would also be a good test of the techno-optimist view—that markets self-correct because as resources run out, prices rise and alternatives come onstream. (While this is obviously correct in theory and over time, there are considerable challenges in the politics and economics of the transition and timing unless the price rises are steady and slow, which they rarely are.) Peak oil is a good example of limits being reached because of the suddenness of the impact, comparable conceptually to the collapse of fisheries we discussed earlier. It’s not that oil will soon run out; in fact nowhere close to it. Part of the way through global supplies, the rate of extraction of oil reaches a maximum as remaining reserves become increasingly difficult to extract.


pages: 364 words: 101,193

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas

accounting loophole / creative accounting, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, blood diamond, Climatic Research Unit, Deng Xiaoping, failed state, Garrett Hardin, hindcast, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Live Aid, Medieval Warm Period, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, price stability, South China Sea, supervolcano, Tragedy of the Commons

Pretty much the entire world has now been geologically surveyed, so the chances of petroleum explorers having missed a formation like Ghawar somewhere else are negligible. With current reserves being depleted without replacement by new reserves, the ‘peak oil’ crowd would indeed seem to be on to something. The British climate change campaigner and ex-geologist Jeremy Leggett warns that a failure to face up to peak oil could cause a global economic crash, combined with an upsurge in military conflict in the Middle East over the remaining oil reserves-conflict of which the US war in Iraq could be a foretaste. The energy analyst Richard Heinberg calls for a strategy he calls ‘powerdown’, where the world undertakes a conscious shift away from the high-energy society in order to avoid collapse on the day the oil wells begin to run dry.

The country's oil use has doubled in the last ten years, and if the Chinese by 2030 use oil at the same rate as Americans do now, China will need 100 million barrels of oil a day. However, current world production is only around 80 million barrels per day, and is unlikely to rise much further before the ‘peak oil’ point is reached. There simply isn't enough oil in the ground to bring Chinese consumption up to Western levels-the global resource buffer is already being hit. Similarly for food: as the Chinese diet becomes increasingly rich in meat and dairy products, more grain is needed. By 2030, if Chinese consumers are to become as voracious as Americans, they will use the equivalent of two-thirds of today's entire global harvest.

Bob Dylan once sang about how the white Southerner who shot the black civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 was ‘just a pawn in their game’. So are we all, pawns in the game of global warming. But we are not entirely powerless, nor entirely blameless. The collective hand that moves these pawns is our own. Peak oil We may not have the luxury of choosing whether to give up fossil fuels voluntarily, however. In the last few years an increasing number of knowledgeable people have come to the conclusion that world oil supplies are close to peaking, raising the spectre of an energy crunch which would cause untold hardship.


pages: 329 words: 85,471

The Locavore's Dilemma by Pierre Desrochers, Hiroko Shimizu

air freight, back-to-the-land, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, British Empire, Columbian Exchange, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, edge city, Edward Glaeser, food desert, food miles, Food sovereignty, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, intermodal, invention of agriculture, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, land tenure, megacity, moral hazard, mortgage debt, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, profit motive, refrigerator car, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, Tyler Cowen, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl

As one University of Copenhagen economist observed at the time, the Danish agricultural performance was only as good as it turned out to be because the “Germans paid for the war effort,” and, overall, the Danish economy consumed some of its accumulated capital and suffered “heavy financial loss[es].”68 In Denmark, as elsewhere, increased national self-sufficiency would have been unsustainable in the long run and the adoption of this policy on an ever smaller geographical scale (i.e., locavorism), even less so. Peak Oil and Locavorism69 Another common belief among locavores in terms of food security is that their prescription prepares us for the unavoidable re-localization of our food system that will follow the imminent peak and later depletion of our supply of “cheap petroleum” in the next century. This argument, however, is fallacious, whether or not one believes in the peak oil rhetoric. For starters, even assuming a world in which hostile aliens have emptied all of our best oil fields, all credible analysts (there are always a few pessimistic outliers) tell us that, with minimal efforts to look beyond the ample economically recoverable reserves available at the moment, we could easily have enough coal to last us several centuries.70 It is true that rebuilding our global food supply chain around (mostly liquefied) coal would be more expensive, inconvenien,t and environmentally damaging than around petroleum-derived liquid fuels (which is why they displaced coal in the first place), but it does not present any insurmountable problem—indeed, South Africa’s Sasol, the world’s largest producer of coal-based liquids, already manufactures a completely synthetic jet fuel.

Megastores Shantytowns and Social Capital Higher Food Prices and Humanistic Pursuits Chapter 3 - Myth #2: Locavorism Delivers a Free Economic Lunch The Broken Window Fallacy Physical Geography and Agricultural Specialization The Importance of Latitude Economies of Scale The Debate Over Land Use Time and Trade-offs Chapter 4 - Myth #3: Locavorism Heals the Earth On the Unbalance of Nature Locavorism and the (Mis)management of Natural Resources The Basic Problems with Food Miles Blame It on the Poor People Green Cities and Trade Chapter 5 - Myth #4: Locavorism Increases Food Security The Third Horseman The Slaying of the Third Horseman (with Long Distance Trade) Agricultural Resilience: Diversification vs. Monocultures Overspecialization and Food Security Locavorism and Military Security Peak Oil and Locavorism Climate Change, Locavorism, and Food Security Chapter 6 - Myth #5: Locavorism Offers Tastier, More Nutritious, and Safer Food The Changing Human Body Taste Nutrition Food Safety Chapter 7 - Well-Meaning Coercion, Unintended Consequences, and Bad Outcomes A Brief Historical Overview of Government Intervention in Food Markets Public Food Reserves Food Export Restrictions and Bans Price Floors Price Ceilings On Appointing “Good” Czars Unleashing the Invisible Hand CONCLUSION EPILOGUE NOTES INDEX Copyright Page To Ferenc (“Ferko”) Csillag (1955–2005), dear friend and mentor.

Furthermore, because the liquid fraction of petroleum used to power container ships is for the most part the dirtiest and cheapest (so-called “bunker fuel”) for which there is at present little other demand,71 higher crude prices would have a much more pronounced effect on other segments of the food supply chain than on long distance maritime transportation. At any rate, the Peak Oil rhetoric should not be taken seriously. Pessimistic energy forecasts have a long history—predictions of imminent petroleum shortages were even made before the first oil well was drilled in Western Pennsylvania in the middle of the 19th century—and a truly awful track record.72 The main problem historically is that energy doomsayers never quite understood that humans are not only mouths to feed, but also brains to think and arms to work, along with the fact that resources are not fixed and permanent things that exist in and of themselves, but instead are created by always renewable human intellect and labor.


pages: 537 words: 144,318

The Invisible Hands: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Bubbles, Crashes, and Real Money by Steven Drobny

Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, commodity super cycle, commodity trading advisor, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency peg, debt deflation, diversification, diversified portfolio, equity premium, equity risk premium, family office, fiat currency, fixed income, follow your passion, full employment, George Santayana, global macro, Greenspan put, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, index fund, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, inventory management, inverted yield curve, invisible hand, junk bonds, Kickstarter, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, market microstructure, Minsky moment, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, North Sea oil, open economy, peak oil, pension reform, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price discovery process, price stability, private sector deleveraging, profit motive, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, savings glut, selection bias, Sharpe ratio, short selling, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, statistical arbitrage, stochastic volatility, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, survivorship bias, tail risk, The Great Moderation, Thomas Bayes, time value of money, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, two and twenty, unbiased observer, value at risk, Vanguard fund, yield curve, zero-sum game

Within the emerging markets, I like India, China, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Central Asia (especially Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan), most of the Gulf, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The next bubble could be due to both peak oil and the end of fiat money. There is much hysteria around commodities, not only because of peak oil and similar theories, but also because people wish to diversify into “real” assets that governments cannot manipulate. Disruptive processes always trigger a variety of bubbles. It is difficult to project which asset or technology will initially dominate as a replacement for something like oil and capital rushes into anything with even some probability of success.

It is difficult to project which asset or technology will initially dominate as a replacement for something like oil and capital rushes into anything with even some probability of success. I cannot help thinking that one of the bubbles will be something related not only to gold, oil, natural gas, and traditional commodities, but also to windmills, solar power, and other related areas. Technology is very disruptive. Everyone is convinced about peak oil, and the rise of the BRICs has additional demand consequences that imply extremely bullish scenarios for oil. However, this also makes alternatives more attractive. I am sure that one of these alternatives will indeed become very important fundamentally, but many will be bubbles. When you mention the end of fiat money, what do you mean?

I chastise myself for not realizing the importance of this flow at the time, but every single real money manager we talked to said they were in for the long term. I would ask, “If commodities are down 30 percent, are you going to get out?” And they would say no. Yet when commodities fell along with everything else, they all got out. Everyone sold. Do you believe in peak oil whereby crude goes to several hundred dollars, and all other commodities are dragged up with it? No. I believe that over time oil will go back down. $50 to $80 is a reasonable range for oil, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it below these levels. There is serious demand destruction in fossil fuels, and a strong movement in favor of bio and alternative fuels.


pages: 501 words: 134,867

A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice by Tony Weis, Joshua Kahn Russell

addicted to oil, Bakken shale, bilateral investment treaty, call centre, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial exploitation, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, decarbonisation, Deep Water Horizon, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Exxon Valdez, failed state, gentrification, global village, green new deal, guest worker program, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, immigration reform, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Jevons paradox, liberal capitalism, LNG terminal, market fundamentalism, means of production, megaproject, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, profit maximization, public intellectual, race to the bottom, smart grid, special economic zone, WikiLeaks, working poor

This means that returns on investment are much lower in the tar sands than in places with cheaper production costs (such as the Middle East, historically.) At the same time, enormous capital investment is needed to enable the extraction, transport, and refining of bitumen. So it was not until world oil prices began to rise quickly in the face of growing limits to conventional supplies—reflecting the dynamics of “peak oil”10—that the tar sands industry became sufficiently profitable for many large-scale energy and financial corporations to ramp up their investments. Here, it is also helpful to remember that oil, coal, and natural gas account for roughly four-fifths of the world’s net primary energy supply (that is, the sum of energy used in all production, transportation, and households).11 Of these, oil is the most crucial, as both the greatest source of energy generation and the overwhelming source of liquid fuel that powers global transportation systems.

The basic truth starts with the fact that fossil fuels permeate nearly every aspect of global capitalism and have a central function in powering the relentless pursuit of growth and profits. Thus, the race to expand the tar sands and other forms of extreme fossil energy is indeed necessary to perpetuate the current order of things and, at least in the near term, the success in this has been reflected in the diminished talk of peak oil. (Here, along with the tar sands, the explosive rise of fracking for oil and gas is especially notable.) Of course, extreme energy projects can mean great earnings for financiers from Wall Street to Bay Street, and for energy corporations from Calgary to Texas to Europe—though we must be clear that these industries also relate to jobs for ordinary people in countless ways, from the tar sands themselves, to automobile assembly lines, to a food system that runs on oil.

These methods are what I refer to here as “extreme” extraction, from turning coal into liquid forms of energy, to hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) to open huge swaths of natural gas and trapped “tight” oil in the US and Russia, and the net result threatens to add years of life to the dying fossil fuel economy. While some industry champions celebrate this extreme extraction as having put questions of “peak oil” behind us, it in fact illustrates a central pillar: the fossil fuel industry is now turning its attention to scraping the proverbial bottom of the barrel. Of the various forms of extreme extraction, the tar sands in Canada are quite likely the most well known, a gigaproject that is slowly metastasizing into a teraproject, now widely recognized as the largest industrial project in human history.


pages: 1,233 words: 239,800

Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design by Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Steve Tiesdell, Taner Oc

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", A Pattern Language, Arthur Eddington, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, big-box store, Broken windows theory, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, cellular automata, City Beautiful movement, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, deindustrialization, disinformation, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, East Village, edge city, food miles, Frank Gehry, Future Shock, game design, garden city movement, gentrification, global supply chain, Guggenheim Bilbao, income inequality, invisible hand, iterative process, Jane Jacobs, land bank, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, longitudinal study, Masdar, Maslow's hierarchy, megaproject, megastructure, New Urbanism, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, place-making, post-oil, precautionary principle, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, profit motive, Richard Florida, Seaside, Florida, starchitect, streetcar suburb, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, telepresence, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, the market place, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transit-oriented development, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, zero-sum game

• Economic effects• Strained personal finance, as US households have shifted more of their spending to maintaining their fleet of depreciable cars • Declining infrastructure and economic competitiveness, due to building relatively lightly used, spread-out infrastructure that is too expensive to maintain and is massively subsidised • Oil dependency and the potential of global peak oil, with significant impacts on current trade deficits and foreign policy, and potentially serious implications when the peak oil is reached. Telecommuting thus does not remove the need to create places where people want to live, work and play. In practice, it typically occurs on one or two days a week, allowing those who have choice more flexible and efficient lifestyles, but still necessitating face-to-face meetings on other days (Graham & Marvin 1999: 95–6).

(Kunstler 2005: 31) By their very nature, all fossil fuels are limited in supply, and we are running out of the carbon-based fuels that have powered urban growth for the past 150 years. The situation is referred to as peak oil – the point when half the original supply has been pumped from the ground, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. A key issue is when peak oil will be reached. Optimistic predictions place such global decline beginning by 2020 or later, giving some scope – though not much – for major investments in alternatives, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of affluent nations.

(i) Localism The depletion of oil reserves and climate change may entail a return to localism and to greater concentration and density (i.e. urbanity). Discussing the post-peak oil period, Kunstler (2005: 255) asserts that our lives will become ‘profoundly and intensely local’: ‘… the focus of society will have to return to the town or small city and its supporting agricultural hinterland. Those towns and small cities will have to be a lot denser.’ Accepting that a return to ‘medieval villages and permaculture ruralised cities’ is unlikely’, Newman et al (2009: 136) argue: ‘Localism is … more likely to be the required modus operandi for the post-peak oil world, just as globalism was for the cheap oil era.’ This will have impacts on personal travel – shorter journeys for employment/work and for food and other forms of shopping, perhaps, as discussed below, resulting in more compact cities and urban areas.


pages: 448 words: 142,946

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein

Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bernie Madoff, big-box store, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon tax, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, corporate raider, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, degrowth, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, disintermediation, diversification, do well by doing good, fiat currency, financial independence, financial intermediation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, global supply chain, God and Mammon, happiness index / gross national happiness, hydraulic fracturing, informal economy, intentional community, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, land tenure, land value tax, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, liquidity trap, low interest rates, McMansion, means of production, megaproject, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, multilevel marketing, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, phenotype, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Scramble for Africa, special drawing rights, spinning jenny, technoutopianism, the built environment, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons

Yes, it is possible to maintain economic growth by displacing it from the consumption of one part of the commons to another—by burning gas instead of oil or by commoditizing human services or intellectual property instead of the cod fishery—but aggregated over the totality of the social, natural, cultural, and spiritual commons, the basic argument of Peak Oil remains valid. Instead of Peak Oil, we are facing Peak Everything. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, the first government response, the bailout and monetary stimulus, was an attempt to uphold a tower of debt upon debt that far exceeded its real economic foundation. As such, its apparent success was temporary, a postponement of the inevitable: “pretend and extend,” as some on Wall Street call it.

It is the “discrete and separate self,” the Cartesian self: a bubble of psychology marooned in an indifferent universe, seeking to own, to control, to arrogate as much wealth to itself as possible, but foredoomed by its very cutoff from the richness of connected beingness to the experience of never having enough. The assertion that we live in a world of abundance sometimes provokes an emotional reaction, bordering on hostility, in those of my readers who believe that harmonious human coexistence with the rest of life is impossible without a massive reduction in population. They cite Peak Oil and resource depletion, global warming, the exhaustion of our farmland, and our ecological footprint as evidence that the earth cannot long support industrial civilization at present population levels. This book offers a response to this concern as part of a vision of a sacred economy. More importantly, it addresses the “how” questions as well—for example, how we will get to there from here.

Debt grows at compound interest and as a purely mathematical quantity encounters no limits to slow it down. Wealth grows for a while at compound interest, but, having a physical dimension, its growth sooner or later encounters limits.2 This association of economic growth with resource consumption is especially common today among Peak Oil theorists, who forecast economic collapse as oil production begins its “long descent.” Their critics contend that economic growth can and does happen independent of energy use, thanks to technology, miniaturization, efficiency improvements, and so on. Since 1960, U.S. economic growth has outstripped energy use, a trend that accelerated in the 1980s (see Figure 1).


pages: 470 words: 128,328

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal

Abraham Maslow, airport security, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, citizen journalism, clean water, collaborative economy, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, en.wikipedia.org, fear of failure, G4S, game design, hedonic treadmill, hobby farmer, Ian Bogost, jimmy wales, mass immigration, Merlin Mann, Network effects, new economy, oil shock, peak oil, planetary scale, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Stallman, science of happiness, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, SimCity, smart meter, Stewart Brand, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tony Hsieh, Tragedy of the Commons, urban planning, We are as Gods, web application, Whole Earth Catalog

WWO will evoke the wisdom of crowds in advance, as players work together to gain grassroots insights into the forces that will rule at street level in a crisis—and figure out the best ways to prepare, cooperate, and collectively create solutions if and when a real peak-oil shortage happens.” It was designed as a massively multiplayer thought experiment: players would spend six weeks imagining how such a crisis might play out in their local communities, their industries, and their own lives. They would make highly personal forecasts using online social media. And they would rely on an “alternate reality dashboard” to get daily updates on the scenario, in the form of fictional news stories, video reports, and economic indicators from the peak-oil crisis in order to flesh out their personal forecasts in more detail.

Players were challenged to test their own ability to adapt, rapidly and dramatically, to a potential oil crisis. Instead of just imagining a peak-oil scenario, they could start making changes and testing adaptive solutions for real. Each day in real time would represent a week in the simulation. This would enable players to consider longer-term impacts and strategies. The game itself would last for thirty-two days, so the scenario could play out over thirty-two weeks. WWO would give players firsthand insight into a plausible future, helping them prepare for, or even prevent, its worst outcomes. The game would also create a collective record of how a real peak-oil scenario might play out—a kind of survival guide for the future, a record of tremendous value for educators, policy makers, and organizations of all kinds.

We could collectively reduce our daily demand for petroleum in order to create equilibrium with the available supply. Or we could compete even more aggressively for the available oil—with our own individual neighbors, with other companies, with other states, and with other countries. Of course, this didn’t really happen—at least not for most of us. But for two thousand online gamers, this peak-oil scenario was the basis for a life-changing six-week experiment: a collaborative simulation designed to find out what would happen if demand for oil did eventually outstrip our supply, and what we could collectively do about it. The project was called World Without Oil (WWO), and it was the first massively scaled effort to engage ordinary individuals in creating an immersive forecast of the future.


Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann

Abraham Maslow, Abraham Wald, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, anti-pattern, Anton Chekhov, Apollo 13, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, business process, butterfly effect, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark pattern, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, fake news, fear of failure, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, framing effect, friendly fire, fundamental attribution error, Goodhart's law, Gödel, Escher, Bach, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, housing crisis, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, incognito mode, income inequality, information asymmetry, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, lateral thinking, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, LuLaRoe, Lyft, mail merge, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, nocebo, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, p-value, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, Potemkin village, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, premature optimization, price anchoring, principal–agent problem, publication bias, recommendation engine, remote working, replication crisis, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, school choice, Schrödinger's Cat, selection bias, Shai Danziger, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Streisand effect, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, systems thinking, The future is already here, The last Blockbuster video rental store is in Bend, Oregon, The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uber lyft, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, urban planning, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, warehouse robotics, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, When a measure becomes a target, wikimedia commons

This concept was actually popularized with oil, as peak oil is usually defined as the point in time when the maximum amount of oil is being extracted from Earth. After peak oil, the decline may be a slow one, but it will have begun, with oil production falling each year instead of rising. People have predicted peak oil many times. As far back as 1919, David White, the chief geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey, predicted in “The Unmined Supply of Petroleum in the United States” that the U.S. “peak of production will soon be passed, possibly within three years.” Many similar predictions have come and gone, and peak oil has still not occurred.

Many similar predictions have come and gone, and peak oil has still not occurred. What has happened instead is that increased demand has driven innovation in how to get more oil out of the ground, continually increasing yearly production. Now, though, a better argument for peak oil is starting to form as the oil market’s underlying structure is proving to be unhealthy. The effects of climate change are looming. Solar energy is quickly becoming cost-competitive with oil on a global scale. Increasing cost-competitiveness of electric cars and the advent of autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing services are threatening to collapse the car and truck markets as we know them.

., 38 oil, 105–6 Olympics, 209, 246–48, 285 O’Neal, Shaquille, 246 one-hundred-year floods, 192 Onion, 211–12 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Darwin), 100 OODA loop, 294–95 openness to experience, 250 Operation Ceasefire, 232 opinion, diversity of, 205, 206 opioids, 36 opportunity cost, 76–77, 80, 83, 179, 182, 188, 305 of capital, 77, 179, 182 optimistic probability bias, 33 optimization, premature, 7 optimums, local and global, 195–96 optionality, preserving, 58–59 Oracle, 231, 291, 299 order, 124 balance between chaos and, 128 organizations: culture in, 107–8, 113, 273–80, 293 size and growth of, 278–79 teams in, see teams ostrich with its head in the sand, 55 out-group bias, 127 outliers, 148 Outliers (Gladwell), 261 overfitting, 10–11 overwork, 82 Paine, Thomas, 221–22 pain relievers, 36, 137 Pampered Chef, 217 Pangea, 24–25 paradigm shift, 24, 289 paradox of choice, 62–63 parallel processing, 96 paranoia, 308, 309, 311 Pareto, Vilfredo, 80 Pareto principle, 80–81 Pariser, Eli, 17 Parkinson, Cyril, 74–75, 89 Parkinson’s law, 89 Parkinson’s Law (Parkinson), 74–75 Parkinson’s law of triviality, 74, 89 passwords, 94, 97 past, 201, 271–72, 309–10 Pasteur, Louis, 26 path dependence, 57–59, 194 path of least resistance, 88 Patton, Bruce, 19 Pauling, Linus, 220 payoff matrix, 212–15, 238 PayPal, 72, 291, 296 peak, 105, 106, 112 peak oil, 105 Penny, Jonathon, 52 pent-up energy, 112 perfect, 89–90 as enemy of the good, 61, 89–90 personality traits, 249–50 person-month, 279 perspective, 11 persuasion, see influence models perverse incentives, 50–51, 54 Peter, Laurence, 256 Peter principle, 256, 257 Peterson, Tom, 108–9 Petrified Forest National Park, 217–18 Pew Research, 53 p-hacking, 169, 172 phishing, 97 phones, 116–17, 290 photography, 302–3, 308–10 physics, x, 114, 194, 293 quantum, 200–201 pick your battles, 238 Pinker, Steven, 144 Pirahã, x Pitbull, 36 pivoting, 295–96, 298–301, 308, 311, 312 placebo, 137 placebo effect, 137 Planck, Max, 24 Playskool, 111 Podesta, John, 97 point of no return, 244 Polaris, 67–68 polarity, 125–26 police, in organizations and projects, 253–54 politics, 70, 104 ads and statements in, 225–26 elections, 206, 218, 233, 241, 271, 293, 299 failure and, 47 influence in, 216 predictions in, 206 polls and surveys, 142–43, 152–54, 160 approval ratings, 152–54, 158 employee engagement, 140, 142 postmortems, 32, 92 Potemkin village, 228–29 potential energy, 112 power, 162 power drills, 296 power law distribution, 80–81 power vacuum, 259–60 practice, deliberate, 260–62, 264, 266 precautionary principle, 59–60 Predictably Irrational (Ariely), 14, 222–23 predictions and forecasts, 132, 173 market for, 205–7 superforecasters and, 206–7 PredictIt, 206 premature optimization, 7 premises, see principles pre-mortems, 92 present bias, 85, 87, 93, 113 preserving optionality, 58–59 pressure point, 112 prices, 188, 231, 299 arbitrage and, 282–83 bait and switch and, 228, 229 inflation in, 179–80, 182–83 loss leader strategy and, 236–37 manufacturer’s suggested retail, 15 monopolies and, 283 principal, 44–45 principal-agent problem, 44–45 principles (premises), 207 first, 4–7, 31, 207 prior, 159 prioritizing, 68 prisoners, 63, 232 prisoner’s dilemma, 212–14, 226, 234–35, 244 privacy, 55 probability, 132, 173, 194 bias, optimistic, 33 conditional, 156 probability distributions, 150, 151 bell curve (normal), 150–52, 153, 163–66, 191 Bernoulli, 152 central limit theorem and, 152–53, 163 fat-tailed, 191 power law, 80–81 sample, 152–53 pro-con lists, 175–78, 185, 189 procrastination, 83–85, 87, 89 product development, 294 product/market fit, 292–96, 302 promotions, 256, 275 proximate cause, 31, 117 proxy endpoint, 137 proxy metric, 139 psychology, 168 Psychology of Science, The (Maslow), 177 Ptolemy, Claudius, 8 publication bias, 170, 173 public goods, 39 punching above your weight, 242 p-values, 164, 165, 167–69, 172 Pygmalion effect, 267–68 Pyrrhus, King, 239 Qualcomm, 231 quantum physics, 200–201 quarantine, 234 questions: now what, 291 what if, 122, 201 why, 32, 33 why now, 291 quick and dirty, 234 quid pro quo, 215 Rabois, Keith, 72, 265 Rachleff, Andy, 285–86, 292–93 radical candor, 263–64 Radical Candor (Scott), 263 radiology, 291 randomized controlled experiment, 136 randomness, 201 rats, 51 Rawls, John, 21 Regan, Ronald, 183 real estate agents, 44–45 recessions, 121–22 reciprocity, 215–16, 220, 222, 229, 289 recommendations, 217 red line, 238 referrals, 217 reframe the problem, 96–97 refugee asylum cases, 144 regression to the mean, 146, 286 regret, 87 regulations, 183–84, 231–32 regulatory capture, 305–7 reinventing the wheel, 92 relationships, 53, 55, 63, 91, 111, 124, 159, 271, 296, 298 being locked into, 305 dating, 8–10, 95 replication crisis, 168–72 Republican Party, 104 reputation, 215 research: meta-analysis of, 172–73 publication bias and, 170, 173 systematic reviews of, 172, 173 see also experiments resonance, 293–94 response bias, 142, 143 responsibility, diffusion of, 259 restaurants, 297 menus at, 14, 62 RetailMeNot, 281 retaliation, 238 returns: diminishing, 81–83 negative, 82–83, 93 reversible decisions, 61–62 revolving door, 306 rewards, 275 Riccio, Jim, 306 rise to the occasion, 268 risk, 43, 46, 90, 288 cost-benefit analysis and, 180 de-risking, 6–7, 10, 294 moral hazard and, 43–45, 47 Road Ahead, The (Gates), 69 Roberts, Jason, 122 Roberts, John, 27 Rogers, Everett, 116 Rogers, William, 31 Rogers Commission Report, 31–33 roles, 256–58, 260, 271, 293 roly-poly toy, 111–12 root cause, 31–33, 234 roulette, 144 Rubicon River, 244 ruinous empathy, 264 Rumsfeld, Donald, 196–97, 247 Rumsfeld’s Rule, 247 Russia, 218, 241 Germany and, 70, 238–39 see also Soviet Union Sacred Heart University (SHU), 217, 218 sacrifice play, 239 Sagan, Carl, 220 sales, 81, 216–17 Salesforce, 299 same-sex marriage, 117, 118 Sample, Steven, 28 sample distribution, 152–53 sample size, 143, 160, 162, 163, 165–68, 172 Sánchez, Ricardo, 234 sanctions and fines, 232 Sanders, Bernie, 70, 182, 293 Sayre, Wallace, 74 Sayre’s law, 74 scarcity, 219, 220 scatter plot, 126 scenario analysis (scenario planning), 198–99, 201–3, 207 schools, see education and schools Schrödinger, Erwin, 200 Schrödinger’s cat, 200 Schultz, Howard, 296 Schwartz, Barry, 62–63 science, 133, 220 cargo cult, 315–16 Scientific Autobiography and other Papers (Planck), 24 scientific evidence, 139 scientific experiments, see experiments scientific method, 101–2, 294 scorched-earth tactics, 243 Scott, Kim, 263 S curves, 117, 120 secondary markets, 281–82 second law of thermodynamics, 124 secrets, 288–90, 292 Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S., 228 security, false sense of, 44 security services, 229 selection, adverse, 46–47 selection bias, 139–40, 143, 170 self-control, 87 self-fulfilling prophecies, 267 self-serving bias, 21, 272 Seligman, Martin, 22 Semmelweis, Ignaz, 25–26 Semmelweis reflex, 26 Seneca, Marcus, 60 sensitivity analysis, 181–82, 185, 188 dynamic, 195 Sequoia Capital, 291 Sessions, Roger, 8 sexual predators, 113 Shakespeare, William, 105 Sheets Energy Strips, 36 Shermer, Michael, 133 Shirky, Clay, 104 Shirky principle, 104, 112 Short History of Nearly Everything, A (Bryson), 50 short-termism, 55–56, 58, 60, 68, 85 side effects, 137 signal and noise, 311 significance, 167 statistical, 164–67, 170 Silicon Valley, 288, 289 simulations, 193–95 simultaneous invention, 291–92 Singapore math, 23–24 Sir David Attenborough, RSS, 35 Skeptics Society, 133 sleep meditation app, 162–68 slippery slope argument, 235 slow (high-concentration) thinking, 30, 33, 70–71 small numbers, law of, 143, 144 smartphones, 117, 290, 309, 310 smoking, 41, 42, 133–34, 139, 173 Snap, 299 Snowden, Edward, 52, 53 social engineering, 97 social equality, 117 social media, 81, 94, 113, 217–19, 241 Facebook, 18, 36, 94, 119, 219, 233, 247, 305, 308 Instagram, 220, 247, 291, 310 YouTube, 220, 291 social networks, 117 Dunbar’s number and, 278 social norms versus market norms, 222–24 social proof, 217–20, 229 societal change, 100–101 software, 56, 57 simulations, 192–94 solitaire, 195 solution space, 97 Somalia, 243 sophomore slump, 145–46 South Korea, 229, 231, 238 Soviet Union: Germany and, 70, 238–39 Gosplan in, 49 in Cold War, 209, 235 space exploration, 209 spacing effect, 262 Spain, 243–44 spam, 37, 161, 192–93, 234 specialists, 252–53 species, 120 spending, 38, 74–75 federal, 75–76 spillover effects, 41, 43 sports, 82–83 baseball, 83, 145–46, 289 football, 226, 243 Olympics, 209, 246–48, 285 Spotify, 299 spreadsheets, 179, 180, 182, 299 Srinivasan, Balaji, 301 standard deviation, 149, 150–51, 154 standard error, 154 standards, 93 Stanford Law School, x Starbucks, 296 startup business idea, 6–7 statistics, 130–32, 146, 173, 289, 297 base rate in, 157, 159, 160 base rate fallacy in, 157, 158, 170 Bayesian, 157–60 confidence intervals in, 154–56, 159 confidence level in, 154, 155, 161 frequentist, 158–60 p-hacking in, 169, 172 p-values in, 164, 165, 167–69, 172 standard deviation in, 149, 150–51, 154 standard error in, 154 statistical significance, 164–67, 170 summary, 146, 147 see also data; experiments; probability distributions Staubach, Roger, 243 Sternberg, Robert, 290 stock and flow diagrams, 192 Stone, Douglas, 19 stop the bleeding, 234 strategy, 107–8 exit, 242–43 loss leader, 236–37 pivoting and, 295–96, 298–301, 308, 311, 312 tactics versus, 256–57 strategy tax, 103–4, 112 Stiglitz, Joseph, 306 straw man, 225–26 Streisand, Barbra, 51 Streisand effect, 51, 52 Stroll, Cliff, 290 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The (Kuhn), 24 subjective versus objective, in organizational culture, 274 suicide, 218 summary statistics, 146, 147 sunk-cost fallacy, 91 superforecasters, 206–7 Superforecasting (Tetlock), 206–7 super models, viii–xii super thinking, viii–ix, 3, 316, 318 surface area, 122 luck, 122, 124, 128 surgery, 136–37 Surowiecki, James, 203–5 surrogate endpoint, 137 surveys, see polls and surveys survivorship bias, 140–43, 170, 272 sustainable competitive advantage, 283, 285 switching costs, 305 systematic review, 172, 173 systems thinking, 192, 195, 198 tactics, 256–57 Tajfel, Henri, 127 take a step back, 298 Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 2, 105 talk past each other, 225 Target, 236, 252 target, measurable, 49–50 taxes, 39, 40, 56, 104, 193–94 T cells, 194 teams, 246–48, 275 roles in, 256–58, 260 size of, 278 10x, 248, 249, 255, 260, 273, 280, 294 Tech, 83 technical debt, 56, 57 technologies, 289–90, 295 adoption curves of, 115 adoption life cycles of, 116–17, 129, 289, 290, 311–12 disruptive, 308, 310–11 telephone, 118–19 temperature: body, 146–50 thermostats and, 194 tennis, 2 10,000-Hour Rule, 261 10x individuals, 247–48 10x teams, 248, 249, 255, 260, 273, 280, 294 terrorism, 52, 234 Tesla, Inc., 300–301 testing culture, 50 Tetlock, Philip E., 206–7 Texas sharpshooter fallacy, 136 textbooks, 262 Thaler, Richard, 87 Theranos, 228 thermodynamics, 124 thermostats, 194 Thiel, Peter, 72, 288, 289 thinking: black-and-white, 126–28, 168, 272 convergent, 203 counterfactual, 201, 272, 309–10 critical, 201 divergent, 203 fast (low-concentration), 30, 70–71 gray, 28 inverse, 1–2, 291 lateral, 201 outside the box, 201 slow (high-concentration), 30, 33, 70–71 super, viii–ix, 3, 316, 318 systems, 192, 195, 198 writing and, 316 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 30 third story, 19, 92 thought experiment, 199–201 throwing good money after bad, 91 throwing more money at the problem, 94 tight versus loose, in organizational culture, 274 timeboxing, 75 time: management of, 38 as money, 77 work and, 89 tipping point, 115, 117, 119, 120 tit-for-tat, 214–15 Tōgō Heihachirō, 241 tolerance, 117 tools, 95 too much of a good thing, 60 top idea in your mind, 71, 72 toxic culture, 275 Toys “R” Us, 281 trade-offs, 77–78 traditions, 275 tragedy of the commons, 37–40, 43, 47, 49 transparency, 307 tribalism, 28 Trojan horse, 228 Truman Show, The, 229 Trump, Donald, 15, 206, 293 Trump: The Art of the Deal (Trump and Schwartz), 15 trust, 20, 124, 215, 217 trying too hard, 82 Tsushima, Battle of, 241 Tupperware, 217 TurboTax, 104 Turner, John, 127 turn lemons into lemonade, 121 Tversky, Amos, 9, 90 Twain, Mark, 106 Twitter, 233, 234, 296 two-front wars, 70 type I error, 161 type II error, 161 tyranny of small decisions, 38, 55 Tyson, Mike, 7 Uber, 231, 275, 288, 290 Ulam, Stanislaw, 195 ultimatum game, 224, 244 uncertainty, 2, 132, 173, 180, 182, 185 unforced error, 2, 10, 33 unicorn candidate, 257–58 unintended consequences, 35–36, 53–55, 57, 64–65, 192, 232 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), 306 unique value proposition, 211 University of Chicago, 144 unknown knowns, 198, 203 unknowns: known, 197–98 unknown, 196–98, 203 urgency, false, 74 used car market, 46–47 U.S.


pages: 304 words: 90,084

Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change by Dieter Helm

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, blockchain, Boris Johnson, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, congestion charging, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demand response, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, electricity market, Extinction Rebellion, fixed income, food miles, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jevons paradox, lockdown, market design, means of production, microplastics / micro fibres, North Sea oil, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price mechanism, quantitative easing, remote working, reshoring, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, systems thinking, Thomas Malthus

The oil price has maintained a long-term trend, gradually falling in real terms over the period since its inception as an industry in the late nineteenth century, with the exceptional interruptions of the 1970s and in the period running up to the peak in 2014. The renewables lobby is keen to argue that wind and solar are becoming grid-competitive. While they relied on a belief in peak oil this might well have turned out to be correct. But peak oil is nonsense: the renewables have not only to reduce their costs, but to do so faster than fossil fuels. The more successful renewables are, the lower the demand for oil, and hence the lower the price of oil as production centres on the incredibly cheap sources in the Middle East.

Source ISBN: 9780008404468 Ebook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008404475 Version: 2020-07-15 Dedication To Susie, Oliver, Laura, Amelie and Jake CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Preface List of abbreviations Introduction PART ONE: 30 WASTED YEARS Chapter one: No progress Chapter two: Kyoto and Paris Chapter three: Going it alone PART TWO: THE NET ZERO ECONOMY Chapter four: Living within our environmental means Chapter five: The price of carbon Chapter six: Net zero infrastructures Chapter seven: Natural sequestration, offsetting, and carbon capture and storage PART THREE: AGRICULTURE, TRANSPORT AND ELECTRICITY Chapter eight: Agriculture: green, prosperous and low-carbon Chapter nine: Reinventing transport Chapter ten: The electric future Conclusions: A no regrets plan Endnotes Bibliography Index Acknowledgements About this Book About the Author About the Publisher PREFACE I thought I had finished writing about climate change a while ago, with my two books on the subject – The Carbon Crunch: How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong – And How to Fix It and Burn Out: The Endgame for Fossil Fuels – and ‘The Cost of Energy Review’ (the Helm Review) I undertook for the UK government in 2017.[1] Back in 2012, in The Carbon Crunch I asked the question: why has so little been achieved? I wanted to puncture the complacency, and especially the peak oil fantasy – that we were going to run out of fossil fuels, and hence the oil price was heading north, making what looked like expensive renewables cheap by comparison. I followed this up in 2017 with Burn Out, pointing out that we have enough oil and gas to fry the planet many times over, and that the exit from fossil fuels will be messy for the great oil-producing countries, and messy for the renewables, as the price of oil and gas falls back.

What you see is a large and, in most cases, growing market over the next 20–30 years. You look at all the fossil fuel projects that cross your desk. You do the analysis. Perhaps you take a pessimistic view about future fossil fuel prices, given the sheer abundance of the resources available, which make a nonsense of all those peak oil and peak gas forecasts that were peddled by politicians and analysts up until the price collapsed in 2014 and then again in 2020.[15] You will be able to balance some of the possible price falls with cost reductions as technology keeps marching on, and every bit as fast as for the competing renewables.


pages: 224 words: 69,494

Mobility: A New Urban Design and Transport Planning Philosophy for a Sustainable Future by John Whitelegg

active transport: walking or cycling, Berlin Wall, British Empire, car-free, carbon tax, conceptual framework, congestion charging, congestion pricing, corporate social responsibility, Crossrail, decarbonisation, Donald Shoup, energy transition, eurozone crisis, glass ceiling, high-speed rail, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), megacity, meta-analysis, negative emissions, New Urbanism, peak oil, post-industrial society, price elasticity of demand, price mechanism, Right to Buy, smart cities, telepresence, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, transit-oriented development, urban planning, urban sprawl

The breakdown of energy use by mode is shown in Table 6.1. The combination of global population increase (a 40% increase is predicted in the period 2010-2030), rapid economic development and car ownership growth in China, India and South American countries and a decline in oil availability (the peak oil problem) all conspire to create serious difficulties for traditional forms of oil-based mobility. A growth in mobility will increase the demand for energy and it is European Union policy to reduce the demand for energy whilst at the same time promoting growth (European Commission 2013a and 2013b).

These strategies not only conserve, land, energy and financial resources, but also help the poor and those without privatized motorised vehicles to access goods and services within the city. In short, accessible cities are inclusive, resourceful and pro-poor.” Accessible cities are also much more resilient. They can deal with shocks that might disrupt transport systems (strikes, civil unrest, and severe weather) and also with fuel price hikes that might result from peak oil and global shortages of oil as India, China and Brazil accelerate their “progress” towards Californian or Swedish levels of car ownership and use. It will be a mistake of some considerable historical significance not to build resilient cities. Holger and Dalkmann (2007) have provided a coherent structure that locates e-mobility in the sustainable transport conceptual framework.

