peak oil | peak oil
Mar.31.2010
Any number of metaphors might be used for the predicament today’s industrial societies face as the age of cheap energy stumbles to its end, but the one that keeps coming to mind is drawn from a scene in one of the favorite books of my childhood, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. It’s the point in the...
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Mar.24.2010
The last several posts here on <i>The Archdruid Report</i> have focused on the ramifications of a single concept – the importance of energy concentration, as distinct from the raw quantity of energy, in the economics of the future. This concept has implications that go well beyond the...
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Mar.17.2010
For those watching current affairs with an eye sharpened by history, it’s been quite a week since the last <i>Archdruid Report</i> post came out. For starters, American politicians and pundits have gone in for another round of China-bashing, insisting that China’s manipulation of its...
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Mar.10.2010
These days plenty of promoters are pushing grandiose projects for huge, centralized power plants using solar energy. With the aid of two forgotten inventors and a glass of brandy, the Archdruid demonstrates why the best use of solar energy lies in a completely different direction. The latest post...
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Mar.03.2010
Perhaps the most important and least appreciated detail of the crisis of industrial society hinges on the difference between energy and exergy -- that is, between the quantity of energy and its concentration. With the aid of a friendly solar water heater, the Archdruid explains all in this latest...
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Feb.24.2010
No, to borrow a phrase, they aren't the three suggestions of thermodynamics -- and they have a huge amount to teach us about the shape of the economy that will emerge in the deindustrial era ahead of us. The latest post from The Archdruid Report.
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Feb.17.2010
If, as last week's Archdruid Report post suggests, the United States is becoming a Third World country, the alternative methods of pursuing Third World economic development proposed by maverick economist E.F. Schumacher may become a significant resource. The latest post from The Archdruid Report.
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Feb.10.2010
Among the varied efforts to imagine what a postpetroleum America would look like, one of the most likely possibilities -- the impoverished, crowded, dysfunctional nations of the contemporary Third World -- has rarely been noticed. Maybe it's time to change that. The latest post from The Archdruid...
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Feb.03.2010
For decades now, people concerned about the future of industrial civilization have warned that sooner or later the point would arrive when the consequences of all that short-term thinking would start coming home to roost. For America, that point may be now. The latest from The Archdruid Report.
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Jan.27.2010
A flurry of discussion about community in the peak oil blogosphere has mostly assumed that Americans had their communities taken away from them by circumstances, if not by some sinister cabal. In fact, though, most Americans actively walked away from their communities and continue to do so. Maybe...
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