How Resource Scarcity and Climate Change Could Produce a Global Explosion

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you.  Whether you know it...

The Strategic Importance of Keystone XL

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Presidential decisions often turn out to be far less significant than imagined, but every now and then what a president decides actually determines how the world turns. Such is the case with the Keystone XL pipeline, which,...

Will China-Japan-U.S. Tensions in the Pacific Ignite a Conflict and Sink the Global Economy?

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Don’t look now, but conditions are deteriorating in the western Pacific.  Things are turning ugly, with consequences that could prove deadly and spell catastrophe for the global economy.

In...

The Good, the Bad, and the Really, Truly Ugly

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Rarely does the release of a data-driven report on energy trends trigger front-page headlines around the world.  That, however, is exactly what happened on November 12th when the prestigious Paris-based International Energy Agency...

Forecasts of Abundance Collide with Planetary Realities

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Last winter, fossil-fuel enthusiasts began trumpeting the dawn of a new “golden age of oil” that would kick-start the American economy, generate millions of new jobs, and free this country from its dependence on imported...

Heat, Drought, Rising Food Costs, and Global Unrest

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as...

Four Ways the President Is Pursuing Cheney’s Geopolitics of Global Energy

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

As details of his administration’s global war against terrorists, insurgents, and hostile warlords have become more widely known -- a war that involves a mélange of drone attacks, covert...

Six Recent Clashes and Conflicts on a Planet Heading Into Energy Overdrive

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time.  Major wars over oil have been fought every decade or...

How the Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the United States into a Third-World Petro-State

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged,...

Why Twenty-First Century Oil Will Break the Bank -- and the Planet

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Oil prices are now higher than they have ever been -- except for a few frenzied moments before the global economic meltdown of 2008. Many immediate factors are contributing...

Why Closure of the Strait of Hormuz Could Ignite a War and a Global Depression

Cross-posted from TomDispatch.com

Ever since December 27th, war clouds have been gathering over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow body of water connecting the Persian...

The Three Top Hot Spots of Potential Conflict in the Geo-Energy Era

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Welcome to an edgy world where a single incident at an energy “chokepoint” could set a region aflame, provoking bloody encounters, boosting oil prices, and putting the global economy at risk. ...

Obama’s Risky Oil Threat to China

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

When it comes to China policy, is the Obama administration leaping from the frying pan directly into the fire?  In an attempt to turn the page on two disastrous wars in the Greater Middle East,...

Cross-posted from TomDispatch.com

America and Oil.  It’s like bacon and eggs, Batman and Robin.  As the old song lyric went, you can’t have one without the other.  Once upon a time, it was also a surefire formula for national greatness and global preeminence.  Now, it’s a guarantee...

Winners and Losers in the Great Global Energy Struggle to Come

Cross-posted from Tomdispatch.com

A 30-year war for energy preeminence?  You wouldn’t wish it even on a desperate planet.  But that’s where we’re headed and there’s no turning back.

From 1618 to 1648, Europe...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com

Here’s the good news about energy: thanks to rising oil prices and deteriorating economic conditions worldwide, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global oil demand will not grow this year as much as once assumed, which may provide some temporary price relief at...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com

In his 2010 book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, environmental scholar and activist Bill McKibben writes of a planet so devastated by global warming that it’s no longer recognizable as the Earth we once inhabited.  This is a planet, he...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.

Ending the Petroleum Age

Let’s try to take the measure of what exactly is at risk in the current tumult.  As a start, there is almost no way to give full justice to the critical role played by Middle Eastern oil in the world’s energy...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.

Get ready for a rocky year.  From now on, rising prices, powerful storms, severe droughts and floods, and other unexpected events are likely to play havoc with the fabric of global society, producing chaos and political unrest. Start with a simple fact: the prices of...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.

If you want to know which way the global wind is blowing (or the sun shining or the coal burning), watch China.  That’s the news for our energy future and for the future of great-power politics on planet Earth.  Washington is already watching -- with...