As a result of petroleum powered transportation and the road danger it creates, we walk and cycle less than ever before in the history of the world and our personal energy output has plummeted…climate change and fatness are different facets of the same basic problem.” We are much more likely to be able to solve climate change and obesity problems and deal with peak oil vulnerability if we harness the synergy that exists between public health, quality of life and climate change concerns. They are all part of the same debate and all require a serious and dramatic upgrade of our built environment to reward the cyclist and the pedestrian. The current “Zeitgeist” is to reward the motorist and to increase climate change and obesity problems.


pages: 309 words: 78,361

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor

Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, big-box store, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, deskilling, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Gini coefficient, global village, Herman Kahn, IKEA effect, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, life extension, McMansion, new economy, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, peak oil, pink-collar, post-industrial society, prediction markets, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, smart grid, systematic bias, systems thinking, The Chicago School, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

It also assumed an unfortunate political hue, with conservatives more likely to dismiss the concerns, and supporters on the other side of the spectrum. The conventional wisdom was that the economists won the day. One reason is that the shortages the model focused on were food and nonrenewables, such as stocks of oil and bauxite and other minerals. This was partly because of concern about peak oil and a long history of energy modeling. When energy, food, and other commodity prices declined in the 1980s, it was seen as prima facie evidence against the scarcity view and closed the case for some. On this point, there was a well-publicized bet between Ehrlich and an economist named Julian Simon about what would happen to the prices of key minerals, which Ehrlich lost decisively.

Around the nation, local sustainability committees have taken up the mission of bringing their communities together for land-use planning, carbon reduction, income security, and greater self-reliance. The vanguard of this movement is thinking long-term, spurred on by the need to wean off fossil fuels and a belief, by some, in the phenomenon of peak oil. A global movement called Transition Towns is helping small locales transform themselves to become self-reliant. The Post Carbon Cities network, which has a similar mission, is active from Spokane to Nevada City to Alachua County, Florida. There are also homegrown efforts. A few years ago, people in rural areas of Northern California began conversations to create an “off the grid” network of farms and businesses.

“It can’t be one family or one ranch of 20 acres,” he explained. “We need to be together and share resources.” Unlike old-school neo-survivalists, many in this movement are upbeat. “I’m not motivated by fear,” says West. We can “sustainably share resources. It’s intoxicating.” One needn’t believe in apocalyptic visions of peak oil to recognize that enhanced investment in each other, that is, in community, is good economics. The era of disconnection has left us socially undercapitalized. This is not only for the reason social scientists have traditionally identified, which is that social capital yields economic and political benefits such as better government and better economic functioning.


What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

banking crisis, British Empire, Doomsday Clock, failed state, feminist movement, Howard Zinn, informal economy, liberation theology, mass immigration, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, oil shale / tar sands, operational security, peak oil, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Thomas L Friedman, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus

Anyone who wants to apply for fissile materials can apply to the IAEA for peaceful use.39 That’s a very sensible proposal. As far as I’m aware, there is only one country in the world that has accepted it—Iran. Try to find a reference to that somewhere. David Korten has a new book out called The Great Turning.40 He describes a perfect storm that is looming consisting of three elements: peak oil, climate change, and the collapse of the U.S. dollar. Those are all problems, but I think a much more serious one than any of them is the threat of nuclear war. It’s not talked about much except in professional circles. If you read the literature by strategic analysts on disarmament, nuclear war is regarded as a serious and growing threat, a threat that’s been very sharply increased by the Bush administration’s aggressive militarism.

Almost every economist knows that the United States is going to have to do something about the huge trade deficit. And there is only one thing you can do, and that is to weaken the dollar, which will increase inflation and the cost of commodities for consumers, but also could lead to a rise in exports and in manufacturing jobs. As for peak oil, that might actually be a blessing if it’s close. People talk about it as a catastrophe, but what they’re failing to notice is that continued use of oil could cause a worse catastrophe, maybe only one generation from now. Oil is finite. So at some point it will no longer be economical to use oil.

There are many ambiguities, including whether it’s not going to be economically possible to refine oil from tar sands or to exploit other oil that’s currently hard to access. It may turn out that Venezuela has the largest reserves in the world, by some measures.42 It’s just very hard to get to. But peak oil will come. If this situation leads to sensible steps toward reconstructing our society and we accommodate to the fact that we cannot keep polluting the atmosphere, we cannot keep destroying the environment or else we’ll all die; if that happens sooner, fine. If it means that the Bush administration or a successor administration will mitigate this impending catastrophe, that would be good.


The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", 3D printing, 9 dash line, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, Bernie Sanders, BRICs, British Empire, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, commodity super cycle, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, failed state, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, LNG terminal, Lyft, Malacca Straits, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Masayoshi Son, Masdar, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, new economy, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, paypal mafia, peak oil, pension reform, power law, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, super pumped, supply-chain management, TED Talk, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, women in the workforce

The Middle East has been shaped, of course, not only by the maps of frontiers but by different kinds of maps—of geology, of oil and gas wells, of pipelines and tanker routes. The oil and gas, and the revenues and riches and power that flow from them, remain central to the identity of the region. Yet the oil price collapse that began in 2014 has fed into a new debate about the future of oil. Not much more than a decade ago, the world worried about “peak oil,” the idea that oil supplies would run out. The focus has shifted to “peak demand”: how long consumption of oil will continue to grow and when it will begin to decline. Will oil lose its value and importance in the decades to come? The demand collapse for oil in 2020 has further fueled the urgency for oil exporters to diversify and modernize their economies, which Abu Dhabi had begun in 2007 with its Vision 2030, and which Saudi Arabia is now trying to do in double time.

By the 1980s, the domestic petroleum industry was meeting the nation’s needs and also producing a surplus of oil that was exported, principally to Japan.1 But economic growth sparked domestic demand for oil that eventually grew faster than domestic production. In 1993, China crossed an historic line—one that would shape its perspectives to the present day. It became a net importer of oil. Since then it has become increasingly dependent on imports. In the 2000s, alarms went off in Beijing about fear of peak oil supply, the world’s running out of oil, and the economic growth machine faltering. Apprehension grew about the possibility of bruising competition for constricted supplies, especially with the United States. Similar fears were also current in Washington in those years. In the decade and a half following its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China’s oil consumption increased two and a half times over.

By this time, the door had already opened to the use of electricity in autos, owing to the uptake of hybrids, which combined an electric motor with a gasoline engine, stretching out the miles per gallon.2 Meanwhile, interest was growing in “clean tech” and renewables among Silicon Valley venture capital firms, in response to rising concern about climate change and the conviction that much money could potentially be made from them. That made it easier for Tesla to raise investment. The rapid rise in oil prices in those years reinforced the fears of “peak oil”—running out of petroleum—which made non-gasoline-powered transportation look increasingly interesting. And of critical importance were government policies—incentives, subsidies, and regulations on fuel economy and emissions. In California, CARB increased the targets for zero-emission vehicles and, with climate moving up the agenda, introduced limits on CO2 emissions.


pages: 327 words: 90,542

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril by Satyajit Das

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, accounting loophole / creative accounting, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Anton Chekhov, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collaborative economy, colonial exploitation, computer age, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, digital divide, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Downton Abbey, Emanuel Derman, energy security, energy transition, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial repression, forward guidance, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, geopolitical risk, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, It's morning again in America, Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, margin call, market design, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, open economy, PalmPilot, passive income, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, pension reform, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Rana Plaza, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satyajit Das, savings glut, secular stagnation, seigniorage, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Fry, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the market place, the payments system, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transaction costs, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

During the 2000s there have been only around seventy major field discoveries, compared to more than 1,200 in the 1960s and 1970s. Consistent with the peak oil theory, conventional world oil production peaked around 2005 and has been relatively constant since. Currently there are about 70,000 producing fields, with about twenty super-giant fields accounting for more than 25 percent of world production. Many large fields, such as Ghawar (Saudi Arabia), Cantarell (Mexico), and Burgan (Kuwait), are more than half a century old and past their production peak. Oil production in Saudi Arabia, which is historically the world's biggest producer and controls its production levels to stabilize supply and prices, peaked in 2005.

In 2013, proven reserves of oil were around 1.7 trillion barrels, sufficient to last for some fifty years at current rates of extraction. Recoverable coal reserves are sufficient for around 150 years. Proven gas reserves are sufficient for around sixty years. In 1956, Marion King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist working for the Shell Development Company in Texas, created the concept of peak oil, correctly predicting that US oil production would peak in 1970. The concept was based on the inevitable consequence of geological processes. Once a significant proportion of the oil in a reservoir is extracted, water, gas, or chemical insertion is required to artificially restore pressure and sustain production, eventually becoming uneconomic.

One of the new large fields discovered, the Lula (formerly known as Tupi) field in deep waters off Brazil's Atlantic coast, may contain 8 billion barrels. At the present rate of consumption, around 90 million barrels a day or 33 billion barrels each year, Lula can only meet global demand for three months. Critics of the concept of peak oil or peak energy question the accuracy of such long-term forecasts, admitting no limits to the global supply of oil. Techno-dynamism, they argue, will create the third age of fossil fuels: unconventional oil. This relies on enhanced oil recovery—increased output from existing fields. It exploits reserves previously considered inaccessible or uneconomic, such as deep oceans or the Arctic, assisted by new techniques and a reduction in sea ice due to global warming.


pages: 879 words: 233,093

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis by Jeremy Rifkin

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, animal electricity, back-to-the-land, British Empire, carbon footprint, classic study, collaborative economy, death of newspapers, delayed gratification, distributed generation, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, feminist movement, Ford Model T, global village, Great Leap Forward, hedonic treadmill, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lewis Mumford, Mahatma Gandhi, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, off grid, off-the-grid, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, Recombinant DNA, scientific management, scientific worldview, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, social intelligence, supply-chain management, surplus humans, systems thinking, the medium is the message, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, working poor, World Values Survey

With global oil reserves dwindling and the worldwide demand for energy increasing—especially in the emerging nations of India and China, where two billion plus inhabitants make up more than one-third of the human race—concern over global peak oil is becoming more urgently debated. Once peak oil is reached, the oil age is effectively over because the price of energy becomes virtually unaffordable on the backside of the bell curve. While no one knows for sure when oil is likely to peak, the gap in perspective between optimists and pessimists continues to narrow. The former argue that global peak oil is likely to occur between 2030 and 2035. The latter say it will likely peak between 2010 and 2020.88 A few of the world’s leading oil experts say it’s already peaked.89 The North Sea peaked in 2000.90 Mexico, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, is likely to peak around 2010.91 Russia is likely to peak shortly thereafter.

However, occasionally, according to Prigogine, the fluctuations become so great that the system is unable to adjust, and positive feedback takes over. The fluctuations feed off themselves and amplification can easily overwhelm the whole system. That’s exactly what’s occurring today as civilization heads to global peak oil production and into the early stages of real-time climate change impacts. When the fluctuations overwhelm the system, it either collapses or reorganizes itself. If it’s able to reorganize itself, the new dissipative structure will often exhibit a higher order of complexity and integration and a greater flow-through than its predecessor.

Oil shortages and the dramatic fluctuation in the price of oil on the world market are fanning political unrest and precipitating armed confl ict and civil wars on three continents. Currently, one-third of all the civil wars being fought in the world are in the oil-producing countries. As we head toward global peak oil production—the point where half of the world’s available supply of oil is used up—and accelerating climate change, the real-time destructive impacts on ecosystems, economies, and social spaces are potential lightning rods for escalating violence. A NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON Human desperation is likely to reach levels never before experienced in our history on Earth.


pages: 217 words: 61,407

Twilight of Abundance: Why the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short by David Archibald

Bakken shale, carbon tax, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, deindustrialization, energy security, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Great Leap Forward, Herman Kahn, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), means of production, Medieval Warm Period, mutually assured destruction, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, out of africa, peak oil, price discovery process, rising living standards, sceptred isle, South China Sea, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

Chapter 7: The Leaving of Oil 1.Steven Connor, “Warning: Oil Supplies Are Running Out Fast,” Independent, August 3, 2009, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/warning-oil-supplies-are-running-out-fast-1766585.html. 2.“World Energy Outlook 2012,” International Energy Agency, November 12, 2012, http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/publications/weo-2012/. 3.Matthieu Auzanneau, “‘Denying the Imminence of Peak Oil Is a Tragic Error,’ Says Ex-IEA Petroleum Expert,” LeMonde, Oil Man (blog), July 9, 2012, http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/07/09/denying-the-imminence-of-peak-oil-is-a-tragic-error-says-ex-iea-petroleum-expert/. 4.M. King Hubbert, “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels,” presentation to the American Petroleum Institute, Dallas, 1956. 5.“Onshore Gas Topic Update,” October 2013, addition to Prudent Development—Realizing the Potential of North America’s Abundant Natural Gas and Oil Resources, National Petroleum Council, September 2011. 6.Stan Stetler, “The New Synfuels: A History of Dakota Gasification Company and the Great Plains Synfuels Plant,” Dakota Gasification Company, 2011. 7.Gordon Hughes, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark (London: Renewable Energy Foundation, 2012). 8.

If they had not attempted to take over the means of production and exchange in the name of global warming, humanity would be blundering completely unsuspectingly into a cold period that will cause widespread crop failures and starvation. We will still have the crop failures and starvation, but we will understand what is causing it while it is happening and be able to take some steps to mitigate the damage. Consider how some of these trends are already affecting one country, the United Kingdom. The UK’s peak oil production was in 1999 at 2.9 million barrels per day. It has since fallen rapidly, to 0.9 million barrels per day in 2012. Peak coal production in that country was 292 million metric tons—a hundred years ago. It is now less than 10 million metric tons per annum. The UK is now importing almost all of the fossil fuel it burns.


pages: 337 words: 96,666

Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World by Michal Zalewski

accounting loophole / creative accounting, AI winter, anti-communist, artificial general intelligence, bank run, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carrington event, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decentralized internet, deep learning, distributed ledger, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, dumpster diving, failed state, fiat currency, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Haber-Bosch Process, housing crisis, index fund, indoor plumbing, information security, inventory management, Iridium satellite, Joan Didion, John Bogle, large denomination, lifestyle creep, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, Modern Monetary Theory, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral panic, non-fungible token, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, passive investing, peak oil, planetary scale, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, supervolcano, systems thinking, tech worker, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, Tunguska event, underbanked, urban sprawl, Wall-E, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

“Volcano Watch: Lessons Learned from the Armero, Colombia Tragedy,” United States Geological Survey, October 29, 2009, https://www.usgs.gov/center-news/volcano-watch-lessons-learned-armero-colombia-tragedy/. 16. Michael Lynch, “What Ever Happened to Peak Oil?,” Forbes, June 29, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2018/06/29/what-ever-happened-to-peak-oil/. 17. Roy E. Plotnick, “Relationship Between Biological Extinctions and Geomagnetic Reversals,” Geology 8, no. 12 (December 1980): 578–581, https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/8/12/578/187677/Relationship-between-biological-extinctions-and?

In addition to the canon of natural disasters outlined earlier in this section, voices in the scientific community have warned us against a range of more novel planetary risks. The first wave of such predictions focused on the population growth worries of Ehrlich (see Chapter 1), as well as the “peak oil” hypothesis formulated by M. King Hubbert in 1956—incorrectly predicting an irreversible decline in global oil production capacity starting somewhere in the 1970s, and interpreted as the promise of a dark and energy-starved world.16 Today, perhaps the most fashionable collapse theory deals with observed declines in the populations of pollinating insects, with potentially dire consequences for agricultural crops.

Heater, 157 MREs (meals ready to eat), 144 muggings, 112–113 Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS), 188 municipal sewers, 145–147 Mylar, 149 MyLife.com, 110 N N95 respirators, 174 N-acetylcysteine (NAC), 179 Nagasaki, 31 Nakamoto, Satoshi (pseudonym), 66–67 nasal glucocorticoids, 150 National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 14 National Security Agency (NSA), 109 natural disasters, 18–19, 34–35 neonicotinoids, 176 neurotoxins, 176 New Deal, 22 New York Times, 37 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 43 9-11 attacks, 26–27 9mm Luger, 214 nitrates storage accidents, 20 non-fungible tokens (NFTs), 87 NRC ADM-300, 179 NSA (National Security Agency), 109 nuclear disasters and nuclear fallout, 20, 31, 39–40, 178–180 nuclear electromagnetic pulse, 40–41 Nuclear War Survival Skills (Kearny), 39 nuclear winter, 30 nutrition, 139–140 O obesity, 115–118 OFD Foods, 141 Oklahoma City bombing, 26–27 Olympic Park bombing, 26 One Child Nation, 8 OneRep, 110 online fraud, 106–108 online privacy, 109–111 optimism, 44 opting out, 110 oral antibiotics, 151 outages, 12 oximeters, pulse, 150 P pain medications, 99–100 pandemics, 25–26, 32, 174–177 pantries, 140–144 paperclip maximizer parable, 42 paperwork, 166–167 passive infrared (PIR) motion sensors, 201 passwords, 108 pathogens, 32–33 “peak oil” hypothesis, 35 pepper spray, 205, 207 Perhach, Paulette, 49–50 perimeter security devices, 201 Permian extinction, 34 personal hygiene, 149 pessimism, 44 pests, 177 phishing, 107 phones, 155–156, 181 physical cash, 75–76 physical fitness, 115–118 physical violence, 13 pickpocketing, 113–114 PIG Sock, 147 Piketty, Thomas, 72 PIR (passive infrared) motion sensors, 201 pistols, 212–213 pit latrines, 147 planetary catastrophe, 34 planning documents, 121–125 plumbing, 145–148 poisons, 177 pollinating insects, declines of, 35 poor countries, 33–34 Population Bomb, 7–8, 30 porch piracy, 111 portable generators, 155–156 portfolio design strategies, 88–90 power outages, 152–159 power puller, 162–163 power tools, 101–103 precious metals, 83–85 predictions of apocalypse, 30–31 prepping community, 119–120 prescription drugs, 99–100, 150 PRI-G, 156 Primatene, 150 prion diseases, 32 privacy online, 109–111 propane, 157–158 property crime, 13–14, 199–202 prophecies, 30–31 proportionality of self-defense, 204–205 pry bars, 112, 163 pulse oximeters, 150 pyrethrin, 176 pyriproxyfen, 176 pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ), 179 Q Quick Dam, 147 R Radaris, 110 radiation, 30, 39–40, 178–180 radios, 182–190 rainy-day savings, 49–55 rats on Christmas Island, 33 Raven Rock (Graff), 40 Reagan, Ronald, shooting of, 26 real estate, 85–86 recessions, 22 recreational drugs, 100–101 recreational shooting, 219 Reddit, 52, 109 refrigerators, 152–153 regimes, totalitarian, 36–39 rehydration salts, 150 REITs (real estate investment trusts), 86 renter insurance, 11, 201 repairs, 162–163 repeaters, 185 representative currency, 63 respiratory diseases, 150 revolvers, 213–214 revolving loans, 53–54 rifles, 215–216 riots, 21 risk mitigating, 74–88 mitigation costs, 5–6 quantifying, 5–6 risk-rank formula, 6 risk-taking, 95–96 statistics on, 3 robberies, 112–113 rodents, 176–177 Romero, George A., 30 Rothbard, Murray, 61–62 Ruby Ridge siege, 26 Ruger LCP, 214 S Sabin, Paul, 8 sanitization, 175–176 SARS, 26 satellite communications, 182–183 savings, 10, 49–55 Savings and Loan Crisis, 22 saws, 162 scams, 106–108 Scepter brand cans, 133 Schneier, Bruce, 3 science, 30 science fiction, 29–30 security devices, 201 self-defense firearms, 211–219 legalities of, 204–206 property crime, 199–202 robberies, 113 semiautomatic pistols, 212–213 September 11 attacks, 26–27 Serenity Prayer, 43 sewers, 145–147 shelter, loss of, 11–12 shotguns, 216–217 (S)-hydroprene, 176 sieverts (Sv), 178 Sig Sauer P229, 214 Simler, Kevin, 7 situational awareness, 13, 112 skin conditions, 150 skin staplers, 150 sleeping bags and pads, 167–168 sleeping sickness, 25 slugs, 217 smallpox, 32 smoke, 177 snow chains, 163 social media, 109, 110 social unrest, 20–21 sodium dichloroisocyanurate (NaDCC) tablets, 134 soft-point ammunition, 217 SOG Seal Pup Elite, 170 solar storms, 36 SOS, 143 space weather events, 35–36 speeding, 96–97 spinosad, 176 Spokeo, 110 Springfield EMP, 214 STA-BIL, 156 stalking, 14 The Stand (King), 32 stock market, 79–81 stock options, 81–83 stockpiled foods, 140–144 stockpiling, 73–74 Stop the Bleed program, 151 storm cleanup equipment, 162–163 “A Story of a Fuck Off Fund” (Perhach), 49–50 street violence, 112–113 student loans, 50 stun guns, 205, 207 submersible pumps, 148 subscription services, 51 suffocation, 104 suicides, 196–197 supervolcanoes, 34 supply issues, 137 Svenson, Ola, 96 swine flu, 26 System Fusion, 188 system of prices, 59 T Taser pistols, 207 tech upgrades, 52 technician class license, 189 tents, 167 terrorism domestic, 26–27 fear of, 26–27 industrial accidents and, 20 statistics on, 3 Texas City Disaster, 20 thermal underwear, 156 thermonuclear war, 39–40 .38 Special, 214 3M gasmaks, 177 3M respirators, 175 3M Vetrap, 150 TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities), 77 tires, 163 toilets, 145–147 Tomcat, 177 tools, 161–164 topical lidocaine cream, 150 totalitarian regimes, 36–39 transfer-on-death directives, 125 transportation disruptions, 12, 158–159 TransUnion, 110 travel expenses, 76 Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), 77 triamcinolone acetonide, 150 A True Story (Lucian of Samosata), 29 TruePeopleSearch.com, 110 28 Days Later, 32 Twitter, 109, 155 two-factor authentication (2FA), 108 two-way radios, 183–190 U umbrella policies, 88 unemployment, 10–11 unintentional injury, 12–13 unrest, 20–21 US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 13 US Geological Survey (USGS), 19 usury, 63 utility outages, 12 V valuables, 201 vandalism, 111 Vanguard Group, 80–81 vehicle accidents, 96–98 vehicle repairs, 163–164 vertigo, 150 vinegar, 148 violence, 13 Virex II 256, 176 virtual private network (VPN) software, 106 visa requirements, 11 vitamin C, 179 volcanoes, 34–35 vomiting, 150 Vox Magazine, 25 W Waco siege, 26 wages, 50 war, 20–21, 39–40 waste disposal, 145–147 water and water outages, 12, 131–135, 145–148, 169 WaterBrick, 133 wealth taxes, 73 weather, 18, 156–158, 168 Weathermen, 27 weight loss, 115–118 West Nile, 26 Westinghouse generators, 156 wet wipes, 149 “What Has Government Done to Our Money?”


pages: 457 words: 109,524

Around the World in 80 Plants by Steven Barstow

food miles, peak oil, the market place

Taraxacum officinale FAMILY: Asteraceae CHINESE: Yaoyongpugongying ENGLISH: Common Dandelion FRENCH: Dent de Lion, Laiteron, Pissenlit GERMAN: Löwenzahn, Kuhblume, Pusteblume GREEK: Agrioradiko ITALIAN: Tarassaco Comune JAPANESE: Seiyou Tanpopo RUSSIAN: Oduvanchik, Oduvanchik Lekarstvennyi SPANISH: Achicoria amarga, Diente de León I never dreamed that my seed saving activities would lead me for a short period of time to be in control of future homeland security in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan! I’m dreaming? Illusions of grandeur? Well, read on… You’ve heard of peak oil, right? Let me introduce you to peak rubber! The price of rubber is being driven through the ceiling through a combination of factors. This includes increasing demand from developing economies increasing oil prices (synthetic rubbers are derived from crude oil). In addition, there is a serious leaf blight disease affecting the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis). Peak oil would also lead to falling availability of rubber in the world, unless natural sources could be boosted. Added to this, the wish in the US and other countries to be able to produce rubber at home, rather than relying on production in tropical countries where Hevea can be cultivated, led to renewed research into a species which previously found favour during World War II when natural rubber supplies from the tropics last dried up.

Imagine a world without ready access to supermarkets offering more or less any vegetable at any time of the year. Actually, it doesn’t take much imagination. Here in Norway, I can remember that only 25 years ago there were only a handful of vegetables available in supermarkets in winter and the way things are going (climate change, peak oil etc.), in another 20 years seasonal vegetables should once again dominate our consumption. People have in the meantime become more accepting of weird and wonderful vegetables. Therefore, we should be looking at how to diversify locally produced vegetables, so that we can maintain a wide variety of local produce.

P. 170, 217, 239, 253, 260 Josselyn, John 166 Joyce, William 263 kagmallik potatoes 260 kajp soup, from Gotland 215, 217 kale see Brassica oleracea Kalimeris yomena see Aster yomena Kallas, John 42, 44, 239–40 Källman, Stefan 42–43, 170 Kalopanax pictus 135 Kalopanax septemlobus 135 Kamchatka lily see Fritillaria camschatcensis Kapuler, Alan 67 karvekaal 251–53 karvekaalsuppe (caraway soup) 251–53 katsuobushi dressing 12 keeled garlic see Allium carinatum kimchi 97, 151 King of Denmark (sweet) 72 King’s Spear see Asphodeline lutea knapweeds 58 Knotweed Festival, US 150 koba giboshi 144 Kohl-lauch 217 Korean angelica see Angelica gigas Korean aster see Aster scaber Korean long-rooted garlic see Allium victorialis kureson see Nasturtium officinale Kurrat 36–37 kvann (Angelica) 211–12 kvanngard (Angelica enclosures) 211 Kwanso 153, 155–56 lactofermentation 97, 118, 151, 225, 228, 234, 250 lady’s mantle 221, 261–62 Lamium album 98 Lamium maculatum 272 lamsoor 237 land cress see Barbarea verna Laportea aestuans 190 Laportea canadensis 188–90, 269 Lapplanders see Sami people Larkcom, Joy 83–84, 127, 132, 135, 140, 147, 162–63, 248 Laurus nobilis 60, 78, 160 leaching 42 leek, wild see Allium ampeloprasum Leopoldia comosa 59 lettuce 8, 45, 75, 165, 167–71, 236 lettuce salsify see Scorzonera hispanica Leucanthemum vulgare 272 Leväsvirta, Jenni 116 Levisticum officinale 78, 112–14, 192, 269 ‘Magnus’ 113 Ligusticum scoticum 114 Lilium lancifolium var. flaviflorum 214 Lilium martagon 260 lily, martagon see Lilium martagon lily, tiger see Lilium lancifolium Lincolnshire asparagus see Chenopodium bonus- henricus Linnaeus, Carl (Carl von Linné) 56, 74, 80, 165, 189, 212, 221, 229 Linum usitassimum 190 liver fluke 11 Lofoten islands 30, 213, 218–20, 226–27, 230 Lost Crops of the Incas (1989) 175 lovage, see Levisticum officinale Low, Tim 68, 171 lucerne see Medicago sativa lucerne, wild see Medicago falcata luftløk (air onion) 256 Lychnis flos-cuculi 272 Mabey, Richard 24, 27, 74, 77, 83, 161, 170, 203, 234, 251, 261 mackerel 113 Maggi herb 113 Maianthemum japonicum 188 Maianthemum purpureum 188 Maianthemum racemosum 168, 186–88, 269 Maianthemum stellatum 186 Making Dandelions Palatable 42, 44 mallow, Chinese see Malva verticillata mallow, common see Malva sylvestris mallow, cut-leaved see Malva alcea mallow, greater musk see Malva alcea mallow, Jew’s see Corchorus olitorius mallow, musk see Malva moschata mallow, salad see Malva verticillata Malva alcea 157–61, 269 var. fastigiata 159 Malva moschata 157–61, 269, 272 Malva neglecta 33 Malva spp. 87 Malva sylvestris 58, 157–61, 270 ssp. mauritanica 158 Malva verticillata 157–61 var. crispa 290–91 mangelwurzel 24 Mansfeld’s World Database of Agricultural and Horticultural Crops 56, 85, 190 Maori ‘weed’ market 167 marsh samphire see Salicornia mashua 175 masking 42, 45 Matteuccia pensylvanica see M. struthiopteris Matteuccia struthiopteris 75–76, 98, 189, 196–200, 244, 270 mauka 175 Maundy Thursday Soup 232 mayapple see Podophyllum peltatum Medicago falcata 162–64 Medicago polymorpha 163 Medicago sativa 128, 162–64, 270 ‘Ranger’ 164 Mediterranean perennial vegetables Allium triquetrum 90–91 Apium nodiflorum 82–83 Asparagus acutifolius 94–96 Asparagus officinalis 94–96 Campanula trachelium 81–82 Chenopodium bonus- henricus 91–93 Cichorium intybus 88–90 Cynara cardunculus 66–72 Cynara scolymus 66–72 Diplotaxis tenuifolia 86–88 Humulus lupulus 79–81 multi-species dishes xv, 24, 27, 57, 59, 272 Myrrhis odorata 72–74 Plantago coronopus 83–85 preparation methods used for 60, 96 Ranunculus ficaria 74–77 Rumex scutatus 85–86 Scorzonera hispanica 63–66 Silene vulgaris 77–79 Megacarpaea polyandra 97–98 Meredith, Leda 176 Meredith, Ted Jordan 115 minestra delle 18 erbe selvatiche 59, 85 minestrella soup 78, 82, 102, 169 Mirabilis expansa 175 mirride delle alpi 73 miso-shiru soup (Japan) 136 misticanza salad (Southern Italy) 59, 78 mitsuba see Cryptotaenia japonica miyamaudo 136 molokhia 160 Mørkved, Brynhild 219 Myrrhis odorata 64, 72–74, 192, 270, 272 nalca see Gunnera tinctoria Names of Herbes, The (1548) 247 nanpaku-udo (Tokyo-udo) 135 Nansen, Fridtjof 252 Nash, Melvin 199 Nasturtium microphyllum 13–14 Nasturtium officinale 1, 6, 11–14, 58, 82–83, 98, 149, 173, 175, 239, 270 ‘Aqua’ 13 National Dandelion Cookoff 44 Native American Ethnobotany (1998) 176, 189, 195 Naturalis Historia (AD23-29) 168 nettle soup 31–33, 196 Nettlemas Night 32 New England Hosta Society 142 nimono (Japanese stew) 152 Nizza Monferrato (Italy) 71 nodding onion see Allium cernuum Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (Nordgen) 109 nori-maki-sushi 145 Norrland onion 125–26 North American Rock Garden Society (NARGS) 221, 226 Norway and Scandinavian vegetables Aegopodium podograria 231–34 Allium fistulosum 247–50 Allium oleraceum 214–17 Allium schoenoprasum 226–27 Allium victorialis 218–21 Allium x proliferum 255–59 Angelica archangelica 210–14 Aster tripolium 234–38 Barbarea vulgaris 238–40 Campanula latifolia 229–31 Carum carvi 250–55 Cicerbita alpina 227–29 Oxyria digyna 225–26 Persicaria bistorta 260–64 Polygonum viviparum 241–43 Rheum x rhabarbarum 243–46 Rumex acetosa 221–24 Norwegian Genetic Resource Centre 211, 255 Norwegian Permaculture Society 210 Norwegian Seed Savers vi, 126 Notobasis syriaca 61 Nyttevekstforeningen (Norwegian Useful Plants Society) xiii, 181, 184–85, 196, 210, 232, 250 oats 32, 253, 262 oba giboshi 144 oca 175 Oenanthe javanica 129 oerprei 34, 35, 78 see Allium ampeloprasum ohitashi dressing 12 oil seed crop 5 old man’s beard see Clematis vitalba olive salad with herbs 185 omega 3 fatty acid 199 omelette bon-Henri recipe 93 Oni’s walking stick see Aralia elata Onopordon acanthium 61 opium poppy see Papaver somniferum Oplopanax horridus 135 Oplopanax japonicus 135 Oriental Vegetables (1991) 162, 248 Ornithogalum creticum 27 Ornithogalum narbonense 27 Ornithogalum pyramidale 27 Ornithogalum pyrenaicum 1, 26–28, 58, 270, 272 var. flavescens 28 Orto Botanico (Giardino dei Semplici) 39, 59, 62, 91 Osmorhiza claytonii 74 Osmorhiza longistylis 74 Osmunda cinnamomea 52 osot polyevoy 171 ostrich fern see Matteuccia struthiopteris Otara Market (New Zealand) 167 oxalic acid 151–52, 224, 244–46 Oxalis acetosella 222 Oxalis adenophylla 175 Oxalis tuberosa 175 Oxyria digyna 86, 221–22, 225–26, 241, 270 pahelo rahar dhal with Jimbu (Nepal) 121 Panax ginseng 135 pangue see Gunnera tinctoria Paoletti, Maurizio 57 Papaver rhoeas 59, 78, 173 Papaver somniferum 252 Paradine, Ulrike 75 parsley see Petroselinum crispum Pastinaca sativa 181, 213 peak oil xviii, 38 peak rubber 38 pearl onions 34 perennial kales see Brassica oleracea Perilla frutescens 145 perlzwiebel 34 Persian chives see Allium ampeloprasum Persicaria bistorta 260–64, 270, 272 ‘Hohe Tatra’ 263–64 ‘Superba’ 263–64 var. carnea 263–64 Persicaria maculosa 262 Petasites japonicus 129 Petasites spp. 129 Peters, Tim 23 Petroselinum crispum 36, 121, 148, 160, 168, 253, 262 Hamburg parsley 254 Phillips, Roger 21, 24, 80, 88, 102, 111, 170, 181, 184, 238, 261 Phyteuma spicatum 272 Pimpinella brachycarpa 130 pinaattiohukaiset 108 pipeløk 247–49 pistic (Italy) 27, 32, 56, 57–59, 75, 78–79, 82, 93, 98, 222, 230, 253 Plant Breeding for Permaculture (Facebook group) 23 Plantago coronopus 83–85, 270 Plantago lagopus 84 Plantago lanceolata 84, 272 Plantago major 84, 99, 146, 252 ‘Atropurpurea’ 84, 147 ‘Rosularis’ 84 Plantago maritima 84–85 Plantago ovata 85 Plantago psyllium 85 Plantago spp. 58 plantain, buckshorn see Plantago coronopus plantain lily see Hosta species PLANTEARVEN® and logo 109 Plants For A Future (PFAF) database xviii, 57–58 Platycodon grandiflorus 128 Plectranthus amboinicus 107 Podophyllum peltatum 201 Polygonatum spp. 186 Polygonum alpinum 99 Polygonum bistorta see Persicaria bistorta Polygonum viviparum 98–99, 241–43, 252, 270 potage cressonnière 12 prairie onion see Allium stellatum Price, John 2 Primula elatior 99, 272 Primula veris ‘Red Strain’ 195 Primula vulgaris 272 PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa) project 22 protoanemonin 60, 75 Pskem River garlic see Allium longicuspis Pteridium aquilinum 165, 197–98 pu cai 206 purple borecole 21 purplestem angelica see Angelica atropurpurea pushki see Heracleum maximum puwha 165 pyrrolizidine alkaloids 129 quinoa see Chenopodium quinoa rabarbragrøt (Norwegian dessert) 244 ramsons see Allium ursinum Ranunculus diffusus 97 Ranunculus ficaria 27, 58, 64, 74–77, 270 ‘Brazen Hussy’ 76 ssp. chrysocephalus 76 råpesoll 241 red bryony see Bryonia dioica reedmace see Typha spp.


The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community by David C. Korten

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, banks create money, big-box store, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, clean water, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, death of newspapers, declining real wages, different worldview, digital divide, European colonialism, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, George Gilder, global supply chain, global village, God and Mammon, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, informal economy, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, joint-stock company, land reform, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Monroe Doctrine, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, new economy, peak oil, planetary scale, plutocrats, Project for a New American Century, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, sexual politics, shared worldview, social intelligence, source of truth, South Sea Bubble, stem cell, structural adjustment programs, The Chicago School, trade route, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, World Values Survey

.… Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.”13 The End of Oil A sharp rise in oil prices in 2004 and 2005, coupled with revelations that Shell and other oil companies were systematically overestimating their proven petroleum reserves, spurred a lively discussion of when global The Imperative 61 oil production will peak and begin an inexorable decline in the face of growing demand and rising extraction costs. Referred to as “peak oil,” this event is predicted to send energy prices skyrocketing and result in massive economic dislocation as the cheap oil subsidy that fueled much of the economic expansion of the past hundred years is withdrawn. According to Fortune, the most optimistic estimates from credible sources place peak oil as much as thirty-five years in the future. Other credible experts suggest that 2005 may have been the fateful year. Meanwhile China has gone from having virtually no private automobiles in 1980 to having a projected 24 million in 2005, with anticipated exponential growth for the foreseeable future.14 In 2004, China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest consumer of oil.15 The United States, of course, is the number one oil consumer.

Meanwhile China has gone from having virtually no private automobiles in 1980 to having a projected 24 million in 2005, with anticipated exponential growth for the foreseeable future.14 In 2004, China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest consumer of oil.15 The United States, of course, is the number one oil consumer. As Fortune correctly notes, it really does not matter whether peak oil has already occurred or will not be encountered for another thirty-five years.16 Reconfiguring the world’s economy to move beyond dependence on petroleum and reverse the buildup of greenhouse gases must be an essential and immediate priority. If we humans do not choose to act on our own, Earth is poised to make the choice for us by forcing the mother of all market corrections.

The emphasis on loyalty and obedience to a strong ruler minimizes the role of responsible citizenship and, most particularly, the essential role of the citizen in holding those in positions of power publicly accountable for their actions. The imperial security story also draws attention away from threats far larger and more certain than terrorism: for example, climate change; the growing scarcity of freshwater; the chemical contamination of land, air, and water; the rapid spread of deadly viruses; the consequences of peak oil; and skyrocketing trade deficits. It results in misguided decisions to invade and occupy whole nations at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent civilian lives in a largely futile effort to capture a few hundred terrorists scattered in hidden networks. The misplaced priorities create instability, fuel terrorist recruiting, and waste resources Prisons of the Mind 245 needed to address the most serious and immediate threats to human security.


pages: 717 words: 150,288

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism by Stephen Graham

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", addicted to oil, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, anti-communist, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, call centre, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, congestion charging, creative destruction, credit crunch, DARPA: Urban Challenge, defense in depth, deindustrialization, digital map, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, edge city, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, failed state, Food sovereignty, gentrification, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Global Witness, Google Earth, illegal immigration, income inequality, knowledge economy, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, loose coupling, machine readable, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, McMansion, megacity, military-industrial complex, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, one-state solution, pattern recognition, peak oil, planetary scale, post-Fordism, private military company, Project for a New American Century, RAND corporation, RFID, Richard Florida, Scramble for Africa, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, SimCity, smart transportation, surplus humans, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Washington Consensus, white flight, white picket fence

Found at http://www.darpa.mil/GRANDCHALLENGE/galleryasp. 9.10 Estimates for the future introduction of fully autonomous military and civilian vehicles from the Urban Challenge presentations of Stanford University’s entry Sebastian Thrun, ‘Stanford Racing Team’, at http://mediax.stanford.edu/conference_07/speakers/thrun/thrun,%20sebastian%20-%20urban%20 challenge.pdf 9.11 Peak Oil and the growing gap between discovery and production. Redrawn from Cameron Leckie, ‘Peak Oil and the Australian Army’, The Australian Army Journal, 4: 3, 23. 9.13 ‘Potential Military Implications of Climate Change’. Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, report to the Pentagon, October 2003, http://www.gbn.com/GBNDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?

In light of the growing reliance on volatile supplies from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, how can Western and US military forces support energy security – given the increasing military and economic strength of major competitors like China and India, which are struggling to meet their own exploding oil demand? How, in short, must military and political strategy respond to what has been widely called ‘peak oil’, and to the scarcity and dramatic increasing oil prices that it will inevitably bring (Figure 9.11)? The strategic imperative is underlined by simulation exercises suggesting that even relatively modest disruptions in the global oil supply might have broad and cascading implications. One especially high-profile simulation, named Oil Shockwave, was undertaken in mid-2005 by a group of senior US national security officials for the National Commission on Energy Policy.

Gates, pointed out that the simulation’s main conclusion was that ‘it only requires a relatively small amount of oil to be taken out of the system to have huge economic and security implications’.135 A 4 per cent global shortfall in daily supply, for example – generated, in their hypothetical scenario, by violent unrest in the Niger delta, combined with simultaneous terrorist attacks on oil ports and infrastructures in Alaska and Saudi Arabia – was enough to result in an immediate 177 per cent increase in the price of oil. 9.11 Peak Oil and the growing gap between discovery and production. Since the days of Jimmy Carter, US foreign and military policy has been organized around the imperative of using, as he famously put it, ‘any means necessary, including military force’, to safeguard the supply and flow of Persian Gulf oil.136 The invasion of Iraq was the direct result of the imposition of a new, pre-emptive warfare strategy, developed by a group of neoconservatives and designed, in part, to secure US control over the rapidly diminishing strategic oil reserves in both the Middle East and the Caspian basin.


