Cuban President Fidel Castro asserted the lack of fuel in the world and its current price will worsen the problem of food.
Grain and cereal productions are increasingly targeting the production of alcohol to be used as fuel for automobiles, stated Fidel Castro in his address to the Cuban People´s Power National Assembly (parliament) seventh period of sessions.
That means automobiles are competing with food and humankind is not prepared to cope with the current energy crisis, noted the leader of the Cuban Revolution.
Alexander & Baldwin has long said that the future of HC&S cannot continue to be in sugar as a commodity. The 37,000-acre farm must become an "energy plantation."
In concept, at least, this fits in with the state's energy policy, which calls for 20 percent of inputs from renewable sources by 2020.
Whether it also fits with state water policy is a question.
Steve Holaday, general manager of Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar, said money is being spent on solving technical problems and preliminary engineering designs.
"Our hang-up," he said, "is we don't have long-term access to irrigation water," which biomass electricity must have.
The idea here seem to be to burn sugar cane leaves for electricity, not to make ethanol. Still, it requires water which they may not be able to get.
Being endorsed by Castro is sort of like being endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan or the Scientologists. Lots of people will use the peculiar ideas of the endorsers as a reason to dismiss Peak Oil as a nutty idea that is possibly evil. We need to lose this quote and endorsement of our ideas before Fox News picks it up. It's kinda like sleeping with a fat person-a whole lot of fun until your friends see you with 'em.
I prefer to point to Switzerland during WW II, where they went through a 6 year, 100% oil embargo. By 1845, they had "powered down" their oil use by ~93% while continuing as a functioning democracy and preserving a decent, if difficult, quality of life.
They made a strategic decision in the 1920s to electrify their railroads and preserve & expand their tram lines, all running off domestic hydroelectric power.
Hand labor? in country oil reserves? Horses and oxen? for food production. I don't think that they had electric tractors...How people moved in towns doesn't interest me as much as ag. Without ag...?
In country food reserves, most Swiss agriculture is alpine (i.e. herding). Every square meter was hand planted in cities & towns. Nearby areas suitable for row crops were tilled by hand (also grapes & orchards). And agriculture got the oil that was left over after the army training, police and medical uses.
Potatoes. for example, can be cultivated by hand quite effectively.
Like those other world leaders TPTB dislike immensely (Chaves, Morales, Ahmadinejad, Putin, Hu, etc) he has an annoying tendancy to to that from time to time.
If we knew that, it would be kind of like being able to predict landfall for any hurricanes that might pop up this August. We would arrange our chips on the roulette table of commodities to benefit from the knowledge ...
I think that the first steps up the price ladder will destroy demand in the smaller economies -- i.e. emerging markets or small currency markets. Perhaps the next $10 or $20 dollars in oil price will do that, but who knows?
Once the small economies are out of the market, then the bidding will move up to the US/Euro/Yen currency blocks. This is when the real spikes could occur. My guess is that the Yen could fail first -- they import energy and food, and have been the biggest money printers in recent years. But again, who knows?
Why would a small currency market have a harder time to buy oil? My first guess is that it should depend on the competetiveness of the industry in the small currency market and the industry and infrastructure efficiency. Is there something inherently bad with having a small currency such as SEK?
"Infrastructure efficiency" was what I was thinking, perhaps I over-generalized using EM. For instance, I read somewhere that the average speed of a truck in India was something like 25 mph.
I think when gas prices hit $6/gallon the US should adopt the metric system. It might not be so overwelming. $1.60/litre is not so frightening and the controversy will take away from the real issue.
The economic activities that are 'oil-inefficient' will be the first to go or at least to get a hard time. Driving a hummer to work is not very efficient for example ;-)
Currency will have something to do with it, because even if you are 'energy efficient', but the surrounding economy is fragile, you still will be competed out of the market because the economy surrounding you will crumble (unless you are completely export oriented ofcoarse)
However, for stable economies, even small ones, it won't matter that much.
