oil shale / tar sands

A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice
by Tony Weis and Joshua Kahn Russell
Published 14 Oct 2014

Such extreme extraction has also come with considerable confusion, as there is a fundamental difference between fracking for “tight” oil and mining for oil shale, or kerogen. Fracking is a procedure that releases normal liquid crude and natural gas from formations of shale that were impossible to recover prior to new fracking technologies. In the case of fracked oil, the crude oil itself is not from shale, which is why “tight oil” is more accurate than shale oil, as it is sometimes referred to (“tight” oil should be read as code for fracking). Oil shale, on the other hand, describes rocks that are fused with kerogen and set in geological formations similar to tar sands bitumen. Much like bitumen, kerogen is a proto-crude oil, in that it is essentially a building block that can be processed into crude oil after being mined or extracted in situ using vast quantities of energy (for heating) and often tremendous amounts of water to separate the proto-oil from the bearing rock.

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In terms of their greenhouse gas emissions per barrel, their climate impacts are even greater than tar sands extraction and processing. Although the expansion of fracking for “tight” oil and natural gas is geologically and technologically very distinct from bitumen-based tar sands and kerogen-based oil shale, they are becoming heavily interrelated because the rapid influx of natural gas released by fracking is serving to reduce overhead energy costs into the tar sands and similar developments. Given the ways in which fracking supports tar sands projects, and given the serious environmental risks associated with fracking, it is extremely deceptive and egregious to call fracked gas a “transition fuel,” as both industry and some environmental organizations do.1 The goal of this chapter is to give a series of snapshots that help to illustrate the rapid race into bitumen and kerogen extraction that is occurring around the world.

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Again, the Canadian tar sands are connected, as key technologies there are expected to contribute to new oil shale extraction projects, and it is notable that Canadian start-up company Global Oil Shale Holdings entered into contracts with the government of Jordan in the fall of 2012.23 Conclusions Such development prospects are at the stage where the tar sands and related oil shale projects would become hard-wired into the energy grid, at a time when we need the exact opposite. Projects for tar sands expansion—and possible resistance to such projects—have gone global. If we are to prevent runaway climate change, it will be, in part, because these projects never get off the ground.

The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future
by Michael Levi
Published 28 Apr 2013

The disparate group had tapped into something much deeper than concern about a single pipeline. “We’ve got to get off oil,” McKibben emphasized the day after his release. “We don’t need one more huge source of oil pouring in.”6 The sentiment made instinctive sense, and not only when it came to the tar sands. Americans were rapidly tapping into ever bigger pools of petroleum. The outer continental shelf, Alaska, tight oil, oil shale; each source of oil raised alarms when juxtaposed with increasing concerns “GAME OVER” • 83 about climate change, which scientists were confident was being accelerated by the carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels. Massive deposits of shale gas, recently unlocked, had struck many similarly: there was nearly ten times more much carbon in the world’s gas fields than in the Alberta oil sands.7 The Sierra Club, which had campaigned to move “Beyond Coal” since 2002, added “Beyond Oil” after the BP spill in 2010 and then launched “Beyond Natural Gas” in 2012.

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All of this, many scientists and advocates argue, misses something important: carbon emissions from new sources of oil are unusually high. The Canadian oil sands have come in for acute criticism on this front, and many fear U.S. oil shale could have similar problems too. Former Vice President Al Gore claimed for several years that “gasoline made “GAME OVER” • 97 from the tar sands gives a Toyota Prius the same impact on climate as a Hummer using gasoline made from oil.”28 His assertion rested on the fact that some oil sands operations produce three times the emissions of extracting conventional oil.

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GLOSSARY Advanced biofuels Barrel Biofuels CAFE standard Cap and trade Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) Carbon tax Cellulosic ethanol Clean energy standard CO2-EOR Biofuels not made from materials that compete with food (e.g., corn, soy) A unit of measure for oil that is equivalent to fortytwo U.S. gallons Liquid fuels made from biological materials; substitute for gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard, mandating average fuel economy of vehicles sold by each company A policy that imposes a limit on greenhouse gas emissions, distributes permits accordingly, and then allows entities to trade those permits among themselves A technology that captures carbon dioxide emissions from industrial facilities (particularly coaland gas-fired power plants) and deposits them permanently underground A policy that levies a fee to entities that emit carbon dioxide, proportional to the amount emitted A gasoline substitute produces from parts of plants that cannot be eaten A policy that mandates a minimum fraction of electricity be generated from clean sources according to a set schedule; “clean” may be defined to include only zero-carbon sources, or may include natural gas (usually with half credit) and/or efficiency An approach to oil production that injects carbon dioxide into oil wells to increase their productivity 214 • GLOSSARY Corporate Average Fuel Economy Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Ethanol Fossil fuels Fracking Fuel economy standards Gas-to-liquids (GTL) GDP Gigawatt (GW) Green jobs Greenhouse gases Horizontal drilling Hybrid Hydraulic fracturing Intermittent sources Keystone XL kilowatt-hour (kWh) Levelized cost of electricity mpg The average fuel economy of all the cars and trucks sold by a given company; usually computed as a harmonic average Any method that increases the amount of oil that can be produced from a given resource; CO2-EOR is one variation A gasoline substitute produced from biological materials Oil, natural gas, and coal Colloquial term used to describe either hydraulic fracturing or the entire process of extracting natural gas from shale See CAFE standard Technology that converts natural gas into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, or methanol Gross Domestic Product; standard measure of national economic output A unit of capacity to produce electricity; a typical nuclear plant has a capacity of one gigawatt Often ill defined, but generally refers to jobs associated with environmental products and services, including clean energy Gaseous compounds that block outbound infrared radiation (heat) when they accumulate in the atmosphere A technology wherein operators drill down before turning their drill bits and then drilling sideways A type of vehicle that combines a gasoline engine and an electric engine A technology wherein operators inject high-velocity fluids into a well in order to fracture surrounding rock and stimulate the flow of oil or gas Sources of electricity that cannot deliver consistent power, most notably wind and solar A proposed pipeline connecting the Canadian oil sands to markets in the United States A measure of electricity use The cost of generating electricity divided by the amount of electricity generated miles per gallon; a measure of the efficiency of a vehicle GLOSSARY • 215 Natural gas liquids (NGLs) Oil sands Oil shale OPEC Peak oil Rare earth metals Renewable energy Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) Shale Shale gas Shale oil Shock Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) Tight oil Zero carbon energy Liquids that are produced concurrently with natural gas, most prominently ethane, butane, and propane Oil-bearing sands found primarily in the Canadian province of Alberta; also referred to as tar sands Rock that can in part be converted to oil through heating Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries; cartel that attempts to restrain collective oil output and raise prices The idea that world oil production will soon hit a peak, and then decline, as a result of scarce resources A class of elements in the periodic table, many of which have applications in clean energy technologies Energy whose production does not require depletable resources; wind, solar, and geothermal are examples A policy that mandates a minimum fraction of electricity be generated from renewable sources according to a set schedule Dense rock that often bears oil or gas Natural gas extracted from shale rock See tight oil In economics, a sudden change; in this book, most often a change in energy prices U.S. government-controlled reserves of already produced oil that can be released in the event of a supply emergency Oil produced from formations in which oil cannot flow under normal conditions; produced using hydraulic fracturing to enhance mobility Energy whose production leads to few or no carbon dioxide emissions This page intentionally left blank NOTES CH AP TER 1 1.

