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Tag Archives: resource insights
Climate change is our grand narrative now
Climate change is our grand narrative now There is the story of our personal lives: our family, our friends, our jobs, our hobbies. There is the story of our communities: our civic, religious, business, artistic and recreational lives. There is the story of our nations: their internal political struggles and their struggles with each other. […]
Genetically engineered salmon: What could possibly go wrong?
Genetically engineered salmon: What could possibly go wrong? As U.S. regulators cleared genetically engineered salmon for sale in the United States last week, they opened the door to what many scientists already feel is inevitable: The escape and reproduction of GE salmon in the wild and the possible destruction of competing wild species. Under the U.S. […]
Getting it wrong on recycling
Getting it wrong on recycling Let’s see what those disparaging America’s rate of recycling as “too high” either get completely wrong or fail to understand. You can read recent commentary suggesting that the recycling rate is too high here, here and here. The number one complaint is that it costs more to recycle some categories of waste than to […]
Public health, endocrine disruption and the precautionary principle
Public health, endocrine disruption and the precautionary principle Several years ago over lunch a medical researcher I know told me that industrial chemicals were disrupting the human endocrine system leading to widespread obesity and diabetes. He said his research had revealed an important cause–the decline in the production of testosterone in both men and women (yes, women […]
Goldilocks and the three prices of oil
Goldilocks and the three prices of oil We all know Goldilocks from the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in which the young maiden wanders into the home of the bears and samples some porridge that happens to be sitting on the dinner table. The first bowl is too hot, the second is too cold and […]
‘Blood & Oil’, North Dakota, and dreams not exactly fulfilled
‘Blood & Oil’, North Dakota, and dreams not exactly fulfilled Last week a new television series set amidst the North Dakota oil boom debuted. Blood & Oil tells the story of locals and newcomers striking it rich in The Bakken, an oil formation that has been heralded as containing more oil than Saudi Arabia–a wildly misleading* but understandably […]
Will declines in U.S. and Canadian oil production lead to a global decline?
Will declines in U.S. and Canadian oil production lead to a global decline? At the beginning of this year I noted that all of the growth in world oil production* since 2005 has come from two countries: the United States and Canada. And, I suggested that since the growth in production in those two countries came […]
Will Washington state have the nation’s first carbon tax?
Will Washington state have the nation’s first carbon tax? Yoram Bauman is the world’s only “stand-up economist.” He makes his living poking fun at economics and economists. But he’s dead serious about fighting climate change, and he’s the intellectual force behind a climate-related initiative that seems likely to appear on Washington state’s November 2016 ballot. If voters […]
Truth takes a hit in the battle over U.S. oil export ban
Truth takes a hit in the battle over U.S. oil export ban They say that the first casualty of war is truth. And, on both sides of the fight over lifting the ban on exports of U.S. crude oil, the truth has already fallen into a coma. The ban was instituted in 1975 in order […]
Stock market confessions, chaos, complexity and the illusion of control
Stock market confessions, chaos, complexity and the illusion of control In the old days of the Chinese Cultural Revolution those who said or did something perceived by the Chinese authorities to be counter-revolutionary were forced into public confessions–and then humiliated, imprisoned or even put to death. It seems that old ways die hard. Last week the new […]
Anxiety turns to fear: Markets, energy, Pan and the zeitgeist
Anxiety turns to fear: Markets, energy, Pan and the zeitgeist The characteristic feeling of the post-2008 world has been one of anxiety. Occasionally, that anxiety breaks out into fear as it did in the last two weeks when stock markets around the world swooned and middle class and wealthy investors had a sudden visitation from […]
Counterintuitive: (Some) volatility is good for you, stability not so much
Counterintuitive: (Some) volatility is good for you, stability not so much With stock markets around the world plunging and commodity prices in free fall, it seems appropriate to return to a theme which I’ve taken up previously: That a certain amount of volatility is good for humans and the systems they build, and that attempts to […]
What is the price of oil telling us?
What is the price of oil telling us? Market fundamentalists tell us that prices convey information. Yet, while our barbers and hairdressers might be able to give us an extended account of why their prices have changed in the last few years, commodities such as oil–which reached a six-year low last week–stand mute. To fill […]
The future isn’t what it used to be
The future isn’t what it used to be Two recent films couldn’t be more at odds in their vision of the future. Mad Max: Fury Road is the long-awaited continuation of the Mad Max movie series. The movie is essentially a relentless chase scene set in a world burned to desert by climate change and bereft of civilization which […]
Energy, the repressed: Paging Dr. Freud
Energy, the repressed: Paging Dr. Freud Jeremy Rifkin announced the end of work in a book by that title in 1995. Today, we are once again being told that the end of work is nigh. The Atlantic Monthly tells us so in a piece entitled, “A World Without Work.” Automation and computer technology will bring unimaginable change and prosperity–and result in […]
