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 […]
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 […]
What magic, or monster, lurks behind the light switch and the gas pump? Where does the seemingly limitless energy that fuels modern society come from? From oil spills, nuclear accidents, mountaintop removal coal mining, and natural gas “fracking” to large-scale wind, solar, and biomass plants, every source of energy has costs. In a large-format, photo-driven […]
Foreword by Van Jones. More than ninety percent of the electricity we use to light our communities, and nearly all the energy we use to run our cars, heat our homes, and power our factories comes from large, centralized, highly polluting, nonrenewable sources of energy. It doesn’t have to be that way. In Power from […]
The debt-based money system just described cannot work if there is less and less energy available. We only borrow if we think we’re going to have more money in future with which to repay, and a society as a whole cannot expect to have more money unless there is economic growth, or inflation, or a […]
A recent series of studies and rebuttals have debated the greenhouse gas impacts of shale gas production as compared to coal. Here, Post Carbon Institute Fellow David Hughes, author of the groundbreaking report, “Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?”, provides an analysis of two conflicting studies. His conclusion: Shale gas is worse […]
There are currently no viable substitutes for oil at current rates of consumption. Although alternatives to oil do exist for many of its uses, they are generally vastly inferior to oil in their energy content and in the ease of which they can be extracted, transported, and turned into a commericaly-usable fuel. This is a […]
These articles are supplements to Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century? (2013). They consider how the challenges posed by shale gas production have serious implications for the future of agriculture, transportation, and health in the United States. Summary Agriculture and Natural Gas By Michael Bomford The vast majority of natural gas supporting American […]