The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century
by Alex Prud'Homme
Published 6 Jun 2011

A few hundred miles north of the Colorado oil shale fields, tension between oil and water has been growing since the discovery of vast deposits of tar sands, another source of synthetic crude oil, in Ontario and Alberta, Canada. Tar sand consists of quartzite, clay, water, and the “tar,” which is the heavy hydrocarbon bitumen (similar to what is found in shale oil). The first commercial operation to exploit it to produce oil was established in Alberta, in 1930. Today, Fort McMurray, a small town set among rippling hills on the Athabasca River, in northern Alberta, is a tar sands boomtown. Since the mid-1990s, residents have taken to calling it Fort McMoney because companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Conoco-Phillips, Chevron, Imperial Oil (mostly owned by ExxonMobil), British Petroleum, Total, StatoilHydro of Norway, and Suncor have poured $150 billion into processing oil from the tar sands in a fifty-seven-thousand-square-mile area—a region almost the size of Florida.

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Since the mid-1990s, residents have taken to calling it Fort McMoney because companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Conoco-Phillips, Chevron, Imperial Oil (mostly owned by ExxonMobil), British Petroleum, Total, StatoilHydro of Norway, and Suncor have poured $150 billion into processing oil from the tar sands in a fifty-seven-thousand-square-mile area—a region almost the size of Florida. These companies plan to invest an additional $75 billion in the region by 2012. The extraction of oil from Alberta’s tar sands is the world’s largest energy project and is expected to contribute nearly $1 trillion to Canada’s gross domestic product by 2020. The tar sands contain more oil than the fields of Kuwait, Norway, and Russia combined. If only 10 percent of Alberta’s deposits are actually tapped, they still represent the world’s second-largest oil reserve, after Saudi Arabia’s.

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Tree-ring studies show that over the millennia the region has suffered extreme droughts that have lasted up to twenty years. Tar sand mining uses an average of three to four barrels of freshwater to produce one barrel of bitumen, with the water usually being heated to help separate hydrocarbons from the sand and clay. Although some companies recycle their water as many as eighteen times, the industry still takes great volumes from the Athabasca River and nearby aquifers. Even in a drought, the government will allow the tar sand industry to withdraw enough water to fill fifty bathtubs per second. In 2008, tar sand processing accounted for 76 percent of the water taken from the Athabasca, Alberta’s longest undammed waterway.

The End of Growth
by Jeff Rubin
Published 2 Sep 2013

And these oil prices won’t fall until they trigger another global recession—one that will last much longer than just a few quarters. Of course, there is at least one group that’s content to see triple-digit prices, and that’s Big Oil. High prices are inspiring oilmen to scour the earth like never before. They’re drilling miles beneath the ocean floor, leveling boreal forests to dig up tar sands, and learning how to get at oil that’s trapped in shale rock. Meanwhile, Western governments are swarming around the Middle East, even launching a couple of military invasions, in a bid to get their hands on every last drop of the region’s treasure trove of oil before it too is sucked dry. The cost of tapping the extra energy we need to fuel our economies is mounting for both our wallets and the environment.

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That doesn’t mean there won’t be any more oil. New reserves are being found all the time in brand-new places. What the decline in conventional production does mean, though, is that future economic growth will be fueled by expensive oil from nonconventional sources such as the tar sands, offshore wells in the deep waters of the world’s oceans, and even oil shales, which come with a long list of environmental costs that range from carbon dioxide emissions to potential groundwater contamination. The arrival of these new sources of oil points to the same thing: oil will be getting more expensive. Where will that leave the global economy?

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What geologists don’t get is that peak oil isn’t about supply: higher prices will always fetch more oil supply. It may not be exactly what purists think of as oil, but hey, if it burns, it’ll do. Peak oil is really a demand phenomenon rooted in economics, not geology. It doesn’t matter if billions of barrels are waiting to be tapped in unconventional plays such as the tar sands or oil shales if the cost of extraction is beyond our capacity to pay. In other words, the only peak that matters is the one determined by what we can afford, not by how much we can drill. Potential oil resources are only meaningful if we have the money to actually pay for the fuel. Otherwise, who really cares if we can pump it out of the ground?

Twilight of Abundance: Why the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short
by David Archibald
Published 24 Mar 2014

In the case of the Canadian tar sands, production of a barrel of bitumen requires the energy from burning natural gas that is the energy equivalent of one-fifth of a barrel of oil. At that rate, production of the 180 billion barrels of the Canadian tar sands reserves will use the energy equivalent of 36 billion barrels of oil. Nuclear power could provide steam and hydrogen for that process and save the natural gas for other purposes. So applying nuclear power to the Canadian tar sands industry would effectively create 36 billion barrels of fossil fuels. Similarly, processing of crude oil from the oil shales of the Green River Formation will require hydrogen best produced by electrolysis using power from nuclear reactors.

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The oil price rise has resulted in some mitigating responses. Oil consumption in the United States is now down from its peak in 2005, which was also the year that world oil production peaked. Road deaths have also declined as people have driven more slowly. The oil price rise has allowed the development of oil and gas production from shales, and that shale production is making a useful contribution. But the decline in conventional U.S. oil production continues all the while. America is currently on a path to a wrenching transition to a very high oil price, and a widening trade deficit from that higher price. But it need not be on that path.

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A more recent study by the National Petroleum Council includes an estimate of 2,500 TCF for the likely amount of shale gas that could be recovered at a cost of less than $10 per thousand cubic feet.5 The EIA shale gas resource estimate ranges from the energy-content equivalent of 70 billion barrels of oil at the low end to 182 billion at the high end, ten years’ and twenty-six years’ worth of oil consumption, respectively. Meanwhile, non-conventional oil production from shales has risen to 2.3 million barrels per day, on its way to perhaps 2.8 million barrels in 2016, about one-third of projected U.S. production in that year. But output from shale oil wells declines very rapidly. In the Bakken Formation of North Dakota’s Williston Basin, well-production rates decline to 15 percent of the initial flow rate by the third year of operation.

Living in a Material World: The Commodity Connection
by Kevin Morrison
Published 15 Jul 2008

Oil prices around $100 a barrel, it is still hard for shale oil to be economic. One of the factors inhibiting the exploitation of shale oil is the amount of water required to extract it – an estimated 1.2 barrels of water for each barrel of shale oil. The US shale deposits are in dry areas where rainfall is minimal. ENERGY | 51 Developers of oil shale projects would therefore need to buy water rights – a complicated affair in Colorado, and the demand for water is becoming even more competitive with the expanding population in the Rocky Mountain region. US energy researchers have also experimented with the live form of algae.

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Coal, for instance, has fewer joules per kilogram than the same weight in oil, making oil the favourite in terms of what you’re going to get out of the effort of finding and producing it. In fact, oil is superior to all other fossil fuels, which is why it is the most strategic of all energy. The weight of oil is 43 MJ per kilogram compared with 25.5 MJ for ethanol from grain, 24 MJ for coal, 18 MJ for wood and 4.4 MJ for oil shale (the small content of energy power contained in oil shale is one of the factors that have limited its commercial viability). 52 | LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD In terms of volume, a cubic metre of oil contains 35 000 MJ of energy, a cubic metre of coal around 27 500 MJ, ethanol about 20 000 MJ, and a cubic metre of gas only 35 MJ.

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Tata Motors, the Indian carmaker, intends to sell its new Tata Nano for $2500 each, or about half the cost of the next cheapest car. Today’s equivalent of the North Sea oil fields – that is, oil supply from a politically stable region – is the Canadian tar sands, also known as oil sands. These are a combination of clay, sand, water and bitumen in a rock formation. Unlike conventional oil, which is drilled, tar sands near the surface are mined using open pit techniques, a common method normally used for large metal deposits. Once the rock is removed from the ground, the oil content, which is bitumen, has to be separated, from the clay, water and sand.

Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources
by Geoff Hiscock
Published 23 Apr 2012

The United States itself produces about 5.5 million barrels a day of crude and about 2 million barrels of natural gas liquids. The United States also has the world’s largest reserves of oil shale deposits, estimated at between 1.5 and 2 trillion barrels. But extraction is complex and costly, and the economic viability of oil shale is haphazard. Estonia, China, and Brazil are the only current producers of any size. Russia has oil shale reserves of 250 billion barrels, and Israel may have about the same. Against this backdrop, oil executives from around the world gathered in the ballroom of London’s Waldorf Hilton Hotel in May 2011 for an important update on the latest market information.

