by Erica Etelson
When Hurricane Katrina struck two years ago, Americans learned just how ill-equipped the government is to respond effectively to natural disasters. But if you think the government's response to Katrina was inept, brace yourself for peak oil.

Global oil production will hit its peak in the next few years, at which point oil prices will skyrocket and voracious consumers like the United States, China and Europe will quickly drain every last barrel they can afford to buy. Our per-capita oil consumption is double that of most European nations and more than triple Mexico's, and shows no sign of slowing. As supplies dwindle, an economic disaster on a par with Katrina will start to unfold.

The prospect of Arctic ice melting in about 36 years has brought the prospector out of countries that covet its gas, oil, and new sea lanes. It's a pity then that the US, with a thousand miles of Arctic coastline, may not have a good seat at the table to decide this frontier's future.

In recent weeks, Russia, Canada, Denmark, and the US have all launched various types of Arctic ventures to mark some claim on this frosty region that's twice the size of France. But the US is the only Arctic-bordering nation not party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. That treaty is the legal venue that can help resolve competing claims beyond each nation's offshore economic zone, based on still-unresolved findings of continental shelves.

In the midst of this energy-driven boom, it's hard to imagine that the gravy train is already slowing down.

But the truth is the provincial government faces a 33 per cent drop in oil and gas royalties over the next three years, and Albertans should take a close look at the reasons behind it.

First, the supplies of easy-to-get conventional oil and gas have declined to the point that almost 90 per cent of wells are permanently paying lower royalty rates, many as low as 5 per cent.

This Conservative Roundtable interview of Jerome Corsi by Howard Phillips reveals how behind closed doors, the Bush administration has collaborated with the governments of Mexico and Canada to merge the three nations into one Socialist mega-state: the "North American Union", also known as the "Security and Prosperity Partnership".

Few notice huge shift towards globalization as frothing masses distracted by climate change debate

Steve Watson
In a sweeping move that has garnered surprisingly little attention this week the United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership that will see regulatory standards "harmonized" and will lay the basis for a merging of the US and EU into one single market, a huge step on the path to a new globalized world order.

"Without the US there can't be any success in coping with a globalised world" European diplomat

The United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership at a summit in Washington.
The pact is designed to boost trade and investment by harmonising regulatory standards, laying the basis for a US-EU single market.

The two sides also signed an Open Skies deal, designed to reduce fares and boost traffic on transatlantic flights. But little of substance was agreed on climate change. However, EU leaders were pleased that the US acknowledged human activity was a major cause.

The latest initiatives to stop global warming won’t save us, James Lovelock tells Jonathan Leake

If you want to get some idea of what much of the Earth might look like in 50 years’ time then, says James Lovelock, get hold of a powerful telescope or log onto Nasa’s Mars website. That arid, empty, lifeless landscape is, he believes, how most of Earth’s equatorial lands will be looking by 2050. A few decades later and that same uninhabitable desert will have extended into Spain, Italy, Australia and much of the southern United States.

by Jared Diamond

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with 11 millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular. recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism that curse our existence.

With $1.2 trillion in reserves, most of it in dollar-backed assets, China plans to launch the world's largest investment fund. It could play havoc with the U.S. economy.

By Clay Chandler, Fortune senior writer

(Fortune Magazine) -- China, Long recognized as the world's factory, is earning a new distinction: America's banker. As it continues to suck in foreign investment and crank out exports, the world's fastest-growing economy is piling up foreign currency, mostly dollars, at an astonishing rate.

BEIJING - Inefficient, outmoded mining techniques and the blind pursuit of profit by some colliery owners have led to huge waste in China's coal mining industry.

The "recovery rate" for China's coal resources is only 30 percent, less than half the world's average, according to the 2007 Energy Blue Paper recently released by the Social Sciences Publishing House.

"To produce one ton of coal in China, we consume five to 20 tons of coal resources. In developed countries, they only consume 1.2 to 1.3 tons," said Doctor Cui Minxuan, chief editor of the blue paper and a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

by Jeremy Leggett

In January 2004, Shell drops a bombshell. We are sorry, dear financial regulators, they say, but we don’t seem to have as much oil as we said we have. Outrage in the City. In March it gets worse: our CEO and head of exploration have been telling the board porkies, we fear, says a contrite board. The biggest scandal in British corporate history duly unfolds.