Talking about the yen, people tend to forget that the Japanese economy is about half the size of the US. That is a mighty large piece. And that they are running in the black, for years and years now. However, the japanese are very dependent on export. If export falls, then so does the economy. In case of a dollar / euro / sterling / etc in trouble, the asian exporting countries will immediately feel the pain, not only the yen.
Yet the Japanese monetary base is larger than the US at current exchange rates. And they import lots of energy. And food. And have a demographic problem. So I agree, they are very dependent on exports.
I'd argue that it's more likely when/if oil is traded in Euros, this will crash the US dollar since banks would have to sell it for Euros, banks would find that they have to foreclose on houses for the cash, which in turn ends the US economy, and send us into the post industrial age. weee
peakoil is the end of the industrial economy, not of countries or people. Actually, humans are going to make a big comeback, if the Japanese 250 years of self-imposed isolation in The Edo Period (1603-1867) is anything to go by. This was a human powered economy and a useful lesson. Besides, now they at least have the cool trains that we all lack ;)
I wouldn't worry about the YEN or Japan. It will surely have its crisis as will any country, but with the USA in the trillions of dollars in debt and burdened by it's SUV suburban society and highways, it's the US that will likely fall the fastest. Without cheap gas nobody can spend or go anywhere. Then they'll find out that there's also nowhere to go to.
I'd argue that it's more likely when/if oil is traded in Euros, this will crash the US dollar since banks would have to sell it for Euros, banks would find that they have to foreclose on houses for the cash, which in turn ends the US economy, and send us into the post industrial age. weee
Which college did you go to? You seem to know a lot about it.
My Toyota is also priced in Yens, but I pay in Euro's. Is the bank now going to sell my house or are my children going hungry? Please tell me, I need to know. Shall I move in with my parents or is the bank going to sell their house too? (They eat a lot of Australian Beef, priced in A$, you know)
naw, your house is fine. the gold you buried in the backyard will protect your country from hyperinflation or is it hyperdeflation? you have gold don't you? or maybe that's another peak, peak gold!
Your Toyota pulled by oxen will make a nice tractor, if you can find the oxen...
Since the US dollar is propped up by sales of all oil transactions being done in US Dollars, (OPEC) if that were to change (Charez is chair this year) then the economic bubble of the US would come into question. I don't think this likely as everyone would lose their #1 customer but it points to the..y'know.. reality and fragility of the US state of debt and how the world holds it up. ( I'm going to guess that each country's trade surplus and deficit will also play a role in a similar way. )
Banks around the world to facilitate oil transactions need to have US dollars. The US dollar is the end transaction, so it's a means of keeping the country afloat in debt without penalty. A sudden selloff of dollars in exchange for euros/rubles/loonies/marbles anything, would lower the US dollar, thereby making oil (and everything else imported into the US) more expensive to buy and gas as well etc.
From what I understand money is loaned into existense plus interest by the banks and if paid off with no new loans coming online, money is essentially retracted from the economy. I think this means recession if a large enough housing bubble bursts?
Everyone but the USA seems to try to put their house in order. Here in Canada we cut our debt a lot in the 90's by cutting a lot of social programs (not medicare of course) however the the US spent more, Dem or Rep. This has always left me scratching my head.
When exactly are Americans going to pay off their debts anyway? I think many in the face of peak oil will in fact spend even more if they knew there wasn't an industrial pizza shopping mall later on. Given the debt situation who can blame them?
trillion dollar Market Correction = Second Depression
We import far more than we import, so who cares if our crops are moderatly more expensive. Local farmers in their local economies seize an opportunity to compete due to the high cost of US crops. Don't forget we import far more than we export, so on net as a country we are still losers with higher priced crops but even higher cost EVERYTHING ELSE.