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The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World by Russell Gold

accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, activist lawyer, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, American energy revolution, Bakken shale, Bernie Sanders, Buckminster Fuller, California energy crisis, Carl Icahn, clean water, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, financial engineering, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), man camp, margin call, market fundamentalism, Mason jar, North Sea oil, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, precautionary principle, Project Plowshare, risk tolerance, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Upton Sinclair

If hydraulic fracturing could significantly increase the availability of oil and gas, it would make more oil available and push back the date of “Hubbert’s Peak.” But he was not impressed with Stanolind’s hydrafracs. In his famous 1956 paper outlining his ideas on peak oil, he noted that only about one-third of the oil in a reservoir was being recovered. The rest was out of reach. New techniques, he wrote, “are gradually being improved so that ultimately a somewhat larger but still unknown fraction of the oil underground should be extracted.” He calculated that peak oil in the United States would occur between 1965 and 1970, and these new technologies would, at best, slow the decline on the far side of the bell curve.

By then, other oil shales had been discovered, including the giant Eagle Ford oil field in South Texas. And if fracking could unlock the oil in these areas, it could do the same around the world. Argentina, Russia, and the Middle East are all believed to have vast oil deposits in shales. In the mid-2000s, fears of “peak oil” were rife. The Olson 10-15 helped change the narrative. Crude remains a complex and constrained global market. Even if a dozen new Bakkens are discovered on the Great Plains, global oil prices are unlikely to budge much. But Brigham in the Bakken reinforced the notion that the industry could sink its drill bits into more oil than even the most dewy-eyed wildcatters had dreamed possible.

It “was very, very important and naturally attracted a great deal of excitement,” he recalled later. Oil companies adopted fracking rapidly. By 1955, less than a decade after the first experiments, more than one hundred thousand wells had been fracked. Hubbert is best remembered today as the father of peak oil theory. His argument was that the amount of oil in the world is finite and that as production increases, it will reach a peak and then begin to decline. Drawn on a graph, his forecast resembled a bell curve. In the late 1940s, he became interested in the question of how many years of oil supply could be pumped out of the earth and set out to figure it out.


pages: 207 words: 86,639

The New Economics: A Bigger Picture by David Boyle, Andrew Simms

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, congestion charging, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Crossrail, delayed gratification, deskilling, digital divide, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, financial deregulation, financial exclusion, financial innovation, full employment, garden city movement, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, John Elkington, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land bank, land reform, light touch regulation, loss aversion, mega-rich, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, Money creation, mortgage debt, neoliberal agenda, new economy, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, peak oil, pension time bomb, pensions crisis, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, systems thinking, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, working-age population

But the economy began to recover a little after 2003, and that meant a little more money for spares and new equipment, in case President Bush took some kind of military action. Whatever anyone thinks about Fidel Castro’s rule, Cuba is a fascinating object lesson in the new economics. Cuba has already lived through the economic and environmental shocks that climate change and peak oil hold in store for the rest of the world. Its sudden loss of access to cheap oil imports and its economic isolation were so extreme in 1990 at the end of the Cold War, and its reaction to the shock was so contrary to orthodox approaches, and so successful, that it was dubbed in Washington the ‘anti-model’.1 Then oil imports dropped by over half.

Taken together, the Green New Deal urged a programme of re-regulating finance and taxation plus a huge transformational programme aimed at substantially reducing the use of fossil fuels and, in the process, tackling the unemployment and decline in demand caused by the credit crunch. It involved policies and new funding mechanisms that will reduce emissions and allow us to cope better with the coming energy shortages caused by peak oil. The importance was not so much the details of the plan, but its pattern. What the Green New Deal understood was that these crises needed to be tackled together, in a way that modern government finds difficulty doing. There is no point in tackling the crises alone, nor is it possible. Tackling climate change needs to be done alongside redistributing the wealth of the planet.

(John Kenneth) 41, 51 gambling 14–15, 152 Gandhi, Mohandas (Mahatma) 18, 19, 21, 110, 112 Gates, Bill 141 Gates, Jeff 141–2 GDP (gross domestic product) 10, 32, 36–40, 42, 43, 54, 79 alternatives to 40–2, 43 bad measure of success 10, 37, 55, 78 INDEX global 141 UK 4 see also growth genetically modified crops see GM crops Germany 33, 50, 58 Gladwell, Malcolm 68 Global Barter Clubs 57, 58 global commons 113, 148 global currencies 56, 61, 120, 147–8 global greenback 61 global warming 3, 3–4, 115, 155 see also climate change globalization 8, 28, 143, 153 see also interdependence GM (genetically modified) crops 91, 117, 119, 140–1 Goetz, Stephan 124 gold standard 8, 143 Good Life, The (BBC sitcom) 69 goods, local 19, 109, 110 Goodwin, Fred 142 government borrowing 37–8, 49–50, 58, 62, 141 governments 2, 28, 116, 129, 158 creating money 58–9, 62, 90 propping up banking system 6, 7 Graham, Benjamin 120 Grameen Bank 26, 143–4, 153 Great Barrington (Massachusetts) 57, 151–2, 153 Great Depression 3, 36, 57 green bonds 157 green collar jobs 106, 157 Green Consumer Guide, The (Elkington and Hailes, 1988) 26, 69, 72 green economics 23, 100, 117 green energy 26, 97, 102–3, 114, 156, 157 Green New Deal 156–8 green taxation 153 greenhouse gas emissions 3–4, 115, 148 gross domestic product see GDP Gross National Happiness 43 growth 2, 11, 12–13, 23, 36–7, 38–40, 42, 43 185 bad measure of success 10, 158 maximizing 25 and poverty 4, 39–40, 81–2 and progress 39, 78 wealth defined in terms of 32 and well-being 4–5 see also GDP guilds 80, 80–1 happiness 12, 18, 29, 41, 43, 45–6 Happy Planet Index 32–3, 34, 43 Hard Times (Dickens, 1854) 36 HBOS 7 health 46, 72, 78, 96, 115, 129 health costs 117 healthcare 13, 33, 44 hedge funds 5, 7, 97, 120 Helsinki (Finland) 102 HIV/AIDS 70, 111, 135, 148 Honduras 139, 141 house prices 36, 46, 79, 83, 91, 126–7, 151 London 53, 54, 91 see also mortgages Howard, Ebenezer 105, 158 HSBC 5 human interaction 67–8, 74 human needs 20, 24, 67, 86 human rights 110–11, 116, 147 ill-health 35, 38, 46 ‘illth’ 29, 35 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 27, 82, 91, 135–6, 139, 143, 147, 147–8 incomes 24, 37, 43, 44, 78, 79, 81 and happiness 45–6 inequalities 37, 81, 82, 142 of poorest 4, 81, 82, 112, 142 Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare see ISEW India 82, 91, 110, 119, 136, 139–40, 153 indigenous knowledge 82, 117 inequality 4, 81–2, 96, 112–13, 116 inflation 8, 22, 58, 90 information technology 58, 59, 115 186 THE NEW ECONOMICS intellectual property 82, 91, 110, 113, 116, 117 interdependence 111–20, 135–8 Keynes on 19, 109, 110, 115, 143 see also globalization interest 8, 11, 11–12, 58, 77, 157 interest rates 144, 144–5 interest-free money 43, 73, 84, 90 intergenerational equity 25, 117 international bankruptcy 147 International Monetary Fund see IMF investment 14, 45, 53, 60, 104, 118, 137–8 ethical 26, 69–70, 74, 154 involvement 71, 75, 128–30 Iraq 49, 60, 136 ISEW (Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) 40–1, 43, 78 Islamic banking 58, 90, 146 islands, small 31–2, 33–4 Italy 33, 119–20, 138 Ithaca hours currency 57, 58 It’s a Wonderful Life (film, Capra, 1946) 38 Jacobs, Jane 56, 110, 126 Jaffe, Bernie 126 Japan 26, 50, 91, 113, 119, 128 Jefferson, Thomas 18, 20 Jersey 52, 53 Jones, Allan 103 Jubilee Debt campaign 137 junk bonds 1, 142–3 just-in-time 123–4, 155 Keynes, John Maynard 2, 13–14, 15, 17, 21, 37, 55 on interdependence 19, 109, 110, 115, 143 international currency 61, 120 on local production 19, 109, 110 on ‘practical men’ as ‘slaves of some defunct economist’ 10, 35, 67, 87, 159 Keynesian economics 8, 18, 22, 27, 28 Kinney, Jill 130 Knowsley (Merseyside) 104 Kropotkin, Peter 18 Krugman, Paul 52 land 19, 82, 96 land tax 43 landfill 97, 98, 100, 107 Layard, Richard 41 Lehigh Hospital (Pennsylvania) 129 Letchworth Garden City (Hertfordshire) 105 lets (local exchange and trading systems) 57 liberalism 18, 19, 27 Lietaer, Bernard 56, 61, 120 life 19, 29, 55, 69, 86, 91 need for meaning 42, 75 life expectancy 31, 32–3, 82 life poverty 82–3 life satisfaction 31, 33, 41, 42 Lima (Peru) 130–1 Linton, Michael 57, 58 Living Economy, The (Ekins, 1986) 24–5 LM3 (Local Money 3) 60, 104–5 loans see debt Local Alchemy programme 152–3 local circulation of money 103–5, 107, 124, 151–2 local currencies 26, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 151–2, 153 local economies 26, 81, 85, 86, 105–7, 118, 124, 133 local exchange and trading systems (lets) 57 local food 2, 118, 119–20, 151 local governments 6, 44, 60 local life 4, 81, 158 Local Money 3 see LM3 local production 109, 116, 118 local savings schemes 61 local shops 75, 82–3, 104, 124, 124–5, 126, 151 supermarkets and 80, 105, 125 local wealth 14, 53–4 localization 155–6, 159 London 52, 53, 61, 97, 102, 103 house prices 53, 54, 91 traffic speed 65–6 INDEX London Underground 147 Lutzenberger, Jose 26 Macmillan Cancer Care 88–9 McRobie, George 22, 24 mainstream 4–5, 26, 154, 159–60 see also economics Malawi 135–6, 137 Malaysia 51 Manchester United 155 manipulated debt 139–41 markets 10, 12, 51, 70, 158 financial 1–2, 52, 53, 55, 138, 154–5 free 22, 85, 112–13 new economics and 67, 72–5, 85 Marsh Farm estate (Luton) 104–5, 152–3 Maslow, Abraham 67 materialism 12, 46–7 Max-Neef, Manfred 24 Maxwell, Robert 143 MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) 39, 136 Mead, Margaret 129 meaning, need for 42, 75 measurement problem 36–40 measuring 12, 42, 55, 85 success 2, 8, 10, 43, 44, 55, 154, 156, 158 value 10, 15, 29, 53, 59, 115 wealth 32, 37–40, 53–4 well-being 4, 18, 32–3, 34, 43 mechanics, Cuban 95–6, 97 medieval economics 78–80, 80–1 mega-rich 120, 141, 142 mental health 4, 35, 36, 46, 68, 83 Merck 99 micro-credit 26, 143–4, 145, 146, 151, 153 Milkin, Michael 142 Millennium Development Goals see MDGs minimum wage 92 misery, of UK young people 35–6 Mishan, E.J. 40 Mogridge, Martin 65–6, 74 Mondragon (Spain), cooperatives 153 money 8, 11, 13, 18, 27, 29, 36, 95 187 as a bad measure 10, 15, 18, 53, 59, 90, 143, 154 creating 7, 56–7, 58–9, 84, 90, 120, 138, 147 designed for money markets 53 economics and 25, 127 externalities 35 and life 55, 86, 154, 159 local circulation 103–5, 107, 124, 151–2 means to an end 15 new economics view 15, 59–60, 89 new ways of organizing 56–60 re-using 103–5 replacing with well-being 42 slowing down 51–2, 60 too little 57 types of 14–15, 57, 59, 120 and value 10, 15, 53, 59 and wealth 15, 19, 32, 38, 78 and well-being 18, 21, 81 see also GDP; growth; price; trickle down money flows 26, 50–2, 60, 103–5, 107, 124, 136–8 money markets 1–2, 52, 53, 55, 138, 154–5 money poverty 81–2 money system 7–8, 50–6, 60 monopolies 8, 20, 83, 84–6, 89–90, 125–6, 133, 146 Monsanto 85, 140 moral philosophy 12, 19, 72–3 morality 8, 18, 28, 74, 115 economics and 12, 19, 22 Morris, William 18, 78, 151 mortgages 1, 4, 5–6, 6, 7, 46, 91 working to pay 46, 68, 73, 77–8, 79, 81, 83, 84, 89, 126–7, 140 see also house prices motivations 4–5, 11, 67–9, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75 multinationals 14, 61, 84–5, 90, 137–8, 139, 143 multiple currencies 58, 59–60, 60, 90 multiplier effect 103–5 Murdoch, Rupert 52 188 THE NEW ECONOMICS Myers, Norman 117 Nanumaea (Tuvalu) 34 national accounting 37–8, 38–9 national debt 49–50, 83, 84, 139, 141 national grid 102, 106 National Health Service see NHS natural capital 3, 99 natural resources 22, 40, 43, 84, 97–8 needs 20, 24, 25, 67, 75, 86 basic 25, 89, 91–2, 115 nef (the new economics foundation) 24, 26, 45, 71, 104, 131–2, 145 Local Alchemy programme 152–3 see also Happy Planet Index; LM3 ‘neo-liberal’ policies 8, 27–8 Nether Wallop (Hampshire) 80, 81 The Netherlands 58, 106, 138 New Century 5 New Deal for Communities 152 New Deal (US) 157 new economics 2–3, 9–10, 18–19, 28–9, 59, 153–4, 159–60 Cuba as object lesson 96–7 history of 9–10, 18–19, 21–7 and the mainstream 26 as new definition of wealth 15 principles 35, 157–8 new economics foundation see nef New York City 52, 128 News Corporation 52 NHS (National Health Service) 87, 114, 131 Northern Rock 6 Nottingham 35 Nu-Spaarpas experiment 106 Obama, Barack 154, 157 obsolescence, built-in 98, 100, 101 odious debt 146 offshore assets 136–7 offshore financial centres 52–3, 61 oil 3, 96, 115, 117, 155 Oil Legacy Fund 157 orchards 111, 112, 115, 124 organic food 26 Ostrom, Elinor 127 out-of-town retailing 75, 80, 123, 132 overconsumption 32, 40, 44, 113 Owen, Robert 57 ownership 11, 46, 60, 91, 118, 156 paid work 87–9, 92 palm oil 112 Partners in Health 130–1 peak oil 3, 96, 117, 155 Pearce, David 25–6, 98, 115 Peasants’ Revolt (1381) 18 pensions 7, 44, 61, 73, 155 people, as assets 15, 57–8, 128–9, 130, 131 permit trading 45, 117–18, 148 personal carbon allowances 45, 117–18 personal debt 7, 36, 83–4, 91, 140, 141 Petrini, Carlo 119–20 Pettifor, Ann 135, 137 philanthropy 130, 133 policy makers 28, 35, 73, 87, 90 assumptions of 67, 68, 73, 128 Keynes on 10, 35, 67, 87, 159 political agenda 42–7 politicians 11, 54, 159 politics, new 159 pollution 10, 35, 37, 40, 98, 112, 114 by GM genes 91, 117, 119 poor 29, 145–6 Porritt, Jonathon 23 post-autistic economics 9–10, 71–2 poverty 4, 23, 35, 79–80, 81–2, 127 economic system and 13–14, 18, 29, 81–2, 154 interdependence leading to 111–15 reduction 39–40, 51–2, 61, 116, 124–5 poverty gap 4, 52–3, 78, 82 power 10, 12, 25, 28, 53, 141–2 corporate 20, 28, 85 monopoly power 83, 89–90, 125–6, 146 power relationships 29, 114 price 10, 67, 72, 73, 115, 153 Price, Andrew 132 INDEX prices 80, 156, 158 Pritchard, Alison 23 product life cycle 97–8, 101 professionals 130, 132, 133, 159 profits 12, 13, 99 progress 36, 37–8, 39, 43, 44, 77–8, 81–2, 84 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 120 psychology, economics and 67–8, 71, 72–3 public goods 148 public sector commissioning 131–2, 133 public services 45, 74, 127–32, 158 public transport 66, 74 ‘purchasing power parity’ 81 Putnam, Robert 126–7, 127–8 189 retirement 46, 73 see also pensions rewarded work 88 rewards 7, 8, 11, 25, 92, 141, 142 roads 66, 115 Robertson, James 17, 22, 23, 55, 145 Rockefeller, John D. 28 Roman Catholic church 19, 21, 117 Roosevelt, Eleanor 96 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 157 Rotterdam (The Netherlands) 106 rubbish 97–105 Rupasingha, Anil 124 Rushey Green surgery (London) 131 Ruskin, John 17–18, 18, 29, 35, 78, 81 Russia 110 qoin system 58 rainforests 4, 10, 111, 112 ‘rational man’ assumption 10, 71 RBS 142 re-use 97, 99, 100–5 Reagan, Ronald 22, 27 real money, generating 120 ‘real’ wealth 2, 32, 36–40 reciprocity 44, 128, 128–30, 133 see also co-production recycling 97, 98, 100–1, 105–6, 106–7 redistribution 19, 27, 52, 96 regeneration 27, 104, 105, 107, 116, 124, 128 regional currencies 58, 59, 60 regulation 129, 156 competition 85, 113, 125, 126, 133 financial sector 53, 85, 157 relationships 4, 69, 83, 128–30 remittances 137 Rendell, Matt 33 renewable energy 26, 97, 102, 102–3, 114, 156, 157 repair 97, 98, 101, 105, 107 resources 32, 43, 97–8, 99, 100–1, 114, 158 local 25, 115 natural 22, 40, 43, 84, 97–8 St Louis (Missouri) 131 Samoa 34 Sane (South African New Economics) 58 saving seeds 91, 117, 119, 141 savings 7, 46, 73, 90, 157 schools 131 Schor, Juliet 83 Schumacher, E.F.


pages: 342 words: 86,256

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck

A Pattern Language, active transport: walking or cycling, benefit corporation, bike sharing, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, congestion charging, congestion pricing, David Brooks, Donald Shoup, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Enrique Peñalosa, food miles, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, if you build it, they will come, Induced demand, intermodal, invisible hand, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, meta-analysis, New Urbanism, parking minimums, peak oil, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Florida, skinny streets, smart cities, starchitect, Stewart Brand, tech worker, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, transit-oriented development, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, walkable city, white flight, white picket fence, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

But Toronto cuts that number in half again, as does Sydney—and most European cities use only half as much as those places. Cut Europe’s number in half and you end up with Hong Kong.20 If ten Hong Kongers were to move to New York with the goal of keeping their gasoline consumption unchanged, nine of them would have to stay at home. These numbers become especially meaningful as we consider the impacts of peak oil prices in the years ahead. What city, or country, is likely to be the most competitive in the face of $200-per-barrel oil? Paris is one place that has determined that its future hangs upon its reducing its auto dependence. The city has recently decided to create twenty-five miles of dedicated busways, introduced twenty thousand shared “city bikes” in 1,450 locations, and committed to removing fifty-five thousand parking spaces from the city every year for the next twenty years.

There are of course some (rather horrid tower-in-the-parking-lot) exceptions, but most communities with these densities are also organized as traditional, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, the sort of accommodating environment that entices people out of their cars. Everything above that is icing on the cake. That means that, while Americans might have a long way to go to match European or Asian sustainability, a little effort can get us a lot closer. But not every American is motivated by concerns about climate change or peak oil and, even among those of us who are, it is not always easy to turn that intention into action. Certainly, unless we hit a national crisis of unprecedented severity, it is hard to imagine any argument framed in the language of sustainability causing many people to modify their behavior. So what will?

Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Mapes, Jeff. Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2009. Newman, Peter, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer. Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2009. Nordahl, Darrin. My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation in America. Chicago: The Center for American Places, 2008. Owen, David. Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability.


pages: 424 words: 119,679

It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear by Gregg Easterbrook

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air freight, Alan Greenspan, Apollo 11, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 747, Branko Milanovic, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, coronavirus, Crossrail, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, Exxon Valdez, factory automation, failed state, fake news, full employment, Gini coefficient, Google Earth, Home mortgage interest deduction, hydraulic fracturing, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, longitudinal study, Lyft, mandatory minimum, manufacturing employment, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, Modern Monetary Theory, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, plant based meat, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post scarcity, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, supervolcano, The Chicago School, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, uber lyft, universal basic income, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, WikiLeaks, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Though society has consumed more than twice as much as existed a generation ago, the reserve has gone up. Rather than a loaves-and-fishes intervention, these numbers reflect economic incentives, technological dynamism, and the enormity of the natural system. “Peak oil” in production terms appears decades away, if the moment ever comes. In the end, of course the oil will run out. But society may move on to clean fuels well before that happens, especially since peak oil may be in the process of yielding to “peak demand”—energy efficiency reducing overall need for oil and gas. The International Energy Agency projects that oil demand will peak around 2040, at only about 10 percent more than today’s consumption.

Adjusted for inflation, contemporary gasoline pump prices in the United States are about where they were when Dwight Eisenhower was president, saving consumers many billions of dollars annually. A geologist named King Hubbert is renowned for predicting in 1956 that the peak of American oil production would occur around the year 1970; then output would irrevocably decline as crude oil became exhausted. To the fringe aspects of environmentalism, Hubbert’s forecast of “peak oil” was wonderful news—civilization will fail and we can say we told you so! Instead, US oil output has risen so much that America is on the verge of surpassing Saudi Arabia as a producer. Limits to Growth was grounded in computer models, which either reach whatever conclusion their algorithms are written to produce or are limited by their data inputs, which may be fuzzy or simply wrong.

See Fear of Missing Out food production, 141, 162 accelerated cross breeding in, 6–7 in Africa, 9–11 Borlaug and, 3, 6–8, 9 CIMMYT and, 6 climate change and, 21 dietary habits of West and, 25, 116 Dust Bowl and, 5 famine and, 4–5 fertilizer and, 7 greenhouse gas and, 238 Hamilton solution and, 12 India and, 8, 16 infrastructure and, 12 machines and, 274, 275 malnutrition and, 3–4, 7, 12 market economy and, 11 meat and dairy yields in, 8 obesity and, 5 plant-based meat substitutes and, 16–17 subsistence farming and, 9, 11, 18–19 technological agriculture as, 11, 14 topsoil and, 10–11 traditional crop breeding and, 6 US jobs and, 71–72, 75 USAID and, 4, 10 water and, 13–14 See also Green Revolution; high-yield agriculture; land, in food production; meat fossil fuels cars and, 147–148 climate change and, 227 deregulation and, 56 greenhouse gases and, 56 leaded gasoline, 112 Limits to Growth on, 52–53 National Energy Act and, 54 natural gas as, 45–46, 53–54 “peak oil” and, 53, 57 price controls for, 54–55 reformulation of, 59–60 resource depletion and, 52–53, 54, 55–57 US coal mining and, 61 freedom of association, 222–223 Fresco, Louise, 16 Friedman, Milton corporate taxes and, 256 free-market systems and, 255–256 on Universal Basic Income, 255–257, 259–260, 264 Gale, William, 255 gay marriage, 89, 224, 268 GDP.


pages: 142 words: 45,733

Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis by Benjamin Kunkel

Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, anti-communist, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, creative destruction, David Graeber, declining real wages, full employment, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, means of production, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, Occupy movement, peak oil, price stability, profit motive, public intellectual, savings glut, Slavoj Žižek, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transatlantic slave trade, vertical integration, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game

The idea has gained a new currency in Marxist writing of recent years, and in its contemporary version tends to locate the limits to growth in the depletion of natural resources or in the exhaustion of productivity gains as the share of manufacturing in the world economy shrinks and that of services expands. Of course, peak oil or soil exhaustion might easily coincide with faltering productivity. Harvey doesn’t spell out why growth must have a stop, and the outlines of an ecologically stable and politically democratic future socialism remain as blurry in his later work as they do almost everywhere else. At the moment Marxism seems better prepared to interpret the world than to change it.

The maxim L’âge d’or était l’âge où l’or ne régnait pas is wrong only in its past tense: the Golden Age will be when gold—or rather capital—no longer rules. Of course today any thought of a golden future for humanity is all but stifled before utterance by ecological dread. So it should be added that full employment wouldn’t win us much unless accompanied by the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, peak oil mitigation, and the conservation of forests, topsoil, fisheries, and so on. Full employment and ecological sustainability might even complement one another, since full employment on an international scale would raise the price of raw materials and fossil energy, and in this way eventually, though not at first, encourage their conservation.


pages: 428 words: 134,832

Straphanger by Taras Grescoe

active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Albert Einstein, big-box store, bike sharing, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, City Beautiful movement, classic study, company town, congestion charging, congestion pricing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, correlation does not imply causation, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Donald Shoup, East Village, edge city, Enrique Peñalosa, extreme commuting, financial deregulation, fixed-gear, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, indoor plumbing, intermodal, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Jane Jacobs, Japanese asset price bubble, jitney, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, laissez-faire capitalism, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, messenger bag, mortgage tax deduction, Network effects, New Urbanism, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, parking minimums, peak oil, pension reform, Peter Calthorpe, Ponzi scheme, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, Skype, streetcar suburb, subprime mortgage crisis, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, transit-oriented development, union organizing, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, walkable city, white flight, working poor, young professional, Zipcar

The automobile sector is showing signs of recovering from the crisis of 2008; the industry has responded by launching more fuel-efficient cars, and governments are finally getting serious about mandating higher emission and better mileage standards. Fears about “peak oil”—the notion that the world was on the verge of using up half its reserves—have lately been quelled by the realization that there are monstrous deposits of unconventional crude trapped in at least twenty major geological formations in the United States alone. The problem, unfortunately, is that its extraction is costly. The long-feared arrival of peak oil has been delayed, at least for the time being. What we are now experiencing is a new phenomenon: the onset of the era of peak cheap oil.

But you are hard-pressed, outside of the extremely wealthy and the sophistos, to find people who want to live in dense places with kids.” In The Next Hundred Million, Kotkin, an energy optimist, predicts that an as yet uninvented technology will avert the “long-prophesied energy catastrophe” of peak oil. When I asked him about the effect rising energy prices could have on sprawl, he smirked. “See, I’m a little older than you; I’ve already seen this movie before. People have been saying these things for thirty-five years. It’s just like the whole climate change thing. Ten years ago, who would’ve expected we’d find all this natural gas?

Lowrey, Annie. “Your Commute Is Killing You.” Slate.com, May 26, 2011. Lutz, Catherine. Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Paumgarten, Nick. “There and Back Again: The Soul of the Commuter.” The New Yorker, April 16, 2007. “The Peak Oil-Debate.” The Economist, December 10, 2009. Puentes, Robert. “Driving’s Back Up … Or Is It?” Brookings Institution, Up Front Blog, http://www.brookings.edu, March 3, 2011. Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Roberts, Paul.


pages: 538 words: 138,544

The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better by Annie Leonard

air freight, banking crisis, big-box store, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business logic, California gold rush, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, cotton gin, dematerialisation, employer provided health coverage, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, Firefox, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, intermodal, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, liberation theology, McMansion, megaproject, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, Ralph Nader, renewable energy credits, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Wall-E, Whole Earth Review, Zipcar

Powering machines and vehicles and heating our buildings takes 84 percent of the petroleum used every year.107 Petroleum itself is also an ingredient in a lot of Stuff: the remaining 16 percent of it goes into making plastics, pharmaceuticals, and fertilizers, as well as Stuff like crayons, bubble gum, ink, dishwashing liquid, deodorant, tires, and ammonia.108 Drilling, processing, and burning oil is dirty and damaging to the health of people everywhere, not to mention the health of the planet. The other big problem with oil is that we’re running out. “Peak oil” is the term used to describe the point at which we’ve used more oil than what’s left available to us because of technological and geological limitations. Once peak oil is reached, oil production declines. The International Energy Agency (IEA), which tracks energy supplies around the world, believes we may reach peak oil by 2020 but are likely to experience an “oil crunch” even earlier as demand outpaces supply and oil becomes increasing expensive to extract.109 In August 2009, Dr.

., 140–141 Madagascar, 2, 3, 35 Makeup, 76–77 Makower, Joel, 185, 186 Malaysia, 8 Mandela, Nelson, 222 Maniates, Michael, 112, 159, 239, 240 Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 (Ocean Dumping Act), 98 Markey, Ed, 195 Marshall, James, 24 Mascara, 75 Massachusetts, toxics use reduction in, 218–219 Mazzochi, Tony, 85–86 McDonough, Bill, 52, 103 McKibben, Bill, 141 McRae, Glenn, 201 Mechanical pulping, 53 Medical waste, 185, 201–202 Mercury, 24, 25, 30, 34–35, 42, 54–55, 59, 61, 62, 69, 73, 74–75, 77, 79, 86, 91, 95, 203, 221–223, 257 Methane, 36, 209 Methyl-3-methoxyproprionate, 60 Methyl alcohol, 60 Methyl ethyl ketone, 60 Methyl isocyanate (MIC), 90, 91, 93 Mexico, 72, 135 Mickey Mouse Goes to Haiti (National Labor Committee), 49, 50 Microchips, 59–61 Microsoft, 71, 203 Minerals, 20–29 Minerals Policy Institute, 253 Mines, Minerals and People, 253 Mining, 20–25, 35, 36, 59, 64, 75 Mirex, 79 Mitchell, Stacy, 121, 125 Mobil Chemical Company, 230–231 Mobile phone chargers, 103–104 Monitors, 61 Monocropping, 47 Montague, Peter, 211–212 Moosewood Cookbook (Katzen), 158 Morris, David, 34 MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People), 31–33 Mountaintop removal mining, 36, 254 Mozambique, 66 Mudslides, 4, 7 Muir, John, 7 Municipal solid waste (MSW), 185, 190–199 Municipal supply of discards (MSD), 190 Myers, John Peterson, 45 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 126, 136, 255 Nair, Shibu, 236 National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, 88 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, 95 National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, 96 National Foreign Trade Council, 258 National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), 85, 96, 205 National Labor Committee, 49 National Marine Fisheries Service, 96 National Memorial for the Mountains, 36 National Ocean Service, 96 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 96 National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit (1991), 88 National Priorities Project (NPP), 243, 244 National Recycling Coalition (NRC), 196 National Weather Service, 96 Native Americans, 24, 196 New Economics Foundation, 152 New Leaf Paper, 56 Newsom, Gavin, 235–236 Newsweek, 234 Nickel, 59 Nigeria, 30–33, 35 Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, 33 Nike, 71, 108, 109, 165, 188 9/11 terrorist attacks, 147 Nitrates, 61 Nitric acid, 60, 61 Nitrogen dioxide, 65 Njehu, Njoki Njoroge, 39 No Dirty Gold campaign, 25 t-Nonachlor, 79 North Cascades National Park, 6–7, 10, 11 Obesity, 150 Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, 96 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 96, 123 Office Depot, 9 Office of Environmental Quality, 95 Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, 96 Ogoni 9, 33 Ogoniland, Nigeria, 31–33 Oil, 29–35, 246, 254 Oil Pollution Act of 1990, 98 One Planet Living program, 40 Online shopping, 118–119 Only the Paranoid Survive (Grove), 58 Open-pit mining, 20–22 Oreskes, Michael, 173 Organic cotton, 51 Organic matter, in water, 11 O’Rourke, Dara, 62, 108–112, 117, 140 Orris, Peter, 84 Our Stolen Future (Colborn, Myers and Dumanoski), 45 Overproduction, 102 Overspent American, The (Schor), 167, 168 Overworked American, The (Schor), 156 Oxfam America, 21 Oxychlordane, 79 Pacific Institute, 17 Packaging, 194–198 Packard, Vance, 163, 194 Paglia, Todd, 10 Paolino & Sons, 224 Paper, 1, 8–9, 14, 51–56, 52–55 Papyrus, 52 Parchment, 52 Patagonia, 50–51 PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), 60, 73, 261 Peak oil, 29 Peek, Bobby, 223 PepsiCo, 196 Perceived obsolescence, 162–163 Perot, Ross, 126 Personal care products, 76–77, 264 Personal consumption expenditures, 146–147, 177–178 Pesticide Action Network Organic Cotton Briefing Kit, 47 Pesticides, 5, 46, 47, 79, 231, 262 Petroleum, 20, 29–34, 55, 230 PFCs (perfluorocarbons), 65, 79 PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), 73 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 224–227 Phosphoric acid, 60 Phosphorus, 59 Phthalates, 69, 71–72, 76, 124 Planned obsolescence, 160, 161–163 Plant-derived pharmaceuticals, 2–3 Plastics, 44, 194–195, 230–232 PVC (polyvinyl chloride), 42, 51, 61–63, 68–72, 124, 170–172, 184, 188, 257, 261, 265–267 Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, 98 Polyester, 44 Polymers, 44 POPs (persistent organic pollutants), 73 Poverty, 178–179 Prescription drugs, 2–3 Print-on-demand technology, 119 Printers, 203, 204 Privatization of water systems, 16 Processed chlorine free (PCF) process, 54, 56 Procter & Gamble, 112 Product Policy Institute (PPI), 198–199 Production, 44–105, 255–256 Progress, redefining, 242–243 Project Return to Sender, 225–226 Project Underground, 31 Puckett, Jim, 205, 210 Puget Sound, 11 Pulping, 53 Putnam, Robert, 149, 238–239 PVC (polyvinyl chloride), 42, 51, 61–63, 68–72, 124, 170–172, 184, 188, 257, 261, 265–267 Quante, Heidi, 226 Quinine, 2 Rainforest Action Network (RAN), 5, 254–255 Rainforests, 2–4, 30–31 REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals) Act, 82, 83 ReBuilders Source, 200–201 Reciprocity, culture of, 238–239 Recycle-Bank, 229 Recycling, 9, 42, 52, 55, 56, 64, 66–67, 69–70, 190, 196, 197–199, 204–207, 216, 228–234, 266–267 Rendell, Edward, 225–226 Repairs, 192–194 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 and 1986, 98 Hazardous and Solid Wastes Amendments of 1984, 98 Resource curse, 37 Responsible Care program, 93 Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Sierra Leone, 26 Rivers, 10–11, 24, 25 Roane County, Tennessee, 35 Rocks, 20–29 Rogers, Heather, 228, 232 Rosario, Juan, 65 Rosy periwinkle, 2–3, 35 Rwanda, 27, 28 Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, 97 Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Campaign, 84 Salt water, 15 San Francisco, California, 235–236 Sarangi, Satinath, 91 Saro-Wiwa, Ken, 31–33 Schettler, Ted, 74, 78, 79 Schor, Juliet, 156, 167, 168, 246, 247 Scorecard, 94 Scott, Lee, 122 Sea levels, 13 Seattle, Washington, 133–134 Seinfeld, Jerry, 182 Seldman, Neil, 228 Sequestration, 2 Sewage systems, 12 Shaman Pharmaceuticals, 3 Sharing and borrowing, 43, 237–238 Shell Oil, 31–33 Shoe repairs, 194 Shopping, 147–148 Shopping malls, 124–125 Shower curtains, 69 Shukla, Champa Devi, 91 Sierra Leone, 26, 35 Silent Spring (Carson), 98 Silicon, 59 Silicon Valley, 57–58 Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 63 Silicosis, 59 Silver, 59 SmartWay Transport program, 115 Smith, Alisa, 140–141 Smith, Kari, 165 Smith, Ted, 58 Sodium hydroxide, 60 Soesterberg Principles, 63 Soil, 7, 12 Solar power, 34, 36 South Africa, 23–24, 26, 221–223, 258 South Korea, 135 Soy inks, 55 Spain, 31, 71 Species extinction, 4 Speth, Gus, 167 Stainless steel, 44 Staples, 9 Steam engine, invention of, 101 Stevens, Brooks, 161, 163 Stewart, Howard, 225 Stoller Chemical, 219 Story of Stuff, The (film), 56, 147, 162 Suicide, teen, 150 Sulfonamides, 48 Sulfur dioxide, 65 Sulfuric acid, 48, 60 Superfund sites, 57, 97, 208 Supply chains, 107–113, 117, 256 Sustainable Biomaterials Collaborative, 34, 231 Sustainable Forestry Initiative, 10 Sweatshops, 49–50, 51 Switkes, Glenn, 66 Synthetic materials, 44–45, 75, 78, 80 Take-back programs, 29, 206 Talberth, John, 242 Tantalum (coltan), 27–29, 35, 246 Tar sands, 254 Target, 118 Television, 167–168, 262 Tetramethylammonium, 60 Texaco, 30 Text messages, 57 Thor Chemicals, 221–223 Thoreau, Henry David, 147 Thornton, Thomas, 245 Timber plantations, 5 Tin, 59 Toluene, 55 Total economic value framework, 18 Totally chlorine free (TCF) process, 54, 56 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, 82, 97 Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987–2007 (United Church of Christ), 89 Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (United Church of Christ), 88 Toxics Release Inventory, 93–94 Toxics Use Reduction Act (TURA), 218 Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), 218–219 Toyota, 71, 108, 111 Toys, 74, 111 Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act, 136, 255 Trans-Atlantic Network for Clean Production, 63 Transition Towns, 141–142 Trees, 2–10, 21 Triclosan, 79 Trucks, 113–115, 123 Ts’ai Lun, 52 Tucker, Cora, 88 Turkey, 50, 157–158 Tweeting, 57 Uganda, 27 Underground (subsurface) mining, 20 Unhappiness/happiness, 149–155 UNICOR, 205 Union Carbide Corporation, 90–93 United Church of Christ (UCC), 88, 89 United Nations, 38, 146 Center for Trade and Development, 228 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16 Environment Programme (UNEP), 75 Food and Agriculture Organization, 47 Human Development Index, 242 Human Poverty Index, 151 U.S.


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Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis by Anatole Kaletsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, buy and hold, Carmen Reinhart, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, eat what you kill, Edward Glaeser, electricity market, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, geopolitical risk, George Akerlof, global rebalancing, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, long and variable lags, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peak oil, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, statistical model, systems thinking, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Energy supply offers a striking example of the way that both geopolitical and economic conditions could be transformed by a change in thinking about economics and the relationships between politics and markets. When oil prices hit $150 a barrel17 shortly before the Lehman crisis, the financial markets debated the theory of peak oil, which stated that global oil production at the end of the twentieth century had reached its physically sustainable limits in the 1990s and was about to enter an inexorable decline. Some investors and policymakers combined the peak oil theory with the assumption of efficient markets to conclude that oil prices would rise dramatically—that the $150 per barrel oil price was only the beginning of a supercycle upswing.

Such measures would also shift the balance of geopolitical power from nondemocratic commodity countries that rely for their wealth and power on unproductive and environmentally damaging resource extraction to democratic nations whose wealth and power depends on innovation and technological progress. If this process were activated, the limits to growth and peak oil theories would never need to be tested. Instead, a large part of the world’s oil supplies would eventually be abandoned, almost worthless, in the ground, like the vast reserves of coal that remain underneath the soil of Britain, which were once believed to be the nation’s greatest treasure. The potential effect on energy production of drastically raising prices to oil consumers was famously summarized at the time of the 1974 energy shock by Shaikh Yamani, then the Saudi oil minister, who reminded his OPEC colleagues that if they got too greedy, the world would replace oil with other energy sources.