Why?, I ask myself. As an ex creature of the oil industry myself, I have always assumed there is enough oil for decades to come, just as I have been told by my peers. I know that a few oil geologists have been saying, since the mid 1990s, that the peak of production would come around 2010. The dean of the early peak oil camp is Colin Campbell, a geologist like me trained by Stuart McKerrow at Oxford. I always assumed – simply assumed, I’m ashamed to say – that he was wrong. Now I’d better check out what is going on, I decide. This is very important. The world is assuming it can run growing economies on growing supplies of generally cheap oil for several decades to come. If it can’t, and supplies prove to be rapidly shrinking and ever-more expensive, all bets are off in the energy field.

By C.J.Campbell ASP0-IRELAND

The World is not about to run out of oil, but what it does face is the end of the First Half of the Age of Oil. That opened 150 years ago when wells were drilled for oil on the shores of the Caspian and in Pennsylvania. The cheap, convenient and abundant energy, it supplied, led to the growth of industry, transport, trade and agriculture, which in turn allowed the population to expand six-fold exactly in parallel with oil. Lastly, it allowed the creation of huge amounts of financial capital, as banks lent more than they had on deposit, confident that Tomorrow’s Expansion was collateral for Today’s Debt. This in turn led to the subject of Economics by which to understand and manage money, investment and finance, and came to control the very fabric of the modern world, its business and indirectly its politics.

Lester R. Brown

As I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center a few years ago, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. Tel Aviv, expanding from a small settlement a half-century ago to a city of some 3 million today, evolved during the automobile era. It occurred to me that the ratio of parks to parking lots may be the best single indicator of the livability of a city—whether a city is designed for people or for cars.

ODAC contact in the Middle East, Barry G. Claverhouse, writes:

I had a long meeting with a local media person who, though he had never before heard of Peak Oil, was prepared to listen to me and watched "End of Suburbia" and the Money Program "The Last Oil Shock" (David Strahan, 2000). He struck me as being "gobsmacked" - he understood the concept and implications more or less immediately. He subsequently did his own "Due Diligence" on the subject and I received the following mail from him today:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. retail gasoline prices could hit an all-time high by the end of this month due to ongoing problems at the nation's oil refineries, automobile and travel group AAA said on Wednesday.

Gasoline prices have surged 30 cents since early April to $2.97 a gallon on average, bringing them within a dime of the record struck after Hurricane Katrina shut down refineries along the Gulf Coast in 2005.

By AMY LORENTZEN, Associated Press Writer

DES MOINES, Iowa - Ethanol industry leaders say a new biotech product that helps corn fight off pests could end up in exported animal feed and risk the industry's relationship with foreign markets.

At issue is the Agrisure RW corn rootworm trait developed by Syngenta Seeds Inc. The Renewable Fuels Association, a leading industry group, expressed its concerns over the product in a letter sent to Syngenta's seed executives that was obtained by The Associated Press.

by A.M Samsam Bakhtiari (April 2007)

The 21st century is still young as there are another ninety-three years to go. So it might sound over-ambitious to claim that 'The Event of the Century' is already behind us. But I'll gladly take the risk; for I seriously believe that the peaking of the global production of crude oil --- commonly know as 'Peak Oil' --- has occurred in 2006 [1] and will be 'The Event' bound to dominate the history of the 21st century: one of those 'Historical Inflection Points' [2] which abruptly change "fundamentals" in the course of World History. I cannot foresee any other 'Event' coming to eclipse 'Peak Oil', not even the World Wars which might be unleashed in the Peak's aftermath and further fueled by widespread resources' scarcity. Unless, of course, humanity decides upon collective suicide with the massive use of weapons of mass destruction; but such an annihilating 'Event' would spell the word 'End' for most, if not all, of Mankind…

A Commentary
by Perry Arnett
18 April 2007

(May be freely transmitted with proper attribution)

1) most members of Western Industrial Civilization are about to enter a ‘Bottleneck’ of historical magnitude and significance;

2) a confluence of various events is acting to cause the Bottleneck;

3) some of those events are: the peaking of production and ultimate decline of cheap, readily available exosomatic energy resources; the economic bankruptcy of nations; the depletion of water, soil, critical minerals, sea life; etc.

Reconciliation with Washington impossible, he says

CARACAS: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said reconciliation with Washington was impossible and threatened again to cut off oil shipments to the United States if it supports any effort to oust him.

He said a thirst for oil motivated both the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and a failed 2002 coup against him. Mr. Chavez has often accused the U.S. of being behind the coup, and Washington has repeatedly denied the allegation.