Fossil fuels created modern civilization, but their rising costs—to health, security, and economic progress—are starting to eclipse their benefits, undermining the prosperity and security they enabled. At the same time, technological innovation has quietly been making fossil fuels obsolete. In history’s greatest infrastructure shift, spanning the entire economy, humans are inventing a new fire: not […]
It would be wise to approach our energy future with two related thoughts in mind: first, the precautionary principle, and second, the law of unintended consequences. Using that perspective, this section of the book reviews the major energy resources and their transportation methods. We consider the current status of each resource as well as any other […]
Gas hydrates are a frozen form of methane found in Arctic regions as well as under the seabed. Commercially exploiting gas hydrates on any significant scale may prove to be extremely challenging—but if successful, it would prolong our dependency on fossil fuels and contribute to ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions. This is a chapter from The […]
Global fossil fuel consumption has accelerated rapidly over the last few decades, requiring an enormous stream of resources to meet even current demand. Claims that future demand can be met simply by opening new areas to exploration and increasing production of relatively new resources like deepwater oil, tar sands, shale oil, oil shale, and shale […]
Since it began producing oil in earnest in 1956, Nigeria has become the poster child for the environmental, social, and economic devastation that can be wrought by unfettered fossil fuel production. This is a chapter from The ENERGY Reader: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth (2012). Read online Sweet and Sour: The Curse o… […]
Each new technology, regardless of benefits, brings its own risks. In many complex situations where there are multiple questions with poorly constrained answers, it is folly to expect that we can use formal risk assessments to guide current actions. Risk assessment can be done properly if it does not pretend a false omniscience, and is […]
When Gloria Flora took the helm of Lewis & Clark National Forest in Montana in 1995, she found priceless wildlands threatened by oil and gas speculators. Defying convention, she declared the area off-limits to oil and gas development, adding a definitive new twist to the interplay between community groups, the fossil fuel industry, and the […]
Nuclear power has gained renewed traction in recent years as the world’s countries seek climate-friendly alternatives to fossil fuels. But public health risks, continued dependence on public subsidies, and the seemingly intractable problem of long-term nuclear waste storage make nuclear power a poor solution to our energy needs. This is a chapter from The ENERGY […]
As a contribution to this ongoing refinement of the concept, I recently formulated five axioms (self-evident truths) of sustainability. My goal was simply to distill ideas that had been proposed previously and put them into a concise, easy-to-understand form. The First Axiom Any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will collapse. Exception: A […]
Many people would agree that the central desirable end of economic activity is a high quality of life for this and future generations. Conventional economists argue that humans are insatiable, and therefore economics should focus on endless economic growth and ever-increasing consumption. Considerable evidence, however, suggests that humans are in fact satiable&emdash;there is a point […]