Morgan Stanley Morris, Charles Mortgage market reform Mudd, Daniel Myths burdening grandchildren national bankruptcy Naisbitt, John National Association of Realtors’ monthly index of home resale prices New Asian Hemisphere, The (Mahbubani) New Deal New Normal New Paradigm for Financial Markets, The (Soros) Newton, Sir Isaac Nixon, Richard Northern Rock collapse/response, Britain Obama, Barack/administration Capitalism 4.0 and critics of economic policies economic recovery and fiscal stimulus plan health care reform and hope and See also Economic recovery/2009 government response OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Oil use/industry dependence on oil and environment and government role in reduction oil shock (2008) OPEC reduction taxes and theory of peak oil true costs/benefits and unearned rent and See also Energy issues Opinions/polls O’Rourke, P. J. Outsourcing Ozone layer Pareto, Vilfredo Pareto Optimality Paris Commune Pascal, Blaise/Wager Paulson, Henry/financial crisis (2007-09) blunders by comparison to Andrew Mellon description/personality Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac seizure Goldman Sachs reputation and market fundamentalism and personal tax exemption post-crisis debate and short sellers and TARP and See also Bush, George W./ administration; Lehman Brothers collapse Pension/health entitlements People’s Daily, China Personalities importance Petronius, Gaius Phelps, Edmund Planck, Max Platform Companies (Platco) Plato “Policy Ineffectiveness Proposition” (Sargent/Wallace) Prince, Charles Protectionism Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The (Weber) Public Choice theory Rajan, Ranghuram Ramo, Joshua Rand, Ann Rational Expectations Hypothesis (REH) Rationality concept Reagan, Ronald See also Thatcher-Reagan revolution Reflexivity description See also Theory of Reflexivity Reich, Robert Reinhart, Carmen Ricardian Equivalence theory, Barro Ricardo, David Robinson, Joan Rogoff, Kenneth Roosevelt, Franklin Rowthorn, Robert Rumsfeld, Donald Samuelson, Paul Sargent, Thomas Sarkozy, Nicolas Savings Schumpeter, Joseph Seabright, Paul Sen, Amartya Shakespeare Shiller, Robert Short sellers Simon, Herbert Simon, John Singh, Jaswant Skidelsky, Robert Slaughter, Anne-Marie Smith, Adam Capitalism 1 and ideas/impact “invisible hand” of competitive markets concept Smith, Vernon Solow, Robert Sorkin, Andrew Ross Soros, George boom-bust cycles and boom-bust cycles/Theory of Reflexivity “market fundamentalism” term/concept South Sea Bubble/effects Sovereign wealth funds Specialization Spence, Michael Stagflation 1970s causes/conditions for description threat of Stiglitz, Joe Stimulus.


pages: 313 words: 92,907

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are Thekeys to Sustainability by David Owen

A Pattern Language, active transport: walking or cycling, big-box store, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, congestion charging, congestion pricing, delayed gratification, distributed generation, drive until you qualify, East Village, Easter island, electricity market, food miles, Ford Model T, garden city movement, hydrogen economy, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, linear programming, McMansion, megaproject, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, Murano, Venice glass, Negawatt, New Urbanism, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, PalmPilot, peak oil, placebo effect, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Ted Nordhaus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas L Friedman, unemployed young men, urban planning, urban sprawl, walkable city, zero-sum game

In succeeding pages, he lucidly explains that humans have consumed about a trillion barrels of oil (that’s 42 trillion gallons), or what Goodstein estimates to be about half of the earth’s total recoverable supply; that a devastating global petroleum crisis will begin not when we have burned the last drop but when we have reached the halfway point—an event known as peak oil, or Hubbert’s Peak, after the geophysicist who first predicted it7—because at that moment, for the first time in history, the line representing supply will fall permanently through the line representing demand; that we will probably pass that point within the next few years, if we haven’t passed it already; that various well-established laws of economics are about to assert themselves, with disastrous repercussions for almost everything; and that “civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels.”8 Extreme predictions have a history of turning out badly.

Sachs, “Surging Food Prices and Global Stability,” Scientific American, June 2008. 5 Bob Davis and Douglas Belkin, “Food Inflation, Riots Spark Worries for World Leaders,” The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2008. 6 Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin, “Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher,” The New York Times, June 30, 2008. 7 For more on peak oil, see Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001) and any of a number of websites, among them www.hub-bertpeak.com and www.peakoil.com, as well as numerous other sources. 8 David Goodstein, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil (New York: W.

Drake, Edwin Dubai automobile dependence geography and economy growth and planning oil reserves and revenue real estate ownership recreational facilities shopping Dubner, Stephen J. Dukes, Jeffrey S. Dyson, Freeman Ebbesmeyer, Curtis Ecocities (Register) economics cheapness of gasoline corn exports and prices economic decline efficiency incentives of fossil-fuel alternatives gasoline prices, public transit usage and oil abundance and oil-production peak oil extraction feasibility oil price increases, repercussions of oil prices, emotional responses to perceived value of free or discounted goods prosperity public transit feasibility tolls and fees Economist Ehrlich, Paul Eiseley, Loren electric and plug-in hybrid automobiles electricity consumption cost to consumers future demand in New York City electricity generation blackout of 2003, diesel generators distributed generation Natural Bridges demonstrator project photovoltaic systems power grid wind turbines Electricity Journal Ellenbogen, Richard and Maryann embodied energy energy.


pages: 335 words: 89,924

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet by Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Bartolomé de las Casas, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, company town, complexity theory, creative destruction, credit crunch, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, energy transition, European colonialism, feminist movement, financial engineering, Food sovereignty, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Haber-Bosch Process, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, means of production, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microcredit, Naomi Klein, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, peak oil, precariat, scientific management, Scientific racism, seminal paper, sexual politics, sharing economy, source of truth, South Sea Bubble, spinning jenny, strikebreaker, surplus humans, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, wages for housework, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War

In Confronting Columbus: An Anthology, edited by John Yewell, Chris Dodge, and Jan DeSirey, 15–29. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Moloney, Pat. 2011. “Hobbes, Savagery, and International Anarchy.” American Political Science Review 105, no. 1: 189–204. Monbiot, George. 2012. “We Were Wrong on Peak Oil: There’s Enough to Fry Us All.” Guardian, July 2. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/02/peak-oil-we-we-wrong. Montaño, John Patrick. 2011. The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moody, Kim. 1988. An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. London: Verso. Moore, Jason W. 2003a. “The Modern World-System as Environmental History?

“A Meta-analysis of Crop Yield under Climate Change and Adaptation.” Nature Climate Change 4, no. 4: 287–91. Channell, Rob, and Mark V. Lomolino. 2000. “Trajectories to Extinction: Spatial Dynamics of the Contraction of Geographical Ranges.” Journal of Biogeography 27, no. 1: 169–79. Chapman, Ian. 2014. “The End of Peak Oil? Why This Topic Is Still Relevant despite Recent Denials.” Energy Policy 64: 93–101. Charlesworth, Andrew. 1983. An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain, 1548–1900. London: Croom Helm. Chaudhuri, K.N. 1985. Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750.


Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years by Richard Watson

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Black Swan, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, cashless society, citizen journalism, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, congestion charging, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, deglobalization, digital Maoism, digital nomad, disintermediation, driverless car, epigenetics, failed state, financial innovation, Firefox, food miles, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, hive mind, hobby farmer, industrial robot, invention of the telegraph, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, linked data, low cost airline, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, mass immigration, Northern Rock, Paradox of Choice, peak oil, pensions crisis, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, RFID, Richard Florida, self-driving car, speech recognition, synthetic biology, telepresence, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Turing test, Victor Gruen, Virgin Galactic, white flight, women in the workforce, work culture , Zipcar

While climate is influencing — and will continue to influence — how governments, corporations and individuals think and act, I would suggest that it won’t be the only game in town. Climate change is a present concern but this could change very fast if a more immediate threat — like an economic collapse or a global flu pandemic — comes along. Equally, we are facing other issues including peak oil, peak coal, peak gas, peak water, peak uranium and even peak people (a severe shortage of workers in many parts of the world). The finite nature of natural resources is not necessarily a problem, although it will require a profound shift in attitudes and behavior (and technology) to overcome. Hence sustainability in a more general sense and the mantra of reuse, recycle and reduce will be something we’ll be hearing a lot more of in the future.

As a result, the resources trade will increasingly operate on a “no questions asked” basis. In the long term, I believe that energy and general resource-scarcity issues will be solved through technology; but in the meantime, energy (along with climate change and sustainability) will dominate politics. Most studies predict that we will hit peak oil production by 2015, or 2020 at the latest. Supplies will run out around 2050. This will be followed by peak gas and peak coal. As a result, nuclear power is firmly back on the political agenda, an inconceivable thought 20 years ago. Widescale use of wind and particularly solar power is also being seriously investigated, although it is hard to see how either can successfully replace oil, coal and gas without a substantial change in the way energy is used.

Widescale use of wind and particularly solar power is also being seriously investigated, although it is hard to see how either can successfully replace oil, coal and gas without a substantial change in the way energy is used. According to Richard Heinberg, a US academic and author of several books on the end of cheap oil, we should all be planning for another 1930s-style economic depression. A report produced for the US Department of Energy says that when peak oil does hit, we will experience abrupt and revolutionary change. The world’s appetite for oil is certainly insatiable. Between September 2003 and May 2008 the price of oil increased by almost 500% but demand Government and Politics 75 has not declined at all. Indeed, demand is predicted to rise by 50% between now and 2025.


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The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans by Mark Lynas

Airbus A320, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, megacity, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Negawatt, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, special drawing rights, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, We are as Gods

Again, this is to misunderstand the physical and ecological nature of the proposed boundaries: It makes no difference to the biosphere if humans run out of iron, for example. Nor does it make any difference if we use up all the cheaply extractable oil—as has recently become the concern of the “peak oil” crowd—except to the extent that humanity’s response to declining oil supplies, like burning more coal or extracting more tar sands, will negatively affect real planetary boundaries like climate change. But peak oil might also be a good thing if it adds to rising prices of fossil fuels sufficiently to encourage the faster uptake of low-and zero-carbon alternatives. Either way, the planetary boundaries are the metric by which humanity’s response to resource crunches should be judged—they are not concerned with resource shortages in and of themselves.

methane Mexico Michaels, Patrick Midgley, Thomas Mississippi River Missouri River “mitigation hierachy” Mitsubishi Molina, Mario Møller, Anders Moloney, Maurice Monbiot, George Monsanto monsoon Montreal Protocol, 1987 Mousseau, Tim mudflats Muller-Landau, Helene NASA Nasheed, President national parks National Science Academy, US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) National Trust National Water Carrier, Israel natural capital Nature Nature Conservancy, 1148 New Economics Foundation (NEF) New Forests New Internationalist NGOs Niger, River Nile, River nitrogen boundary: famine and; Haber-Bosch process; nitrogen ape; meeting the; human production of nitrogen, benefits of; nitrogen oxide emissions; efforts to control nitrogen pollution; microbial denitrification; wastewater, removing nitrates from; organic farming and fertilizer use; designing crops that are more efficient in nitrogen uptake North America: extinction in; “rewilding”; climate change in; GE in; land use in; wind power in Northern permafrost zone carbon store Norway no-till agriculture nuclear power; pollution/dangers of Nuon Renewables Obama, Barack ocean acidification; waste in; evolution of; animals depleted; boundary; life in acidic oceans; reef gaps; oceans of the future; carbon cycle and; ocean pH; sea creatures and; changes characteristics of seawater; fertilizing effect of; “calcification crisis”; ground-up olivine rock spread as beach nourishment; addition of lime directly into oceans; attention to; skeptics Open Atmospheric Science Journal Overpeck, Jonathan Oxford University ozone layer; boundary Pachauri, Rajendra Pakistan Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) palm-oil companies Papua New Guinea Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee, U.K. PCBs Peacock, Jim peak oil Permian Period pesticides Petrovich, Leonid photosynthesis Pielke Jr., Roger Pinatubo eruption, 1991 planetary boundaries, concept of; expert group; summary of; what about population?; do not deal with resource constraints plastics Pliocene epoch polar bear pollution see under individual pollutant name population, human Porritt, Jonathan Pretty, Jules Prosperity Without Growth (Jackson) pumped storage reservoirs Quaternary Megafaunal Extinction rain forest Rasmussen, Lars Lokke Rational Optimist, The (Ridley) “RE<C” REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals), 2007 Reagan, Ronald RealClimate blog “rebel organisms” Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) renewables “rewilding” Ricardo, David Ridley, Matt Rio Grande rivers: dams and reservoirs on; drying of; eutrophication; nitrogen in; ecological zones; agricultural use of water from; “gender benders” in; toxics in; see also under individual dam or reservoir name Roberts, Callum Rockström, Professor Johan Rowland, F.


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The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich by Daniel Ammann

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", accounting loophole / creative accounting, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, book value, Boycotts of Israel, business intelligence, buy low sell high, energy security, family office, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, peak oil, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez crisis 1956, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, Yom Kippur War

He began trading modest amounts of Tunisian crude oil at the end of the 1960s. Then a barrel of crude oil cost 2 (the price hit a record 147 in July 2008 but fell back as far as 35 in February 2009), the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth had not yet been written, and hardly anyone had ever heard of peak oil, a term that describes the worldwide decline in oil production.13 Rich also sparked the emancipation of the oil-producing countries. Increased competition among the multinational oil companies meant that producers could now demand more for their natural resources than ever before. Isaac Querub, Rich’s longtime colleague and confidant, went so far as to compare him with the father of Communism: “You can say in a way that Marc Rich was the Karl Marx of the oil-producing countries.

Enrico Mattei, the legendary boss of Eni, the then state-owned Italian energy company, coined the term “Seven Sisters” in the 1960s. 12. Rich’s partners were Pincus Green, Jacques Hachuel, Alec Hackel, and John Trafford. 13. Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1992). Marion King Hubbert, a geologist at Shell, coined the term “peak oil” in 1957. The term “Hubbert’s peak” is used as well. 14. James Kerr, senior trader with Elders IXL, quoted in John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, Contemporary American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1990), 557. 15. Richard M. Auty, (1993). Sustaining Development in Mineral Economies: The Resource Curse Thesis (London: Routledge, 1993); Jeffrey D.

., 168–71 October Revolution (1917), 61 Oil nationalizations, 57–58 Oil price per barrel Marc Rich on future, 264–65, 270–71 38.5 to 55.1 , 81 2.00, 14 2.50 to 3.00, 56–57 5.00, 71 8.00, 192 10.75 to 13.39, 95 11.60, 73 13.34, 95 28.00, 95 38.00 to 50.00, 97–98 Oil trade (trading), 53–74, 79–86, 174–75 embargo, 54–55, 81, 99–101, 117 globalization of, 89–91 Marc Rich on future of, 264–65, 270–71 nationalizations and, 57–58 price controls, 117–20 secret pipeline in Israel, 64–70, 79–80 Seven Sisters oligopoly and, 55–57 shock of 1974, 81–82, 86 shock of 1979, 97–102 spot market, 1–2, 13–14, 56, 70, 71–73, 82, 83–86, 101–2 Oil transport, 59–61, 69, 84–85, 189–90 Oligopoly, 56, 84–85 Olmert, Ehud, 11, 246 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), 57–58, 67, 70–71, 72 oil price per barrel, 95, 97–98 Operation Magic Carpet, 205–6 Operation Moses, 204 Ortega, Daniel, 179 Oslo Accords, 247–49 Otford Project, 154 Outsider status of Marc Rich, 32–33 Pahlavi, Ashraf, Princess, 217 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza (Shah of Iran), 64–67, 90–91, 92, 94, 96, 102–3, 190–91 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 50 Palestinians, 94, 247–49, 259, 270 “Paradox of plenty,” 15 Paribas, 80 “Peak oil,” 14, 278n Peres, Shimon, 103–4, 247–50, 258–59 Perkins, Richard, 100–101 Permissible average markup (PAM), 118–19 Persian Gulf, 54–55 Petty Gem Shop, 34 Philanthropy of Marc Rich, 237–38, 270 Philip IV of France, 39 Philipp, Julius, 38 Philipp, Oscar, 38 Philipp Brothers, 36–51 apprenticeship at, 37–38, 40–41 creating a market, 42–43 Cuba assignment, 45–47 departure of Marc Rich and Pinky Green, 73–74 Madrid assignment, 48–51 oil trade, 53–54, 55, 58–59, 63–64, 71–72, 73 sensitive assignments, 44–45 vendetta against, 78–79 Playboy, 108, 241 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), 50 Pogroms, 39 Poland, 25, 26 Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 183–85 Prestige, 231 Price per barrel Marc Rich on future, 264–65, 270–71 38.5 to 55.1 , 81 2.00, 14 2.50 to 3.00, 56–57 5.00, 71 8.00, 192 10.75 to 13.39, 95 11.60, 73 13.34, 95 28.00, 95 38.00 to 50.00, 97–98 Princeton University, 106 Private life of the Riches, 209–24 Przemy l, Poland, 26 Publicity and Marc Rich, 139–41, 230–32 Pyrite, 46–47 Qaddafi, Muammar, 17 Querub, Isaac, 14, 42, 194, 211 Quinn, Jack, 5 Clinton pardon and, 239–41, 243–46, 249, 251–52, 254, 255–56, 258–59 flaws in Marc Rich Case, 135–39, 142 negotiations about Marc Rich case, 170–71 Quirós, Antonio, 48–49 Qurei, Ahmed, 248 Rabin, Yitzhak, 103, 204–5, 208, 249 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO), 110, 122–23, 135–36, 139–40 Rand, Ayn, 180–81 Ras Burqa attack, 197–200 “Rational egoism,” 180 Ratliff, David, 107 Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation, 230–31 Reagan, Ronald, 118, 141, 158 Realpolitik, 203–8 Regulations, 118–19, 267 Reichmuth, Karl, 18 Religious fundamentalism, 270–71 Renationalization, 268 Renewable energy, 264–65 “Resource curse,” 15, 279n Rezai, Ali, 67–68, 79–80, 92 Rhodes Preparatory School, 36 Rich, Danielle (daughter), 4–5, 21, 209–12, 215, 220, 237 Rich, David (father), 25–36, 76, 212–13, 217 Rich, Denise Eisenberg (ex-wife), 5, 209–24 blind date with Marc Rich, 213–15 Clinton pardon and, 250–54, 258 daughter Gabrielle’s cancer and, 209–12 divorce from Marc Rich, 21–22, 221–24 family values of, 215–17 flight to Switzerland, 109–10 in Madrid, 48 songwriting of, 217–18 Rich, Gabrielle (daughter), 11, 209–13, 215 Rich, Ilona (daughter), 4–5, 210, 215 Rich, Marc ambition of, 16–17 apprenticeship at Philipp Brothers, 37–38, 40–41 birth of, 27–28 case against.


Player One by Douglas Coupland

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, call centre, double helix, Marshall McLuhan, neurotypical, oil shock, peak oil, post-oil, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), uranium enrichment, Y2K

As an aside, Karen said, “The 1970s oil shock set his calendar back by a decade. But he was right.” “How on earth do you people know this?” “It’s kind of weird,” Karen said. “We met in a — God, this is so embarrassing — a Peak Oil Apocalypse chat room.” “Man,” Warren said, “wouldn’t Hubbert freak to see oil over $250 a barrel.” Rick said, “You mean you two actually did meet in a Peak Oil Apocalypse chat room?” Warren said, “Yeah, so what? There are a lot of collapsitarians like me out there.” Karen, slightly embarrassed, added, “I was in a dark patch — visiting the doom and gloom sites — we all do that sometimes.


pages: 311 words: 17,232

Living in a Material World: The Commodity Connection by Kevin Morrison

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, commoditize, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, diversified portfolio, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, energy security, European colonialism, flex fuel, food miles, Ford Model T, Great Grain Robbery, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), junk bonds, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Michael Milken, new economy, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, planned obsolescence, price mechanism, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, young professional

Consuming nations are making alternative arrangements by looking at other energy sources. This ambiguity about global oil reserves has given rise to the peak oil theory. Based on the number of recent large oil discoveries (not many), and the age of many of the existing oil fields in the Middle East (pretty old), the peak oil theorists may have a point. But the restrictions enforced by oil-producing nations on foreign companies and a desire not to maximize output has, for the short term at least, blurred the issue on peak oil. In his book Twilight in the Desert, Matthew Simmons, a Houston-based investment banker, warned that Saudi Arabian oil reserves – estimated to make up about a quarter of global oil reserves – could face serious and irreversible decline (Simmons, 2005).


pages: 289 words: 112,697

The new village green: living light, living local, living large by Stephen Morris

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, back-to-the-land, Buckminster Fuller, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, Community Supported Agriculture, company town, computer age, cuban missile crisis, David Sedaris, deindustrialization, discovery of penicillin, distributed generation, Easter island, energy security, energy transition, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial independence, Firefox, Hacker Conference 1984, index card, Indoor air pollution, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Elkington, Kevin Kelly, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, McMansion, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Negawatt, off grid, off-the-grid, peak oil, precautionary principle, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review

But there is more – much more – we need to understand about how economics is impacting our personal and collective lives and the health of our planet. The economic consequences of globalization and late stage hyper-capitalism are reaching a crisis point that will be felt by most of us in the next few years “up close and personal” – probably even before we feel the immediate results of Peak Oil or global warming. Even if we are doing everything we can to live a lowimpact, sustainable lifestyle, we need to understand what’s happening in the US and world economies. The Big Picture We have lived most of our lives in a growth economy, and our society has been getting rich off the consumption of cheap fossil fuel.

Government Debt Whatever happened to old-fashioned conservative fiscal responsibility? Thanks to George Bush and his imbecilic economic policies, we have now become the nation with both the largest personal debt and the largest government debt. Our military policies are hugely expensive as well as immoral and stupid. And as the effects of Peak Oil and Energy Descent begin to be felt, we will have little wealth available to invest in new solutions. If we are lucky enough to elect one of the hapless Democratic candidates for President and this person turns out to be a Franklin Roosevelt disguised as a centrist Democrat, he or she will have none of the maneuvering room, which Roosevelt had, to get us out of the economic depression that we may face in the not too distant future.

The garlic juice was so successful in treating infection that Russian army physicians employed the same technique in World War II along with garlic and onions given internally to increase resistance to infections. 146 chapter 6 : Small is Beautiful Debbie Bennett is a Transitions Weight and Lifestyle management coach as well as a nutritional counselor and vegan/raw food chef. Shelley Massa-Gooch teaches yoga. Think Globally, Eat Locally T by Debbie Bennett & Shelley Massa-Gooch hroughout the discussions on global warming and Peak Oil concerns, there is one aspect often overlooked. The continued use of massive quantities of petroleum in the production of synthetic fertilizers, in the farm machinery, and in the transportation of food across the globe is clearly unsustainable. Not only is oil a finite natural resource, but CO2 emissions from a petroleum-based food economy also contribute to air pollution, related health problems, and global warming.


pages: 553 words: 168,111

The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market by Leah McGrath Goodman

Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, automated trading system, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Carl Icahn, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, East Village, energy security, Etonian, family office, Flash crash, global reserve currency, greed is good, High speed trading, light touch regulation, market fundamentalism, Oscar Wyatt, peak oil, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, price mechanism, profit motive, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, upwardly mobile, zero-sum game

Most of the time, I would just sit at my desk, trying to think of a new way of saying the same thing I’d said the day before—that there no longer appeared to be enough oil in the world to meet rising demand, that the rock on which modern industrial civilization had been built seemed to be slowly crumbling. The strange term being tossed around by experts at the time was “peak oil.” Dismissed by the opposing experts as a ridiculous doomsday scenario, it referred to the moment when the world’s oil production would begin to decline until supply ran out. The feeling was that this would not be a good thing, since there was no decent alternative for oil and no reliable way of knowing exactly when the planet had reached its tipping point. In the meantime, guessing when peak oil would arrive had become somewhat like a parlor game to industry insiders, each trying the shout the others down.

In the meantime, guessing when peak oil would arrive had become somewhat like a parlor game to industry insiders, each trying the shout the others down. But behind the scenes, a much more terrifying question overshadowed the debate: had peak oil already arrived—and nobody wanted to admit it yet? On one point the experts could agree. The world was not prepared for the catastrophic end of oil. Without question, its depletion would mean more wars, more political strife, and more awkward death matches between the West and the oil-rich Middle East. Still, even as the United States fought wars in two Middle East nations and kept drilling for oil in ever more perilous depths of the ocean, nobody seemed especially alarmed at the thought of oil drying up.

., 339–41 O’Reilly, Bill, 6–8, 343–44 O’Reilly Factor, The (TV show), 6–8, 343–44 over-the-counter markets, 87–88, 104–6, 181–83, 218–19, 222–23, 237, 277–79, 383 Painter, George, 186–93, 196–97, 232, 240–41 Palace Hotel, 216 palladium futures market, 42, 85 Paris Foods, 36, 37 Paris Futures, 36 Paris Securities, 36, 110–11, 306 Parsons, Scott, 326, 378 Parton, Dolly, 64 Paul Mahler Inc., 48–49 Paulson, Henry, 356–57 Pavel, Ilona, 78 peak oil, 2–3 Peak Ridge Capital, 347 Penthouse Executive Club, 281 Pepperdine University, 199 Perez, Rosie, 367 Perkins, Bill, xiv–xv Arnold and, 316 basketball futures trading and, 205–6 on gambling on the floor, 147–48 Goldman and financial crisis of 2008, 356–57 start at Nymex, 19–20 Persian Gulf War, 143–44 Petersen, Peter, 273 Petroleum Argus Inc., 210 Phibro Energy, 104, 151 Pickens, T.


pages: 464 words: 116,945

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alvin Toffler, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, call centre, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, company town, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, drone strike, end world poverty, falling living standards, fiat currency, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Food sovereignty, Frank Gehry, future of work, gentrification, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, informal economy, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Murray Bookchin, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, peak oil, phenotype, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wages for housework, Wall-E, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

The stranglehold that the rentier class (for example, landlords and owners of mineral, agricultural and intellectual property rights) has over so-called ‘natural’ assets and resources allows it to create and manipulate scarcities and to speculate on the value of the assets they control. This power has long been in evidence. It is now generally accepted, for example, that almost all famines over the last 200 years have been socially produced and not naturally ordained. Every time rising oil prices provoke a chorus of commentary on the natural limits of ‘peak oil’ it is followed by a period of rueful remorse as it is realised that it was the speculators and the oil cartel who together pushed the oil prices up. The ‘land grabs’ now going on around the world (particularly in Africa) have more to do with escalating competition to monopolise the food chain and resources with an eye to extracting rents than with fear of impending natural limits to food production and mineral extractions.

We are therefore not in a position to find out if capital could accomplish the massive adaptations required to deal with this problem effectively. The bulk of the evidence now available does not support the thesis of an impending collapse of capitalism in the face of the environmental dangers. We will not run out of energy in spite of ‘peak oil’; there is land and water enough to feed an expanding population for many years to come even in the face of exponential growth. If there are specific impending scarcities of this or that resource, we are smart enough to find substitutes. Resources are technological, economic and cultural evaluations of use values in nature.

283 Maddison, Angus 227 Maghreb 174 Malcolm X 291 Maldives 260 Malthus, Thomas 229–30, 232–3, 244, 246, 251 Manchester 149, 159 Manhattan Institute 143 Mansion House, London 201 manufacturing 104, 239 Mao Zedong 291 maquilas 129, 174 Marcuse, Herbert 204, 289 market cornering 53 market economy 198, 205, 276 marketisation 243 Marshall Plan 153 Martin, Randy 194 Marx, Karl 106, 118, 122, 142, 207, 211 and alienation 125, 126, 213 in the British Museum library 4 on capital 220 conception of wealth 214 on the credit system 239 and deskilling 119 on equal rights 64 and falling profits 107 and fetishism 4 on freedom 207, 208, 213 and greed 33 ‘industrial reserve army’ 79–80 and isolation of workers 125 labour theory of value 109 and monetary system reforms 36 monopoly power and competition 135 reality and appearance 4, 5 as a revolutionary humanist 221 and social reproduction 182 and socialist utopian literature 184 and technological innovation 103 and theorists of the political left 54 and the ‘totally developed individual’ 126–7 and world crises xiii; Capital 57, 79–80, 81, 82, 119, 129, 132, 269, 286, 291–2 The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 269, 286 Grundrisse 97, 212–13 Theories of Surplus Value 1 Marxism contradiction between productive forces and social relations 269 ‘death of Marxism’ xii; ecologically sensitive 263 and humanism 284, 286, 287 ‘profit squeeze’ theory of crisis formation 65 traditional Marxist conception of socialism/ communism 91 Marxists 65, 109 MasterCard Priceless 275 Mau Mau movement 291 Melbourne 141 merchants 67 and industrial capital 179 price-gouging customers 54 and producers 74–5 Mercosur 159 Mexican migrants 115, 175, 195–6 Mexico 123, 129, 174 Mexico City riots (1968) x microcredit 194, 198 microfinance 186, 194, 198, 211 Microsoft 131 Middle East 124, 230 Milanovic, Branko 170 military, the capacities and powers 4 dominance 110 and technology 93, 95 ‘military-industrial complex’ 157 mind-brain duality 70 mining 94, 113, 123, 148, 239, 257 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 292 Mitchell, David: Cloud Atlas 264 Mitchell, Timothy 122 Modern Times (film) 103 Mondragon 180 monetarism xi monetary wealth and incomes, inequalities in (1920s) x 1071 monetisation 44, 55, 60, 61, 62, 115, 192–3, 198, 235, 243, 250, 253, 261, 262 money abandonment of metallic basis of global moneys 30, 37, 109 circulation of 15, 25, 30–31, 35 coinage 15, 27, 29, 30 commodification of 57 commodity moneys 27–31 creation of 30, 51, 173, 233, 238–9, 240 credit moneys 28, 30, 31, 152 cyber moneys 36, 109–10 electronic moneys 27, 29, 35, 36, 100 and exchange value 28, 35, 38 fiat 8, 27, 30, 40, 109, 233 gap between money and the value it represents 27 global monetary system 46–7 love of money as a possession 34 measures value 25, 28 a moneyless economy 36 oxidisation of 35 paper 15, 27, 29, 30, 31, 37, 40, 45 power of 25, 36, 59, 60, 62, 65–66, 131–6, 245, 266 quasi-money 35 relation between money and value 27, 35 represented as numbers 29–30 and social labour 25, 27, 31, 42, 55, 88, 243 and the state 45–6, 51, 173 storage of value 25, 26, 35 the US dollar 46–7 use value 28 money capital 28, 32, 59, 74, 142, 147, 158, 177, 178 money laundering 54, 109 ‘money of account’ 27–8, 30 monopolisation 53, 145 monopoly, monopolies 77 and competition 131–45, 218, 295 corporate 123 monetary system 45, 46, 48, 51 monopoly power 45, 46, 51, 93, 117, 120, 132, 133–4, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142–3 monopoly pricing 72, 132 natural 118, 132 of state over legitimate use of force and violence 42, 44, 45, 51, 88, 155, 173 see also prices, monopoly monopsony 131 Monsanto 123 Montreal Protocol 254, 259 ‘moral restraints’ 229, 233 mortgages 19, 21, 28, 32, 54, 67, 82, 239 multiculturalism 166 Mumbai 155, 159 Murdoch, Rupert xi Myrdal, Gunnar 150 N NAFTA 159 name branding 31, 139 nano-trading 243 Nation of Islam 291 national debt 45, 226, 227 National Health Service 115 National Labor Relations Board 120 National Security Administration 136 nationalisation 50 nationalism 7, 8, 44, 289 natural resources 58, 59, 123, 240, 241, 244, 246, 251 nature 56 alienation from 263 capital’s conception of 252 capital’s relation to 246–63 commodification of 59 domination of 247, 272 Heidegger on 59, 250 Polanyi on 58 power over 198 process-thing duality 73 and technology 92, 97, 99, 102 Nazis 151 neoclassical economists 109 neocolonialism 143, 201 neoliberal era 128 neoliberal ethic 277 neoliberalisation x, 48 neoliberalism xiii, 68, 72, 128, 134, 136, 176, 191, 234, 281 capitalism 266 consensus 23 counter-revolution 82, 129, 159, 165 political programme 199 politics 57 privatisation 235 remedies xi Nevada, housing in 77 ‘new economy’ (1990s) 144 New York City 141, 150 creativity 245 domestic labour in 196 income inequality 164 rental markets 22 social reproduction 195 Newton, Isaac 70 NGOs (non-governmental organisations) 189, 210, 284, 286, 287 Nike 31 Nkrumah, Kwame 291 ‘non-coincidence of interests’ 25 Nordic countries 165 North America deindustrialisation in 234 food grain exports 148 indigenous population and property rights 39 women in labour force 230 ‘not in my back yard’ politics 20 nuclear weapons 101 Nyere, Julius 291 O Obama, Barack 167 occupational safety and health 72 Occupy movement 280, 292 Ohlin Foundation 143 oil cartel 252 companies 77, 131 ‘Seven Sisters’ 131 embargo (1973) 124 ‘peak oil’ 251–2, 260 resources 123, 240, 257 oligarchy, oligarchs 34, 143, 165, 221, 223, 242, 245, 264, 286, 292 oligopoly 131, 136, 138 Olympic Games 237–8 oppositional movements 14, 162, 266–7 oppression 193, 266, 288, 297 Orwell, George 213 Nineteen Eighty-Four 202 overaccumulation 154 overheating 228 Owen, Robert 18, 184 Oxfam xi, 169–70 P Paine, Tom: Rights of Man 285 Paris 160 riots (1968) x patents 139, 245, 251 paternalism 165, 209 patriarchy 7 Paulson, Hank 47 pauperisation 104 Peabody, George 18 peasantry ix, 7, 107, 117, 174, 190, 193 revolts 202 pensions 134, 165, 230 rights 58, 67–8, 84, 134 people of colour: disposable populations 111 Pereire, Emile 239 pesticides 255, 258 pharmaceuticals 95, 121, 123, 136, 139 Philanthropic Colonialism 211 philanthropy 18, 128, 189, 190, 210–11, 245, 285 Philippines 115, 196 Picasso, Pablo 140–41, 187, 240 Pinochet, Augusto x Pittsburgh 150, 159, 258 planned obsolescence 74 plutocracy xi, xii, 91, 170, 173, 177, 180 Poland 152 Polanyi, Karl 56, 58, 60, 205–7, 210, 261 The Great Transformation 56–7 police 134 brutality 266 capacities and powers 43 powers xiii, 43, 52 repression 264, 280 surveillance and violence 264 violence 266, 280 police-state 203, 220 political economy xiv, 54, 58, 89, 97, 179–80, 182, 201, 206–9 liberal 204, 206, 209 political parties, incapable of mounting opposition to the power of capital xii political representation 183 pollutants 8, 246, 255 pollution 43, 57, 59, 60, 150, 250, 254, 255, 258 Pontecorvo, Gillo 288 Ponzi schemes 21, 53, 54, 243 population ageing 223, 230 disposable 108, 111, 231, 264 growth 107–8, 229, 230–31, 242, 246 Malthus’s principle 229–30 Portugal 161 post-structuralism xiii potlatch system 33 pounds sterling 46 poverty 229 anti-poverty organisations 286–7 and bourgeois reformism 167 and capital 176 chronic 286 eradication of 211 escape from 170 feminisation of 114 grants 107 and industrialisation 123 and population expansion 229 and unemployment 170, 176 US political movement denies assistance to the poor 292–3 and wealth 146, 168, 177, 218, 219, 243 world xi, 170 power accumulation of 33, 35 of capital xii, 36 class 55, 61, 88, 89, 97, 99, 110, 134, 135, 221, 279 computer 105 and currencies 46 economic 142, 143, 144 global 34, 170 the house as a sign of 15–16 of labour see under labour; of merchants 75 military 143 and money 25, 33, 36, 49, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65–6, 245, 266 monopoly see monopoly power; oligarchic 292 political 62, 143, 144, 162, 171, 219, 292 purchasing 105, 107 social 33, 35, 55, 62, 64, 294 state 42–5, 47–52, 72, 142, 155–9, 164, 209, 295 predation, predators 53, 54, 61, 67, 77, 84, 101, 109, 111, 133, 162, 198, 212, 254–5 price fixing 53, 118, 132 price gouging 132 Price, Richard 226, 227, 229 prices discount 133 equilibrium in 118 extortionate 84 food 244, 251 housing 21, 32, 77 land 77, 78, 150 low 132 market 31, 32 and marketplace anarchy 118 monopoly 31, 72, 139, 141 oil 251, 252 property 77, 78, 141, 150 supermarket 6 and value 31, 55–6 private equity firms 101, 162 private equity funds 22, 162 private property and the commons 41, 50, 57 and eradication of usufructuary rights 41 and individual appropriation 38 and monopoly power 134–5, 137 social bond between human rights and private property 39–40 and the state 47, 50, 58, 59, 146, 210 private property rights 38–42, 44, 58, 204, 252 and collective management 50 conferring the right to trade away that which is owned 39 decentralised 44 exclusionary permanent ownership rights 39 and externality effects 44 held in perpetuity 40 intellectual property rights 41 microenterprises endowed with 211 modification or abolition of the regime 14 and nature 250 over commodities and money 38 and state power 40–41, 42–3 underpinning home ownership 49 usufructuary rights 39 privatisation 23, 24, 48, 59, 60, 61, 84, 185, 235, 250, 253, 261, 262, 266 product lines 92, 107, 219, 236 production bourgeois 1 falling value of 107 immaterial 242 increase in volume and variety of 121 organised 2 and realisation 67, 79–85, 106, 107, 108, 173, 177, 179, 180, 221, 243 regional crises 151 workers’ dispossession of own means of 172 productivity 71, 91, 92, 93, 117, 118, 121, 125, 126, 132, 172, 173, 184, 185, 188, 220, 239 products, compared with commodities 25–6 profitability 92, 94, 98, 102, 103, 104, 106, 112, 116, 118, 125, 147, 184, 191–2, 240, 252, 253, 256, 257 profit(s) banking 54 as capital’s aim 92, 96, 232 and capital’s struggle against labour 64, 65 and competition 93 entrepreneurs 24, 104 falling 81, 107, 244 from commodity sales 71 and money capital 28 monopoly 93 rate of 79, 92 reinvestment in expansion 72 root of 63 spending of 15 and wage rates 172 proletarianisation 191 partial 175, 190, 191 ‘property bubble’ 21 property market boom (1920s) 239 growth of 50 property market crashes 1928 x, 21 1973 21 2008 21–2, 54, 241 property rights 39, 41, 93, 135 see also intellectual property rights; private property property values 78, 85, 234 ‘prosumers’ 237 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 183 Prozac 248 public goods 38 public utilities 23, 60, 118, 132 Q quantitative easing 30, 233 R R&D ix race 68, 116, 165, 166, 291 racial minorities 168 racialisation 7, 8, 62, 68 racism 8 Rand, Ayn 200 raw materials 16, 17, 148, 149, 154 Reagan, Ronald x, 72 Speech at Westminster 201 Reagan revolution 165–166 realisation, and production 67, 79–85, 106, 107, 108, 173, 177, 179, 180, 221, 243 reality contradiction between reality and appearance 4–6 social 27 Reclus, Elisée 140 regional development 151 regional volatility 154 Reich, Robert 123, 188 religion 7 religious affiliation 68 religious hatreds and discriminations 8 religious minorities 168 remittances 175 rent seeking 132–3, 142 rentiers 76, 77, 78, 89, 150, 179, 180, 241, 244, 251, 260, 261, 276 rents xii, 16–19, 22, 32, 54, 67, 77, 78, 84, 123, 179, 241 monopoly 93, 135, 141, 187, 251 repression 271, 280 autocratic 130 militarised 264 police-state 203 violent 269, 280, 297 wage 158, 274 Republican Party (US) 145, 280 Republicans (US) 167, 206 res nullius doctrine 40 research and development 94, 96, 187 ‘resource curse’ 123 resource scarcity 77 revolution, Fanon’s view of 288 revolutionary movements 202, 276 Ricardo, David 122, 244, 251 right, the ideological and political assault on the left xii; response to universal alienation 281 ‘rights of man’ 40, 59, 213 Rio de Janeiro 84 risk 17, 141, 162, 219, 240 robbery 53, 57, 60, 63, 72 robotisation 103, 119, 188, 295 Rodney, Walter 291 romantic movement 261 Roosevelt, Theodore 131, 135 Four Freedoms 201 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 213, 214 Ruhr, Germany 150 rural landscapes 160–61 Russia 154 a BRIC country 170, 228 collapse of (1989) 165 financial crisis (1998) 154, 232 indebtedness 152 local famine 124 oligarchs take natural resource wealth 165 S ‘S’ curve 225, 230–31 Saint-Simon, Claude de Rouvroy, comte de 183 sales 28, 31, 187, 236 San Francisco 150 Santiago, Chile: street battles (2006–) 185 Sao Paulo, Brazil 129, 195 savings the house as a form of saving 19, 22, 58 loss of 20, 58 private 36 protecting the value of 20 Savings and Loan Crisis (USA from 1986) 18 savings accounts 5, 6 Scandinavia 18, 85, 165 scarcity 37, 77, 200, 208, 240, 246, 260, 273 Schumpeter, Joseph 98, 276 science, and technology 95 Seattle 196 Second Empire Paris 197 Second World War x, 161, 234 Securities and Exchange Commission 120, 195 security xiii, 16, 121, 122, 165, 205, 206 economic 36, 153 food 253, 294, 296 job 273 national 157 Sen, Amartya 208–11, 281 Development as Freedom 208–9 senior citizens 168 Seoul 84 serfdom 62, 209 sexual hatreds and discriminations 8 Shanghai 153, 160 share-cropping 62 Sheffield 148, 149, 159, 258 Shenzhen, China 77 Silicon Valley 16, 143, 144, 150 silver 27–31, 33, 37, 57, 233, 238 Simon, Julian 246 Singapore 48, 123, 150, 184, 187, 203 slavery 62, 202, 206, 209, 213, 268 slums ix, 16, 175 Smith, Adam 98, 125–6, 157, 185, 201, 204 ‘invisible hand’ 141–2 The Wealth of Nations 118, 132 Smith, Neil 248 social distinction 68, 166 social inequality 34, 110, 111, 130, 171, 177, 180, 220, 223, 266 social justice 200, 266, 268, 276 social labour 53, 73, 295 alienated 64, 66, 88 and common wealth 53 creation of use values through 36 expansion of total output 232 household and communal work 296 immateriality of 37, 233 and money 25, 27, 31, 42, 55, 88, 243 productivity 239 and profit 104 and value 26, 27, 29, 104, 106, 107, 109 weakening regulatory role of 109, 110 social media 99, 136, 236–7, 278–9 social movements 162–3 social reproduction 80, 127, 182–98, 218, 219, 220, 276 social security 36, 165 social services 68 social struggles 156, 159, 165, 168 social value 26, 27, 32, 33, 55, 172, 179, 241, 244, 268, 270 socialism 215 democratic xii; ‘gas and water’ 183 socialism/communism 91, 269 socialist revolution 67 socialist totalitarianism 205 society capitalist 15, 34, 81, 243, 259 civil 92, 122, 156, 185, 189, 252 civilised 161, 167 complex 26 demolition of 56 and freedom 205–6, 210, 212 hope for a better society 218 industrial 205 information 238 market 204 post-colonial 203 pre-capitalist 55 primitive 57 radical transformation of 290 status position in 186 theocratic 62 women in 113 work-based 273 world 204 soil erosion 257 South Africa 84–5, 152, 169 apartheid 169, 202, 203 South Asia labour 108 population growth 230 software programmers and developers 115, 116 South Korea 123, 148, 150, 153 South-East Asia 107–8 crisis (1997–8) 154, 232, 241 sovereign debt crises 37 Soviet Bloc, ex-, labour in 107 Soviet Union 196, 202 see also Russia Spain xi, 51, 161 housing market crash (2007–9) 82–3 spatio-temporal fixes 151–2, 153, 154, 162 spectacle 237–8, 242, 278 speculative bubbles and busts 178 stagnation xii, 136, 161–2, 169 Stalin, Joseph 70 standard of life 23, 175 starvation 56, 124, 246, 249, 260, 265 state, the aim of 156–7 brutality 266, 280 and capital accumulation 48 and civil society 156 curbing the powers of capital as private property 47 evolution of the capitalist state 42 and externality effects 44 guardian of private property and of individual rights 42 and home ownership 49–50 interstate system 156, 157 interventionism 193, 205 legitimate use of violence 42, 44, 45, 51, 88, 155, 173 loss of state sovereignty xii; and money 1, 45–6, 51, 173 ‘nightwatchman’ role 42, 50 powers of 42–5, 47–52, 57–8, 65, 72, 142, 155–9, 209, 295 and private property 47, 50, 58, 59, 146, 210 provision of collective and public goods 42–3 a security and surveillance state xiii; social democratic states 85 war aims 44 state benefits 165 state regulatory agencies 101 state-finance nexus 44–5, 46–7, 142–3, 156, 233 state-private property nexus 88–9 steam engine, invention of the 3 steel industry 120, 121, 148, 188 steel production 73–4 Stiglitz, Joseph 132–4 stock market crash (1929) x Stockholm, protests in (2013) 171, 243 strikes 65, 103, 124 sub-prime mortgage crisis 50 suburbanisation 253 supply and demand 31, 33, 56, 106 supply chain 124 supply-side remedies xi supply-side theories 82, 176 surplus value 28, 40, 63, 73, 79–83, 172, 239 surveillance xiii, 94, 121, 122, 201, 220, 264, 280, 292 Sweden 166, 167 protests in (2013) 129, 293 Sweezy, Paul 136 swindlers, swindling 45, 53, 57, 239 ‘symbolic analysts’ 188 Syntagma Square, Athens 266, 280 T Tahrir Square, Cairo 266 Taipei, Taiwan 153 Taiwan 123, 150, 153 Taksim Square, Istanbul 266, 280 Tanzania 291 tariffs 137 taxation 40, 43, 47, 67, 84, 93–4, 106, 133, 150, 155, 157, 167, 168, 172, 190 Taylor, Frederick 119, 126 Taylorism 103 Tea Party faction 205, 280, 281, 292 technological evolution 95–6, 97, 101–2, 109 technological imperatives 98–101 technological innovation 94–5 technology changes involving different branches of state apparatus 93–4 communicative technologies 278–9 and competition 92–3 constraints inhibiting deployment 101 culture of 227, 271 definition 92, 248 and devaluation of commodities 234 environmental 248 generic technologies 94 hardware 92, 101 humanising 271 information 100, 147, 158, 177 military 93, 95 monetary 109 and nature 92, 97, 99, 102 organisational forms 92, 99, 101 and productivity 71 relation to nature 92 research and development 94 and science 95 software 92, 99, 101 a specialist field of business 94 and unemployment 80, 103 work and labour control 102–11 telephone companies 54, 67, 84, 278 Tennessee 148 Teresa, Mother 284 Thatcher, Margaret (later Baroness) x, 72, 214, 259 Thatcherism 165 theft 53, 60, 61, 63 Thelluson, Peter 226, 227 think tanks 143 ‘Third Italy’ 143 Third World debt crisis 240 Toffler, Alvin 237 tolls 137 Tönnies, Ferdinand 122, 125 tourism ix, 16, 140, 141, 187, 236 medical 139 toxic waste disposal 249–50, 257 trade networks 24 trade unions xii, 116, 148, 168, 176, 184, 274, 280 trade wars 154 transportation 23, 99, 132, 147–8, 150, 296 Treasury Departments 46, 156 TRIPS agreement 242 tropical rainforest 253 ‘trust-busting’ 131 trusts 135 Turin, Italy 150 Turkey 107, 123, 174, 232, 280, 293 Tuscany, Italy 150 Tutu, Archbishop Desmond 284 Twitter 236 U unemployment 37, 104, 258, 273 benefits 176 deliberately created 65, 174 high xii, 10, 176 insurance 175 and labour reserves 175, 231 and labour-saving technologies 173 long-term 108, 129 permanent 111 echnologically induced 80, 103, 173, 274 uneven geographical developments 178, 296 advanced and underserved regional economies 149–50 and anti-capitalist movements 162 asset bubbles 243 and capital’s reinvention of itself 147, 161 macroeconomic processes of 159 masking the true nature of capital 159–60 and technological forms 219 volatility in 244 United Fruit 136 United Kingdom income inequality in 169; see also Britain United Nations (UN) 285 United States aim of Tea Party faction 280 banking 158 Bill of Rights 284 Britain lends to (nineteenth century) 153 capital in (1990s) 154 Constitution 284 consumption level 194 global reserve currency 45–6 growth 232 hostility towards state interventions 167 House of Representatives 206 human rights abuses 202 imperial power 46 indebtedness of students in 194 Indian reservations 249 interstate highway system 239 jobless recoveries after recession 172–3 liberty and freedom rhetoric 200–201, 202 Midwest ‘rust belt’ 151 military expenditures 46 property market crashes x, 21–2, 50, 54, 58, 82–3 racial issues 166 Savings and Loan Crisis (from 1986) 18 social mobility 196 social reproduction 196–7 solidly capitalist 166 steel industry 120 ‘symbolic analysts’ 188 ‘trust-busting’ 131 unemployment 108 wealth distribution 167 welfare system 176 universal suffrage 183 urbanisation 151, 189, 228, 232, 239, 247, 254, 255, 261 Ure, Andrew 119 US Congress 47 US dollar 15, 30, 45–6 US Executive Branch 47 US Federal Reserve xi, 6, 30, 37, 46, 47, 49, 132, 143, 233 monetary policy 170–71 US Housing Act (1949) 18 US Treasury 47, 142, 240 use values collectively managed pool of 36 commodification of 243 commodities 15, 26, 35 common wealth 53 creation through social labour 36 and entrepreneurs 23–4 and exchange values 15, 35, 42, 44, 50, 60, 65, 88 and housing 14–19, 21–2, 23, 67 and human labour 26 infinitely varied 15 of infrastructural provision 78 loss of 58 marketisation of 243 monetisation of 243 of money 28 privatised and commodified 23 provision of 111 and revolt of the mass of the people 60 social demand for 81 usufructuary rights 39, 41, 59 usury 49, 53, 186, 194 utopianism 18, 35, 42, 51, 66, 119, 132, 183, 184, 204, 206–10, 269, 281, 282 V value(s) commodity 24, 25 failure to produce 40 housing 19, 20, 22 net 19 production and realisation of 82 production of 239 property 21 relation between money and value 27, 35 savings 20 storing 25, 26, 35 see also asset values; exchange values; social value; use values value added 79, 83 Veblen, Thorstein: Theory of the Leisure Class 274 Venezuela 123, 201 Vietnam, labour in 108 Vietnam War 290 violence 53, 57, 72, 204–5, 286 against children 193 against social movements 266 against women 193 colonial 289–90, 291 and contemporary capitalism 8 culture of 271 of dispossession 58, 59 in a dystopian world 264 and humanism 286, 289, 291 of the liberation struggle 290 militarised 292 as the only option 290–91 political 280 in pursuit of liberty and freedom 201 racialised 291 state’s legitimate use of 42, 44, 45, 51, 88, 155, 173 of technology 271 and wage labour 207 virtual ecological transfer 256 Volcker, Paul 37 W wages 103 basic social wage 103 falling 80, 82 for housework 115, 192–3 low xii, 114, 116, 186, 188 lower bound to wage levels 175 non-payment of 72 and profits 172 reduction in 81, 103, 104, 135, 168, 172, 176, 178 rising 178 and unskilled labour 114 wage demands 150, 274 wage levels pushed up by labour 65 wage rates 103, 116, 172, 173 wage repression 158–9 weekly 71 see also income Wall Street criticised by a congressional committee 239–40 illegalities practised by 72, 77 and Lebed 195 new information-processing technologies 100 Wall Street Crash (1929) x, 47 Wall-E (film) 271 Walmart xii, 75, 84, 103, 131 war on terror 280 wars 8, 60, 229 currency 154 defined 44 monetisation of state war-making activities 44–5 privatisation of war making 235 resource 154, 260 and state aims 44 state financing of 32, 44, 48 and technology 93 trade 154 world 154 water privatisation 235 wave theory 70 wave-particle duality 70 wealth accumulation of 33, 34, 35, 157, 205 creation of 132–3, 142, 214 disparities of 164–81 distribution of 34, 167 extraction from non-productive activities 32 global 34 the house as a sign of 15–16 levelling up of per capita wealth 171 and poverty 146, 168, 177, 218, 219, 243 redistribution of 9, 234, 235 social 35, 53, 66, 157, 164, 210, 251, 265, 266, 268 taking it from others 132–3 see also common wealth weather futures 60 Weber, Max 122, 125 Weimar Republic 30 welfare state 165, 190, 191, 208 Wells Fargo 61 West Germany 153, 154, 161 Whitehead, Alfred North 97 Wilson, Woodrow 201 Wolf, Martin 304n2 Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 285 women career versus family obligations 1–2 disposable populations 111 exploitation of 193 housework versus wage labour 114–15 oppression against 193 social struggle 168 trading of 62 violence against 193 in the workforce 108, 114, 115, 127, 174, 230 women’s rights 202, 218 workers’ rights 202 working classes and capital 80 consumer power 81 crushing organisation 81 education 183, 184 gentrified working-class neighbourhoods ix; housing 160 living conditions 292 wage repression and consumption 158–9 working hours 72, 104–5, 182, 272–5, 279 World Bank 16, 24, 100, 186, 245 World Trade Organization 138, 242 WPA programmes (1930s) 151 Wright, Frank Lloyd: Falling Water 16 Wriston, Walter 240 Y YouTube 236 Yugoslavia, former 174 Z Zola, Émile 7