Agreed, but due to either inflation or deflation there will be consequences to everything we pay. If everything costs more then imports will crimp even more spending due to higher prices. In deflation our crops are worth even less, while import prices remain higher still. I think I'm firmly on the fence now about whether we see inflation or deflation, but I still lean towards inflation.
I'm thinking more macro than plasma tv's for my living room. Those plasma tv's are going to get more expensive or remain flat, best case. The cost efficiencies appear to have been rung out of production. I've found 42' plasmas for under $4k. Don't know about the quality, but DLP is far better anyway and that is OWNED by Texas Instruments, so they are at the helm when it comes to producing those.
I'm trying to put forward that regardless of the price of the imports in the "consumer goods" categories (e.g. "leather products" $8B ytd deficit, "appliances and electrical" $9B, "computers and electronics" $45B, "transportation equipment" $32B, "apparel" $20B, etc.) that we'll buy much less of these things. I think that the prices of these things will fall, and you think that the prices of these things will rise. Neither of us may be clearly correct in the short run.
However, I think that our exports of grains will remain steady or rise, but definitely fall much less than those "consumer goods". Further, risky-asset prices will fall, and "riskless" asset prices will rise (lower yield).
All of this seems to fit a "deflation" scare description better than an "inflation" scare to me.
It's entirely possible that all "non-riskless" assets, even utilities, go down in the current (#1) seasonal weakness (combined with #2 cyclical weakness), before any (#3) secular weakness hits the markets. If we get all three hits (only #1 and #2 are expected at this stage) then it's tough sledding for a while. #1 and #2 will last only thru October. #3 is when the Fed comes back in play with the downkick in interest rates.
I think sustained US$70+ per barrel oil is leading, step by step to a recession in the United States (elsewhere as well I suspect). Perhaps a year away, perhaps closer.
A recession will reduce demand. Unemployed people drive less, closed offices & industries use less as well.
I think this is the worst thing only because demand will soften, prices will abate for a while and the perception will change to this being another hiccup on the rollercoaster of life. We would find ways to waste more.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian state oil firm Rosneft is hoping to raise around $10 billion (5.4 billion pounds) in its initial public offering, a source familiar with the IPO said as the share issue was launched on Monday.
The offering, which will be one of the world's biggest ever IPOs, will give a chance for investors to buy into Russian oil and for Russia's most leveraged firm to pay off a $7.5 billion debt.
The main goal of the IPO is to pay $7.5 billion back to four banks who lent the sum to the Kremlin last year, enabling Russia to buy a controlling stake in gas firm Gazprom.
The average college senior graduated this year with more than $19,000 in debt. That's a problem Joe Palazzolo would love to have.
Palazzolo, 25, graduated on Mother's Day from Rutgers University with a master's degree in public policy and student loans exceeding $116,000. His payments will average about $800 a month. It could have been worse: Because of his top grades, Rutgers paid Palazzolo's tuition for his final year of graduate school.
At a time when his friends are thinking about buying their first homes, he's looking for roommates to share a three-bedroom house so he can limit his rent to $600 a month. "I feel like I've done everything I was supposed to do, and at the end of the day, I've got this huge debt," Palazzolo says. "What did I do wrong?"
After years of rising college costs and shrinking financial aid, it's come to this: Some graduates are now leaving college with student-loan debt in the six figures.
Graduates with more than $100,000 in debt still account for a small subset of borrowers. But their numbers are rising. And the proportion who are leaving college with some level of unmanageable debt -- debt they can't repay without significant hardship -- is swelling.
There's less government aid than there used to be, and more pressure for advanced degrees. Students are taking out the loans because in the long term, having a degree has paid off. But it can take many years for that to happen.
Especially hard-hit are people in fields that require degrees but don't pay well, such as education.
The US secondary education system is uncommonly ungenerous. I've got a B.Sc. and M.A.Sc. now in the Canadian system and am in a Ph.D. program and I'm slowly increasing my savings. When I looked into programs in Europe like at T.U. Delft in the Netherlands they paid their Ph.D. students starting at €18000 for the first year and progresses to €45000 by the third.
