Post Carbon Institute provides individuals, communities, businesses, and governments with the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated economic, energy, environmental, and equity crises that define the 21st century. We envision a world of resilient communities and re-localized economies that thrive within ecological bounds.
As the term “China syndrome” has already been taken, I am terming what is happening in the country these days the “Beijing syndrome,” for China’s…
When peak oil first came to widespread public attention some 10 or 15 years ago, there was some debate about whether peak oil was the…
Given the increase in the amount of oil that China and India are importing, it looks as if there will be no oil available for…
We are only a few weeks into the New Year and already the shape of the next 11 months is starting to form. To start,…
There are many forces at work in our world today – climate change, the Arab Spring, population growth, and mass migrations to name a few.…
In the past, Russian foreign policy was mostly based in the decisions made by the Politburo—and then after by Boris Yeltsin’s foreign policy—the pursuit of…
The Association for the Study of Peak Oil recently held its annual conference down in Austin, Texas. The venue for the meeting was right across…
There is a growing disconnect between forecasts of prodigious amounts of oil coming out of the Middle East in coming decades and what is likely…
A paper published recently by the IMF gives us some insight into how oil prices and availability might affect the global economy in the next…
Good news, folks. According to our friends at the International Energy Agency (IEA), the United States will once again be the world's top oil producing…
One hard truth: The era of cheap oil is over. Even the recent glut of US oil and gas was driven by high prices, which…
Somewhere in the midst of watching the Weather Channel's reporting on the approach of Superstorm Sandy, I was struck by the lack of meteorologists saying…
For the past three or four years media sources in the U.S. trumpeted the “game-changing” new stream of natural gas coming from tight shale deposits…
It is sometimes useful when confronted with the flood of information we all receive these days to step back to ponder the major forces that…
Energy is everything. Without energy literally nothing happens. It's easy to overlook the role of energy in the economy because we often just look at…
Last week brought the news that this summer the Arctic icecap shrank to an all-time low of roughly half the size it was in 1980.…
It has now been more than 33 years since Jimmy Carter's famous "malaise' speech given in July 1979. As this speech is often cited as…
As Labor Day nears, a quiet summer seems poised to turn into an autumn to remember. Our concern here, as it has been for many…
In surveying the multiple, uprisings, insurgencies, insurrections, confrontations and what have you currently going on in the Middle East, it is hard to believe that…
Few would argue with the proposition that within the next 20 or 30 years our current sources of fossil fuels and other somewhat substitutable liquids…