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Oil India has a mainly domestic focus, with most production coming from Assam state in India’s northeast, plus Rajasthan in the west. Its overseas exploration blocks, usually in partnership with IOCL and/or OVL, are in Iran, Gabon, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Venezuela, and East Timor. GAIL bought its first U.S. shale gas asset, a stake in Houston-based Carrizo Oil & Gas’s Eagle Ford shale tenement in late 2011. It will spend about $300 million with Carrizo over five years, and said it was prepared to spend another $1 billion for more such assets in North America. Reliance Industries, controlled by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has its primary oil-sector focus on exploration and production off the coast of India, mainly in the Krishna Godavari Basin in the Bay of Bengal where it began producing oil and gas in 2009.

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It is the world leader in natural gas production, it has the biggest reserves of recoverable coal, it is the third-largest crude oil producer behind Russia and Saudi Arabia, it has significant new petroleum prospects in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, it is the leading producer of nuclear electricity, and it has supply capacities in copper, other metals, food, and bioenergy that are either at or near the top of the tree. And in the evolving field of unconventional oil and gas, its vast shale reserves and gas-to-liquids conversion abilities have a “game-changer” whiff about them. At the same time, the U.S. government is pumping billions of dollars into alternative energy forms such as wind, solar, and wave power. Renewables are well and truly part of America’s future energy mix, but for the next decade at least, the main U.S. energy story will be the shift from coal to natural gas.

Oil Panic and the Global Crisis: Predictions and Myths
by Steven M. Gorelick
Published 9 Dec 2009

With the onset of the 2008 economic crisis and the rapid decline in oil prices, it was estimated that about $75 billion of new project investment would be halted, and the 2010 peak workforce needs would be cut in half from 44,000 to 22,000.158 US oil shale Much lower on the US oil resource pyramid is the third type of unconventional oil that comes from oil shale. Oil shale is a hard rock, generally derived from calcium-rich clay and mud, that is loaded with kerogen. If this rock were buried under the right conditions (within what is called the oil window), it might produce oil naturally, over geologic time. Now tied up as a solid, the organic matter, kerogen, in oil shales needs to be artificially “cooked” over a human time scale to generate oil. Today, oil shale is not being produced in the US, although Unocal did produce about 1 million barrels between 1957 and 1989.

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Earlier Rand studies suggested that after 0.5 billion barrels were produced, the technology would improve, production costs would drop by 50 percent, and the oil shale resource would be profitable at $35 to $48 per barrel (2005$). The expectation is that such production efficiency would occur within 12 years of initial commercial operation. An analysis conducted in 2008 claims that US oil shale can be profitably produced at an oil price of $38 to $62 (2007$) per barrel.162 Global oil shale With potential recovery of about 3 trillion barrels globally, there is about as much oil in oil shale as the total global endowment estimated in the USGS 2000 Assessment. However, within the oil industry, the standing joke is that, “Oil shale is the energy source of the future and always will be.”

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There are documented reserves in China, Brazil, and Estonia, where oil shale has been mined and used, and other countries contain substantial oil shale deposits (e.g., Australia, Russia, Italy, Morocco, and Zaire). Worldwide, a credible published estimate by the USGS is 2.9 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, based on analysis of oil shale in 33 countries that contain a total of 411 billion tons of oil shale, which “should be considered a minimum figure because numerous deposits are still largely unexplored or were not included in [their] study.”164 The average of published, but uncertain, estimates of all global oil shale resources suggests that the quantity of oil shale containing at least 10 gallons of oil per ton is staggering: about 330 trillion barrels, which, even at 1 percent recovery, would roughly equal the current estimate of the global endowment of conventional oil (approximately 3 trillion barrels).165 Fossil Fuel Conversion: The Role of Gas and Coal If the supply of conventional oil were to fall short, and the technology to economically extract unconventional oil from as yet untapped resources like oil shale did not materialize, what could possibly replace common gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel fuel, the most precious products derived from 60 percent of each barrel of oil?

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines
by Richard Heinberg and James Howard (frw) Kunstler
Published 1 Sep 2007

Imagine the world investing trillions of dollars and working mightily for the next 20 years to build hundreds of “clean” coal (and/or CTL) plants, with the world’s electrical grids and transportation systems now becoming overwhelmingly dependent on these technologies, only to see global coal supplies dwindle. Would the world then have the capital to engage in another strenuous and costly energy transition? And what would be the next energy source? Other low-grade fossil fuels, such as tar sands, oil shale, and heavy oil are also problematic from both the depletion and emissions perspectives. Some depletion analysts recommend full-speed development of these resources. However, the energetic extraction costs for them are usually quite high compared to the energy payoff from the resource extracted.

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The exception and limit to the exception address the common argument of free-market economists that resources are infinitely substitutable, and that therefore modern market-driven societies need never face a depletion-led collapse, even if their consumption rates continue to escalate.9 In some instances, substitutes for resources do become readily available and are even superior, as was the case in the mid-19th century when kerosene from petroleum was substituted for whale oil as a fuel for lamps. In other cases, substitutes are inferior, as is the case with tar sands as a substitute for conventional petroleum, given that tar sands are less energy-dense, require more energy input for processing, and produce more carbon emissions. As time goes on, societies will tend first to exhaust substitutes that are superior and easy to get at, then those that are equivalent, and increasingly will have to rely on ever more inferior substitutes to replace depleting resources — unless rates of consumption are held in check (see Axioms 2-4). 2.

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Klare, Michael Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth L labor Lahontan, Baron de The Land Institute land use language: and belief in symbols; development; and economics; and environmental damage; and politics; and reason; and religion; role in civilization; and societal change leisure time Lerro, Bruce lifestyle choices The Limits to Growth (Club of Rome) local economies logic Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (Bellamy) love M MacKenzie-Mohr, Doug Macy, Joanna magical thinking Malthus, Thomas Mandil, Claude marketing. see also advertising McLuckie, Benjamin media Mexico Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Mollison, Bill money trading morality Morris, William Moyers, Bill Müller, Max Mumford, Lewis The Myth of the Machine (Mumford) mythology N natural gas The Natural Step nature Nelson, Gaylord Nixon, Richard non-renewable resources. see also fossil fuels nuclear power O oil (see also Peak Oil): as bulwark of US economy; level of dependency on; production levels; substitutes for; sustainability; and wars Oil Depletion Protocol oil shale Oman Ornstein, Robert P parrots Pauli, Wolfgang Peak Oil (see also psychology of peak oil/climate change; techno-collapse): benefits of cooperation with Climate Change; concerted campaign for; conflict with Climate Change; definition; depletionists’ and their views; effects of; experts in; possible strategies for; predictions of when it will happen; psychological theories on; strategies for psychologically coping with; in US Pepperberg, Irene permaculture petrochemicals politics (see also government): after techno-collapse; beginnings of political organization; in a de-industrialized society; and greenhouse gas emissions; and the industrial revolution; and population explosion; and quasi-religious ideologies; role in changing society; and success of technology; and sustainability measures; in US pollution Poon, Wing-Chi population: and A.

Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence
by Robert Bryce
Published 16 Mar 2011

But even as all of these factors are restraining new production, advances in technology and rising commodity prices are spurring the Why We Think We Want Energy Independence 39 development of oil deposits that just a few years ago were viewed as mere fantasy. And that reflects a truism about natural resource development: As prices for a given commodity rise, more people will work to figure out how to find and produce more of it. That means that “difficult” oil like that located in oil shale and tar sands, which is virtually worthless when oil sells for less than about $40 per barrel, becomes more viable when the price of oil is, say, $60 or $80 a barrel. The innovations in the oil exploration business were clearly illustrated in September 2006 when Chevron, Devon Energy, and Norway’s Statoil ASA announced a major discovery with a well called the Jack No. 2.