pages: 573 words: 115,489

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow by Tim Jackson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, biodiversity loss, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, critique of consumerism, David Graeber, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hans Rosling, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, Philip Mirowski, Post-Keynesian economics, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, secular stagnation, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, Works Progress Administration, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy ‘Prosperity without Growth says it all: informatively, clearly, inspiringly, critically and constructively, starting from the very troubled, unsustainable and unsatisfying economy we have today and providing a robust combination of suggestions for going toward a sustainable economy and fulfilling lives.’ Richard Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley ‘Tim Jackson’s book is a powerful intellectual challenge to an economic orthodoxy out of touch with the real world of physical limits, global warming and peaking oil reserves. It is refreshingly rigorous, honest and hopeful.’ Ann Pettifor, author of Just Money ‘When it comes to resolving the tension between the environment and the economy the watchword should be “less is more”. If you want to find out how we could all be healthier, wealthier and a lot wiser you should read this book.’

id=PALLFNFINDEXQ,# (accessed 15 December 2015). 30 Data from the Economist Commodity Price index. 31 For a discussion see Rogoff (2015). 32 Meadows et al. (1972: 126). 33 The G20 group warned of the threat of rising oil prices to global economic stability as early as 2005. See www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/g20-warns-of-oil-price-threat-to-global-economic-stability-5348403.html (accessed 30 March 2016). The long-term concern was widely acknowledged. See, for example, the IEA’s World Energy Outlook (IEA 2008) and the report of the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES 2008). 34 Mohr et al. (2015: figure 5, for example). 35 Turner (2008, 2014). A second study (Pasqualino et al. 2015) puts the world on one of the Limits scenarios associated with enhanced technology; this scenario suggests that collapse will come from pollution rather than from resource depletion. 36 Ragnarsdottír and Sverdrup (2015), Sverdrup and Ragnarsdottír (2014). 37 Rockström et al. (2009); Steffen et al. (2015). 38 Stern (2007: xv).

Perspectives on Psychological Science 3(4): 264–285. IPCC 2014. Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contributions of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva: IPCC. ITPOES 2008. The Oil Crunch: Securing the UK’s Energy Future. First Report of the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security. London: ITPOES. Jackson, Andrew and Ben Dyson 2013. Modernising Money: Why Our Monetary System is Broken and How it Can be Fixed. London: Positive Money. Jackson, Tim 2016. ‘Emission pathways in historical perspective: an analysis of the challenge of meeting the 1.5°C target’.


pages: 432 words: 124,635

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Abraham Maslow, accelerated depreciation, agricultural Revolution, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, centre right, City Beautiful movement, clean water, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, data science, Donald Shoup, East Village, edge city, energy security, Enrique Peñalosa, experimental subject, food desert, Frank Gehry, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Google Earth, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, license plate recognition, McMansion, means of production, megacity, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mortgage tax deduction, New Urbanism, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, power law, rent control, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, science of happiness, Seaside, Florida, Silicon Valley, starchitect, streetcar suburb, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transit-oriented development, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, wage slave, white flight, World Values Survey, zero-sum game, Zipcar

It would take nine planets: WWF, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. Living Planet Report 2008 (Gland, Switzerland: World Wide Fund For Nature, 2008). in the next twenty years: Froggatt, Antony, et al., “Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities for business,” white paper, London: Lloyd’s, 2010; Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Scarcity, “2010 Peak Oil Report,” 2010; Hess, Werner, “Energy for Tomorrow’s World—Trends, Scenarios, Tomorrow’s Markets,” Allianz/Dresdner Bank AG, Frankfurt/M., Germany, 2005); International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2008 (Paris: IEA Publications, 2010); Hirsch, Robert L., “Peaking of World Oil Production: Recent Forecasts,” National Energy Technology Laboratory, 2007; U.S.

forty million cars: Mouawad, Jad, “Rising Demand for Oil Provokes New Energy Crisis,” New York Times, November 9, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/business/worldbusiness/09oil.html (accessed January 21, 2011). massive energy shortfalls: Macalister, Terry, “US Military Warns Oil Output May Dip Causing Massive Shortages by 2015,” The Guardian, April 11, 2010, www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply (accessed January 21, 2011). extreme heat waves: Tillett, Tanya, “Temperatures Rising: Sprawling Cities Have the Most Very Hot Days,” Environmental Health Perspectives, 2010: A444. More heat waves: Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001).


pages: 265 words: 74,941

The Great Reset: How the Post-Crash Economy Will Change the Way We Live and Work by Richard Florida

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, big-box store, bike sharing, blue-collar work, business cycle, car-free, carbon footprint, collapse of Lehman Brothers, company town, congestion charging, congestion pricing, creative destruction, deskilling, edge city, Edward Glaeser, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial innovation, Ford paid five dollars a day, high net worth, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, indoor plumbing, interchangeable parts, invention of the telephone, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, McMansion, megaproject, Menlo Park, Nate Silver, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, pattern recognition, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, reserve currency, Richard Florida, Robert Shiller, scientific management, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, total factor productivity, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, white flight, young professional, Zipcar

The United States rose to economic preeminence by periodically developing entirely new systems of infrastructure—from canals and railroads to modern water and sewer systems to federal highways. Each played a major role in shaping and enabling whole eras of growth.2 There’s been much outcry about the impact of rising fuel costs and even “peak oil”—the notion that the supply of oil has reached its upper limit and will decline and become more expensive—on reshaping our economic landscape.3 James Kunstler writes that declining oil supplies and rising prices will force us to “downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work.”

Chapter 20: The Velocity of You 1. Figures on average travel speed are from Randal O’Toole as cited in Neil Reynolds, “America’s Fast Track to Wealth,” Globe and Mail, October 9, 2009. 2. Christopher Kennedy, The Wealth of Cities (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming). 3. The literature on the subject is vast. Peak oil was first predicted by M. King Hubbert. See Kenneth Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Prince ton, N.J.: Prince ton University Press, 2001); James Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005); Paul Roberts, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004); Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Press, 2005); Matthew Simmons, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley & Sons, 2005); Christopher Steiner, $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009); Jeff Rubin, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization (New York: Random House, 2009). 4.


pages: 268 words: 74,724

Who Needs the Fed?: What Taylor Swift, Uber, and Robots Tell Us About Money, Credit, and Why We Should Abolish America's Central Bank by John Tamny

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Apollo 13, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bretton Woods, business logic, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Fairchild Semiconductor, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Michael Milken, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, NetJets, offshore financial centre, oil shock, peak oil, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, price stability, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, War on Poverty, yield curve

We didn’t suffer “oil shocks” in the 2000s; we suffered the weak-dollar policies of President Bush, and during his first term, of President Barack Obama. In a replay of modern history, Bartley added, “When the price of oil shot up, the most fashionable sectors of American opinion persuaded themselves the world was running out of energy.” We heard much the same in the 2000s as the silly notion of “peak oil” became popular. Without detracting from the impressive U.S. fracking advances in the oil patch, just as the supply argument wasn’t true in the 1970s, it also wasn’t true in the 2000s. Evidence supporting this claim comes from Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman, author of a laudatory history of fracking, The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters.

., 29–30, 33, 103 Morgan, Junius Spencer, 29–30 Morgan Stanley, 45, 123, 127, 130, 151 Morgenthau, Henry, 167, 168 mortgage-backed securities, 150–52 mortgage lending practices, 119–20, 127 Mundell, Robert, 155, 158 Nelson, Richard, 159–60 NetJets, 85–86, 98 NetQoS, 123–24 The New Tycoons (Kelly), 126 NeXT Computer, 30 Nikkei index, 152, 159 1984 Summer Olympics, 34 1989 (album), 10 Nixon, Richard, 69–70, 92, 116, 117, 169 Nixon’s Economy (Matusow), 169–70 Norman, Montagu, 167 Noyce, Richard, 31 Obama, Barack, 51, 61, 71, 72, 154, 171–72 Ohio State University, 17–18, 19 oil fracking boom, 66–67, 73–75 and global economy, 66–67, 74–75 gold standard and the price of oil, 68–72 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC), 68–69, 70 price declines and rising cost of credit, 146–48 O’Neill, Paul, 118 Oracle, 143 Pacific Research Institute, 53 Patriot Act, 119 Paul, Ron, 94 Paulson & Co., 44–45 Paulson, Henry, 172 Paulson, John, 44–46, 48, 120, 127 Payback (Fischel), 38 PayPal, 28 “peak oil,” 71 Pellegrini, Paolo, 120 Pelosi, Nancy, 51, 106, 128, 150 Phillipps, Cassandra, 27 Phillips, A. W., 156 Phillips curve, 156 Pipes, Sally, 53 political class, 51–52, 58–59 Ponnuru, Ramesh, 138–39 Popular Economics (Tamny), 3, 4, 48–49, 67, 81, 142, 143 price cutting, 73 private air transportation, 85–86, 98 private-sector investment, 78 production and money supply, 136 property development, 33, 35–37 quantitative easing (QE) program, 149–54, 172 RadioShack, 57 Rasmussen, Bill, 109 Reagan, Ronald, 49–50, 68–69, 71, 72, 171, 172 recessions, 142, 147, 153 recruiting of college athletes, 15–21 Reds (film), 23 Reid, Harry, 51 Reynolds International, 54 The Rise and Fall of Monetarism (Smith), 121 Rivals recruit rankings, 15–18, 19–20 the Roaring Twenties, 94–95 robots and job creation, 176–80 Rock, Arthur, 31 Romney, Mitt, 126 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 61, 142, 167–69 Rothbard, Murray, 89, 92 Rubio, Marco, 59 The Russians (Smith), 77 Ryan, Paul, 51, 150 Saban, Nick, 79, 129 Sampler, Jeffrey, 105 Sam’s Club, 105, 106–7 San Francisco 49ers, 17 Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, 119, 124 Sarkisian, Steve, 16, 20 saving money, 57–58, 77, 88, 112, 149, 176 Say’s Law, 94–95 Schlumberger, 73 Schumpeter, Joseph, 28, 123 Secrets of the Temple (Greider), 121 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 38 Security Pacific Bank, 34–35, 101, 108, 129, 164–65 The Seven Fat Years (Bartley), 70, 157–58 Shampoo (film), 23 Shandling, Garry, 24 Shanghai, 138 Sharma, Ruchir, 151 She’s Gotta Have It (film), 109 Shlaes, Amity, 167–69 Shula, Mike, 79, 129 Shultz, George, 170 Silicon Valley, 27–32, 143 Smith, Adam, 65, 67, 77, 119, 140, 142–43 Smith, David, 121 Smith, Hedrick, 77 Smith, Robert H., 34–37, 108, 111, 129, 162, 164–65, 173 Smoot-Hawley Tariff, 142 Snow, John, 118 Solyndra, 59, 60 Soviet Union, 76–78, 80, 94 Splash (film), 22–23 Stanford University, 16–17 stimulus spending, 53, 141 student debt, 173–74 substitution effect and traditional banking alternatives, 105, 106–7 supply-side economics, 48–55, 79–80, 92–94, 141, 144 surge pricing, 12–14, 106–7, 165–66 Swanson, Bret, 143 Swift, Taylor, 9–12, 13, 162–63 Switzer, Barry, 18–19 tariffs, 3 taxes as barrier to economic growth and prosperity, 3 and Laffer curves, 50, 54–55 Smoot-Hawley Tariff, 142 and supply-side economics, 49–51, 79–80, 92–93, 141 technology innovation in Austin, Texas, 123–25 robots and job creation, 176–80 Ten Days That Shook the World (Reed), 23 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Texas Instruments, 155 The Theory of Money and Credit (von Mises), 87 Thiel, Peter, 28–29, 59, 150, 168 This Time Is Different (Reinhart and Rogoff), 168 Thwaites, Thomas, 64–65 Timiraos, Nick, 147, 148 toasters, 64–65 Town & Country (film), 23–24, 28 Townsend, Robert, 109 Trammel, Joel, 123–25 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), 172–73 Truffaut, François, 24 Trump, Donald, 33–37 The 21st Century Case for Gold (Gilder), 68 The Twilight of Sovereignty (Wriston), 109 2008 financial crisis, 106, 110 Uber and “easy credit,” 115–16 and the “sharing economy,” 57 and surge pricing, 12–14, 106–7, 165–66 Ueberroth, Peter, 34–35 unicorn companies, 28, 148 University of Michigan, 16–17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 79, 103, 127, 148 University of Southern California (USC), 18–20 University of Washington, 20 USAA, 108 U.S.


pages: 158 words: 16,993

Citation Needed: The Best of Wikipedia's Worst Writing by Conor Lastowka, Josh Fruhlinger

airport security, citation needed, en.wikipedia.org, jimmy wales, Nelson Mandela, peak oil, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Stephen Hawking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Thomas Calculator spelling In Portuguese, 50135 (upside down ‘SEIOS’), means ‘breasts’, and is directly analogous to the English “58008/BOOBS”. If all of the world’s ten-year-old boys could gather together and realize that no matter what our color or religion we all like boob jokes, there would be no more wars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator_spelling Cornucopian In the “peak oil” debate, the views of those labeled as cornucopian are very diverse, ranging from the simplistic “we will never run out of oil” to pessimistic views such as “we might transition to alternatives fast enough to barely avoid the collapse of civilization”. If we may, let’s focus on “the collapse of civilization.”


pages: 301 words: 85,263

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

AI winter, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boeing 747, British Empire, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, congestion charging, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Eyjafjallajökull, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, fear of failure, Flash crash, fulfillment center, Google Earth, Greyball, Haber-Bosch Process, Higgs boson, hive mind, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Bridle, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Large Hadron Collider, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, Leo Hollis, lone genius, machine translation, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Minecraft, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Network effects, oil shock, p-value, pattern recognition, peak oil, recommendation engine, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, social graph, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, speech recognition, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, stem cell, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, the built environment, the scientific method, Uber for X, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks

Gail foresees a time in which our grandchildren might conceivably know less about the world in which they live than we do today, with correspondingly catastrophic events for complex societies.32 Perhaps, he wonders, we have already passed through ‘peak knowledge’, just as we may have already passed peak oil. A new dark age looms. The philosopher Timothy Morton calls global warming a ‘hyperobject’: a thing that surrounds us, envelops and entangles us, but that is literally too big to see in its entirety. Mostly, we perceive hyperobjects through their influence on other things – a melting ice sheet, a dying sea, the buffeting of a transatlantic flight.

This data/oil will remain hazardous well beyond our own lifetimes: the debt we have already accrued will take centuries to dissipate, and we have not come close as yet to experiencing its worst, inevitable effects. In one key respect, however, even a realistic accounting of data/oil is insufficient in its analogous power, for it might give us false hope of a peaceful transfer to an information-free economy. Oil is, despite everything, defined by its exhaustibility. We are already approaching peak oil, and while every oil shock prompts us to engage and exploit some new territory or some destructive technology – further endangering the planet and ourselves – the wells will eventually run dry. The same is not true of information, despite the desperate fracking that appears to be occurring when intelligence agencies record every email, every mouse click, and the movements of every cell phone.


pages: 334 words: 82,041

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature by George Monbiot

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, bank run, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, dematerialisation, demographic transition, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, first-past-the-post, full employment, Gini coefficient, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, land bank, land reform, land value tax, Leo Hollis, market fundamentalism, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, peak oil, place-making, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, urban sprawl, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, World Values Survey

The third, as Alistair Darling, then in charge of energy, admitted in the House of Commons in May 2007, is that the technologies required for commercial carbon capture ‘might never become available’.12 (The government is prepared to admit this when making the case – as Darling was – for nuclear power, but not when making the case for coal.) Almost every week I receive an email from someone asking what the heck I am talking about. Don’t I realise that peak oil will solve this problem for us? Fossil fuels will run out, we’ll go back to living in caves and no one will need to worry about climate change again. These correspondents make the mistake of conflating conventional oil supplies with all fossil fuels. Yes, at some point the production of petroleum will peak, and then go into decline.

., 16, 219 One Hyde Park, 282 opencast coal mines, 147, 149, 155 opiate use, 34–5 Optimum Population Trust (OPT), 106 Osborne, George, 181, 182, 281 outdoor learning, 39–42 Oxfam, 187 Oxford Farming Conference, 133 Oxford University, 49, 50, 51 P particulates, 171 pastoral tradition, impact of, 120–1 Paterson, Owen, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137 pathological consumption, 204 pay gap, 187 Peak District National Park, 137 peak oil, 150 Pearl, Steve, 260 performance anxiety, 17 Perrara, Peter, 223 personality disorders, 17, 189 Petroamazonas, 176 Pew, Joseph N., Jr., 16, 219 Philadelphia General Hospital, 34 Philip Morris, 250 Philo, Greg, 281 pig farming, 114 Piketty, Thomas, 1 Pinochet, Augusto, 3 Pirie, Madsen, 214, 215 Pitt Review, 136 planet-eating machine, 102 plant plankton, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87 play, in children, 43–7 playdate coaches, 20–1 plutocratic power, 2, 6, 24, 213 Podhoretz, John, 230 pointless consumption, 205 political constraint, 24 political elite, 100 political freedom, 5 politics, as bankrolled by big oil and big coal, 157 poll tax, 215 pollution air pollution, 169, 171 from coal, 167, 170 lead pollution, 161, 163 mercury pollution, 170 radioactive pollution, 164 pollution permits, 158 Pontbren, 131, 132 poor blaming of for excesses of the rich, 107 characterised as unthinking beasts, 180 cutting essential services for, 275 effect of raising taxes on, 209 freedom of the rich to exploit the poor, 274 misery inflicted on, 75 as new deviants, 16 power over, 24 punishment of for errors of the rich, 285 shutting of out of healthcare, 287 as trapped in culture of dependency, 179 ultra-rich as deciding very poor are trashing the planet, 106 Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), 181 poor relief, 180, 181, 182 poor-rich men, 22 Pope Benedict XVI, 73, 74, 76 population growth, 103–4, 106 Porritt, Jonathan, 106 Portillo, Michael, 215 possessions, 175 poverty, 179–83 The Power of Market Fundamentalism (Block and Somers), 180 predators, 80–1, 89 pregnancy premarital pregnancy, 60 relationship between sex education and falling rates of unintended pregnancy, 74–5 pre-marital sex, 75 Prentis, Dave, 266 Press Complaints Commission, 224 Private Eye, 244 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 171 Progressives, 286, 289 property taxes, 278, 281 Protection from Harassment Act (1997), 269 protests injunctions against, 269 as muted, 24 suppression of, 3, 4, 28, 257, 259, 260, 262, 276 proxy life, 24 psychology, applications of advances in, 285–7, 289 Psychology, Crime and Law (journal), 189 public advocacy, 223 Public Library of Science, 196 public places, keeping children and teenagers out of, 67–71 public services, 4, 15, 24, 215, 218, 219, 220, 264, 272, 274, 280 Public Space Protection Orders, 29 public spending, 15, 130 Q Quantock Hills, 107, 109 R The Races of Man (Knox), 234 racism, 163, 234, 239 radioactive pollution, 164 Ramsay, Adam, 273 The Rational Optimist (Ridley), 199, 200 Ratzel, Friedrich, 234 Reader, W.


pages: 807 words: 154,435

Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making for an Unknowable Future by Mervyn King, John Kay

Airbus A320, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, algorithmic trading, anti-fragile, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, banking crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Black Swan, Boeing 737 MAX, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, capital asset pricing model, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, DeepMind, demographic transition, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Dutch auction, easy for humans, difficult for computers, eat what you kill, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, Ethereum, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, experimental subject, fear of failure, feminist movement, financial deregulation, George Akerlof, germ theory of disease, Goodhart's law, Hans Rosling, Helicobacter pylori, high-speed rail, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, Johannes Kepler, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, market fundamentalism, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Monty Hall problem, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, nudge theory, oil shock, PalmPilot, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Pierre-Simon Laplace, popular electronics, power law, price mechanism, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, railway mania, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, sealed-bid auction, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Socratic dialogue, South Sea Bubble, spectrum auction, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Suez crisis 1956, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Chicago School, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Davenport, Thomas Malthus, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, ultimatum game, urban planning, value at risk, world market for maybe five computers, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

The German chemist Fritz Haber discovered a process for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen and when the First World War led to a blockade of German ports his discovery was rolled out on an industrial scale. Food production no longer depended on the excreta of seabirds. Marion King Hubbert, an American geologist, popularised the notion of ‘peak oil’; in the 1950s he predicted that US oil production would reach an unsustainable peak in 1965 and that the similar peak in global output would occur in around 2000. 7 America did encounter peak oil in 1970 – domestic output subsequently fell; but thanks to shale the peak in US oil production was at the time of writing experienced in 2018 and is expected to be higher in 2019. 8 World petroleum output in 2000 was about twice the level Hubbert anticipated and has continued to grow.

question NASA, 18–19 , 26 , 35 , 218 , 352 , 353–6 , 373–4 , 391–2 , 394 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 233–4 , 239–40 National Lottery, 438 native tribes in American north-west, 189 , 193 Neumann, John von, 111 , 133 , 137 , 435–7 neuroeconomics, 129 , 135 neurophysiology, 306 , 416–17 neuropsychology, 171 New York, 424–5 New Zealand, 362 Newtonian mechanics, 259 , 260 , 392 Neyman, Jerzy, 71 Nixon, Richard, 4–5 , 412 , 420 Nobel Prize in Economics, 134 , 135 , 148 , 252 , 256 , 286 , 307 , 351 , 382 Nokia, 30–1 Norges Toppidrettsgymnas, 273 Northampton, 56 Northern Rock, 310–11 , 312 , 367 nudge theory, 148–9 Obama, Barack, 9–10 , 20 , 26 , 100 , 102 , 118–19 , 120 , 174–5 ; reference narrative of Abbottabad, 122–3 , 277 , 298 ; role of luck at Abbottabad, 262–3 ; on success as collaborative process, 432 ; and two-war policy, 295 ; on unhelpful probabilities, 8–9 , 326 oil industry: Hubbert’s ‘peak oil’ notion, 361 , 362 ; Middle East producers, 222–3 ; oil block auctions in USA, 256 Olsen, Ken, 27 , 31 , 100 , 227 opinion polls, 240–2 , 390 Opium Wars, 420 optimising behaviour: hegemony of theory, 40–2 , 110–14 ; as individual not social, 408 ; limits to, xiv–xv , 16 , 41–4 , 171–2 , 258 ; radical uncertainty precludes, 320–1 , 435 ; Simon’s bounded rationality, 149–53 ; in ‘small worlds’, 112–13 , 116 , 129–30 , 155 , 166 , 170 , 334 , 382 , 399–400 ; see also axiomatic rationality organisation, economics of, 408 Orwell, George, 127 , 130 , 226 , 307 Osborne, George, 404 Pacioli, Luca, 59 Paleolithic social kinship groups, 159–60 , 215–16 paleontology, 159 Panasonic Corp, 410 paradigm shift process, 285 Paris colloquium (1952), 134–5 , 137 , 437 , 440–3 Pascal, Blaise, 53 , 56 , 57 , 59–60 , 64 , 80 , 106 Pasteur, Louis, 285 Patton, George S., 293 , 294 Paulson, John, 422–3 Pearl Harbor attack (1941), 25 , 26 , 218–19 , 266 , 279 pensions, 312–13 , 328–9 , 405 , 424 ; index-linked, 330–1 ; interference with indices, 330–1 ; search for illusory certainty, 330 , 423 Pentagon Papers, 135 , 282 Perry, Captain, 420 perspective in art, 142–3 Petty, Sir William, 56 pharmaceutical companies, 243–5 , 284 Phillips, Bill, 339 , 340 Pierce, Charles Sanders, 137–9 pigeons, 274 Pitt, Brad, 273 plague, 56 , 57 , 166 Planck, Max, 285 , 386 , 387 , 388 , 411 , 429 planetary motion, 18–19 , 35 , 373–4 , 389 , 391–2 , 394 Plato, 54 Poisson, Siméon-Denis, 199 , 235 poker, 263 , 268 , 273 policing, 208 Polybius (Greek historian), 54 , 186 , 187 Popper, Karl, 36 ; falsificationism, 259–60 poverty, 389 , 390 practical knowledge, 22–6 , 195 , 255 , 352 , 382–8 , 395–6 , 398–9 , 405 , 414–15 , 431 pragmatist philosophy, 137 Prescott, Edward, 352–4 , 356 presidential election, US (2016), 241–2 Príncipe, island of, 259 Prisoner’s Dilemma, 248–9 , 252 , 393 probabilistic reasoning: as absent from pre-modern thought, 54–5 ; Bayes’ theorem, 60–7 , 70–1 , 114 , 117–20 , 127 , 179 , 196 , 203 , 204 , 210 , 420 ; Bortkiewicz model, 235–6 ; Central Limit Theorem, 234 ; compound probability , 59–60 , 197 , 198 , 200–4 ; conditional probabilities , 61 , 66–7 , 70 , 204 ; and confidence, 8–9 , 71–2 , 86 , 87–9 , 96–7 , 403 ; ‘dependent’ and ‘explanatory’ variables, 246–7 ; disguising of uncertainty by, 374 ; and economic variables, 6–7 , 12 , 15 , 34 , 45–6 , 58 , 72–4 , 83 , 95–6 ; expected value , 60 , 106–9 , 114–16 , 124–5 ; and Friedman, 74 , 400 , 420 ; and games of chance, 37–8 , 42 , 53–4 , 57–8 , 59–60 , 64–5 , 69 , 83 , 420 ; and imperfect information, 12 , 41–4 , 65–8 , 80–2 , 92–4 , 98 , 118–19 , 129 , 155 , 277 , 320–1 ; Indifference Principle, 63–6 , 107 ; infinite regress issue, 443 ; Keynes on, 105 ; and known distribution of outcomes, 14 , 16 , 37–8 , 43 , 57–65 , 69–70 , 87 ; and the law, 196 , 197 , 198–203 , 206–7 , 210–12 , 214 ; and likelihood, 86–7 , 89–91 , 96–7 , 206–7 , 403 ; the ‘Linda problem’, 90–1 , 98 ; and markets in risk, 55–7 ; models as contingent and transitory, 235–6 ; the Monty Hall problem, 62–3 , 64–6 , 98 , 100 , 113 , 139 , 203 , 204 ; mortality tables and life insurance, 56–7 , 69 , 232–3 ; non-stationary nature of social sciences, 235–6 ; Pascal and Fermat, 53 , 56 , 57 , 59–60 , 106 ; Pascal’s wager, 64 , 80 ; posterior distribution, 100 ; ‘probabilistic turn’ in human thought, 20 , 49 , 53–4 , 55–68 ; probability theory, 42–3 , 55 , 58 , 59–68 , 69–70 , 71–2 , 105 ; the problem of points, 59–60 , 61 , 64–5 , 106 , 113 ; puzzle-mystery distinction, 20–4 , 32–4 , 48–9 , 64–8 , 100 , 155 , 173–7 , 218 , 249 , 398 , 400–1 ; and reinsurers, 326 ; and risk-uncertainty distinction, 12–17 , 20 , 22 , 23 , 26 , 305–6 , 355 , 420 ; ‘rodeo problem’, 206–7 ; scope of, 37–8 ; and screening for cancer, 66–7 , 206 ; spurious application to uncertainty, 8–10 , 15–16 , 20 , 34 , 70 , 74–84 , 85–94 , 197–204 , 246–7 , 320–1 , 372 , 435–44 ; ‘St Petersburg paradox’, 114–16 , 199 ; statistical discrimination, 207–9 , 415 ; and Taleb’s ‘black swans’, 14 , 38–40 , 42 ; tension with mutualisation, 328–9 ; Tetlock and Gardner’s ideas, 294–5 ; two-envelope problem, 107–8 ; and unique events/projects, 23–6 , 38–40 , 57 , 70 , 71–2 , 96–7 , 138 , 174 , 177 , 188 , 192–5 , 338–9 ; see also axiomatic rationality; statistics; subjective probabilities productivity, 347 public sector organisations, 183 , 355 , 415 puerperal fever, 282–3 quantum mechanics, 233 Quebec Bridge collapse (1907), 33 Quetelet, Adolphe de, 233 racial discrimination, 208 , 209 radical uncertainty, xv–xvi ; definition of term, 14–15 ; disappearance from mainstream, 73–4 , 351–2 , 356 , 357 ; triumph of subjective probability over, 20 , 72–84 , 110–14 ; see also decision-making under uncertainty; uncertainty railways, 48 , 49 , 315 ; HS2 proposals, 364 , 372 Rainwater, Richard, 288 Rajan, Raghuram, 317 Ramanujan, Srinivasa, 432 Ramsey, Frank, 73 , 80 , 84 Rand, Ayn: Atlas Shrugged , 226 ; The Fountainhead , 288 Rand Corporation, 248 Ranke, Leopold von, 187–8 rationality: Aristotle’s view of, 137 , 147 ; biases in context, 141–8 , 162 ; ‘bounded rationality concept, 149–53 ; cognitive illusions, 141–2 ; and communication, 265–8 , 269–77 ; communicative , 172 , 267–77 , 279–82 , 412 , 414–16 ; and cooperation/collective intelligence, 155 , 162 , 176 , 231 , 272–7 , 279–82 , 343 , 412 , 413–17 , 432 ; evolutionary, 16–17 , 47 , 152–3 , 154–5 , 171–3 , 272 , 401 , 428–31 ; hegemony of optimisation, 40–2 , 110–14 ; invisible gorilla experiment, 140 ; Kahneman’s dual systems, 170–1 , 172 , 271 ; legal reasoning, 194–5 , 196–8 , 205–7 , 210–14 , 410 , 415 , 416 ; meaning of as contested, 79 , 80 , 136 ; and nudge theory, 148–9 ; optimism and confidence, 167–70 , 330 , 427–8 ; ordinary usage of term, 136–7 ; ‘rational expectations theory, 342–5 , 346–50 ; reasoning as not decision-making, 268–71 ; styles of reasoning, 137–9 , 147 ; technical meaning in economics, 12 , 16 , 436 ; von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms, 435–6 ; ‘wisdom of crowds’, 47 , 413–14 ; ‘in the zone’ phrase, 140–1 ; see also axiomatic rationality; narrative and contextual reasoning; reference narrative concept Rees, Martin, 39 , 40 reference narrative concept, 123–4 , 160–2 , 294–300 , 305–7 , 330 , 334 , 336 , 358 ; and Abbottabad raid (2011), 122–3 , 277 , 298 ; and business strategy, 286–90 , 296–7 ; changes to, 155 ; and collective intelligence, 155 , 160–1 ; and definition of risk, 123–4 , 306 , 307 , 332 , 355 , 421 ; definition of term, 122 ; and first-rate decision-making, 285 , 424 ; and gambling, 125–6 ; and insurance markets, 125 , 126 , 160–1 ; and regulators, 313 ; robustness and resilience, 123 , 294–8 , 332 , 335 , 374 , 423–5 ; secure reference narratives, 127 , 426–31 , 432 reflexivity , 35–6 , 309 , 394 regulators, 310–12 , 313–14 ; pension models, 312–13 , 405 ; prescribed risk models, 9 , 312–13 ; and probabilistic reasoning, 38 , 49 , 311–12 ; Solvency II directives, 312 ; Value at risk models (VaR), 366–8 , 405 religion, 220 Renaissance artists, 143 , 147 , 418 , 419 , 421 , 428 resolvable uncertainty, 14 , 37 , 42 Retail Motor Federation, 252 , 254 retail prices index, 330–1 retirement planning, 10–12 Ricardo, David, 249–50 , 252 , 253–4 , 255 , 382 risk: anticipating, 128–30 ; as asymmetric, 121 ; and causes of 2007–08 crash, 422–3 ; as central dynamic of capitalism, 170 ; certainty as not same as absence of, 329–30 ; definition in finance theory, 420–1 ; dictionary definition, 120–1 , 306 , 332 , 421 ; as different to uncertainty, 12–14 , 15–16 , 17 , 74 , 305–6 , 355 , 420 ; and expectations narrative, 121–2 , 341–2 ; and financial regulation, 9 , 38 , 49 , 310–12 ; intergenerational sharing of, 328–9 ; ‘market risk’–‘market specific risk’ distinction, 308–9 ; models of diversification, 304–5 , 307–9 , 317–18 , 334–7 ; mutualisation of, 160 , 162 , 192 , 325–6 ; as not a characteristic of an asset, 332 ; ordinary usage of term, 123–4 , 306 , 324 , 421 ; pension models, 312–13 , 405 ; pre-crisis models, 6–7 , 9 , 68 , 202 , 246–7 , 260 , 311–12 , 339 , 407 ; priced as a commodity, 124 , 420–1 ; as product of a portfolio as a whole, 332 ; quantification of, 6–7 , 8–10 , 12 , 15–16 , 68 , 124–5 , 311–12 , 326–7 , 332–3 , 420 ; ‘risk as feelings’ perspective, 128–9 , 310 ; risk weights, 310 , 311 ; and securitisation, 311 , 316 – 18 , 366–7 , 401 ; social risk-sharing, 159–61 ; technical meaning in economics, 12 , 305–6 , 307 , 333 , 421 ; tension between different meanings of, 305–12 , 332 , 334 , 415 , 420 , 421 ; ‘training base’ (historical data series), 406 ; Value at risk models (VaR), 366–8 , 405 , 424 ; and volatility, 124–5 , 310 , 333 , 335–7 , 421–3 ; see also reference narrative concept risk aversion , 117 , 124–5 , 127–8 , 306 , 420–1 RiskMetrics, 366 Rittel, Horst, 22 Ritz casino, London, 38 , 83 rocket technology, 373–4 Rome, classical, 142 Romer, Paul, 93 , 95 , 357 , 394 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 25 , 26 , 167 , 218–19 , 240 , 266 , 269 , 390 , 411–12 Rosling, Hans, Factfulness , 389 Royal Bank of Scotland, 257 Royal Shakespeare Company, 217 Royal Society, 55 , 56 Royal Statistical Society, 197 , 203 Rumelt, Richard, 30 , 178–80 , 184 , 296 ; Good Strategy/Bad Strategy , 10 , 407 Rumsfeld, Donald, 7–8 , 295 , 413 Russell, Bertrand, 421–2 Russian roulette, 438–9 Ryle, Gilbert, 192 Sala, Emiliano, 265 Salem witch trials, 230 Samuelson, Paul, xv , 42 , 108–9 , 110–11 , 125 , 130 , 135 , 285 , 304 Sandemose, Aksel, 430 San Francisco, 48 ; earthquake, 32–3 Sargent, Thomas, 342 sat nav systems, 395–6 Saudi Arabia, 363 Savage, Jimmie, 111–12 , 113–14 , 125 , 133 , 135 , 249 , 309–10 , 345 , 392 , 400 ; and Allais paradox, 442–3 ; billiards analogy, 257–8 ; von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms, 111 , 435–6 , 437 ; The Foundations of Statistics (1954), 112–13 , 443 Schelling, Thomas, 281 Schoemaker, Paul, 137 science fiction, 219 scientific reasoning, 18–20 , 32–3 , 219 , 233 , 239 , 383 ; and narratives, 283–5 , 388–9 ; Newtonian mechanics, 259 , 260 , 392 ; observation as trumping theory, 389 ; search for unified theory of everything, 219 ; and stationarity, 18–19 , 35 , 236 , 373–4 , 388 , 392 , 429–31 ; string theory, 357 ; Thales of Miletus, 303–4 ; validity of research findings, 242–7 Scott, James, 167 Scott, Rick, 189 Scottish Enlightenment, 163 , 187 Scottish Widows Fund, 325 , 328 Sears, 287–9 , 292 Second World War, 24–6 , 119 , 168 , 169 , 187 , 218–19 , 266 , 292 , 293 ; D-Day, 266 , 294 securities trading, 55 , 82–3 , 268–9 , 316–18 , 366–7 , 401 , 411 ; derivative markets, 318 , 422–3 ; price volatility, 310 , 336 , 422–3 seismology, 32–3 Sellar and Yeatman, 1066 And All That , 426 Selvin, Steven, 62 Semmelweis, Ignaz, 283 , 306 Seward, William, 290 Shackle, George, 109 , 188 Shakespeare, William, 217 , 218 , 225 , 226 , 304–5 , 307 , 393 shareholder value, xiv–xv , 41 , 228 , 305 , 409 Sharpe, William, 318 Shell, 222–3 , 295 Sherlock (BBC series), 147 Shiller, Robert, 229 , 230 , 252 , 314 , 320 Shockley, William, 438 Silicon Valley, 49 , 228 , 276 , 335 , 427 Silver, Nate, 74–6 , 202 , 241 Simon, Herbert, 135 , 136 , 149–51 , 175 Simons, Daniel, 140 Simons, Jim, 269 , 319–20 , 336 Simpson, O.


