Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has also appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Le Monde Diplomatique, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He is currently a fellow of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.
There are those who believe our current way of life is not facing any near term threat and will go on indefinitely. In this view,…
The most salient fact about natural resources such as minerals and fertile soil is that they are unevenly distributed around the world. That means some…
A person buying insurance does so because he or she is concerned about the future. A house fire could lead to a financial wipe-out. A…
We humans now face an era of climate that is uncharted for the size and complexity of the human community. Our roads, rails, ports, buildings,…
Self-driving vehicles are stopping in traffic for no apparent reason and blocking emergency vehicles reports the Los Angeles Times. The writer alludes to a famous…
The state of Illinois is suffering from its driest conditions in more than a decade. In fact, large swathes of the Midwest and Plains states are…
A friend of mine who was trained as a physicist used to joke about a future in which each of us would carry handheld fusion…
I'm certainly not the only person who noticed before now that sustaining our increasing consumption of copper would be difficult as I suggested in my…
This seems like the 10th time that I've read a story that says Greenland's glaciers are melting faster than previously thought and thus the consequences of climate…
Certainly, there a plenty of horror stories about possible disasters awaiting us from emerging technologies. I've written about two of them: 1) the possibility of small…
My expectations are never disappointed when I read the news each day and find out that the solutions to the problems created by our modern…
Here we go again. Satellite companies that plan to put tens of thousands of satellites into orbit to create space-based internet and cellphone networks are…
Complex, tightly networked systems run very efficiently and can work with precision for long periods, until they don't. Money saved on the front end can…
The most recent poster child for the failure to understand resource limits is the town of Rio Verde Foothills, an unincorporated part of Maricopa County…
"Global warming" morphed into "climate change" which now seems inadequate to describe the weather chaos we are experiencing on planet Earth.* The recent "atmospheric rivers"…
Few of us think about heat as an essential ingredient in the products we use every day. And, yet industrial process heat constitutes two-thirds of…
Prior to the pandemic-induced downturn in world oil production, U.S. oil production growth was responsible for 98 percent of the increase in world production in…
As a military conflict rages in Ukraine between Russia and what the Russian government calls "the West" (apparently meaning NATO allies and particularly the United…
Modern global society is steeped in the idea of trade-offs, the notion that one must suffer losses to obtain desired gains. This prepares the way…
Climate change deniers have had to adjust their story in recent years as the effects of climate change have become more and more apparent to…