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Dave Russum, a technical specialist with AJM Petroleum Consultants in Calgary, expects gas production in Alberta, which produces about 80 percent of Canada’s gas, to drop from 14 billion cubic feet per day in 2000 to just 6 billion cubic feet per day by 2024. Even if Canada is able to forestall a major decrease in its natural gas production, the booming tar sands operations in Alberta and Saskatchewan have a huge hunger for gas, which they use to heat the sands to leach out the oil. Some forecasts have even projected that all of the gas that would be carried by the proposed Mackenzie Delta pipeline, which could bring Canadian gas southward from the Beaufort Sea, may be diverted into the tar sands operations.5 The crimps in the Canadian gas market have left the U.S. with few options. New LNG-receiving terminals are being built in Texas and on the West Coast to handle the incoming gas.

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And like Ford, he threatened to impose gasoline rationing.26 Carter even had some 5 billion gasoline rationing coupons printed up, at a cost of $12 million, in case rationing became necessary.27 Perhaps the most expensive element of Carter’s push for energy independence was the federally funded Synthetic Fuels Corporation. Launched in 1980, the agency provided money and loan guarantees to entrepreneurs who wanted to produce motor fuel from coal and oil 102 GUSHER OF LIES shale. Congress supported the program, wrote energy analyst Vito Stagliano in his 2001 book, A Policy of Discontent, “even as one uneconomic project followed another, justified by the ever-elusive standard of energy security.”28 By 1992, the new federal agency was supposed to be producing 1.5 million barrels of synthetic fuel per day.29 It never got close to that target.

Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe
by Noam Chomsky and Laray Polk
Published 29 Apr 2013

Of course, that requires the contributions of the information and political systems, largely willing to line up in the same parade with only occasional hesitation. During the Tar Sands Action in Washington, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute told the press, “the protesters are really protesting jobs.” What do you make of API’s statement?103 The translation of the API statement to English is easy: “The Tar Sands Action is protesting an initiative that will severely harm local environments and accelerate the global rush to disaster—while putting plenty of bucks in our pockets for us to hoard or spend while we watch the ship sinking.” From what I know of the Tar Sands Action, it consists of people whose priorities are virtually the opposite of the API’s.

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The API spokesperson quoted in the article was contacted to verify accuracy; she responded, “If they [Tar Sands Action participants] are protesting the pipeline they are protesting a shovel-ready job that will put thousands of Americans to work. This industry is focused on creating jobs, producing energy responsibly and strengthening America’s energy security.” Sabrina Fang, API Media Relations, e-mail correspondence, November 16, 2011. On how Saudi interests infuse money into US elections through trade associations, namely, API, see Lee Fang, “How Big Business Is Buying the Election,” The Nation, September 17, 2012. 104 The Tar Sands Action is part of an ongoing campaign to protest the proposed 1,661-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

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On drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, see note 3, chap. 1. 2 In 2005, while deep-water drilling in Angola, an Exxon spokesperson said, “All the easy oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Now comes the harder work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas.” This is proved to be true as the new frontiers of unconventional oil (Arctic offshore, oil sands, oil shale, pre-salt deepwater, tight oil) involve extreme environmental risk in sensitive areas such as the boreal forest and the world’s oceans. Based on BP’s data, the estimated time span of the “world proved [oil] reserves” in meeting current demand is forty-six years. John Donnelly, “Price Rise and New Deep-Water Technology Opened Up Offshore Drilling,” Boston Globe, December 11, 2005; Mark Finley, “The Oil Market to 2030—Implications for Investment and Policy,” Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy 1, no. 1 (2012): 28, doi:10.5547/2160-5890.1.1.4. 3 Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), 226.

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality
by Richard Heinberg
Published 1 Jun 2011

Meanwhile, international competition for dwindling oil supplies might lead to wars between petroleum importing nations, between importers and exporters, and between rival factions within exporting nations. In the years following the turn of the millennium, many pundits claimed that new technologies for crude oil extraction would increase the amount of oil that can be obtained from each well drilled, and that enormous reserves of alternative hydrocarbon resources (principally tar sands and oil shale) would be developed to seamlessly replace conventional oil, thus delaying the inevitable peak for decades. There were also those who said that Peak Oil wouldn’t be much of a problem even if it happened soon, because the market would find other energy sources or transport options as quickly as needed — whether electric cars, hydrogen, or liquid fuel made from coal.

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More oil-producing countries were seeing their extraction rates peaking and beginning to decline despite efforts to maintain production growth using high-tech, expensive extraction methods like injecting water, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide to force more oil out of the ground. Production decline rates in the world’s old, super-giant oilfields, which are responsible for the lion’s share of the global petroleum supply, were accelerating. Production of liquid fuels from tar sands was expanding only slowly, while the development of oil shale remained a hollow promise for the distant future.15 From Scary Theory to Scarier Reality Then in 2008, the Peak Oil scenario became all too real. Global oil production had been stagnant since 2005 and petroleum prices had been soaring upward. In July 2008, the per-barrel price shot up to nearly $150 — half again higher (in inflation-adjusted terms) than the price spikes of the 1970s that had triggered the worst recession since World War II.

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In its authoritative 2010 World Energy Outlook, the IEA announced that total annual global crude oil production will probably never surpass its 2006 level.2 However, the agency fudged the question a bit by declaring that the peak was not due to geological constraints, and that total volumes of liquid fuels (including crude oil, biofuels, synthetic oil from tar sands and coal, and natural gas liquids like butane and propane) will continue to grow — just a bit — until 2035. In discussing the IEA report, a few analysts declared that these latter claims were essentially just efforts to avoid panicking the markets.3 BOX 3.1 Oil Shock 2011? In the early months of 2011 street demonstrations erupted in Iraq, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Algeria.

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
by Alex Epstein
Published 13 Nov 2014

Oil’s value leads to continuous large investments in exploration and extraction technology. Whereas oil deposits were once completely invisible to industry, today modern imaging, called 3D seismic imaging, can get us a far clearer idea of what’s going on below the surface and how it changes over time. We can get oil out of hard rock (shale oil). In oil sands, we’ve created technology that acts as a ground decongestant—releasing oil from the sands that have held it in place for decades. Portability is valuable for many reasons. Personally, oil is the fuel of freedom—the fuel that liberated Americans to go where they want, when they want.

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These are things to be on the lookout for when you follow the cultural debate; they are everywhere, and all four are used to attack what might be the most important technology of our generation. THE ABUSE-USE FALLACY The largest fossil fuel controversy today, besides the broader climate change issue, is fracking—shorthand for hydraulic fracturing—one of several key technologies for getting oil and gas out of dense shale rock, resources that exist in enormous quantities but had previously been inaccessible at low cost. Fracking has gotten attention, not primarily because of the productivity revolution it has created, but because of concerns about groundwater contamination. The leading source of this view is celebrity filmmaker Josh Fox’s Gasland (so-called) documentaries on HBO.10 Looking at how these movies have affected public opinion is an instructive exercise.

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WHAT WE ALL MUST DO In 2007 and 2008, candidate Obama declared his intention to destroy fossil fuel energy in America and around the world, calling for “emissions targets” that would make it illegal to use more than 20 percent of today’s levels.20 About oil, the most versatile fuel in the world, which powers 93 percent of our transportation system and, through shale-oil booms in North Dakota, Texas, and elsewhere, has been one of our few sources of economic hope, he said: At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the country that faced down the tyranny of fascism and communism is now called to challenge the tyranny of oil. . . . For the sake of our security, our economy, our jobs and our planet, the age of oil must end in our time.21 While he was saying this, the oil industry he was comparing to the mass murderers of the twentieth century was perfecting shale-oil (and shale-gas) technology. Thanks to Obama’s lack of oversight in this area, shale energy technology became the leading positive economic force during his administration. That is, a revolution in fossil fuel technology occurred because our government didn’t know enough about it to demonize and ban it.