pages: 328 words: 90,677

Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors by Edward Niedermeyer

autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, bitcoin, business climate, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, crowdsourcing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, fake it until you make it, family office, financial engineering, Ford Model T, gigafactory, global supply chain, Google Earth, housing crisis, hype cycle, Hyperloop, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Kickstarter, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, OpenAI, Paul Graham, peak oil, performance metric, Ponzi scheme, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, short selling, short squeeze, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Solyndra, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, tail risk, technoutopianism, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, vertical integration, WeWork, work culture , Zipcar

Yet despite that, the period around 2008 also witnessed a bizarre phenomenon: new startup companies trying to break into the punishing business of making and selling cars. Soaring gas prices had caught the truck- and SUV-dependent Detroit automakers flat-footed and were inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs to launch fledgling “green car” companies for the coming era of “Peak Oil.” Whether or not these new players fully understood how tough the car business could be, their boundless optimism and often wildly experimental ideas presented a sharp contrast to the homogenized, commodified mainline auto industry. Though the explosion of new ideas and companies in the automotive world was a hint at the “mobility technology” revolution we see unfolding today, it was still firmly anchored in the privately owned car paradigm (with the exception of car-sharing pioneers like Zipcar).

Edwards, 56 Department of Energy (DOE) loans from, 68–89, 118, 120, 121 as shareholder of Tesla, 82–86, 90 detractors, 102–108 Detroit, Michigan, 2, 4 Detroit Auto Show, 68 disruptive innovator, Tesla as, 195–197 DOE. see Department of Energy doors falcon-wing, 137–141 gull-wing, 136–137 Downey, California, 76 Drori, Ze’ev, 49–50, 65 Dunlay, Jim, 58 E Eberhard, Martin as advocate of Tesla, 67 founding of Tesla by, 21–24, 27–31, 35, 37–40 ouster of, 44–48, 50, 79 EBITDA, 215 Eisner, Michael, 45 Electrek, 97–101 electric vehicles (EVs), 3, 12–14, 24, 77, 202, 207 Energy Independence and Security Act, 67 Enron, 105 environmental issues, 112–113, 119 Esquire, 61 e-tron quattro, 203 EV1, 13, 24, 34 EVs. see electric vehicles F Facebook, 41 Falcon One, 28 falcon-wing doors, 137–141 FCW (Forward Collision Warning), 125 Ferrari, 60, 200–201 Fiat, 11, 34 financial crisis (2008), 75–76, 105 fixed costs, 54 Flextronics, 47 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), 72, 131 Ford, Henry, 56, 194 Ford Focus, 159 Ford Fusion, 75 Ford Motor Company, 3, 4, 56, 75, 181, 194, 204, 216 Forward Collision Warning (FCW), 125 Founders Edition Roadster, 215 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 72, 131 Fremont, California, 53, 206, 218 funding (fundraising), 29, 40, 44–47, 50, 69–71, 85 G Gage, Tom, 27–29 Galileo Galilei, 105 Gao Yaning, 128 Gartner, 175 gas prices, 11, 14 General Motors (GM). see also specific models bankruptcy and bailout of, 2–3, 88 and electric cars, 11–13, 34 Impact concept car, 24 and Lotus, 36, 37, 53 OnStar system, 194 Germany, 203, 204 Ghosn, Carlos, 197–200 Gigafactory, 77, 183–184, 189, 218 GM. see General Motors G170J1-LE1 screens, 228 Goodwill Agreements, 149 Google, 44, 120–124, 171 Graham, Paul, 41 “A Grain of Salt” (blog post), 152–153 Grant, Charley, 100 “green car” companies, 11 GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT), 95–97 gull-wing doors, 136–137 H Harrigan, Mike, 30 Harris Ranch, 115–116, 119 Harvard Business School, 195 herd mentality, 96 Hethel, England, 49 Hoerbiger, 138–140 Holzhausen, Franz von, 137 Honda, 201 “How to Be Silicon Valley” (speech by Paul Graham), 41 Hyperloop, 16, 88, 217 I IDEO, 38 IGBT (insulated-gate bipolar transistor), 49 Impact concept car, 13, 24 imperfection, 55 incumbent companies, 196–197 innovation, 193–210 by Citroën, 193–195 disruptive, 195–197 by Carlos Ghosn, 197–200 by Tesla, 201–210 “Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things” (Christensen), 196–197 The Innovator’s Dilemma, 197 insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT), 49 internal conflict, 29–32 InvestorsHub, 99 Israel, 4, 12 J Jaguar I-PACE, 202–203 Jivan, Jon, 98 Jonas, Adam, 172 K kaizen, 58, 60 Krafcik, John, 176 L Lambert, Fred, 98–101 Lamborghini, 204 Land Rover, 60 lead-acid batteries, 23–24, 197 Leech, Keith, 146–147, 156 Level 4 autonomous cars, 175–176 Level 5 autonomous cars, 170, 172, 175–176, 178 Lexus, 204 lithium-ion batteries, 22–24, 26, 34 “long tailpipe,” 110 losses, 11 Lotus, 36–37, 38, 43, 44, 49, 59 Lotus Elise, 28, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43 Lotus Evora, 59 “Ludicrous Mode,” 16 Lyons, Dave, 64 M Mac, Ryan, 218 Magna Powertrain, 48–49 Magna Steyr, 202 manufacturing, 180–192 of batteries, 183–184, 188–189 and continuous reiteration of Model 3s, 182–192 Elon Musk on, 180–182 preproduction as, 187–188 Marchionne, Sergio, 11 market saturation, 10 Marks, Michael, 47, 48, 50 Mars, 25 “Master Plan, Part Deux” (blog post), 164 McLaren F1, 25–26, 39 media hype, 88, 90–91, 93–95, 97–102, 130, 211–224 and base version of Model 3, 220–224 Elon Musk as cause of, 217–224 at Semi/Roadster unveiling, 211–215 as stock price stimulant, 215–216 Menlo Park, California, 28, 58 Michelin, 194 Miles, 11 Mobileye, 167–170 mobility technology, 11 Model 3, 8–10, 180–182 base version of, 220–224 production of, 182–192 Model S, 15, 74–75, 81–84, 90, 99, 135–137. see also Whitestar Model T, 56 Model X, 101, 134–145 Model Year 2008, 69 Moggridge, Bill, 38–39 Montana Skeptic, 105–108 Morgan Stanley, 172 Morris, Charles, 43 Motley Fool, 98 Musk, Elon on belief, 21 and branding of Tesla, 16–17 as cause of media hype, 217–224 childhood and personality of, 25–26 clientele knowledge of, 60 “cluelessness” of, 33–35 and culture of Tesla, 60 and Daimler, 68 detractors of, 102–108 and electric cars, 25–28 and Elise-Roadster conversion, 38–39 on financial viability of Tesla, 72–73 and fundraising, 44, 69–71 and loans, 70, 78 on manufacturing, 180–181, 190 on Model 3, 8–9 on Model S, 74 on Model X, 144–145 on obstacles faced by Tesla, 46 offers of, to sell Tesla, 120–121 on price increases, 71 and production process, 142, 165 as public figure, 15 on Series D, 47 and JB Straubel, 26 and stress, 64–67, 77–78 and Superchargers, 109–119 and Tesla cofounders, 29–32, 45, 47–48 on Tesla’s master plan, 21–22, 30–31, 58, 163 at town hall meeting, 70–71 and Whitestar, 51 Musk, Errol, 25 Musk, Justine, 25–26 Musk, Kimball, 65 N National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 66 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 127, 131–132, 149–162 National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), 132, 167 NDAs. see non-disclosure agreements Neil, Dan, 59 Neuralink, 16, 217 New Mexico, 48, 67 New United Motor Manufacturing, 53 New York Times, 2, 30, 66 NHTSA. see National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Nissan Leaf, 198 Nissan-Renault Alliance, 197–200, 207 Noble M12, 27 nondisclosure agreements (NDAs), 5, 149–151, 152, 155–156 Norway, 12 NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), 132, 167 NUMMI plant, 76, 81 Nürburgring, 203 NuvoMedia, 23 O Occupy Wall Street, 80–81 Ohno, Taiichi, 57 OnStar, 194 Opel, 36 Opel Speedster, 36 OpenAI, 217 operating profits and losses, 89 P Packet Design, 23 Page, Larry, 44 Paine, Chris, 13, 64, 71, 73–74 Panasonic, 77 Pandora, 41 PayPal, 16, 28 Peak Oil, 11 Pinnacle Research, 25 platforms, 135–136 Porsche, 24, 26, 39, 203–204 Porsche 911, 39 power electronics module (PEM), 49 Powertrain Technology, 58 Prenzler, Christian, 100 preproduction, 187–188 price increases, 71 Prius, 24 profitability, 81–82, 89 Project Better Place, 4–5, 11–12 public, going, 80–81 Q quality, 55, 59–60 Quality Control Systems, 131 R Ranger, 60 Reddit, 97, 99–100 reliability, 143 Renault Kwid, 207 Renault Zoe, 198 Reuters, 66 Revenge of the Electric Car (film), 64 Roadster as Elise conversion, 37–39 launch of, 14–15, 29, 42, 47–51, 59–61 new model of, 211–215 profitability of, 71–72, 81 securing investments for, 44, 45 and Tesla startup, 2–3 robotaxis, 166–167 Rogan, Joe, 219 Rosen, Harold, 26 Rosen Motors, 26 S Saleen, 99–100 San Carlos, California, 28 San Francisco, California, 59 San Jose, California, 75–76 Santa Monica, California, 45 Saudi Arabia, 218–219 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 45 Scion xB, 27 Seagate, 23 “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan” (blog post), 21 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 67, 160, 219–220, 224, 234 Seeking Alpha, 103, 105–107 self-driving cars, 120–133 Semi, 211–215 Senate Finance Committee, 67 Series A funding, 29 Series C funding, 40, 44–45 Series D funding, 46, 47 Series E funding, 50 S 40 model, 84 Shashua, Amnon, 167–170 Silicon Valley, 4, 14, 15, 17, 45, 53, 54, 58 Siry, Darryl, 65, 73 60 Minutes, 66 S 60 model, 84 “skateboard” chassis, 134, 202 Skype, 41 Smart (Tesla car), 68 software startups, 54–55 SolarCity, 110–111, 164 solar power, 109–114 Sorbonne University, 66 South Africa, 25 SpaceX, 15, 16, 25, 28, 39, 66, 78, 100 Spiegel, Mark, 102–103 Stanford University, 4, 26, 27, 28, 121 startups, 41–43, 59, 62, 76 “stealth recalls,” 160–161 stock price, 89, 90, 93, 97, 100, 102–103 StockTwits, 98 Straubel, JB, 26, 28, 48 SunCube, 146–147 Superchargers, 109–119 SYNC, 194 T TACC (Traffic Aware Cruise Control), 125 Tama, 197 Tarpenning, Marc, 21–24, 27, 31, 37, 43, 113 Tea Party movement, 80–81 “Tesla Death Watch” (blog posts), 3 Tesla Energy Group, 68 Tesla Founders Blog, 50 Tesla Motors. see also specific headings and barriers to entry, 35, 56 branding of, 16–17, 18, 59–63, 225–234 and collisions, 127–133 concept of, 34–36 continuous improvement at, 58 culture of, 51–52, 60 detractors of, 102–108 as disruptive innovator, 195–197 EBITDA of, 215 and environmental issues, 112–113, 119 “factory-less” model of, 35–36 innovation by, 201–210 internal conflict at, 29–32 legacy of, 19 Model 3 introduced by, 8–10 personal approach to public relations, xii raising capital for, 44, 69–71, 85 “shaky ground” of, 4, 5 as startup, 2–3 stock price of, 89, 90, 93, 97, 100, 102–103 strategy of, 22 and Supercharger network, 109–119 and whistleblowers, xii Tesla Motors Club (TMC), 95–97 Teslarati, 100 “Tesla stare,” 60 “Tesla Suspension Breakage: It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Coverup” (blog post), 151 Thailand, 48, 218 Think Global, 11, 67 Thrun, Sebastian, 121 TMC (Tesla Motors Club), 95–97 Too Big to Fail, 91 Toyoda, Akio, 76 Toyoda, Sakichi, 57 Toyota, 184, 201. see also specific models auto sales, 11 contract with, 81, 83 electric vehicles of, 159–160 and 2008 financial crisis, 76–77 pragmatism of, 209 safety scandal, 149–151 Toyota Previa, 214 Toyota Production System (TPS), 56–60, 76–77, 142, 183 Toyota Way, 58, 77 TPS. see Toyota Production System Traction Avant, 193–194 trading volume, 89 Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC), 125 The Truth About Cars (TTAC) (blog), 1–3 Tse, Bernard, 67 turnarounds, financial, 83–87 Twitter, 41, 98, 104–108, 113, 152, 156, 217–220, 224, 236 tzero, 23–24, 26, 27, 31, 37 V Valor Equity Partners, 47 Vance, Ashlee, 38, 47, 66, 73, 84, 120–121, 137, 227–228 VantagePoint Capital Partners, 66 variable costs, 54 V8 engine, 62 Volkswagen, 11, 171, 203–205 W Wall Street Journal, 2, 18, 100, 129, 132, 168, 187 Waymo, 173–174 Web 2.0, 41 Weintraub, Seth, 97–98, 101 Wharton School of Business, 25 whistleblowers, xii Whitestar, 46–48, 51, 65, 67, 68, 73 Who Killed the Electric Car?


pages: 614 words: 176,458

Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie

agricultural Revolution, air gap, Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Community Supported Agriculture, deindustrialization, en.wikipedia.org, food miles, Food sovereignty, Garrett Hardin, gentleman farmer, Haber-Bosch Process, household responsibility system, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Just-in-time delivery, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, megacity, military-industrial complex, Northern Rock, Panamax, peak oil, precautionary principle, refrigerator car, rewilding, scientific mainstream, sexual politics, stem cell, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Waste food will be recycled by the shortest possible route, according to DEFRA’s own ‘proximity principle’.31 Welcoming pigs back into the community may sound dotty because it seems so at odds with the sanitized suburbia promulgated by the nanny state. But we know that recycling food through pigs works because we did it during the Second World War – and if the prophets of peak oil and global warming are correct, we may be headed for similar conditions. It also looks as though the business of making Tottenham Pudding could become a simpler and less energy intensive business. Tristram Stuart visited a firm in Japan which sterilizes food waste by pasteurizing it at 90 degrees for just five minutes, and then inoculates it with a Lactobacillus, that ferments the swill much as if it were yoghurt.

I have taken the liberty of transcribing it into the same matrix as the other scenarios, after making some minor adaptions.6 CAT’s rural economy is based around a 12 course rotation, in which (typically) the land would be under green manure during three years, and sown to Miscanthus for bioenergy over another three years, with grain, rape for biofuel and root crops taken over the other six years. The authors warn: There is much justified anxiety about biofuels. Sometimes presented as a means of maintaining post peak oil mobility, a few simple calculations show that biofuels come nowhere near to providing the World’s (or even Britain’s) current transport demands. A key reason why they are not a panacea is that under typical field or forest conditions, photosynthesis is simply not very efficient. For a given area, windmills produce 20 times more energy, photovoltaic panels 100 times more … Despite these drawbacks this strategy recognizes that bio-energy can play a useful role in a sustainable energy strategy.

The GOOFs have too much on their side: the pressure of rising population, the increasing numbers of people brought up in cities who have no connection with or understanding of land-based livelihoods, a media with an urban bias, and the financial muscle of capitalist corporations whose sole interest is profit. There are some, such as Richard Heinberg,94 who think that peak oil will force society to ruralize (as it did in Cuba). But the supporters of headlong economic growth will do their utmost to identify other technologies such as nuclear energy to substitute for fossil fuels, and the most likely thing to scupper them is a miscalculation about the onset of global warming – and that will scupper all of us.


pages: 614 words: 168,545

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It? by Brett Christophers

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business process, business process outsourcing, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, collective bargaining, congestion charging, corporate governance, data is not the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, electricity market, Etonian, European colonialism, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, G4S, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, greed is good, green new deal, haute couture, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, intangible asset, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, land bank, land reform, land value tax, light touch regulation, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, patent troll, pattern recognition, peak oil, Piper Alpha, post-Fordism, post-war consensus, precariat, price discrimination, price mechanism, profit maximization, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, remunicipalization, rent control, rent gap, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, risk free rate, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, sharing economy, short selling, Silicon Valley, software patent, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech bro, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, very high income, wage slave, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, yield curve, you are the product

In the peak years of the early-to-mid 1980s, easily the largest component of government revenue from oil-and-gas production was the Petroleum Revenue Tax.66 This tax, which was based on the accumulated cash flow arising from individual fields and became payable once the latter turned positive, was introduced by the Labour government in 1975; but it declined in importance from the mid 1980s as the applicable taxation rate was progressively reduced, and because fields given development consent after March 1993 were exempted. In the period since what we might call ‘peak oil taxation’ – that is, the early-to-mid 1980s, when effective tax rates stood at around 50 per cent – a powerful narrative has coalesced concerning the government’s use, and perceived abuse, of those peak tax receipts. Strikingly, it is a narrative rehearsed by commentators on both the left and the right.

Rather, the principal, almost existential threat to hydrocarbon rents posed by climate change is that it will choke consumption, most obviously through state regulation designed to help keep fossil fuels in the ground, rendering hydrocarbon assets ‘stranded’ and valueless. As discussion of this threat has expanded, talk of ‘peak oil’ (the idea that the world might run out of quality oil reserves) has increasingly been replaced by talk of ‘peak demand’. To date, the response of the oil-and-gas majors to this perceived threat has been the classic response of the rentier, which is to defend to the hilt the asset and its continuing ability to generate rents.

Where his book held up better, Jack observed, was in its gloomy prognosis for the future of the national economy in the light of a failure to invest the spoils of the oil boom strategically. He picked out one particular sentence from the book – ‘[G]iven the lack of industrial investment during Britain’s peak oil years, it is difficult to see what will provide our living’ – as having ‘the comfort of rightness’. Successive governments have since made the exact same mistake with the spoils of the financial services boom that followed hard on the heels of the oil boom. Jack’s prognosis in 2013 was thus equally gloomy: ‘Neither Big Oil nor the Big Bang has saved us – what will, O Lord, what will?’


pages: 391 words: 102,301

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sinatra Doctrine, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

The demand for natural resources is rising. That is leading to a spike in prices and jostling between the world’s major powers to secure access to supplies of energy, food, and water. There is a lively debate between experts about whether the world has reached “peak oil”—the moment when oil reserves peak and then decline. Believers in “peak oil” point out that, while the number and size of new oil discoveries has been falling since the mid-1980s, global demand is rising steadily. The International Energy Agency projects that, to keep pace, “some 64 million barrels-per-day of additional gross capacity—the equivalent of almost six times that of Saudi Arabia today—needs to be brought on stream between 2007 and 2030.”4 James Schlesinger, a well-respected former U.S. energy secretary, predicts that “we are heading for a crucial moment as the nations of the world face a time, the first time since we had major economic development, of an inability to increase the supply of oil.”5 These projections sound alarming, but critics point out that dire predictions that the world was about to run out of oil were also fashionable in the 1970s—and were then disproved by new finds and new technology.


pages: 323 words: 95,939

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Andrew Keen, bank run, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, big-box store, Black Swan, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, cashless society, citizen journalism, clockwork universe, cognitive dissonance, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, disintermediation, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, Elliott wave, European colonialism, Extropian, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Future Shock, game design, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Howard Rheingold, hypertext link, Inbox Zero, invention of agriculture, invention of hypertext, invisible hand, iterative process, James Bridle, John Nash: game theory, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, lateral thinking, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, Merlin Mann, messenger bag, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, mutually assured destruction, negative equity, Network effects, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, passive investing, pattern recognition, peak oil, Peter Pan Syndrome, price mechanism, prisoner's dilemma, Ralph Nelson Elliott, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, scientific management, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, social graph, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, technological determinism, the medium is the message, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero-sum game

In their book The Last Myth, Mathew Barrett and Mel Gilles put it this way: By allowing the challenges of the 21st century to be hijacked by the apocalyptic storyline, we find ourselves awaiting a moment of clarity when the problems we must confront will become apparent to all—or when those challenges will magically disappear, like other failed prophecies about the end of the world. Yet the real challenges we must face are not future events that we imagine or dismiss through apocalyptic scenarios of collapse—they are existing trends. The evidence suggests that much of what we fear in the future—the collapse of the economy, the arrival of peak oil and global warming and resource wars—has already begun. We can wait forever, while the world unravels before our very eyes, for an apocalypse that won’t come.1 For many, it’s easier, or at least more comforting, to approach these problems as intractable. They’re just too complex and would involve levels of agreement, cooperation, and coordination that seem beyond the capacity of humans at this stage in our cultural evolution, anyway.

The crisis of global warming morphs into the fantasy of living off the grid. The threat of a terrorist attack on our office tower leads us to purchase an emergency personal parachute for easy egress, and to wonder how far up the org chart we might be promoted once everyone else is gone. The collapse of civilization due to nuclear accident, peak oil, or SARS epidemic finally ends the ever-present barrage of media, tax forms, toxic spills, and mortgage payments, opening the way to a simpler life of farming, maintaining shelter, and maybe defending one’s family. The hardest part of living in present shock is that there’s no end and, for that matter, no beginning.


Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World by Bethany McLean

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, buy and hold, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, corporate governance, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, family office, geopolitical risk, hydraulic fracturing, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, Masdar, Michael Milken, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Upton Sinclair, Yom Kippur War

“They sold their stake to Washington Gas and Light and got a $100 million check. I thought, ‘These are two dudes who just drilled a well and it happened to hit.’ So that really piqued my interest.” Three years before McClendon was born, the iconoclast geologist M. King Hubbert first outlined his ideas on peak oil. Essentially, the idea was that since the amount of oil is finite, production will follow a bell curve, and after peaking, it will inevitably decrease. Time seemed to prove Hubbert right. American oil production peaked in 1970 at 9.6 million barrels a day and began a steady, seemingly inexorable decline.


pages: 321 words: 85,893

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith

British Empire, car-free, clean water, cognitive dissonance, correlation does not imply causation, Drosophila, dumpster diving, en.wikipedia.org, Gary Taubes, Haber-Bosch Process, longitudinal study, McMansion, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, out of africa, peak oil, placebo effect, Rosa Parks, the built environment, vertical integration

—Peter Bane, Permaculture Activist Everyone who eats should read this book. Everyone who eats vegetarian should memorize it. This is the single most important book I’ve ever read on diet, agriculture, and ecology. And as a farmer and ex-vegan, that’s saying a lot. —Aric McBay, author of What We Leave Behind and Peak Oil Survival The Vegetarian Myth puts together in coherent and passionate form all the arguments about meat and agriculture that have been running around in my head for fifteen years. It’s not easy to transmute outrage and pain into something so full of love and wonder, but Lierre Keith has done it beautifully.

To quote George Draffan, “I’ll repeat the obvious: sustainable systems are the only ones that are sustainable.”83 Using those methods, and only those methods, how many humans can the planet support? Because the day we produce one more of us is the day we need to be ashamed of ourselves as a species. William Catton and other peak oil writers think that our numbers overshot in 1800 CE. That year stands in as the beginning of the fossil fuel age. We began to produce increasing amounts of food by using reserves of energy that were nonreplicating, nonrenewable. I agree that the year 1800 marks a change in human culture and consumption that has been profoundly destructive.


pages: 375 words: 105,586

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth by Chris Smaje

agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, collaborative consumption, Corn Laws, COVID-19, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, energy transition, European colonialism, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, fake news, financial deregulation, financial independence, Food sovereignty, Ford Model T, future of work, Gail Bradbrook, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, hive mind, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jevons paradox, land reform, mass immigration, megacity, middle-income trap, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, post-industrial society, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, Rutger Bregman, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

The fact that fossil fuels are source-limited or non-renewable is potentially another problem, since ultimately reserves must deplete and fossil fuel energy prices escalate – the much-touted problem of ‘peak oil’. But the real problem currently is at the sink, not the source. If humanity continues to burn fossil fuels as at present, we’ll make the world uninhabitable for ourselves through climate breakdown long before the fuels are gone. So the main worry right now isn’t the scarcity of fossil fuels but their abundance. The necessity is for us to impose ‘peak oil’ (and gas, and coal) on ourselves. Figure 1.1 isn’t too encouraging in that respect. It shows climbing levels of fossil fuel consumption globally, from about 3,500 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 1965 to nearly 12,000 million tonnes in 2018.


pages: 396 words: 117,897

Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, additive manufacturing, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, Boeing 747, British Empire, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, energy transition, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, global pandemic, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Watt: steam engine, megacity, megastructure, microplastics / micro fibres, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, post-industrial society, Post-Keynesian economics, purchasing power parity, recommendation engine, rolodex, X Prize

., 1972; Barney, 1980; McLaren and Skinner, 1987; Ehrlich and Holdren, 1988), developed into arguments between catastrophist and cornucopian camps (Simon, 1981 1995) and became combined with an even broader concern about the extent and rapidity of global environmental change. The latest phase of these concerns began with prediction of an imminent peak in global oil extraction that was to be followed by a steep decline in production (Campbell, 1997; Deffeyes, 2001; for a critique of peak oil see: Smil, 2006a). That there has been no global oil production decline – and that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon – has not stopped the transference of such fears to other resources, particularly as China's seemingly insatiable demand for all minerals reversed a century of steadily declining cost of raw materials for the world's affluent consumers (Sullivan et al., 2000; The Economist, 2011).

Smil, V. (2001) Enriching the Earth, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Smil, V. (2003) Energy at the Crossroads, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Smil, V. (2005) Creating the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, New York. Smil, V. (2006a) Transforming the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, New York. Smil, V. (2006b) Peak oil: a catastrophist cult and complex realities. World Watch, 19: 22–24. Smil, V. (2007) Light behind the fall: Japan's electricity consumption, the environment, and economic growth. Japan Focushttp://www.vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil-article-light-behind-fall-20070000-apj.pdf (accessed 23 May 2013).


pages: 412 words: 113,782

Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist by Ray C. Anderson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centralized clearinghouse, clean tech, clean water, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, dematerialisation, distributed generation, do well by doing good, Easter island, energy security, Exxon Valdez, fear of failure, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invisible hand, junk bonds, late fees, Mahatma Gandhi, market bubble, music of the spheres, Negawatt, Neil Armstrong, new economy, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, peak oil, precautionary principle, renewable energy credits, retail therapy, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, subprime mortgage crisis, supply-chain management, urban renewal, Y2K

Third, as I said in the opening chapter, when it comes to running your operation with the earth and sustainability in mind, you will have no trouble finding skeptics. You’ll find them among your friends, your colleagues, your board. The bold ones will take you aside and say, Don’t you know that all this environmental, global warming, peak-oil stuff is just _____. (You can fill in the blank.) Even if they’re not quite that bold they might still ignore—or undermine—your efforts. You might even run into resistance in some corners of Wall Street, though there has truly been a dramatic shift in attitudes there. But it surely wasn’t that way back in 1994, when a man by the name of Dan Hendrix had the unenviable job of convincing the investor community that even if Interface’s founder and CEO had gone round the bend, the company was still a good place to invest.

Our taxes pay for direct federal subsidies to the oil industry, too, even though our dependency on their oil makes us vulnerable to political blackmail. The emissions that come from burning oil and coal not only destabilize the climate, but also ratchet up regional tensions over dwindling resources. To oil, add arable land and clean, freshwater, and what do you have? Peak oil, peak water, and peak soil—all at the same time. Staying with oil, the quest to find and produce ever greater quantities of fossil fuels skews our moral compasses, too. We’re encouraged to destroy pristine wilderness because it might contain a few weeks’ worth of petroleum (or not) that may (or may not) come on line sometime in the next decade or so.


pages: 265 words: 15,515

Nomad Citizenship: Free-Market Communism and the Slow-Motion General Strike by Eugene W. Holland

business cycle, capital controls, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, commons-based peer production, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, deskilling, Eben Moglen, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Free Software Foundation, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, informal economy, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Jane Jacobs, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lewis Mumford, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, peak oil, post-Fordism, price mechanism, Richard Stallman, Rochdale Principles, Ronald Coase, scientific management, slashdot, Stuart Kauffman, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Upton Sinclair, urban renewal, wage slave, working poor, Yochai Benkler

The international Transitions movement provides a useful contrast in this respect.57 Started in Ireland in 2005, but now operating in most of the English-speaking world as well as Japan and South America, the Tran­ sitions Network shares some of the presuppositions and organizational philosophy propounded in The Coming Insurrection. Although far less apocalyptic in tone, Transitions, too, constitutes a response to what it considers the crisis of modern civilization: in this case, the imminence of peak oil and potentially catastrophic climate change, aggravated more recently by the financial collapse of 2008 and the general failure of the economic model of perpetual growth. Owing to the inability of “industrial society” and representative democracy to address the crisis, steps had to be taken to do so autonomously, outside the usual channels of big busi­ ness and government.

The Transitions movement comprises a plethora of local groups dedicated to preparing for energy descent (the move toward a lower-energy, carbon-free economy), in which authority and decision making are distributed and situation-specific: the aim is to “help people access good information and trust them to make good decisions”: the intention of the Transition model is not to centralize or control decision making, but rather to work with everyone so that it is practiced at the most appropriate, practical and empowering level, and in such a way that it models the ability of natural systems to self organize.58 Local groups are thus linked in an international network whose main purpose is not to command or even coordinate action but simply to share examples of and information about fostering community resilience in the face of climate change, peak oil, and the inevitability of energy descent. Although the means it employs are entirely peaceful, in contrast to those of The Coming Insurrection, the Transitions Network envisions social change on a similarly global scale, implemented via similarly distributed decision making and action taking by small groups.


pages: 349 words: 114,038

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution by Pieter Hintjens

4chan, Aaron Swartz, airport security, AltaVista, anti-communist, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, bread and circuses, business climate, business intelligence, business process, Chelsea Manning, clean water, commoditize, congestion charging, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, Debian, decentralized internet, disinformation, Edward Snowden, failed state, financial independence, Firefox, full text search, gamification, German hyperinflation, global village, GnuPG, Google Chrome, greed is good, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, independent contractor, informal economy, intangible asset, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Rulifson, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, M-Pesa, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, no silver bullet, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, packet switching, patent troll, peak oil, power law, pre–internet, private military company, race to the bottom, real-name policy, rent-seeking, reserve currency, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, selection bias, Skype, slashdot, software patent, spectrum auction, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route, transaction costs, twin studies, union organizing, wealth creators, web application, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day, Zipf's Law

Digital society must be careful about tolerating the criminalization of behavior, such as seeking socially unacceptable porn, that gives the goons an excuse to push the line the wrong way. As with narcotics, the police are not the right tool for public health issues. Zombie Conspiracies There is one other global existential threat to our way of life, and I'm not talking about Hello Kitty. I am however talking about peak oil, and the risks it brings for our comfortable holiday society. Bear with me, I'm not a catastrophe fan (we made it through Y2K, so how bad can the future be, right?). However, that doesn't mean that other people are as optimistic as me. Though the industrial revolution started with coal, today's global economy owes its very existence to long-chain liquid hydrocarbons, aka "oil."

Either way, oil is the lifeblood (though about 500 times cheaper than human blood, after the processing fee of $1,500 per gallon of blood is factored in) of our industrial society. Take away oil, and we have some really big problems. And, although it has dropped off the radar in the last years, peak oil is a fairly solid thesis. That is, we're ending the era of cheap oil, and the future is one of rising oil prices, scarcity, and (more) wars over oil. Deja vu, anyone? We're going to end with Mad Max and large men in weird masks chasing us down the road so they can cut our faces off. The future is scary!


pages: 789 words: 207,744

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning by Jeremy Lent

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Atahualpa, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, complexity theory, conceptual framework, dematerialisation, demographic transition, different worldview, Doomsday Book, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, failed state, Firefox, Ford Model T, Francisco Pizarro, Garrett Hardin, Georg Cantor, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of gunpowder, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, Law of Accelerating Returns, mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Metcalfe's law, Mikhail Gorbachev, move 37, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Plato's cave, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Solow, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, scientific management, Scientific racism, scientific worldview, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological singularity, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, ultimatum game, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, wikimedia commons

., Flagship Report: World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability (Berlin: German Advisory Council on Global Change, 2011), 326; McNeill, Something New under the Sun, locs. 587–606; Anders Wijkman and Johan Rockström, Bankrupting Nature: Denying Our Planetary Boundaries (New York: Routledge, 2012), Kindle edition, locations 1437–40; Samuel Alexander, “Peak Oil, Energy Descent, and the Fate of Consumerism” (Melbourne: Simplicity Institute, 2011). 39. Wijkman and Rockström, Bankrupting Nature, locs. 1470–79. Also, see Alexander, “Peak Oil”; Luis de Sousa, “What Is a Human Being Worth (in Terms of Energy)?,” The Oil Drum: Europe, 2008, http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4315. 40. Will Steffen, cited in Wijkman and Rockström, Bankrupting Nature, locs. 968–73.