KABUL, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Unknown militants set on fire a U.S. base-bound oil tanker in the southern Ghazni province on Monday, a senior police official said.
"The incident occurred in Andar district leaving the tanker's driver dead and injured its conductor," Asil Khan told Xinhua.
Since the 1994 release of The Geography of Nowhere, author James Howard Kunstler has been among the most acerbic critics of North American urban design. Kunstler has argued that suburban sprawl has left citizens almost entirely dependent on cars, just as the world nears the historic peak of oil production. What happens after we pass that fossil fuel "tipping point"? That's the subject of Kunstler's latest book, The Long Emergency, in which the author describes the massive changes that Americans -- and their neighbours -- will experience as the age of cheap oil drips to a close. In what The Guardian describes as "a 300-page dirge to the doom that awaits us," Kunstler predicts the end of cheap aviation, the withering of the American southwest, the collapse of global trade and a shallow grave for suburbia, among other horrors.
I sure wish Kunstler would give up an the Pirates of the North Pacific theme. It makes about as much sense as the muggers living near Central Park going to the Hamptons to do their mugging because the victims are so much richer there.
As has always been the case, when people start looking for someone to rob, they go to their neighbors, not halfway around the world.
I sure wish Kunstler would give up an the Pirates of the North Pacific theme. It makes about as much sense as the muggers living near Central Park going to the Hamptons to do their mugging because the victims are so much richer there.
I wouldn't say you have proven there won't be pirates. You have really suggested he should change their likely ancestry. History records that caucasians are not entirely averse to acts of piracy.
not to mention pirates have not gone away, no i do not mean those who copy software.
the pirates have just moved to the lesser patrolled Asian country's.
once the bigger effects of p.o. hit and our forces are focused more internally i bet you pirates will start to roam closer to our shores. they do it now because well, do you honestly thing they have a chance against a aegis cruiser?
And in Hawaii:
'Energy plantation' would require water guarantees
The idea here seem to be to burn sugar cane leaves for electricity, not to make ethanol. Still, it requires water which they may not be able to get.
Way too late for that, dude. Cuba has been embraced as the answer to peak oil by many environmentalists, liberals, and peak oilers for years now.
They made a strategic decision in the 1920s to electrify their railroads and preserve & expand their tram lines, all running off domestic hydroelectric power.
They also were hard on the engines.
VERY little transportation via rubber tires (emabrgo there as well) except bicycle and electric trolley bus.
Potatoes. for example, can be cultivated by hand quite effectively.
Only a question about energy:
When the price of oil will hurt the economy in EEUU for a real demand destruction?
At what price?
(P.D. I´m spanish, sorry by errors.)
Once the small economies are out of the market, then the bidding will move up to the US/Euro/Yen currency blocks. This is when the real spikes could occur. My guess is that the Yen could fail first -- they import energy and food, and have been the biggest money printers in recent years. But again, who knows?
People complain about it but they do not revolt.
Go for it, every killing of a "funny unit" is a good kill.
Currency will have something to do with it, because even if you are 'energy efficient', but the surrounding economy is fragile, you still will be competed out of the market because the economy surrounding you will crumble (unless you are completely export oriented ofcoarse)
However, for stable economies, even small ones, it won't matter that much.
Talking about the yen, people tend to forget that the Japanese economy is about half the size of the US. That is a mighty large piece. And that they are running in the black, for years and years now. However, the japanese are very dependent on export. If export falls, then so does the economy. In case of a dollar / euro / sterling / etc in trouble, the asian exporting countries will immediately feel the pain, not only the yen.
peakoil is the end of the industrial economy, not of countries or people. Actually, humans are going to make a big comeback, if the Japanese 250 years of self-imposed isolation in The Edo Period (1603-1867) is anything to go by. This was a human powered economy and a useful lesson. Besides, now they at least have the cool trains that we all lack ;)
I wouldn't worry about the YEN or Japan. It will surely have its crisis as will any country, but with the USA in the trillions of dollars in debt and burdened by it's SUV suburban society and highways, it's the US that will likely fall the fastest. Without cheap gas nobody can spend or go anywhere. Then they'll find out that there's also nowhere to go to.