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril
by Satyajit Das
Published 9 Feb 2016

Accessing Arctic fields, believed to contain 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its natural gas, creates the risk of catastrophic spills. Fracking and tar sand oils require large quantities of water for extraction, transport, and refining. There is a risk of groundwater and aquifer contamination, and storing and treating waste water is difficult. There are suspected connections between fracking and earthquakes. Unconventional fuels, especially heavy oils and tar sands, have a higher proportion of carbon to hydrogen, resulting in higher carbon dioxide emissions when used. Fracking also increases potential emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

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Water is used to generate electricity, either directly using hydroelectric power plants, or indirectly through heat exchange in coal, nuclear, or geothermal power processes. Energy production accounts for around two-thirds of industrial consumption, with water required for coal mining; hydraulic fracturing (fracking), to extract gas and oil from shale formations; and the cooling of gas, coal, and nuclear power plants. Water is used in the production of foodstuffs, fuels, and chemicals. Textiles, paper production, and mining are especially water-intensive. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of demand. Professor John Anthony Allan from King's College, London, introduced the concept of virtual or embedded water, the volume of freshwater used to produce a product.

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This fall reflects weaker than expected demand due to slower economic growth and increased supply, in part from new sources such as shale gas and liquids, but also due to the refusal of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), led by Saudi Arabia, to cut output for strategic and geopolitical reasons. The strategy was to allow prices to fall below the production costs of high-cost producers and non-traditional oil sources, especially shale, forcing them out of business and thus protecting Saudi's and OPEC's market share. Some argued that oil prices had entered a new, permanent long-term range of US$20–60 per barrel. Others saw the fall as temporary. The consensus was that lower oil prices would assist the global economy.

Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century
by Tom Bower
Published 1 Jan 2009

The fundamentals of supply and demand could not permanently support record high prices, and if the price increases were remorseless, the cost of processing “unconventional” tar sands into gasoline became realistic, undermining the peak oil case. High crude prices, however, were hitting profits. Refineries were earning less from their products, the cost of rigs and personnel was rising, and the taxes demanded by the producer nations soared. Rex Tillerson tried to talk prices down. “One trillion barrels of oil have been produced,” he said, “and over 15 trillion barrels of energy remains.” More conservatively, the energy consulting group CERA estimated that four trillion barrels of proven reserves existed; by including oil shale, tar sands and bitumen, that figure was increased to at least seven trillion barrels.

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Hubbert’s original forecast of production in America was based upon data compiled over decades, but new technology and prices challenged its accuracy. While America’s “proven” reserves in 1991 were 24.7 billion barrels, the total reserves, including tar oil, oil shale and other condensates, were estimated in 2003 to be 204 billion barrels, and some experts calculated that new technology could increase the ultimate recovery to between 263 billion and 368 billion barrels; and that figure did not include an estimated 180 billion barrels of oil in the Canadian tar sands. Price and technology would determine the amounts: producing a barrel of oil from bitumen cost about $35. “Let me know when we reach peak technology, then we can talk about peak oil,” Paul Siegele, Chevron’s vice president in charge of strategic planning, would say.

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In the future, said Herkströter, Shell would engage with Greenpeace to discuss the reduction of greenhouse gases in coal gasification and biofuels. Satisfied that he had fulfilled the public relations requirements, Herkströter approved the purchase of one fifth of Canada’s Athabasca tar sands for C$27 million, a relative pittance. The total estimated reserves were 1,701 billion barrels of oil. Shell anticipated extracting 179 billion barrels. Exploitation of the tar sands was uneconomic while oil was at $15 a barrel, but would be profitable once the price hit $40, although the process offended Shell’s newfound commitment to protect the environment. The tar’s extraction would require the felling of 54,000 square miles of forest, an area the size of New York State, and as a consequence wildlife would be killed and water polluted.

The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters
by Gregory Zuckerman
Published 5 Nov 2013

Since the early 1900s, for example, interest has waxed and waned in areas of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming jam-packed with so-called oil shale, an organic-rich rock that’s a distant cousin of shale oil, despite the similar name. Oil shale holds high concentrations of kerogen, a precursor to oil that some liken to teenage crude because it hasn’t experienced the millions of years of pressure needed to become oil.2 Rock in those U.S. states holds the energy equivalent of the world’s entire proven oil reserves, government reports have said. Plus, it’s close to the surface, making it easy to find. During World War I, National Geographic predicted that “no man who owns a motor-car will fail to rejoice” because oil shale surely would provide the “supplies of gasoline which can meet any demand.”3 But fervor for this rock has petered out time and time again in the United States due to the imposing cost of heating it to get the kerogen out, as well as the environmental damage that usually results from this extraction.

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The first commercial natural gas well in the United States was in a shale formation in Fredonia, New York, in the early nineteenth century. But energy companies quickly moved away from this rock. It just didn’t seem possible to easily extract oil or gas from shale. Sure, shale had a lot of pores, allowing it to store oil and gas. But the rock was too tight and compressed. In other words, there weren’t enough connections between those pores. Trapped oil and gas didn’t seem to have necessary pathways for it to flow to a “wellbore,” or a hole drilled into the ground to create a well. Much of the oil and gas in shale eventually makes its way to shallower rock formations near the surface through natural fractures in the rock.

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Much of the oil and gas in shale eventually makes its way to shallower rock formations near the surface through natural fractures in the rock. But because shale is so compressed, this process can take millions of years. Geologists knew oil and gas remained in shale formations around the country and around the world, but it seemed much too expensive to try to go get it. The rock had such low permeability that it just didn’t seem worth the time, cost, and effort. Whatever oil or gas shale held, it sure didn’t seem to want to give it up. “In the field the stance was that it wasn’t economical, the formation wasn’t viable and couldn’t make enough gas,” says Jay Ewing, an engineer who worked for a rival of Mitchell Energy in the early 1980s.9 Complicating matters, shale layers were just too far down—as much as two miles below the surface—adding to the difficulty and cost.

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism
by Kevin Phillips
Published 31 Mar 2008

The global output of ‘liquids,’ the department indicated, would rise from 84 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) per day in 2005 to a projected 117.7 mboe in 2030—barely enough to satisfy anticipated world demand of 117.6 mboe.”74 Peak-oil stalwarts like Simmons have made the same point: crude-oil production is what has peaked, and the liquids—from tar sands, oil shale, biofuels, coal-to-liquids, and gas-to-liquids—must now be included to keep things on track. Perhaps they can do so; certainly they can for several years. But that is not the only issue. If crude production has peaked, with its many ramifications, that in itself conveys an enormously significant message.

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After a while, he said, “they’ll be in liquidation.” 29 State oil companies have most remaining global reserves so locked up, according to the Oil & Gas Journal, that the Canadian oil sands region now represents 50 to 70 percent of the reserves not barred to international oil companies because of government restrictions.30 However, a substantial percentage of environmentalists seem as opposed to developing the Canadian oil sands as they are to developing coal in southern Illinois or oil shale in the Rocky Mountains. Some hold all three positions alongside determined support for the idea of U.S. energy independence. Facilitated as these assumptions are by strong public preference for Democratic environmental positions and general dismissal of the Republicans, the net result may be less a green breakthrough than a green illusion.

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In the agricultural sector, though, the plus side of record food prices is that they have a history of encouraging innovation, be it in farm equipment, technology, seeds, or fertilizer. The same has been true in energy, where 2006-2008 prices spurred development of previously uneconomic resources—heavy oil, shale oil, and the Canadian oil sands region. This is why the idea of an Asia-centered Price Revolution II is so compelling. Price upheavals and progress may require each other. One prospect that troubled the National Intelligence Council was the apparent resurgence of state capitalism, resource nationalism, and forms of mercantilism.