Incorporating the functions of a camera, radio, telephone, music center, compass, navigation system, and endless other devices, this “represents the great dematerialization of modern civilization, well ahead of any imminent collapse of natural resources,” writes cornucopian M. J. Kelly. Turning to agriculture, cornucopians offer a vision of animal protein bioengineered in factories rather than obtained from animals grazing in the fields, just as synthetic fiber has mostly replaced wool. Under this scenario, rather than speaking of peak oil, “we can speak of peak farmland—we will need smaller areas in future to feed the world, and we will oversee the managed return of excess land to the wild.”31 We can even use genetic engineering to improve on the natural process of photosynthesis in plants, cornucopians argue. According to theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, the most efficient crops in nature convert just 1 percent of the sunlight they receive into chemical energy.


pages: 421 words: 125,417

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs

agricultural Revolution, air freight, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business process, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, digital divide, Edward Glaeser, energy security, failed state, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Global Witness, Haber-Bosch Process, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, mass immigration, microcredit, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, peak oil, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, Skype, statistical model, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, unemployed young men, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, zoonotic diseases

Third, we can economize on the use of the depleting resource, for example, by investing in better insulation in order to use less home heating oil. There has been much consternation about “peak” oil, the idea that the world may be nearing the peak of total oil production and, therefore, faces a decline of oil reserves and oil production in future decades because we have discovered and already developed most or all of the world’s great oil fields. The common assumption is that peak oil, if true, is a disaster: the world hitting a brick wall of oil supply just as the developing world is ramping up its demand for it. Yet the consequences would not be nearly as dire as some have suggested.


City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age by P. D. Smith

active transport: walking or cycling, Albert Einstein, Andrew Keen, Anthropocene, augmented reality, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business cycle, car-free, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, congestion charging, congestion pricing, cosmological principle, crack epidemic, double entry bookkeeping, Dr. Strangelove, edge city, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, en.wikipedia.org, Enrique Peñalosa, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, garden city movement, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, global village, haute cuisine, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of gunpowder, Jane Jacobs, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Kibera, Kickstarter, Kowloon Walled City, Lewis Mumford, Masdar, megacity, megastructure, multicultural london english, mutually assured destruction, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, peak oil, pneumatic tube, RFID, smart cities, starchitect, telepresence, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, the High Line, Thomas Malthus, trade route, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, walkable city, white flight, white picket fence, young professional

A recent scholarly article listed fifty terms describing new metropolitan forms and a further fifty describing relations between cities.134 The old relationship between central cities and suburbs is dead and new ones are being forged. Recent trends also suggest a decline in population of the outer suburbs and a repopulation of the inner cores of some cities (‘recentralisation’). Indeed this might be a timely reaction to climate crisis and peak oil. Some have even argued that suburbia is the ‘landscape of the dinosaur’.135 For today, the conditions that gave rise to suburban sprawl – cheap oil, cars, credit and land – are gone. Unless new carbon-zero transport systems can be created, owning a home on the outskirts of a city or a boomburb may become an expensive luxury.

Urban thoroughfares have become no-go zones for pedestrians, who have been reduced to second-class citizens. But change is in the air. Transport generates nearly a quarter of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions and over half of that comes from cars and vans. To maintain the health of the planet, we need to get out of our cars. In the age of climate change and peak oil, ‘walkability’ is the new buzzword in urban planning. And public transport is also experiencing a renaissance – even in America. In 2010, United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stated on his official blog: ‘This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.’


pages: 466 words: 159,321

Star's Reach: A Novel of the Deindustrial Future by John Michael Greer

deindustrialization, gentleman farmer, peak oil

Contents One: The Place of Beginnings and Endings Two: Stories to the Dark Three: The Misters’ Lodge Four: Shaking the Robot’s Hand Five: The Road to Melumi Six: The Gray Towers Seven: The Way of Ruins Eight: The Medicine Seller Nine: Jennel Cobey’s Letter Ten: Dell’s Bargain Eleven: What the Wind Said Twelve: When the Rains Come Thirteen: The Yellow Butterfly Fourteen: Whisper from the Sky Fifteen: The View from Troy Tower Sixteen: On Gasoline Oceans Seventeen: What’s Always Real Eighteen: Mules’ Pace Nineteen: A Different World Twenty: In the Stream of Time Twenty-One: The King of Yami Twenty-Two: Memfis Nights, Arksa Days Twenty-Three: The Thing that Matters Twenty-Four: When the Door Opened Twenty-Five: At a Table of Stars Twenty-Six: Waiting for the Thunder Twenty-Seven: When the Spire Fell Twenty-Eight: One Step Too Far Twenty-Nine: The Spaces Between the Stars Thirty: How the Old World Ended About The Author John Michael Greer is the author of more than thirty books, including four books on peak oil and one science fiction novel, The Fires Of Shalsha, as well as the weekly peak oil blog, The Archdruid Report. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he now lives in an old red brick mill town in the north central Appalachians with his wife Sara.


100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-To-1 and How to Find Them by Christopher W Mayer

Alan Greenspan, asset light, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, book value, business cycle, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, cloud computing, disintermediation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, dumpster diving, Edward Thorp, Henry Singleton, hindsight bias, housing crisis, index fund, Jeff Bezos, market bubble, Network effects, new economy, oil shock, passive investing, peak oil, Pershing Square Capital Management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, Teledyne, The Great Moderation, The Wisdom of Crowds, tontine

Here I borrow from another favorite sage, that corncob-pipe-smoking disheveled man of letters Paul Goodman. “I can’t think abstractly,” he wrote. “I start from concrete experience.” He cracked that because he stuck so close to concrete experience, he “cannot really write fiction.” People take easily, though, to big ideas: The new economy. Peak oil. The Chinese century. The Great Moderation. All of these things are just abstract ideas. They are predictions about how the world might look. But they are far from concrete experience—and hence likely to lead you astray. And each of the abstractions I mentioned has led investors astray. “Investment,” author John Train once wrote, “is the craft of the specific.”


pages: 219 words: 63,495

50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know by Richard Watson

23andMe, 3D printing, access to a mobile phone, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, BRICs, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon credits, Charles Babbage, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, computer age, computer vision, crowdsourcing, dark matter, dematerialisation, Dennis Tito, digital Maoism, digital map, digital nomad, driverless car, Elon Musk, energy security, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, gamification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, hive mind, hydrogen economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, life extension, Mark Shuttleworth, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, peak oil, personalized medicine, phenotype, precision agriculture, private spaceflight, profit maximization, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Florida, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, semantic web, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, smart transportation, space junk, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, telepresence, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Turing test, urban decay, Vernor Vinge, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, women in the workforce, working-age population, young professional

Oil is running out, alongside other key resources, but the amount that’s left is probably much more than we think and largely depends on what price people are willing to pay for it. With oil, in particular, technology will rapidly develop alongside demand, as it has done historically. This means that deeper deposits will be accessed alongside new reserves. Furthermore, “peak oil” generally refers to conventional oil, but there are huge reserves of unconventional oils such as tar sands, ultraheavy oils, oil shale and bituminous schist. Over the next few decades we’ll have problems matching rising demand to supply, but the main issues will be price volatility, transport and refining capacity—not a lack of oil.


pages: 245 words: 64,288

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy by Pistono, Federico

3D printing, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, bioinformatics, Buckminster Fuller, cloud computing, computer vision, correlation does not imply causation, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Firefox, future of work, gamification, George Santayana, global village, Google Chrome, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, illegal immigration, income inequality, information retrieval, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Jeff Hawkins, jimmy wales, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Lao Tzu, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, Loebner Prize, longitudinal study, means of production, Narrative Science, natural language processing, new economy, Occupy movement, patent troll, pattern recognition, peak oil, post scarcity, QR code, quantum entanglement, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, Rodney Brooks, selection bias, self-driving car, seminal paper, slashdot, smart cities, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, strong AI, synthetic biology, technological singularity, TED Talk, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce

Next time you hear somebody claiming that economic growth can continue forever, and that you just do not get it because you are not taking efficiency into account, you know what to respond. To conclude, I would like to take and look at it from a larger perspective. As Prof. Murphy pointed out, we, as a society, are like children asking their parents for a pony. We have not learned to take care of our gerbil (peak oil, environmental degradation), yet we are asking for a pony (fusion or whatever supposedly infinite supply of energy we have in mind, space colonisation, infinite growth). This is quite arrogant and irresponsible at the same time. We ought to be better than spoiled little children. It is time to grow up and move forward.


pages: 243 words: 66,908

Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Meadows. Donella, Diana Wright

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, clean water, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, game design, Garrett Hardin, Gunnar Myrdal, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, peak oil, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Stanford prison experiment, systems thinking, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, Tragedy of the Commons, Whole Earth Review

That book made headlines around the world for its observations that continual growth in population and consumption could severely damage the ecosystems and social systems that support life on earth, and that a drive for limitless economic growth could eventually disrupt many local, regional, and global systems. The findings in that book and its updates are, once again, making front-page news as we reach peak oil, face the realities of climate change, and watch a world of 6.6 billion people deal with the devastating consequences of physical growth. In short, Dana helped usher in the notion that we have to make a major shift in the way we view the world and its systems in order to correct our course. Today, it is widely accepted that systems thinking is a critical tool in addressing the many environmental, political, social, and economic challenges we face around the world.


pages: 214 words: 71,585

Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids by Meghan Daum

delayed gratification, demographic transition, Donald Trump, financial independence, happiness index / gross national happiness, index card, Joan Didion, Mason jar, Multics, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, risk tolerance, Skype, women in the workforce

The childless, on the other hand—or childfree, as the more aggressive ones like to be called (a formation apparently derived from the uncomplimentary smoke- and disease-free)—like to claim that they’re living more fully conscious lives than those brainless docile hordes helplessly breeding at the dictates of their DNA. They cite the imminent threats of overpopulation, global warming, peak oil, and, don’t let’s forget, nuclear war, still very much on the table—all of which are perfectly valid and persuasive reasons for not procreating, and none of which do I believe for one second is anyone’s real reason. Our real reasons may be less obvious than those of parents—or the child-curs’d, as we like to call them—but I have no doubt they’re just as unconscious and primal.


pages: 221 words: 68,880

Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy (Bicycle) by Elly Blue

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, active transport: walking or cycling, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autism spectrum disorder, big-box store, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, business cycle, car-free, congestion pricing, Donald Shoup, food desert, hydraulic fracturing, if you build it, they will come, Induced demand, job automation, Loma Prieta earthquake, medical residency, oil shale / tar sands, parking minimums, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, power law, ride hailing / ride sharing, science of happiness, the built environment, Tragedy of the Commons, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional

Our current bicycle infrastructure investments in the United States alone save 12 million tons of carbon emissions every year, by one estimate.207 Moderate investment in the future could save 23 million tons a year, and more substantial investment could save as much as 91 million tons a year. It’s a small piece of the puzzle, not insignificant but not world-saving on its own, either—though it’s certainly one of the most cost-effective climate remedies out there. What are bicycles good for, then? Peak oil is old hat, and perhaps has been for several decades. And it is no longer necessary to await apocalyptic disaster as major world cities are shattered by earthquakes and flooded by rising tides and increasingly large storms. The rising price of gas, the health care crisis, and the terrible economy have constituted a true disaster for many households in recent years.


pages: 222 words: 70,559

The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself-and Profit-from the Coming Energy Crisis by Stephen Leeb, Donna Leeb

Alan Greenspan, book value, Buckminster Fuller, buy and hold, currency risk, diversified portfolio, electricity market, fixed income, government statistician, guns versus butter model, hydrogen economy, income per capita, index fund, low interest rates, mortgage debt, North Sea oil, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, profit motive, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, Yom Kippur War, zero-coupon bond

King Hubbert, a geologist, predicted in the 1950s that oil production in a field peaks once half its oil has been extracted. So far he has been remarkably prescient. • Mideast reserves are likely less than has been stated, and there are serious questions as to whether Saudi Arabia even wants to fully develop its reserves. • As geological limits lead to peaking oil production, inflationary pressures will build. chapter 4 Oil Prices: Up, Up, and Away On February 20, 2003, the New York Times ran an article about the sudden jump in prices at the gasoline pump that had occurred in the preceding week or so in many parts of the country. Gas prices had risen an average of 29 cents a gallon since late 2002, and many drivers suddenly were having to shell out $2 or more a gallon.


pages: 1,205 words: 308,891

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World by Deirdre N. McCloskey

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Airbnb, Akira Okazaki, antiwork, behavioural economics, big-box store, Black Swan, book scanning, British Empire, business cycle, buy low sell high, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, Costa Concordia, creative destruction, critique of consumerism, crony capitalism, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental economics, Ferguson, Missouri, food desert, Ford Model T, fundamental attribution error, Garrett Hardin, Georg Cantor, George Akerlof, George Gilder, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, God and Mammon, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Hernando de Soto, immigration reform, income inequality, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, John Harrison: Longitude, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, lake wobegon effect, land reform, liberation theology, lone genius, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, middle-income trap, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nick Bostrom, North Sea oil, Occupy movement, open economy, out of africa, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Pax Mongolica, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Philip Mirowski, Pier Paolo Pasolini, pink-collar, plutocrats, positional goods, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, refrigerator car, rent control, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, seminal paper, Simon Kuznets, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, spinning jenny, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, the rule of 72, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, union organizing, very high income, wage slave, Washington Consensus, working poor, Yogi Berra

And now in the United States the production of oil, thanks to fracking, is drifting toward its old record. In 2015 U.S. oil production exceeded that of Saudi Arabia. Even setting aside the main American energy source, coal, total energy extracted from oil and gas produced in the United States has long exceeded previous peaks. Worldwide a “peak oil” has yet to happen, decades after it was confidently predicted by physical and biological scientists contemptuous of economic science. World crude-oil production has increased since 1970 by over 40 percent. The paleontologist Niles Eldridge, for example, as late as 1995 quoted with approval a geologist at Columbia who had predicted in the 1960s on the basis of “simple measures of the volumes of the great sedimentary basins” that the world would run out of recoverable petroleum in the mid-1990s.16 Ah, yes, simple measures.

See also analytic egalitarianism; equality: French; Fleischacker, Samuel; Frankfurt, Harry; Gaus, Gerald; Scottish equality Ehrenreich, Barbara, 42 Ehrlich, Paul: The Population Bomb, 628; and Simon, 629 Einaudi, Luigi: entrepreneurship, 96; nationalism, 91; I Promessi Sposi, 164 Eisenstein, Serge: anti-bourgeois, 642 Elbl, Ivana, 691n5 Eldridge, Niles: peak oil, 629–630 Elias, Norbert, 250 Eliot, George, 313 Eliot, T. S.: bourgeoisie, 642; John Churchill, 337 Elizabeth I: aristocratic rhetoric, 251; censorship, 390 Ellis, Markman: Austen and trade, 156, 160; on bourgeoisie, 159; gentry as bourgeois, 667n1 embeddedness: table 5, 555–556 Emerson, Ralph Waldo: merchants, 266 Emmett, Ross: acknowledged, xxxviii, xli; Malthus, 655n2; Malthus and property, 656n17 empire: in cricket, 661n13; gainers, 89; growth and, chap. 10; losers at home, 90; non-European, 642; Smith on, 180; theorized, xix.

.: ideas in history, 516, 695n12; Sieyes, 507 sewerage, 31, 67, 134, 649; Indian, 27 Shackle, George: discovery, 646 Shaftesbury, Third Earl: benevolence, 191; Holland, 343; honesty, 239; virtue ethics, 193, 194 Shakespeare, William: bourgeoisie, xxxiv, 307; Coriolanus, social body, 299; Cymbeline, false and honest, 237; Hamlet, aristocratic calculation, 317; Hamlet, courtiers, 220; 1 Henry IV, 309, 321; 1 Henry IV, zero sum theft, 317; 2 Henry IV, zero sum theft, 309; Henry V, Agincourt, 323; Henry V, Roman numerals, 321; Henry V, Falstaff lying, 309; Julius Caesar, aristocratic, 261; King Lear, aristocratic calculation, 317; lying in the comedies, 241; medieval government, 460; The Merchant of Venice, fluent Jews, 307; The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Shoemaker’s Holiday, 305, 309; Much Ado About Nothing, commoners in prose, 307; Othello, honest, 238; prudence in, 317; Troilus and Cressida, merchants, 456; A Winter’s Tale, aristocratic calculation, 317 Shaw, George Bernard: doing good, 384; Great Conversion, 591, 594; socialism, 573 Shields, Carol: work in novels, 590 Shiller, Robert: animal spirits, 667n11; rationality, 164 Shils, Edward: consumerism, 700n12; on German sociological romanticism, 676n19 Shilts, Wade: incorporation, 692n27 Shining Path: and utopia, 503 Short, Doug: Great Recession, 658n2 Shorto, Russell: Dutch entry, 696n17; Radical Reformation, 682n3 Sieyes, Abbé: What Is the Third Estate?, 507 significance tests: relevance, 472 Silver, Morris: Polanyi, 550 Simmel, Georg: charity, 341; competition, 60; ethics, 190; German sociological Romanticism, 676n19; great wealth, 441; money economy, 283; thrift, 282 Simmons, Phil: nuclear power, 660n26 Simon, Julian: peak oil, 629; productivity of another human, 657n9; resources, 66 Simone, Maria Rosa di: medieval university, 687n7 Sinatra, Frank, 636 Singapore, 571 Singer, Peter: modern utilitarian, 185 Singh, Manmohan: after 1991 in India, 465, 501 Sinha, Ajit: acknowledged, xxxix Sinyavsky, Andrei D. (Abram Tertz): On Socialist Realism, 696n21; quotes Stalin on materialism, 681n3 Skinner, Quentin: ideas in history, 207; right of revolution, 449; Scholastic influence on early modern political thought, 370; Smith as subversive, 209 Skwire, Sarah: Quakers, 365 slavery: abolition, 410; former theology of, 377–378; liberalism and, 386; Russians and, 697n4.


Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives by Jarrett Walker

Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, congestion charging, demand response, Donald Shoup, iterative process, jitney, New Urbanism, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, place-making, Silicon Valley, transit-oriented development, urban planning

But the city’s debate about transit is over, as far as the big money for rail transit is concerned. The debate that remains is about an even more limited resource: street space.a Block-by-block fights about transit lane proposals can easily make us depressed about the chance for transformative change. But as the costs of driving rise, and as a generation raised with climate-change and peak-oil anxiety moves into positions of influence, more and more people are going to see that the boulevard plugged with stored traffic doesn’t have to be the future. We will never move more cars down a boulevard—that’s a fact of geometry. But we can move vastly more people, efficiently, sustainably, and reliably.


pages: 264 words: 76,643

The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations by David Pilling

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Branko Milanovic, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, financial repression, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mortgage debt, off grid, old-boy network, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peak oil, performance metric, pez dispenser, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, science of happiness, shareholder value, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

That doesn’t mean, however, that economists have nothing to contribute to the debate. It is at least worth hearing what they have to say. In his quest to measure the unmeasurable, Helm first divides natural capital into two categories: renewable and non-renewable. There has traditionally been a lot of focus on non-renewable resources. Have we reached “peak oil”? How are we to manage when there’s no more coal or copper? But non-renewable resources are the easy part. They are relatively simple to value using market prices. If a government knows it has fifty years’ worth of natural gas, it can work out the value at today’s prices and decide how much it wants to “spend” today and how much to save for tomorrow.


pages: 296 words: 76,284

The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving by Leigh Gallagher

Airbnb, big-box store, bike sharing, Burning Man, call centre, car-free, Celebration, Florida, clean water, collaborative consumption, Columbine, commoditize, crack epidemic, demographic winter, East Village, edge city, Edward Glaeser, extreme commuting, Ford Model T, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, helicopter parent, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Jane Jacobs, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Menlo Park, microapartment, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, New Urbanism, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, Ponzi scheme, Quicken Loans, Richard Florida, Robert Shiller, Sand Hill Road, Seaside, Florida, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, streetcar suburb, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Tony Hsieh, Tragedy of the Commons, transit-oriented development, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, walkable city, white flight, white picket fence, young professional, Zipcar

But never have so many forces been working against conventional suburban development at the same time. The facts laid out in the pages that follow represent a slow-burning revolution, a realignment of our societal priorities, and a reversal of the fundamental social equation that’s come to define our nation. In the energy world, people talk about peak oil, the moment after which our supply of fossil fuels will begin to dwindle. After more than half a century of expansion and the housing equivalent of gas-guzzling, we may have hit peak suburb. When migration patterns are starting to head in a different direction, when the market has changed its mind on what’s valuable, when Whole Foods opens in Harlem and Toll Brothers takes over Manhattan, it’s hard to deny we’re at the beginning of a serious transformation.


pages: 294 words: 80,084

Tomorrowland: Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact by Steven Kotler

adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, Alexander Shulgin, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Biosphere 2, Burning Man, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, Dean Kamen, Dennis Tito, epigenetics, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, haute couture, Helicobacter pylori, interchangeable parts, Kevin Kelly, life extension, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, North Sea oil, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, private spaceflight, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, theory of mind, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

Dozens of new plants were cancelled. One became a coal factory. In America, no new plants have been ordered in over thirty years. As far as most are concerned, that was the end of the story. 2. This might have stayed the end of that story except, in the early 2000s, we started hearing other tales. Global warming, peak oil, resource wars — the list goes on. And it’s this list that’s put the nuclear option back on the table, a process well summarized by Peter Schwartz and Spencer Reiss in a recent Wired article: “Burning hydrocarbons is a luxury that a planet with six billion energy-hungry souls can’t afford. There is only one sane, practical alternative: nuclear power.”


pages: 305 words: 79,356

Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit by Loren C. Steffy

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, clean water, corporate governance, corporate raider, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shock, peak oil, Piper Alpha, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, tech worker, Timothy McVeigh

Bringing the platform into production, along with its sister project, Atlantis, would “make an enormous difference to BP’s financial performance,” Hayward predicted. Thunder Horse’s delays in reaching “first oil” had been costly. Not only had the repairs been expensive, but the lost time meant that when the field began producing in July 2008, it had missed the 157 1 58 D R O W N I N G I N O I L peak oil prices of the previous summer. Thunder Horse was ready to run just as a global recession was taking hold, hobbling worldwide demand for oil. Crude prices tumbled. No matter. For BP, the benefits were as much psychological as financial. Thunder Horse represented everything that BP employees, from Hayward on down, wanted the company to be, the sort of stunning undertaking for which BP wanted to be known.


pages: 287 words: 81,970

The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Coming Currency Crisis With Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments by Charles Goyette

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Elliott wave, fiat currency, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, housing crisis, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, index fund, junk bonds, Lao Tzu, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, McMansion, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, National Debt Clock, oil shock, peak oil, pushing on a string, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, short selling, Silicon Valley, transaction costs

Lesley Stahl’s report displayed one oil project that demanded removal of 100 million cubic feet of sand dunes just to build an airstrip, while a 400-mile pipeline had to be constructed in an unforgiving terrain in which temperatures can reach 135 degrees. Another, at the Khurais oil field, is described as the biggest oil project in history. Because of inadequate pressure, a 150-mile pipeline was built from the sea to pump in 84 million gallons of seawater each day. Peak Oil, the theory that world oil production has reached its maximum level, has to contend with a moving target. New drill bits and recovery methods make oil accessible at places it couldn’t be tapped years ago. But it all comes at a cost. Equipment wears out; infrastructure has to be maintained. Russia has been able to boost its proved reserves in western Siberia with new technology, but when Russian oil production dipped in 2008, it was because of insufficient reinvestment.


pages: 309 words: 84,038

Bike Boom: The Unexpected Resurgence of Cycling by Carlton Reid

1960s counterculture, autonomous vehicles, Beeching cuts, bike sharing, California gold rush, car-free, cognitive dissonance, driverless car, Ford Model T, Haight Ashbury, Jane Jacobs, Kickstarter, military-industrial complex, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stop de Kindermoord, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, urban planning, urban renewal, Whole Earth Catalog, Yom Kippur War

Along with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Udall’s book was required reading for budding environmentalists, of whom there was a small but growing number in the early 1960s. A decade later, in a 1972 article for Atlantic Monthly, “The Last Traffic Jam,” Udall was one of the first to write about what became known as “peak oil,” and he also talked of “livable cities” and said the “end of automania would … contribute greatly to ending suburban sprawl.” This, Udall wrote, “would lead to the building of more compact, sensitively planned communities in the future—and it would prompt many cities to build quick, quiet, and convenient modes of transportation ranging from bicycle paths to mass transit systems.”


Toast by Stross, Charles

anthropic principle, Buckminster Fuller, cosmological principle, dark matter, disinformation, double helix, Ernest Rutherford, Extropian, Fairchild Semiconductor, flag carrier, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Free Software Foundation, Future Shock, Gary Kildall, glass ceiling, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, Higgs boson, hydroponic farming, It's morning again in America, junk bonds, Khyber Pass, launch on warning, Mars Rover, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, NP-complete, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, performance metric, phenotype, plutocrats, punch-card reader, Recombinant DNA, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, slashdot, speech recognition, strong AI, traveling salesman, Turing test, urban renewal, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Review, Y2K

First, the halcyon days of the late 1990s boom economy burst: then a cabal of smart, ingenious, and deter- mined engineering students carried out a daring attack—or, equally truthfully, committed an atrocious act of mass-murder that shocked the world: it all depends on where you stand in relation to the aftermath of Gavrilo Princip’s fatal shots in 1914. Two wars later—and a city destroyed by a hurricane—and there’s gloom all over. Peak Oil seems to be just around the corner, with the $10 gallon of gas looming, draco- nian clamp-downs on civil liberties seen as a necessity to prevent further acts of terrorism, global climate change is beginning to bite, species are going extinct at a rate that hasn’t been seen since the end of the Triassic, and we still can’t put an astronaut back on the Moon.


pages: 285 words: 86,174

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy by Chris Hayes

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, carried interest, circulation of elites, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, Gunnar Myrdal, hiring and firing, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Kenneth Arrow, Mark Zuckerberg, mass affluent, mass incarceration, means of production, meritocracy, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, money market fund, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, peak oil, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, radical decentralization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Savings and loan crisis, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, Vilfredo Pareto, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

.”: See “Energy Update: 30% Say Global Warming a Very Serious Problem,” Rasmussen Reports, January 7, 2012, http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/energy_update, accessed January 20, 2012. 46 “At no other time in U.S. history were the news media more influential”: Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 7. 47 “there is no doubt”: Ibid., p. 6. 48 “We’re marching over the cliff”: See interview with Noam Chomsky in “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate,” Videonation, www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUmwy0VTnqM&feature=player_embedded, accessed February 22, 2012. 49 “State and Terrorist Conspiracies”: Available at http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf, accessed January 19, 2012. 50 “Institutions are very important”: “Frost Over the World: Julian Assange Interview,” Aljazeera, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/frostovertheworld/2010/12/201012228384924314.html, accessed January 19, 2012.


pages: 290 words: 85,847

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next by Tom Standage

accelerated depreciation, active transport: walking or cycling, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-city movement, bike sharing, car-free, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Chris Urmson, City Beautiful movement, Clapham omnibus, congestion charging, coronavirus, COVID-19, deep learning, Didi Chuxing, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Elaine Herzberg, Elon Musk, flex fuel, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, garden city movement, General Motors Futurama, Ida Tarbell, Induced demand, interchangeable parts, invention of the wheel, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, jitney, Joan Didion, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, minimum wage unemployment, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, peak oil, prompt engineering, Ralph Nader, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, safety bicycle, self-driving car, social distancing, Steve Jobs, streetcar suburb, tech bro, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbiased observer, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, W. E. B. Du Bois, walkable city, white flight, wikimedia commons, Yom Kippur War, Zipcar

After plunging during the financial crisis of 2008–9, sales swiftly resumed their upward climb, and global light-vehicle sales hit an all-time high in 2017 of 95 million vehicles—driven by booming sales in China, which had become the world’s largest car market in 2010, and by the global popularity of SUVs. So much for the idea that concerns over traffic, safety, pollution, climate change, or “peak oil” would lead to a change of heart. Despite decades of predictions to the contrary, there was no sign of consumers turning away from the automobile. In his 2008 book Autophobia, the historian Brian Ladd concluded, “Change seems both inevitable and vitally necessary. Yet it does not appear imminent … Individual decisions have consistently favored greater car use, whether in spite of public policies to discourage it, or because of policies that encourage it.


The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East by Andrew Scott Cooper

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Boycotts of Israel, energy security, falling living standards, friendly fire, full employment, Future Shock, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, interchangeable parts, Kickstarter, land reform, MITM: man-in-the-middle, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, RAND corporation, rising living standards, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, strikebreaker, unbiased observer, uranium enrichment, urban planning, Yom Kippur War

You can spread the bad news and add that it comes from someone who knows what he’s talking about. I know everything there is to know about oil, everything. I’m a real specialist and it’s as a specialist that I must tell you the price of oil must rise. There’s no other solution.” The Shah prided himself on being an oil man of the new era. He was an early and avid proponent of peak oil, arguing that the world’s major oil fields would run out of petroleum in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Iran was expected to maximize its oil production from 5.8 million barrels per day in 1973 to 9 million barrels per day in 1976–77. Iran’s oil would then level off and enter several decades of decline.

., 327 Olin Foundation, 392 Oman, 19, 130, 140 Operation Ajax, 22–23, 24, 85, 142, 340 Operation Alkali Canyon, 107–8 Operation Enhance Plus, 75–77 Operation Mudhen, 74 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 160, 345 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 1, 4, 5–6, 7, 10, 143, 158, 160, 174, 175, 185, 189–90, 200, 206, 227, 229, 233, 238, 254, 268, 269, 271, 275–77, 293, 295, 301, 302, 327, 328, 330, 331, 332, 334, 340, 348, 366, 384, 440n Bali meeting of, 311 Doha meeting of, 317, 327, 354, 358–61 hardened U.S. policy for, 346–47, 350, 353 and settlement of Oil War, 382–83 at Tehran summit, 145–46, 172 Vienna meeting of, 278 Oriol y Urquijo, Antonio María de, 357 Overseas Aleutian, 88–89 Packard, David, 40 Pahlavi National Library, 186 Pakistan, 19, 42, 46, 59, 62, 67, 93, 102, 134, 163, 215, 221, 281, 317, 385 India’s 1971 war with, see India-Pakistan War of 1971 Kissinger’s 1974 visit to, 219–20 Pakravan, Fatemeh, 100, 385 Pakravan, Hassan, 49, 100, 385 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 122, 312, 370 Panama, 316 Pan American airlines, 204, 217, 254 pan-Islamism, 2 Park Police, U.S., 388–89 Parsa, Nadina, 62 Parti Québécois, Canadian, 346 Patterson, Donald, 455n Peace Corps, 60, 216, 256 peak oil, 139 Peres, Shimon, 225–26, 243 Pérez, Carlos Andrés, 175, 330–31 Perle, Richard, 248 Persian Book of Kings, The (Ferdowsi), 1, 15, 17, 197 Persian Gulf, 59, 90 British pullout from, 19, 21, 44 oil of, 19–20 see also specific countries Peru, 315, 316 Peter I (the Great), Czar of Russia, 63 Peterson, Peter, 81, 89 Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, 383 Philippines, 46 Phillips, Mark, 135 Pickering, Thomas, 320 Plan and Budget Organization, Iranian, 141, 181, 185, 264, 271, 295, 355, 372, 386 Planet Oil and Minerals, 35 Poland, 160 Politburo, Soviet, 103 Pompidou, Georges, 145, 165–66, 280 Porter, William, 328–29 Portugal, 8, 159, 180, 194, 195–96, 243, 310, 357, 361, 363 coup attempts in, 167–68, 246 1976 economic crisis in, 333, 346, 350–51, 356 1976 political crisis in, 309 Powers, Thomas, 88 Pravda, 215 Presidential Succession Act of 1792, 118 Prince, Harold, 63 Project Independence, 144, 353 Propeller Club, 114 Puerto Rico, 310 Qaddafi, Muammar al-, 52, 109–10, 112, 116, 123, 132, 240 Qatar, 124, 189, 275 Quinn, Sally, 254, 413n Rabin, Yitzhak, 196, 225–26, 228–29, 243–44 Radford, Charles, 57–58 Radji, Parviz, 384 Rainier, Prince of Monaco, 53 Ramsbotham, Peter, 149 RAND Corporation, 337 Rappleye, Willard, Jr., 176 Rastakhiz, 360 Razavi, Hossein, 186 Reagan, Ronald, 28, 231, 288, 289, 323–24 Reagan Revolution, 392 Republican Party, U.S., 231, 268, 319, 323–24, 328, 375, 392 Resurgence Party, Iranian, 375, 378 Reza Cyrus Pahlavi, Crown Prince of Iran, 100, 142, 304, 391 Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, 21, 63, 219 reforms of, 63–64 Rhodesia, 159 Richard Nixon Presidential Archives Foundation, 392 Richard R.


pages: 351 words: 93,982

Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies by Otto Scharmer, Katrin Kaufer

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Branko Milanovic, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, do what you love, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Fractional reserve banking, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, market bubble, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, new economy, offshore financial centre, Paradox of Choice, peak oil, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, technology bubble, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, working poor, Zipcar

Stakeholder capitalism, or Society 3.0, as practiced in many countries, deals relatively well with the classical externalities through wealth redistribution, social security, environmental regulation, farm subsidies, and development aid. However, it fails to react in a timely manner to global challenges such as peak oil, climate change, resource scarcity, and changing demographics. Over time, response mechanisms such as farm subsidies or subsidies for ethanol-based biofuel become part of the problem rather than the solution.10 There are three essential limitations of Society 3.0: It is biased in favor of special-interest groups, it reacts mostly to negative externalities, and it has only a limited capacity for intentionally creating positive externalities.


pages: 323 words: 89,795

Food and Fuel: Solutions for the Future by Andrew Heintzman, Evan Solomon, Eric Schlosser

agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, big-box store, California energy crisis, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate social responsibility, David Brooks, deindustrialization, distributed generation, electricity market, energy security, Exxon Valdez, flex fuel, full employment, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, hydrogen economy, Kickstarter, land reform, megaproject, microcredit, Negawatt, Nelson Mandela, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, social contagion, statistical model, Tragedy of the Commons, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

This is, perhaps, the ultimate measure of our deep and problematic connection to global networks of resource exploration and consumption. Our energy empire is large but stretched dangerously thin. The story isn’t merely about linear depletion and the bell-curve graphs of oil and gas decline favoured by peak oil advocates: it’s about how the quest for unconventional and marginal supplies of energy is progressively sabotaging the economy and efforts to transition to greener outcomes. It’s as though the world’s energy system, left unchecked, engineers its own crisis; new solutions are often transitory, effectively mere stopgap measures within a limited economic horizon.


pages: 304 words: 88,773

The Ghost Map: A Street, an Epidemic and the Hidden Power of Urban Networks. by Steven Johnson

call centre, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Dean Kamen, digital map, double helix, edge city, Ford Model T, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Earth, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, John Nash: game theory, John Snow's cholera map, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, mass immigration, megacity, mutually assured destruction, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, pattern recognition, peak oil, side project, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, the scientific method, trade route, unbiased observer, working poor

page 226 “In the Broad Street outbreak” Quoted in Rawnsley, p. 76. page 227 “that in any profession the highest order” Rawnsley, p. 206. page 232 Two-thirds of the women living in rural areas Statistics from “State of World Population 1996.” See http://www.unfpa.org/swp/1996/. page 233 “Virtually any service system” Toby Hemenway, “Cities, Peak Oil, and Sustainability.” Published at http://www.patternliteracy.com/urban2.html. page 234 If we’re going to survive as a planet Much has been made of the staggering size of the environmental footprint of today’s modern city, the area of land required to support sustainably the energy intakes of the city’s population.


pages: 293 words: 97,431

You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall by Colin Ellard

A Pattern Language, call centre, car-free, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, classic study, congestion pricing, Frank Gehry, global village, Google Earth, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, job satisfaction, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, New Urbanism, peak oil, polynesian navigation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Snow Crash, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, traveling salesman, urban planning, urban sprawl

A fascinating repository of facts and figures related to the worldwide problem of urban sprawl can be found in the book by Jeffrey Kenworthy and Felix Laube entitled An International Sourcebook of Automobile Dependence in Cities, 1960-1990 (University Press of Colorado: Boulder, CO, 1999). 24. One of the most widely cited (and frightening) views of the coming changes related to peak oil is Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (Grove Press: New York, 2006). 25. The history of Portland’s experiences with Oregon’s groundbreaking 1973 restrictions on urban sprawl, as well as many other positive examples of smart growth approaches, can be found in the book by F.


pages: 269 words: 104,430

Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives by Catherine Lutz, Anne Lutz Fernandez

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, book value, car-free, carbon footprint, collateralized debt obligation, congestion pricing, failed state, feminist movement, Ford Model T, fudge factor, Gordon Gekko, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, inventory management, Lewis Mumford, market design, market fundamentalism, mortgage tax deduction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, New Urbanism, oil shock, peak oil, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, traffic fines, traumatic brain injury, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, Zipcar

Those countries collectively took in $750 billion in oil revenues in 2007, much of it from Americans at the pump, from Davenport, Iowa, to Binghamton, New York. Gas prices grab the most attention and generate the fiercest agitation at least in part, it seems, because we have come to think of gas as a birthright and a necessity. Like water, it should flow easily and cheaply, as it has long done. More consumers have come to understand the concept of peak oil— that world reserves are finite and that production may have already reached or will soon reach a peak and begin to fall. They have also heard or read extensive news reports about the rise of demand in China and India. Yet they also tend to believe it should be a top national policy priority to keep oil economical.


pages: 346 words: 102,625

Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker

8-hour work day, active transport: walking or cycling, barriers to entry, book value, buy and hold, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, delayed gratification, discounted cash flows, diversification, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, dumpster diving, Easter island, fake it until you make it, financial engineering, financial independence, game design, index fund, invention of the steam engine, inventory management, junk bonds, lateral thinking, lifestyle creep, loose coupling, low interest rates, market bubble, McMansion, passive income, peak oil, place-making, planned obsolescence, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, power law, psychological pricing, retail therapy, risk free rate, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, wage slave, working poor

We also see the emerging problems of consumer society--stress, overwork, inflation, lack of balance, lack of paradigm-shifting innovation, stagnation, and loss of control--both on a personal, and occasionally a national scale. This indicates that this figure is beginning to come to a full circle. It's not clear which direction the next cycle will take humanity--brave new world, information revolution and the discovery of commercial fusion, or peak oil/water, irreversible climate crisis, and the decline and fall of civilization.24 Yet this will all be decided by those who live now; in part by you, and none will be more ideally prepared for a changing world, indeed to change the world, than a Renaissance man.25 The Renaissance ideal A Renaissance man excels in a wide range of subjects.


pages: 391 words: 97,018

Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline . . . And the Rise of a New Economy by Daniel Gross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset-backed security, Bakken shale, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, congestion pricing, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, demand response, Donald Trump, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, illegal immigration, index fund, intangible asset, intermodal, inventory management, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, LNG terminal, low interest rates, low skilled workers, man camp, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, money market fund, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, plutocrats, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, risk tolerance, risk/return, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, the High Line, transit-oriented development, Wall-E, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Look at the deficit and the impact of the Fed’s zero-interest policy. Yes, we’ve recovered some economic ground, but there’s so much still to recover in housing and employment. Yes, the U.S. economy has entered its third year of expansion, but it’s likely to conk out at any minute. Yes, but what about housing? Yes, but what about global warming, peak oil, the deficit? As the economy lights candles, the Yessbuts call for more darkness. The usual response at the end of a book like this is to point a way forward by ticking off a host of sensible, sane policy prescriptions that will lead the United States back to the economic promised land. I’m going to resist the temptation of creating yet another goo-goo laundry list.


pages: 340 words: 101,675

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction by Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon, air gap, Anthropocene, augmented reality, blockchain, bounce rate, call centre, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cepheid variable, charter city, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deepfake, defense in depth, discrete time, disinformation, disintermediation, driverless car, drone strike, food desert, game design, gamification, gravity well, hive mind, hydroponic farming, impulse control, income inequality, job automation, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, life extension, lifelogging, low earth orbit, machine translation, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral panic, Neal Stephenson, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, peak oil, peer-to-peer, phenotype, planned obsolescence, post scarcity, precariat, precautionary principle, prediction markets, rewilding, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, social graph, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, telepresence, transfer pricing, tulip mania, Turing test, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, VTOL, working-age population

For two centuries, oil—or, more broadly, petroleum—was the lifeblood of the world economy thanks to its high energy density and its ease of transportation through pipelines and on tankers. At its peak, more than one hundred million barrels of oil were transported and consumed per day, with the US, EU, China, and India accounting for much of the total. By the twenty-first century, new extraction methods from shale rock, tar sands, and deep-sea drilling meant that peak oil was not considered to be a major problem. Even so, the grave political and environmental costs of an overdependence on oil led many countries to seek alternatives. But what could replace it? The vast majority was used to fuel cars, planes, and other vehicles. While it was relatively straightforward to build electric cars that could travel short distances, high-capacity batteries remained expensive for years, and finding a good alternative to jet fuel was even trickier.


pages: 944 words: 243,883

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Atul Gawande, banking crisis, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, decarbonisation, disinformation, energy security, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Global Witness, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, kremlinology, market fundamentalism, McMansion, medical malpractice, Mikhail Gorbachev, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, place-making, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Scramble for Africa, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, smart meter, statistical model, Steve Jobs, two and twenty, WikiLeaks

ExxonMobil faced serious trials as a business in the years ahead—annual reserve replacement, maintaining its share price by extracting full value from XTO’s unconventional gas holdings, and global competition—but its place at the heart of America’s energy economy, as a bastion of fossil fuel optimism, remained unchallenged. Forecasting “peak oil,” the moment when world supply will reach its height and begin to decline, is a fool’s errand, the long record of inaccurate past forecasts would suggest. At a minimum, there appears to be enough oil left in the world to meet projected rates of demand for several decades, and likely longer. Gas and coal supplies are even more abundant.

