Clashes erupt at Indonesia demos against fuel hike

JAKARTA — Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at stone-throwing protesters in Indonesia on Monday, as thousands demonstrated nationwide against the government's plan to increase fuel prices.

Several people were injured in the clashes which came as lawmakers at the national parliament in the capital Jakarta were set to approve budget amendments that will pave the way for the first fuel hike since 2008.

Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks

Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis - or all three.

Peak oil: preparing for the extinction of 'petroleum man' (interview with Kjell Aleklett)

At the turn of the century, certain sections of the scientific community noticed a small but ominous speck on the horizon. Over the years, this speck has advanced, revealing itself as a hulking great obstacle that casts a shadow of uncertainty over our collective energy future. The speck has been replaced by something nearer and altogether more tangible. We now have an elephant in the room, and its name is peak oil.

So, what is peak oil? In short, peak oil will occur when the extraction rate of this resource ceases to rise. Typically, this point is reached when half or less of a natural commodity has been removed. It is the peak of the bell curve; the point at which the tail is longer than the rise to the top.

Dangerous Times As Energy Sources Get Costlier To Extract

Remember the term “peak oil”? With all the oil now available from oil shale, tar sands, and other new sources, many analysts assume that the old talk of peak oil has been proven dead wrong. They buttress this conclusion with statistics showing decreased per capita oil usage, a signal, they say, of our entry into a golden era of rising supply and falling demand that will cut energy prices and fuel economic growth.

The optimists believe that our energy problems have been largely solved. I wouldn’t bet on that. The real issue with oil isn’t how much we have or even whether we can continue to increase production. That’s what peak oil had come to represent and why, in retrospect, it was a misleading term.

Rather, what really matters is the cost of resources, in terms of resources required, including energy resources, to keep producing oil. On that front, the U.S. is losing ground at an alarming pace.