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World
by Daniel Yergin
Published 14 May 2011

Ohio oil aggregate disruption of, see aggregate disruption Brent burning of as capital-intensive industry climate change and demand for demand shock and, see demand shock dependence on disappearance of diversification of supplies of for electricity energy density of estimates of stock of fading away as policy issue of First Gulf War and as fuel choice global choke points for increase in recovery rate of Iraq disruption and, see Iraq War job creation and nationalization of Nazi need for non-OPEC, birth of offshore production of price controls on refineries for for Royal Navy running out of shut-in capacity and size of production of in South China Sea strategic importance of supply shock and synthetic technology and unconventional supply of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) see also specific countries and regions oil boom (1970s) oil companies Afghanistan and antitrust and biofuels and Caspian Derby and Chinese environmental degradation from international (IOC) international national (INOCs) international vs. national Iran and Iraq and mergers and, see mergers, oil-industry national (NOC) in Nigeria offshore production and oil shale campaign and shale gas and Tengiz oil field and in Venezuela see also specific companies oil crisis (1975) “Oil Dot-com” (Morse) oil embargo (1967) oil embargo (1973) energy efficiency and France and Japan and oil prices and Solarex and wind energy and Oil-for-Food Programme Oil Ministry, USSR Oil Pollution Act oil prices Arab Awakening and avoided costs and biofuels and bubble in cars and China and collapse of (1986) collapse of (1997–98) demand shock and energy security and in Great Depression Hubbert’s predictions and Iran and Iraq War and Kuwait and LNG and Nigeria and 9/11 and 1973–74 increase in oil embargo and petro-state and R&D and reversed Midas touch and Soviet Union and Strait of Hormuz and surge in (2004) terrorism and Venezuelan general strike and whether they matter oil sands (tar sands) oil shale oil shock, second Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund oil spills oil trading Oily Rocks Oklahoma oil in Okonjo-Iweala, Ngozi Oman Omar, Mullah “On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light” (Einstein) O’Neill, Jim O’Neill, Paul OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) Algiers meeting of (2004) divisions in energy security and founding of Iran and Jakarta meeting of (1997) June 2011 meeting of obscurity of quotas of total oil revenues of OPEC Imperium Open Russia Foundation Orange Revolution Orbach, Raymond Orchestra of the Three Seas O’Reilly, David Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Organization of Gas Exporting Countries Orinoco region Oslo Accords Otto, Nikolaus “Otto cycle” engine outer-continental shelf (OCS) over-the-counter markets “overwhelming force” doctrine oxide fuel cells oxygen ozone, hole in Pachauri, Rajendra Pacific Ocean Packard, David Pakistan atomic bomb in extreme weather in Khan network in Kissinger in pipelines and terrorism and Palestinian Liberation Organization Palestinian National Authority Paley Commission Parati Field Paris patents Patton, George PDVSA, see Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.

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The Carter administration instituted an $88 billion program that would cost many tens of billions of dollars to develop those “synfuels” as the way to ensure energy independence. Oil shale was at the top of the list. Petroleum companies announced major projects. But within a couple of years, the projects were abruptly terminated. The oil shale campaign was done in by the rising surplus of petroleum in the world market, the falling price, and the way in which the costs for developing oil shale were skyrocketing—even without any commercial production having begun.25 Yet today a few hardy companies, large and small, are at work on oil shale again. They are still trying to find new and more economic approaches for speeding up nature’s time machine and turning kerogen into a commercial fuel without having that several-million-year wait.

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It is all about finding a way to unlock resources whose existence may have long been recognized but for which recovery on a commercial scale had seemed impossible. Those breakthroughs are yet to happen with what is called oil shale. Oil shale contains high concentrations of the immature precursor to petroleum, kerogen. The kerogen has not yet gone through all the millions of years in Mother Nature’s pressure cooker that would turn it into what would be regarded as oil. The estimates for the oil shale resource are enormous: 8 trillion barrels, of which 6 trillion are in the United States, much of it concentrated in the Rocky Mountains. During the gasoline famine of World War I, National Geographic predicted that “no man who owns a motor-car will fail to rejoice” because this oil would provide the “supplies of gasoline which can meet any demand that even his children’s children for generations to come may make of them.

Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics
by Francis Fukuyama
Published 27 Aug 2007

Therefore, even if every new vehicle produced runs on some alternative fuel, uninterrupted supplies of conventional fuels will still be needed for the next fifteen to twenty years. 2990-7 ch07 luft 7/23/07 12:11 PM Page 77 in search of energy security 77 The petroleum industry will doubtless do its part: With high oil prices expected for the foreseeable future, Americans are likely to see expanded domestic production using enhanced recovery technologies; the government relaxing some restrictions on domestic drilling; and, increasingly, nonconventional sources of petroleum such as tar sands, extra-heavy oil, and oil shale coming online. An estimated 180 billion barrels of oil can potentially be generated from tar sands in Canada, and technology is being developed to tap an additional 800 billion barrels of oil from shale in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. America’s vast coal reserves can also be tapped to produce synthetic petroleum. A process called Fischer-Tropsch, which was used extensively by Nazi Germany and by South Africa, allows the conversion of coal to clean diesel.

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See Special Report on Emissions Scenarios SRI International, 95 Standardization, of automobiles, 24–25 State governments, political barriers to preparation by, 11 STEEP framework, 100–01 Stern, Fritz, 131 Stimson, Henry, 60, 61 Stock markets, in East Asia, before crisis, 42–43 Stockpiling, of antiviral drugs, 85–86 Storage, computer, 124 Strategic surprises, 93–108; believability of, 93–94, 98, 103–05; definition of, 94; denial and, 103; filters approach to, 99–100; imagination applied to, 93–94, 97–99; information-processing frameworks for, 100–01; insideout perspective on, 101–03; myths regarding, 94–95; outside-in perspective on, 101–02; predictions of, 97, 106–08; preparedness for, 105–08; Soviet collapse as, 95–97; systematic approach to, 97–99; ways of anticipating, 97–105 Sudan, infectious disease in, 86 Sugar cane, ethanol from, 78–79, 171 Suharto, 42, 106 2990-7 ch17 index 7/23/07 12:33 PM Page 197 index Sukarno, 106 Sumatra, 106, 144 Supercomputers, 122 Supernova, 141 Superpowers: European–Russian alliance as, 107; U.S. as, end of, 107, 157–59 Surowiecki, James, 100 Surprises: collective cognitive architecture of, 29–30, 36; expectation in, 110; inevitable, 93, 94; psychology of, 3, 23, 110; slow, 23–28; socio-surprises, 3; strategic, 93–108; time frames of, 23–24 Surveillance, of infectious disease, 86–87, 88 Switching circuits, in digital computers, 124 Syria, past surprises in, 145–46 Taiwan, 158 Tar sands, 77 Technological forecasting, limits of, 5 Technological innovation: adaptation to, 162–63; in automobile industry, 24–28; cycles of, 58; dangers of, 155, 163; in electricity, 27–28; in energy sector, 59–60, 67–70; in geo-engineering of climate change, 151–52; optimism vs. pessimism about, 138; organization of, 59–70; in petroleum industry, 26–28; precursors of DARPA in, 60–63; slow surprises in, 23–28; social change and, 163–64; in war, 57–58.