., xiv, 400–401, 402–3, 406–7 Obiang, Gabriel, 287–88, 525–26 Obiang, Teodorin, 525, 526–28, 622 Obiang, Teodoro Nguema, xiv, 140–41, 150–51, 164, 297, 298, 299, 356, 509, 510, 512–13, 528, 529–30, 622 arms purchases and, 517–18 attempted coup and, 282–84, 286–87, 289, 291 Gamble’s meeting with, 296–97 Israel relations and, 516–17 Powell’s meeting with, 294–95 Rice’s meeting with, 518–20 Riggs Bank and, 144, 152–53, 287–88 succession question and, 525–26 U.S. relations and, 141–49, 151, 152, 283, 291, 294 Occidental Petroleum, 342, 548–49 Oceaneering International, 451 offshore drilling, 542–43 accident response plans and, 616 blowout preventer and, 607 deaths and injuries and, 607 ExxonMobil and, 608–9 federal regulation of, 606–7 in Gulf of Mexico, 604–5, 611 leasing and, 607 Obama and, 607–8 Oil Spill Response Plan and, 608–9 politics and, 605–6 Santa Barbara blowout and, 605 2008 election and, 607 see also Deepwater Horizon disaster oil: biomass origin of, 126–27 poisonous effects of, 126, 128–31 Oil and Energy Working Group, 232 Oil & Gas Journal, 251, 544 Oil Drum, The, 593 oil embargoes, 3, 29, 52, 80, 95, 237, 544 oil industry, 4, 17, 18, 191, 192 climate change debate and, 84–89, 310–11 climate policy and, 540–41 oil security and, 237–40 peak oil and, 420–21, 617 reserve replacement problem in, 54–57, 188–93 resource nationalism and, 51–55 retail gas stations and, 316–17 R.O.C.E. performance measures in, 49–50 Royal Dutch Shell scandal and, 188–89 Senate hearings on, 320–22 state-owned companies and, 53–54 2000 election and, 68–69 see also alternate energy Oil Ministry, Iraqi, 233, 559, 563–64, 571–72, 574 Oil Spill Response Plan, 608–9 Okah, Henry, 463 Old Field Development, 158 Olo, Juan, 142, 638n O’Melveny & Myers, 131 One Hundred Years of Solitude (García Márquez), 601 O’Neill, Paul, 89, 91, 254–55 Open Russia Foundation, 266 Open Society program, 523 Operations Integrity Management System (O.I.M.S.), 32–33, 39, 41, 94, 164, 189–90, 223, 398, 405 Opinion Leader Dialogue, 343 O’Reilly, David J., 270, 320, 370 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 569 Organization of African Unity, 150 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (O.P.E.C.), 52, 59, 204, 222, 233, 238 O.S.D.


pages: 1,034 words: 241,773

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

Social media have encouraged younger people to show off their experiences rather than their cars and wardrobes, and hipsterization leads them to distinguish themselves by their tastes in beer, coffee, and music. The era of the Beach Boys and American Graffiti is over: half of American eighteen-year-olds do not have a driver’s license.38 The expression “Peak Oil,” which became popular after the energy crises of the 1970s, refers to the year that the world would reach its maximum extraction of petroleum. Ausubel notes that because of the demographic transition, densification, and dematerialization, we may have reached Peak Children, Peak Farmland, Peak Timber, Peak Paper, and Peak Car.

Robert, 308 optimism attacks on, 39, 49 complacent vs. conditional, 154–5 enlightenment as, 7 historical improvement as basis for, 51, 327–8 Optimism Gap, 40, 115, 225–6, 268 perceived as salesmanship, 49 rational (pessimistic hopefulness, possibilism, protopia, opti-realism), 52, 344–5, 482n55 See also pessimism order improbability of, 15–16, 24, 25 life as, 18–19, 20 meaning of life as creation despite entropy, 17 self-organization, 17–19 Orlando nightclub massacre, 215, 216 Orlov, Vadim Pavlovich, 479n93 Osgood, Charles, 318 Osler, William, 63 Ottoman Empire, 430, 439 Our World in Data (Web site), xviii, 52 Pacification Process, 43 pacifist’s dilemma, 166, 414, 488n10 Paddock, William and Paul, 74 Pagden, Anthony, 482n6 Pagel, Mark, 477n20 Paine, Thomas, 409 Pakistan agriculture in, 76 climate change and, 151 as democracy, 207 and literacy, female, 239, 240 nuclear weapons and, 307–8, 317, 318, 320 polio in, 65 terrorist deaths in, 193 Palin, Sarah, 374–5 Pan-African Parliament, 222 Panama, 85, 86 pantheism, 8, 422 paradox of value (income statistics can mislead) definition of, 82 globalization and, 117 increasing with humanism, 332–3 inequality and, 117 technology and, 117, 332–3 paranormal phenomena, 422, 427, 428 Parfit, Derek, 429 Paris, terrorism and, 219 Paris Agreement on climate, 134, 152, 335, 449 Paris Peace Pact (1928), 163–4 Parker, Dorothy, 248, 277 Parker, Theodore, 223 Pascal, Blaise, 162 Pasteur, Louis, 63 Paulsen, Pat, 332, 365 peace, 13–14, 156–66 democracy as fostering, 162–3 education as fostering, 235 as inherently worthy, 164–5, 166 peacekeeping forces, success of, 404–5 romantic militarism giving way to, 165–6 as self-reinforcing, 164 See also Long Peace; war Peak Car, Carbon, Children, Coal, Paper, Timber, 144 Peak Farmland, 76, 144 Peak Oil, 135 Peak Stuff, 135–6 Peanuts (comic), 377 Pearl Harbor, 196 pedestrian deaths, 179–80, 179 Pelopidas, Benoît, 316 period (zeitgeist) effects, 224–5 happiness and, 272–4, 275 religious belief and, 437–8 See also age (life cycle) effects; cohort effects permafrost, melting, 136 Perry, William, 316, 319 Persia, ancient, 23, 398 Peru, 158, 160 pessimism, 33, 39–52 about democratization, 201 about human rights, 207 about life expectancy, 53 mistaken for moral seriousness, 49 as one-upmanship, 49 and populism, xvii, 50, 343–4 about racism, sexism, and homophobia, 215 and sympathy, expansion of circle of, 49 about terrorism, 191 and Trump’s election, 340 See also fatalism; intellectuals; media; optimism; romantic heroism —CULTURAL PESSIMISM, 33 doomsday scenarios from, 293, 294 German, 165 and happiness, lack of, 263–4, 268 and the humanities, malaise of, 406 quality of life, 247 and romantic militarism, 165–6 about science, 400 —HISTORICAL PESSIMISM, 33 and democracy, 201 and nuclear war, 308 root-causism, 169–71 petroleum carbon-to-hydrogen ratio of, 143 deaths caused by, 146–7 new technologies for use of, 330 See also climate change; coal; energy Pew Research Center, 216, 222 pharmaceutical drugs.


Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, autonomous vehicles, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon tax, circular economy, colonial rule, complexity theory, coronavirus, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Easter island, endogenous growth, energy transition, epigenetics, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, general purpose technology, Gregor Mendel, happiness index / gross national happiness, Helicobacter pylori, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, knowledge economy, Kondratiev cycle, labor-force participation, Law of Accelerating Returns, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, meta-analysis, microbiome, microplastics / micro fibres, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, old age dependency ratio, optical character recognition, out of africa, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, power law, Productivity paradox, profit motive, purchasing power parity, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Republic of Letters, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, South China Sea, synthetic biology, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, three-masted sailing ship, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, trade route, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, yield curve

As already noted, since the 1990s there have been also many studies of the limits to the growing extraction of mineral resources in general and to an imminent arrival of peak global oil production in particular (Deffeyes 2003)—and, given oil’s importance in the global economy, of inevitable and permanent economic downturn. I labeled this wave a new catastrophist cult, and wrote that the proponents of imminent peak oil “resort to deliberately alarmist arguments as they mix incontestable facts with caricatures of complex realities and as they ignore anything that does not fit their preconceived conclusions in order to issue their obituaries of modern civilization” (Smil 2006a, 22). More than a decade later, the global output of oil keeps on slowly rising and world oil prices remain relatively low.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smil, V. 2001. Enriching the Earth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smil, V. 2002. The Earth’s Biosphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smil, V. 2003. Energy at the Crossroads. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smil, V. 2005. Creating the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Smil, V. 2006a. Peak oil: A catastrophist cult and complex realities. World Watch 19:22–24. Smil, V. 2006b. Transforming the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Smil, V. 2007. The unprecedented shift in Japan’s population: Numbers, age, and prospect. Japan Focus 5(4). http://apjjf.org/-Vaclav-Smil/2411/article.html.


pages: 565 words: 122,605

The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us by Joel Kotkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alvin Toffler, autonomous vehicles, birth tourism , blue-collar work, British Empire, carbon footprint, Celebration, Florida, citizen journalism, colonial rule, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, demographic winter, Deng Xiaoping, Downton Abbey, edge city, Edward Glaeser, financial engineering, financial independence, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Gini coefficient, Google bus, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, intentional community, Jane Jacobs, labor-force participation, land reform, Lewis Mumford, life extension, market bubble, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, microapartment, new economy, New Urbanism, Own Your Own Home, peak oil, pensions crisis, Peter Calthorpe, post-industrial society, RAND corporation, Richard Florida, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Seaside, Florida, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, starchitect, Stewart Brand, streetcar suburb, Ted Nelson, the built environment, trade route, transit-oriented development, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, young professional

In his vision, the house becomes “the electronic cottage,” the center of a new economy, with benefits not only for the environment but also for families, partly from allowing mothers and fathers to work while being active parents.159 The implication for housing forms is fairly obvious: as people use houses for work, they are likely to look for larger—not smaller—and more comfortable places to live. CAN SUBURBS BE GREENER? Preferences and market changes point to continued urban expansion, but such a trend is certain to engender opposition from the influential environmental movement. A decade ago, many environmentalists insisted that suburbs would collapse by themselves due to “peak oil,” a theory that maintained that fossil fuel supplies were running dangerously low. Author James Howard Kunstler boldly predicted that high energy costs would make “the logistics of daily life impossible” in the suburbs.160 Yet the prospect of an energy-driven suburban collapse has become increasingly unlikely, in large part due to recent advances in US oil and gas production that have driven prices down.161 Unable to wait for energy shortages to do their work, retro-urbanists increasingly base their opposition to suburbs on concerns over climate change instead.162 Densification, claims influential architect Peter Calthorpe, is no less than “a climate change antibiotic.”163 This strong linkage of suburbs to climate change proves somewhat extravagant and perhaps more than a little self-serving.


pages: 424 words: 108,768

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, bioinformatics, clean water, Columbian Exchange, decarbonisation, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, Eratosthenes, financial innovation, Google Earth, Khyber Pass, Malacca Straits, megacity, meta-analysis, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Pax Mongolica, peak oil, phenotype, rewilding, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, spice trade, Suez crisis 1956, supervolcano, trade route, transatlantic slave trade

The Persian Gulf, the most abundant region for oil and gas today, as well as the substantial deposits in western Siberia, the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea and Venezuela, were all produced by the combination of geological processes at this time.40 CUTTING OUT THE MIDDLEMAN While coal powered the Industrial Revolution and oil carried us into our modern technological civilisation, humanity’s exploitation of these fossil fuels has brought with it some now well-established global problems. Since the early seventeenth century we’ve been fervently digging up this buried ancient carbon that took tens of millions of years for the Earth to slowly stockpile, and we burned a great deal of it in just a few centuries. While there are concerns over peak oil and the diminishing supply of crude, there is plenty of accessible coal still underground–certainly another few centuries’ worth at current consumption rates.41 In this sense, then, we’re not currently facing another energy crisis but a climate crisis, born as a result of our past solution to our energy hunger.


pages: 376 words: 109,092

Paper Promises by Philip Coggan

accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, delayed gratification, diversified portfolio, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, fear of failure, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, German hyperinflation, global reserve currency, Goodhart's law, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, paradox of thrift, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price stability, principal–agent problem, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, time value of money, too big to fail, trade route, tulip mania, value at risk, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

After trees, we exploited the coal and oil that were nearest the surface, or cost less to refine. Saudi Arabia is so rich because its oil is so cheap to extract; a few dollars per barrel. Some people think the Saudi oil reserves have been overstated and that we have already reached maximum global oil production – peak-oil theory, as it is known. Certainly, individual areas have peaked, including the North Sea fields between Britain and Norway. Others argue that it is all a matter of price. High prices will create the incentive to find and exploit new reserves. But the new reserves that have been found in recent years are either expensive to exploit (under the Atlantic near Brazil, for example) or in politically difficult places.


pages: 366 words: 107,145

Fuller Memorandum by Stross, Charles

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Beeching cuts, Bletchley Park, British Empire, carbon credits, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, congestion charging, Crossrail, death from overwork, dumpster diving, escalation ladder, false flag, finite state, Firefox, Herman Kahn, HyperCard, invisible hand, land reform, linear programming, messenger bag, MITM: man-in-the-middle, operational security, peak oil, Plato's cave, post-work, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, quantum entanglement, reality distortion field, security theater, sensible shoes, side project, Sloane Ranger, telemarketer, Turing machine

If you think the UK's been sliding into an Orwellian nightmare for the past decade, policed by cameras on every doorstep, you're right--but there is a reason for it: the MAGINOT BLUE STARS defense network and its SCORPION STARE basilisk cameras are fully deployed, ready to track and zap the first outbreaks. There are other, less obvious defensive measures. Our budget's been rising lately; ever wondered why there are so many police vans with cameras on the streets? CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is coming, and it's going to be perilous in the extreme. It's a bigger threat than global warming, peak oil, and the cold war rolled into one. We may not live to see the light at the other end of the tunnel, as we finally drift out from the fatal conjunction and the baleful stars close their eyes and reality returns to normal. Survival is far from assured--it may not even be likely. But one thing's for sure: we're going to give it our best shot.


pages: 379 words: 108,129

An Optimist's Tour of the Future by Mark Stevenson

23andMe, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Andy Kessler, Apollo 11, augmented reality, bank run, Boston Dynamics, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon-based life, clean water, computer age, decarbonisation, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, flex fuel, Ford Model T, Future Shock, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, Hans Rosling, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of agriculture, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, Leonard Kleinrock, life extension, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nick Bostrom, off grid, packet switching, peak oil, pre–internet, private spaceflight, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Rodney Brooks, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social intelligence, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, synthetic biology, TED Talk, the scientific method, Virgin Galactic, Wall-E, X Prize

It might even appeal to those who don’t buy the need for carbon neutral fuels. Today nearly ninety per cent of oil reserves are held by just thirteen countries, which makes the rest of the world dangerously dependent. The US, for instance, imported fifty-seven per cent of its oil in 2008. As reserves dwindle (and it’s pretty much accepted that we will reach ‘peak oil’ at some point in the next generation), the opportunity for conflict is obvious. And beyond the possibility of making any country which successfully adopts these technologies energy-independent, they also eradicate the sort of man-made disaster that devastated the US coasts of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.


pages: 324 words: 106,699

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, air gap, Berlin Wall, call centre, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, company town, disinformation, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Free Software Foundation, information security, it's over 9,000, job-hopping, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Neal Stephenson, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, operational security, pattern recognition, peak oil, pre–internet, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, sovereign wealth fund, surveillance capitalism, trade route, WikiLeaks, zero day

Come to think of it, maybe it was banking in general. Geneva is an expensive city and unabashedly posh, but as 2008 drew to a close its elegance seemed to tip over into extravagance, with a massive influx of the superrich—most of them from the Gulf states, many of them Saudi—enjoying the profits of peak oil prices on the cusp of the global financial crisis. These royal types were booking whole floors of five-star grand hotels and buying out the entire inventories of the luxury stores just across the bridge. They were putting on lavish banquets at the Michelin-starred restaurants and speeding their chrome-plated Lamborghinis down the cobbled streets.


pages: 422 words: 113,525

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, back-to-the-land, biofilm, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, business process, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, conceptual framework, Danny Hillis, dark matter, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, digital divide, Easter island, Elon Musk, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, glass ceiling, Google Earth, Hans Rosling, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, Jane Jacobs, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, Kibera, land tenure, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, megaproject, microbiome, military-industrial complex, New Urbanism, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, out of africa, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, rewilding, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, We are as Gods, wealth creators, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, William Langewiesche, working-age population, Y2K

Jared Diamond, biologist, conservationist, and author of Collapse (2004), had read Holdren’s report closely, so when he was asked by an audience member at a San Francisco talk if he “agreed with Stewart Brand in supporting the revival of nuclear,” he surprised the audience and me by saying yes: “To deal with our energy problems we need everything available to us, including nuclear power.” James Howard Kunstler, fervent opponent of suburbs, wrote a book in 2004 titled The Long Emergency. I’m persuaded by neither his expectation of how peak oil plays out nor his views on the fragility of big cities, but many environmentalists are, and they should note that he ends his “Beyond Oil” chapter with the words, “Nuclear power may be all that stands between what we identify as civilization and its alternative.” There is a category of prominent environmentalist that I predict will increase in coming years—the reluctant tolerators.


Wireless by Charles Stross

air gap, anthropic principle, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Buckminster Fuller, Cepheid variable, cognitive dissonance, colonial exploitation, cosmic microwave background, Easter island, epigenetics, finite state, Georg Cantor, gravity well, hive mind, hydroponic farming, jitney, Khyber Pass, Late Heavy Bombardment, launch on warning, lifelogging, Magellanic Cloud, mandelbrot fractal, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Neil Armstrong, peak oil, phenotype, Pluto: dwarf planet, security theater, sensible shoes, Turing machine, undersea cable

Pierce, for his part, found it oddly easier to deal with the second half of his training with a stable family life to fall back on. The Stasis were spread surprisingly thin across their multitrillion-year empire. The defining characteristic of his job seemed to be that he was only called for in turbulent, interesting times. Between peak oil and Spanish flu, from Carthage to the Cold War, his three-thousand-year beat sometimes seemed no more than a vale of tears—and a thin, poor, nightmare of a world at that, far from the mannered, drowsy contentment of the ten-thousand-year-long Hegemony. Most of his fellow students seemed to prefer the hedonistic abandon proffered by the Pleasure Empires, but Pierce held his own counsel and congratulated himself on his discovery of a more profound source of satisfaction.


pages: 451 words: 115,720

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex by Rupert Darwall

1960s counterculture, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Bakken shale, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, California energy crisis, carbon credits, carbon footprint, centre right, clean tech, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, disinformation, Donald Trump, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, gigafactory, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, market design, means of production, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, Murray Bookchin, Neil Armstrong, nuclear winter, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, Paris climate accords, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, plutocrats, postindustrial economy, precautionary principle, pre–internet, recommendation engine, renewable energy transition, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Solyndra, Strategic Defense Initiative, subprime mortgage crisis, tech baron, tech billionaire, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, women in the workforce, young professional

Their guru, Fritz Schumacher, had hailed the 1973 oil price shock as heralding the end of an era. World oil production then rose by 12 percent in 6 years. From the end of the 1990s, oil began to reverse a near two-decade trend of declining prices. In 2008, oil prices reached an inflation-adjusted peak not seen for 28 years, triggering a renewed bout of speculation on the imminence of peak oil. Now fracking had come along to make abundant what should have been scarce. Environmentalists mobilized. Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s foundation teamed up with Tides and the Ithaca, New York–based Park Foundation to pour money into grassroots antifracking campaigns to get statewide fracking bans in New York and Colorado.


pages: 421 words: 120,332

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith

Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, clean water, climate change refugee, Climategate, colonial rule, data science, deglobalization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, electricity market, energy security, flex fuel, G4S, global supply chain, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, guest worker program, Hans Island, hydrogen economy, ice-free Arctic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, land tenure, Martin Wolf, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Y2K

We now withdraw so much water that many of our mightiest and most historic rivers—like the Nile, the Colorado, the Yellow, the Indus—have barely a trickle left to meet the sea. The good news is that, unlike oil, which is ultimately finite, water is endlessly returned to us by the hydrologic cycle. Except for fossil groundwater, there is no such thing as “Peak Water” in the same sense as “Peak Oil.” It always comes back—somewhere—as rain or snow. It may be too much, or too little, or come at the wrong time, but it does come back. The bad news is that in addition to the aforementioned problems of too much, too little, or bad timing, our water sources can also become polluted. Finally, while it’s true that there is plenty of water circulating out there someplace, nearly all of it is useless to us.


pages: 414 words: 123,666

Merchants' War by Stross, Charles

British Empire, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, dumpster diving, East Village, guns versus butter model, indoor plumbing, military-industrial complex, offshore financial centre, operational security, packet switching, peak oil, stem cell, Timothy McVeigh

You know what the business with al-Qaeda is about? Oil. We're in Saudi Arabia because of the oil: bin Laden wants ns out of Saudi. We're going to go into Iraq because of the oil. Oil is leverage. Oil lets us put the Chinks and Europeans in their place. And we're running short of it, in case you hadn't noticed, there's this thing called peak oil coming and we've got analysis scratching their heads to ligure out how we're going to field it. We're not going to run out, but demand is going to exceed supply and the price is going to start climbing in a few years. Our planetary preeminence relies on us having cheap oil for our industries, while everyone else pays through the nose for it.


pages: 407 words: 121,458

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff by Fred Pearce

additive manufacturing, air freight, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, blood diamond, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, clean water, congestion charging, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, demographic transition, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, food miles, ghettoisation, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Kibera, Kickstarter, mass immigration, megacity, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, profit motive, race to the bottom, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, the built environment, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce

If metals ran low, we would always find more, or technology would create substitutes. The road to continued economic growth was clear. But now the rapacious demands of surging economies like China are beginning to undermine this optimism. At current rates of demand, there are thirty years of antimony and silver left, forty years of tin, and sixty years of copper. The date of peak oil production may be close. And, most worrying perhaps, a whole suite of new metals has become vital to the twenty-first century – many of which are in short supply even as they are being exploited for the first time. Our world now depends on indium, with a projected thirteen years of supply, on gallium and hafnium and terbium and ruthenium and, thanks to the mobile phone, tantalum.


pages: 416 words: 129,308

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant

Airbnb, animal electricity, Apollo Guidance Computer, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Black Lives Matter, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, cotton gin, deep learning, DeepMind, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frank Gehry, gigafactory, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Hangouts, Higgs boson, Huaqiangbei: the electronics market of Shenzhen, China, information security, Internet of things, Jacquard loom, John Gruber, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Large Hadron Collider, Lyft, M-Pesa, MITM: man-in-the-middle, more computing power than Apollo, Mother of all demos, natural language processing, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shock, pattern recognition, peak oil, pirate software, profit motive, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, special economic zone, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, TSMC, Turing test, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vannevar Bush, zero day

Environmentalism had swept into public consciousness after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (which exposed the dangers of DDT), the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the Cuyahoga river fire. Ford moved to address complaints that its cars were polluting cities and sucking down oil by experimenting with cleaner electric cars, which instilled spark and focus to battery development. Meanwhile, it appeared that oil production had begun to peak. Oil companies were nervously eyeing the future and looking for ways to diversify. “I joined Exxon in 1972,” Whittingham tells me. “They had decided to be an energy company, not just a petroleum and chemical company. They got into batteries, fuel cells, solar cells,” he says, and “at one point they were the largest producer of photovoltaic cells in the United States.”


pages: 422 words: 131,666

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, addicted to oil, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-globalists, AOL-Time Warner, banks create money, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, big-box store, Bretton Woods, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, colonial exploitation, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, computer age, congestion pricing, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death of newspapers, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, easy for humans, difficult for computers, financial innovation, Firefox, full employment, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Google Earth, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Rheingold, income per capita, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, loss aversion, market bubble, market design, Marshall McLuhan, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, negative equity, new economy, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, peak oil, peer-to-peer, place-making, placebo effect, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, private military company, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, RFID, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social software, Steve Jobs, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, union organizing, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Victor Gruen, white flight, working poor, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

With Streetsblog I set out to change that. I launched the blog with four goals in mind: First, I aimed to create a new journalistic beat covering a range of stories from the intense neighborhood-level battles over new bike lanes and parking spaces to the big questions around how New York City planned to address the challenge of peak oil and climate change. Second, I wanted Streetsblog to serve as a watchdog for the New York City Department of Transportation, an agency that no one was holding to account. Third, Streetsblog would educate New York City’s policy makers, press, and regular citizens about urban planning and transportation best practices that were emerging in other cities.


A Dominant Character by Samanth Subramanian

affirmative action, Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur Eddington, British Empire, CRISPR, double helix, Drosophila, Eddington experiment, epigenetics, Etonian, Fellow of the Royal Society, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, Louis Pasteur, peak oil, phenotype, statistical model, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, Tim Cook: Apple

By looking back on these developments from the future, he framed them as inescapable; by looking at them through the eyes of a foolish student, he avoided having to judge their ethics. But Haldane didn’t remain noncommittal about the value of science itself. Daedalus is known for many things—including its smart predictions about peak oil, humankind’s switch to wind and solar, the hydrogen fuel cell, and semi-ectogenetic test-tube babies. But it is, foremost, a manifesto for society on how to deal with its scientists, how to allow them to light the way to human happiness. In Daedalus, speaking of the 1920s and in his own voice, Haldane admitted that science had some mud on its face.


pages: 512 words: 131,112

Retrofitting Suburbia, Updated Edition: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones, June Williamson

accelerated depreciation, banking crisis, big-box store, bike sharing, call centre, carbon footprint, Donald Shoup, edge city, gentrification, global village, index fund, iterative process, Jane Jacobs, knowledge worker, land bank, Lewis Mumford, McMansion, megaproject, megastructure, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, place-making, postindustrial economy, Ray Oldenburg, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Savings and loan crisis, Seaside, Florida, Silicon Valley, skinny streets, streetcar suburb, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, transit-oriented development, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Victor Gruen, white flight, working poor, young professional, zero-sum game

Large new urbanist projects in particular are often derided as “instant cities” and “faux downtowns.”2 This kind of design critique applies to many suburban retrofits, but often fails to distinguish the detrimental effects of “instant architecture” from the potential benefits of “instant cities.” At a time when climate change and peak oil prices call for vast swaths of existing suburban areas to be retrofitted on a scale and at a speed that is beyond the capacity of incremental urbanism, it is worth recognizing when the kind of large-scale changes associated with “instant cities” might be welcomed rather than shunned. The global urgency of reducing greenhouse gases provides the latest and most time-sensitive imperative for reshaping sprawl development patterns, for converting areas that now foster the largest per capita carbon footprints into more sustainable, less auto-dependent places.3 The transforming of aging and underperforming shopping centers, office parks, garden apartment complexes, and other prototypical large suburban properties into more urban places allows new population growth to be redirected from metropolitan greenfield edges into more central, VMT-reducing, greyfield redevelopment.4 It also allows for the development of an incremental metropolitanism at a scale far more capable of confronting the problems of sprawl than incremental urbanism is.


pages: 458 words: 132,912

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, defund the police, deindustrialization, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, El Camino Real, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, old-boy network, Paris climate accords, Parler "social media", peak oil, Potemkin village, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, tech worker, Thomas L Friedman, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

US oil and gas production meant that there was no economic need to intervene in the Middle East, unless the purpose was to secure for the Europeans and Chinese—usually opposed to US policy in the Persian Gulf—their imported fuel or the safety of their often-used commercial sea lanes. There is no such thing as having years ago reached “peak oil”—the point at which Americans have drawn more oil from their ground than is left beneath it—and there will not be at least for the foreseeable future. At least two-thirds of the NATO alliance members likely would not or could not come to the assistance of any tiny frontline NATO member threatened by neighboring Russia.


pages: 497 words: 144,283

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

As America, Europe, and China invest in infrastructure with their neighbors, promoting regional integration and advancing global connectivity, they ultimately—if inadvertently—contribute to greater collective resilience. Whereas the quest for oil drove the Nazis into the Near East and the Japanese to Malaya, today we have energy abundance rather than scarcity—not “peak oil,” but “gas glut.” For more than a decade, Westerners have feared that China was locking up raw materials with an imperialist impulse reminiscent of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European empires. But it turns out that China’s huge investments in ramping up Latin American and African resource extraction have generated massive global supplies for the world market (even oversupply that has led to price collapses for certain commodities as China’s own demand has fallen).


pages: 532 words: 155,470

One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility by Zack Furness, Zachary Mooradian Furness

active transport: walking or cycling, affirmative action, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, back-to-the-land, bike sharing, Build a better mousetrap, Burning Man, car-free, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, conceptual framework, critique of consumerism, DIY culture, dumpster diving, Enrique Peñalosa, European colonialism, feminist movement, fixed-gear, food desert, Ford Model T, General Motors Futurama, ghettoisation, Golden Gate Park, independent contractor, interchangeable parts, intermodal, Internet Archive, Jane Jacobs, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, market fundamentalism, means of production, messenger bag, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, peak oil, place-making, post scarcity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, safety bicycle, Silicon Valley, sustainable-tourism, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, urban planning, vertical integration, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, work culture , working poor, Yom Kippur War

House appropriations Transportation Subcommittee is indicative of why the federal government is only now considering the idea of actually funding and improving, rather than dismantling and maligning, the only nationwide passenger rail system in the United States. Somewhere between these poles, a market-friendly environmental centrism is taking root through the advocacy of politicians like al Gore and scientists like Kenneth S. Deffeyes, the geologist most credited with drawing public attention to Hubbert’s “peak oil” hypothesis.6 On matters of transportation, Gore benignly calls for “higher mileage cars” while Deffeyes speaks for the bulk of americans who ironically see human-powered transportation— not the one hundred-year anomaly of the automobile—as part of an unrealistic, even radical, set of objectives: One possible stance, which i am not taking, says that we are despoiling the Earth, raping the resources, fouling the air, and that we should eat only organic food and ride bicycles.


pages: 459 words: 144,009

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, carbon tax, clean water, correlation coefficient, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, interchangeable parts, invention of writing, Jeff Bezos, low interest rates, medical malpractice, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, post-work, purchasing power parity, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Spirit Level, Timothy McVeigh, traffic fines, transcontinental railway, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

Industrial exploitation of coal was followed by exploitation of oil, oil shale, and natural gas. For instance, the first oil well that extracted oil from underground was a shallow well drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, followed by progressively deeper wells. There are debates about whether we have already reached “peak oil”—that is, whether we have consumed so much of the Earth’s accessible oil reserves that oil production will soon start to decline. However, there is no debate about the fact that the cheapest, most accessible, and least damaging sources of oil have already been used up. The U.S. can no longer scrape up surface oil or drill shallow wells in Pennsylvania.


pages: 653 words: 155,847

Energy: A Human History by Richard Rhodes

Albert Einstein, animal electricity, California gold rush, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Copley Medal, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, demographic transition, Dmitri Mendeleev, Drosophila, Edmond Halley, energy transition, Ernest Rutherford, Fellow of the Royal Society, flex fuel, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ralph Nader, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, Simon Kuznets, tacit knowledge, Ted Nordhaus, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, tontine, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, Vanguard fund, working poor, young professional

What immediately emerges to view is that after the oil crisis was surpassed in the 1980s, the market seems to have frozen, with each energy source maintaining its market share.”21 De Sousa comments in turn on each of the graph’s energy components. Coal: “Since the year 2000, coal has been moving upwards and looks like the best candidate to take oil’s dominant place, as soon as the former peaks.” Oil: “Although oil has been the most battered energy source since the 1970s, it is the one following closer [to Marchetti’s] model.” Oil again: “This means that Marchetti probably underestimated oil’s trend . . . Today oil is clearly losing ground and will likely follow a downward trend.” Natural gas: “[Marchetti’s natural gas] model looks highly optimistic. . . .


pages: 476 words: 148,895

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan

biofilm, bioinformatics, Columbian Exchange, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, dematerialisation, Drosophila, energy security, Gary Taubes, Helicobacter pylori, Hernando de Soto, hygiene hypothesis, Kickstarter, Louis Pasteur, Mason jar, microbiome, off-the-grid, peak oil, pneumatic tube, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Steven Pinker, women in the workforce

Unlike cooking, however, the energy required to ferment food does not need to come from burning wood or fossil fuel. It is self-generated, by the metabolism of microbes breaking down the substrate. Fermentation can easily be done off the grid, a quality that commends it to the enviros, anarchists, and peak-oil types who help make up the subculture. “The historical bubble of refrigeration may not last,” Katz likes to point out. When that particular bubble bursts, you’re going to want to know people like Sandor Katz and microbes like L. plantarum. Fermenting foods also intensifies their flavors, a particular boon to agricultural humans.


The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History by Derek S. Hoff

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Alfred Russel Wallace, back-to-the-land, British Empire, business cycle, classic study, clean water, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, feminist movement, full employment, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, George Gilder, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Herman Kahn, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, Lewis Mumford, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, New Economic Geography, new economy, old age dependency ratio, open immigration, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, pensions crisis, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban sprawl, W. E. B. Du Bois, wage slave, War on Poverty, white flight, zero-sum game

In 1952—the same year it made its first grant for population research—the Ford Foundation bankrolled the creation of Resources for the Future, a think tank that emphasized market-based solutions to resource problems.48 Natural scientists and the philanthropists who funded them, dazzled by the Green Revolution and the prospect of atomic energy too cheap to meter, remained optimistic about the nation’s ability to continually replenish its basic materials and feed a growing population.49 In works such as The Road to Abundance, cornucopianists predicted a caloric paradise, especially from the sea.50 Writing in Foreign Affairs, agricultural economist Joseph Davis argued, “Considering our present knowledge, I believe that expanding population will promote essential soil and water conservation rather than intensify depletion.”51 Likewise, predictions of peak oil production met with quick dismissal.52 Henry Luce, the famous publisher of Time magazine, declared that “by 1980 all ‘power’ (electric, atomic, solar) is likely to be virtually costless.”53 In 1958, Resources for the Future held a series of forums at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., that addressed topics from “the A of aesthetics to the Z of zoology” and that led to the widely cited volume Perspectives on Conservation: Essays on America’s Natural Resources (1958).54 The resource optimism mantle fell to Thomas Nolan, director of the United States Geological Survey.


pages: 1,324 words: 159,290

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made by Vaclav Smil

8-hour work day, agricultural Revolution, AltaVista, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Boeing 747, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, complexity theory, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, energy transition, European colonialism, Extinction Rebellion, Ford Model T, garden city movement, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, peak oil, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, power law, precision agriculture, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Republic of Letters, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Singularitarianism, Skype, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, working-age population

While it was always clear that eventual advances in commercializing non-fossil energy conversions would leave most of the remaining fossil fuels in the ground, such a gradual transition determined solely by cost considerations now appears to be unacceptable. We are now trying to shorten the fossil fuel era not because of any imminent concerns about running out of resources or because of unbearably high costs of their recovery and use. Not so long ago a vocal peak-oil movement forecast an imminent end of the oil era, but these were unfounded concerns. A combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing opened oil shales, a previously unexploitable resource, to mass-scale commercial recovery and, despite increasing demand, the world has experienced problems stemming from record crude oil production (with the United States once again in the lead), saturated markets, and falling crude oil prices.


pages: 692 words: 167,950

The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century by Alex Prud'Homme

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, big-box store, bilateral investment treaty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, commoditize, company town, corporate raider, Deep Water Horizon, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, Garrett Hardin, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Joan Didion, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, mass immigration, megacity, oil shale / tar sands, oil-for-food scandal, peak oil, remunicipalization, renewable energy credits, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, William Langewiesche

Rivers, lakes, and aquifers were drained, and at least half of the world’s wetlands had been damaged or filled in, which caused greater storm-water runoff and allowed salt water to pollute freshwater aquifers. Humanity’s nearly unslakable thirst is threatening to outstrip the earth’s ability to supply water in a sustainable way. Borrowing from the notion of peak oil—a point at which the supply of oil is outstripped by human consumption—academics worry that the earth could be reaching a point of “peak water.” While experts don’t usually predict a massive hydrological apocalypse, they point out that local water crises exacerbate many other social conflicts. They warn that two major trends, population growth and climate change, will accelerate water scarcity in coming decades, setting off a ripple effect of changes.


Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil

8-hour work day, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, animal electricity, Apollo 11, Boeing 747, business cycle, carbon-based life, centre right, Charles Babbage, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, epigenetics, Exxon Valdez, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of gunpowder, James Watt: steam engine, Jevons paradox, John Harrison: Longitude, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Just-in-time delivery, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kibera, knowledge economy, land tenure, language acquisition, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, Louis Blériot, mass immigration, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, mutually assured destruction, North Sea oil, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, phenotype, precision agriculture, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, Richard Feynman, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Suez canal 1869, Toyota Production System, transcontinental railway, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

Global demand and efficiency of use are no less important: demand (driven by the combination of economic and population growth) may be predictably increasing, but it is also highly modifiable, and energy conversion efficiencies, even after generations of improvements, remain greatly improvable. Consequently, it is not worries about an early exhaustion of fossil fuels—most prominently expressed by the advocates of imminent peak oil (Deffeyes 2001)—but rather the impact on the habitability of the biosphere (above all through global climate change) that is the most important near- and long-term concern resulting from the world’s dependence on coals and hydrocarbons. The Importance of Controls Past adoptions of new energy sources and new prime movers could never have had such far-reaching consequences without introducing and perfecting new modes of harnessing those energies and controlling their conversion to supply required energy services (heat, light, motion) at desirable rates.


Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom, Milan M. Cirkovic

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, anthropic principle, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, availability heuristic, backpropagation, behavioural economics, Bill Joy: nanobots, Black Swan, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charles Babbage, classic study, cognitive bias, complexity theory, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, cosmological principle, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, death of newspapers, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, Doomsday Clock, Drosophila, endogenous growth, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, false flag, feminist movement, framing effect, friendly AI, Georg Cantor, global pandemic, global village, Great Leap Forward, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, Kevin Kelly, Kuiper Belt, Large Hadron Collider, launch on warning, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, means of production, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, mutually assured destruction, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, P = NP, peak oil, phenotype, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, reversible computing, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, Singularitarianism, social intelligence, South China Sea, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, The Coming Technological Singularity, the long tail, The Turner Diaries, Tunguska event, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, uranium enrichment, Vernor Vinge, War on Poverty, Westphalian system, Y2K

Although the necessity and economic effects of pre-Y2K investments in information technology modernization remain controversial, some subsequent economic and productivity gains were probably accrued (Kliesen, 2003) . Althoughthe size and cost of the Y2K preparations may not have been optimal, the case is still one of proactive policy and technological innovation driven in part by millennialjapocalyptic anxiety. Similar dynamics can be observed around the apocalyptic concerns over 'peak oil', 'climate change', and the effects of environmental toxins, which have helped spur action on conservation, alternative energy sources, and the testing and regulation of novel industrial chemicals (Kunstler, 2006). 4.7 Sym ptoms of dysfunctional millenn ialism in assessing future scenarios Some critics denigrate utopian, millennia!


pages: 903 words: 235,753

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty by Benjamin H. Bratton

1960s counterculture, 3D printing, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, additive manufacturing, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, Charles Babbage, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, company town, congestion pricing, connected car, Conway's law, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Graeber, deglobalization, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, distributed generation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, functional programming, future of work, Georg Cantor, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, High speed trading, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Laura Poitras, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, McMansion, means of production, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, OSI model, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, peak oil, peer-to-peer, performance metric, personalized medicine, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-Fordism, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reserve currency, rewilding, RFID, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, skeuomorphism, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Startup school, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, the long tail, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y Combinator, yottabyte

Rachel Swaby, “Big Ideas: Spray Wi-Fi Hotspots on to Everything,” Wired UK, March 30, 2013, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/03/big-ideas/spray-wi-fi-hotspots-on-to-everything. 47.  Thanks to Aaron Fooshee, a student in a workshop I taught at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 2013 for exploring the idea of object-to-object spam. 48.  See my “Root the Earth: Peak Oil Apophenia,” in Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium, ed. Ed Keller, Nicola Masciandaro, Nicola Masciandaro, and Eugene Thacker (Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2012). Interface Layer This whole question of the cinematic author is certainly about ensuring the distribution of films, since creative work solicits a whole other temporality, but it is also about keeping open the possibility of creating films that do not yet exist.