I think a hummer will make a nice planter.
Which college did you go to? You seem to know a lot about it.
My Toyota is also priced in Yens, but I pay in Euro's. Is the bank now going to sell my house or are my children going hungry? Please tell me, I need to know. Shall I move in with my parents or is the bank going to sell their house too? (They eat a lot of Australian Beef, priced in A$, you know)
Can I still fly in a Boeing, or only Airbus?
Your Toyota pulled by oxen will make a nice tractor, if you can find the oxen...
Since the US dollar is propped up by sales of all oil transactions being done in US Dollars, (OPEC) if that were to change (Charez is chair this year) then the economic bubble of the US would come into question. I don't think this likely as everyone would lose their #1 customer but it points to the..y'know.. reality and fragility of the US state of debt and how the world holds it up. ( I'm going to guess that each country's trade surplus and deficit will also play a role in a similar way. )
Banks around the world to facilitate oil transactions need to have US dollars. The US dollar is the end transaction, so it's a means of keeping the country afloat in debt without penalty. A sudden selloff of dollars in exchange for euros/rubles/loonies/marbles anything, would lower the US dollar, thereby making oil (and everything else imported into the US) more expensive to buy and gas as well etc.
From what I understand money is loaned into existense plus interest by the banks and if paid off with no new loans coming online, money is essentially retracted from the economy. I think this means recession if a large enough housing bubble bursts?
Everyone but the USA seems to try to put their house in order. Here in Canada we cut our debt a lot in the 90's by cutting a lot of social programs (not medicare of course) however the the US spent more, Dem or Rep. This has always left me scratching my head.
When exactly are Americans going to pay off their debts anyway? I think many in the face of peak oil will in fact spend even more if they knew there wasn't an industrial pizza shopping mall later on. Given the debt situation who can blame them?
trillion dollar Market Correction = Second Depression
I can surely put off buying that plasma TV and wine refrigerator until next year, but will the world put off eating until next year?
I'm thinking more macro than plasma tv's for my living room. Those plasma tv's are going to get more expensive or remain flat, best case. The cost efficiencies appear to have been rung out of production. I've found 42' plasmas for under $4k. Don't know about the quality, but DLP is far better anyway and that is OWNED by Texas Instruments, so they are at the helm when it comes to producing those.
However, I think that our exports of grains will remain steady or rise, but definitely fall much less than those "consumer goods". Further, risky-asset prices will fall, and "riskless" asset prices will rise (lower yield).
All of this seems to fit a "deflation" scare description better than an "inflation" scare to me.
Different nations:
Canada
Brazil
Austria
Switzerland
New Zealand
Your thoughts ?
A recession will reduce demand. Unemployed people drive less, closed offices & industries use less as well.
In debt before you start
There's less government aid than there used to be, and more pressure for advanced degrees. Students are taking out the loans because in the long term, having a degree has paid off. But it can take many years for that to happen.
Especially hard-hit are people in fields that require degrees but don't pay well, such as education.
Not a good way to start off the week.
-C.
Suburbia's Worst Enemy
As has always been the case, when people start looking for someone to rob, they go to their neighbors, not halfway around the world.
I wouldn't say you have proven there won't be pirates. You have really suggested he should change their likely ancestry. History records that caucasians are not entirely averse to acts of piracy.
Hoist the Jolly Roger matey!
the pirates have just moved to the lesser patrolled Asian country's.
once the bigger effects of p.o. hit and our forces are focused more internally i bet you pirates will start to roam closer to our shores. they do it now because well, do you honestly thing they have a chance against a aegis cruiser?