A Pipeline Runs Through It: The Story of Oil From Ancient Times to the First World War
by Keith Fisher
Published 3 Aug 2022

Asphalt was produced in France, where a lamp-oil refining industry thrived behind a protective tariff on imported oil products; its raw materials were vegetable oils, shale oil and semi-refined oil from the United States that was classified as crude oil. In 1903 French alcohol producers, who also manufactured lamp oil, made an assault on oil-refining competitors by getting the protective tariff removed, which stimulated French investors into joining the Rothschilds to seek their own foreign sources of crude oil. In Britain, the Scottish shale-oil industry continued, and asphalt was being produced in Italy, both countries also producing small amounts of oil and natural gas.105 On Europe’s eastern fringe, new fields were being opened up in Russia’s north Caucasus, mainly near Grozny, and oil production began to extend to the other side of the Caspian Sea as far east as Ferghana (in present-day Uzbekistan).106 Yet further east, there were indications of oil on Sakhalin Island, Petroleum World reporting, ‘the Viceroy of the Far East has decidedly declared himself against the retention of the island of Saghalin as a place of deportation, and now proposes to throw the island open to colonists … [T]here ought to be a great future in store for the extensive oil sources known to exist in this part of the world.’107 In the Far East, while new oil was being struck in the Dutch East Indies, in British India increasing Burmese production was joined by new production from Digboi and Makum in Upper Assam by the Assam Oil Co., made economically feasible by the new railway of the Assam Railways and Trading Co.; and small levels of production had been achieved intermittently in Punjab and Baluchistan.108 Japan, with more than 40 miles of modern pipelines, was producing well over a million barrels of crude per year, mainly from the Echigo oilfield, about 200 miles northwest of Tokyo in present-day Niigata prefecture.

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It stated ‘that he, after much paines and expences, hath certainely found out “A Way to Extract and Make great Quantityes of Pitch, Tarr, and Oyle out of a sort of Stone,” of which there is sufficient plenty within our Dominions of England and Wales.’128 By distilling local tar sands, they produced an oily substance that could be turned into pitch for waterproofing ships, which, following improved distillation techniques, was claimed to be a serviceable substitute for Swedish pine tar. However, a more lucrative product of Shropshire tar sands was ‘Betton’s British Oil’, sold as a cure-all.129 An account of 1764 described how at Broseley there was also ‘a Well exhaling a sulphurous Vapour, which when contracted to one Vent by Means of an Iron Cover with a circular Hole, and set on Fire by a Candle, burns like the Spirit of Wine or Brandy, with a Heat that will even boil a large Piece of Beef in two Hours’.

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I was assured at Gabian that the Bishop of Béziers obtained a large income from it, though not so large as it used to be.122 In the Alsace region of northeast France oil seeps were reported from at least the fifteenth century, and by the seventeenth century the oil was being distilled into fractions and used for lubrication, as a wood preservative, for illumination, and as a treatment for a range of ailments.123 From 1712 Eyrini d’Eyrinis, a doctor and teacher, began experimenting with asphalt found a few hundred miles to the south, in the Neuchâtel region of Switzerland, and he publicized its potential as being ‘more suitable than any other material for joining together and tarring all manner of structures’.124 While these deposits were commercialized initially on a small scale, mainly for distilled oil that was sold as a medicine, from 1745 the Alsace oil sands around Pechelbronn began to be mined and processed on a significant industrial scale. In the early nineteenth century bitumen deposits further south began to be exploited, near Seyssel in the Rhône valley, while oil shale deposits at Autun in Saône-et-Loire began to be distilled into products including lamp oil. As asphalt became used more widely as a mastic and for surfacing pavements and roads, the deposits of Neuchâtel similarly began to be commercially exploited.125 Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1, Scientific American would run a report arguing that ‘The value of Alsace to Germany and the consequent extent of the loss to France, commercially considered, are alike enhanced by the probable development of a large petroleum industry in that celebrated province.’126 A late sixteenth-century encyclopedia of the geography of Great Britain described how near Wigan, Lancashire, there was a well – that became known as ‘Camden’s cooker’ – from which breaks out a sulphurous vapour, which makes the water bubble up as if it boyl’d.

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future
by Laurence C. Smith
Published 22 Sep 2010

Legarth, “Sustainable Metal Resource Management—the Need for Industrial Development: Efficiency Improvement Demands on Metal Resource Management to Enable a Sustainable Supply until 2050,” Journal of Cleaner Production 4, no. 2 (1996): 97-104; see also C. M. Backman, “Global Supply and Demand of Metals in the Future,” Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, 71 (2008): 1244-1254. 104 Unconventional oil is much more difficult to extract and includes materials that are often excavated, like oil shales and tar sands, and high-viscosity oils. 105 Based on their analysis of eight hundred oil fields, including all fifty-four “supergiants” containing five billion or more barrels, the International Energy Agency estimates the world average production-weighted decline rate is currently about 6.7% for fields that have passed their production peak, rising to 8.6% decline by 2030.

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The cost to produce it has dropped from thirty-five dollars per barrel in 1980 to twenty dollars per barrel in recent years, making even fifty-dollars-per-barrel oil prices very profitable.421 Huge new supplies of natural gas, needed for energy and hydrogen, will come online with construction of the Mackenzie Gas Project, a long-anticipated 1,220-kilometer pipeline that will carry Arctic gas from the Mackenzie Delta area to the tar sands and other North American markets. 422 History tells us that Canada’s adherence to international climate-change treaties crumbles before market forces like these: The tar sands are the biggest reason why Canada not only failed to meet her pledged reduction in carbon dioxide emissions under the Kyoto Protocol (to -6% below 1990 levels), but actually grew them +27% instead.423 So far, about 530 square kilometers have been strip-mined, an area not much greater than the city of Edmonton. But tar sands underlie a staggering 140,000 square kilometers of Alberta, nearly one-fourth of the province and about the size of Bangladesh.

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Since 1967, when the first mining began, only one square kilometer has been certifiably restored and returned to the public.420 These and other problems have environmental organizations yowling against any further increase in tar sands production. They face a difficult battle. Short of being outlawed, it’s hard to imagine how the growth of this industry will ever stop. The oil reserves the tar sands contain are estimated at an astonishing 175 billion barrels which, if correct and recoverable, is the second-largest oil endowment on Earth after Saudi Arabia (estimated at 264 billion barrels). That means Alberta holds more oil than Iraq (115 billion barrels), Kuwait (102 billion), Venezuela (99 billion), Russia (79 billion), or Norway (7.5 billion).

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow
by Tim Jackson
Published 8 Dec 2016

Respected observers – including the International Energy Agency (IEA) – had suggested, prior to the crisis, that a peak in oil production would arrive as early as 2020. These estimates clearly underestimated the potential rise in unconventional oil supplies. But the extent of this underestimation remains unclear.33 Optimists point to the massive reserves still lying in the tar sands and oil shales. Getting the oil out might be costly and environmentally damaging, but absolute scarcity is still a long way off, they claim. But recent detailed analyses suggest that unconventional oil will at best delay the production peak by a few decades. Some estimates even confirm a peak before 2025 and suggest that fracking will simply slow down the post-peak decline.34 In short, we are not in a position either to dismiss entirely or to confirm unequivocally the Limits to Growth scenarios.

