For the first time the price of oil hit $80, shattering all previous records despite a pledge by OPEC to boost production.

Prices jumped following a U.S. government report that oil and gasoline stocks had fallen surprisingly.

Technologies like http://www.globalfinest.com/tech will probably now be viable

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.