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INDEX Locators in italic refer to figures absolute decoupling 84–6; historical perspectives 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; mathematical relationship with relative decoupling 96–101, 111 abundance see opulence accounting errors, decoupling 84, 91 acquisition, instinctive 68 see also symbolic role of goods adaptation: diminishing marginal utility 51, 68; environmental 169; evolutionary 226 advertising, power of 140, 203–4 Africa 73, 75–7; life-expectancy 74; philosophy 227; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; growth 99; relative income effect 58, 75; schooling 78 The Age of Turbulence (Greenspan) 35 ageing populations 44, 81 agriculture 12, 148, 152, 220 Aids/HIV 77 algebra of inequality see inequality; mathematical models alienation: future visions 212, 218–19; geographical community 122–3; role of the state 205; selfishness vs. altruism 137; signals sent by society 131 alternatives: economic 101–2, 139–40, 157–8; hedonism 125–6 see also future visions; post-growth macroeconomics; reform altruism 133–8, 196, 207 amenities see public services/amenities Amish community, North America 128 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith) 123, 132 angelised growth see green growth animal welfare 220 anonymity/loneliness see alienation anthropological perspectives, consumption 70, 115 anti-consumerism 131 see also intrinsic values anxiety: fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; novelty 116–17, 124, 211 Argentina 58, 78, 78, 80 Aristotle 48, 61 The Art of Happiness (Dalai Lama) 49 arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 assets, stranded 167–8 see also ownership austerity policies xxxiii–xxxv, 189; and financial crisis 24, 42–3; mathematical models 181 Australia 58, 78, 128, 206 authoritarianism 199 autonomy see freedom/autonomy Ayres, Robert 143 backfire effects 111 balance: private interests/common good 208; tradition/innovation 226 Bank for International Settlements 46 bank runs 157 banking system 29–30, 39, 153–7, 208; bonuses 37–8 see also financial crisis; financial system basic entitlements: enterprise as service 142; income 67, 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; limits to growth 63–4 see also education; food; health Basu, Sanjay 43 Baumol, William 112, 147, 222, 223; cost disease 170, 171, 172, 173 BBC survey, geographical community 122–3 Becker, Ernest 69 Belk, Russ 70, 114 belonging 212, 219 see also alienation; community; intrinsic values Bentham, Jeremy 55 bereavement, material possessions 114, 214–15 Berger, Peter 70, 214 Berry, Wendell 8 Better Growth, Better Climate (New Climate Economy report) 18 big business/corporations 106–7 biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 biological perspectives see evolutionary theory; human nature/psyche biophysical boundaries see limits (ecological) Black Monday 46 The Body Economic (Stuckler and Basu) 43 bond markets 30, 157 bonuses, banking 37–8 Bookchin, Murray 122 boom-and-bust cycles 157, 181 Booth, Douglas 117 borrowing behaviour 34, 118–21, 119 see also credit; debt Boulding, Elise 118 Boulding, Kenneth 1, 5, 7 boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) bounded capabilities for flourishing 61–5 see also limits (flourishing within) Bowen, William 147 Bowling Alone (Putnam) 122 Brazil 58, 88 breakdown of community see alienation; social stability bubbles, economic 29, 33, 36 Buddhist monasteries, Thailand 128 buen vivir concept, Ecuador xxxi, 6 built-in obsolescence 113, 204, 220 Bush, George 121 business-as-usual model 22, 211; carbon dioxide emissions 101; crisis of commitment 195; financial crisis 32–8; growth 79–83, 99; human nature 131, 136–7; need for reform 55, 57, 59, 101–2, 162, 207–8, 227; throwaway society 113; wellbeing 124 see also financial systems Canada 75, 206, 207 capabilities for flourishing 61–5; circular flow of the economy 113; future visions 218, 219; and income 77; progress measures 50–5, 54; role of material abundance 67–72; and prosperity 49; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; role of shame 123–4; role of the state 200 see also limits (flourishing within); wellbeing capital 105, 107–10 see also investment Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty) 33, 176, 177 Capital Institute, USA 155 capitalism 68–9, 80; structures 107–13, 175; types 105–7, 222, 223 car industry, financial crisis 40 carbon dioxide emissions see greenhouse gas emissions caring professions, valuing 130, 147, 207 see also social care Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams) 213 causal path analysis, subjective wellbeing 59 Central Bank 154 central human capabilities 64 see also capabilities for flourishing The Challenge of Affluence (Offer) 194 change see alternatives; future visions; novelty/innovation; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Chicago school of economics 36, 156 children: advertising to 204; labour 62, 154; mortality 74–5, 75, 206 Chile xxxiii, xxxvii, 58, 74, 74, 75, 76 China: decoupling 88; GDP per capita 75; greenhouse gas emissions 91; growth 99; life expectancy 74; philosophy 7; post-financial crisis 45–6; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; relative income effect 58; resource use 94; savings 27; schooling 76 choice, moving beyond consumerism 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy Christian doctrine see religious perspectives chromium, commodity price 13 Cinderella economy 219–21, 224 circular economy 144, 220 circular flow of the economy 107, 113 see also engine of growth citizen’s income 207 see also universal basic income civil unrest see social stability Clean City Law, São Paulo 204 climate change xxxv, 22, 47; critical boundaries 17–20; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 98; fatalism 186; investment needs 152; role of the state 192, 198, 201–2 see also greenhouse gas emissions Climate Change Act (2008), UK 198 clothing see basic entitlements Club of Rome, Limits to Growth report xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16, Cobb, John 54 collectivism 191 commercial bond markets 30, 157 commitment devices/crisis of 192–5, 197 commodity prices: decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; fluctuation/volatility 14, 21; resource constraints 13–14 common good: future visions 218, 219; vs. freedom and autonomy 193–4; vs. private interests 208; role of the state 209 common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199 see also public services/amenities communism 187, 191 community: future visions of 219–20; geographical 122–3; investment 155–6, 204 see also alienation; intrinsic values comparison, social 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect competition 27, 112; positional 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also struggle for existence complexity, economic systems 14, 32, 108, 153, 203 compulsive shopping 116 see also consumerism Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (CoP21) 19 conflicted state 197, 201, 209 connectedness, global 91, 227 conspicuous consumption 115 see also language of goods consumer goods see language of goods; material goods consumer sovereignty 196, 198 consumerism 4, 21, 22, 103–4, 113–16; capitalism 105–13, 196; choice 196; engine of growth 104, 108, 120, 161; existential fear of death 69, 212–15; financial crisis 24, 28, 39, 103; moving beyond 216–18; novelty and anxiety 116–17; post-growth economy 166–7; role of the state 192–3, 196, 199, 202–5; status 211; tragedy of 140 see also demand; materialism contemplative dimensions, simplicity 127 contraction and convergence model 206–7 coordinated market economies 27, 106 Copenhagen Accord (2009) 19 copper, commodity prices 13 corporations/big business 106–7 corruption 9, 131, 186, 187, 189 The Cost Disease: Why Computers get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn’t (Baumol) 171, 172 Costa Rica 74, 74, 76 countercyclical spending 181–2, 182, 188 crafts/craft economies 147, 149, 170, 171 creative destruction 104, 112, 113, 116–17 creativity 8, 79; and consumerism 113, 116; future visions 142, 144, 147, 158, 171, 200, 220 see also novelty/innovation credit, private: deflationary forces 44; deregulation 36; financial crisis 26, 27, 27–31, 34, 36, 41; financial system weaknesses 32–3, 37; growth imperative hypothesis 178–80; mortgage loans 28–9; reforms in financial system 157; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–19; and stimulation of growth 36 see also debt (public) credit unions 155–6 crises: of commitment 192–5; financial see financial crisis critical boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi 127 Cuba: child mortality 75; life expectancy 74, 77, 78, 78; response to economic hardship 79–80; revolution 56; schooling 76 Cushman, Philip 116 Dalai Lama 49, 52 Daly, Herman xxxii, 54, 55, 160, 163, 165 Darwin, Charles 132–3 Das Kapital (Marx) 225 Davidson, Richard 49 Davos World Economic Forum 46 Dawkins, Richard 134–5 de Mandeville, Bernard 131–2, 157 death, denial of 69, 104, 115, 212–15 debt, public-sector 81; deflationary forces 44; economic stability 81; financial crisis 24, 26–32, 27, 37, 41, 42, 81; financial systems 28–32, 153–7; money creation 178–9; post-growth economy 178–9, 223 Debt: The First Five Thousand Years (Graeber) 28 decoupling xix, xx, xxxvii, 21, 84–7; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 84, 86, 87, 88, 95, 104; green growth 163, 163–5; historical perspectives 87–96, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95; need for new economic model 101–2; relationship between relative and absolute 96–101 deep emission and resource cuts 99, 102 deficit spending 41, 43 deflationary forces, post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 degrowth movement 161–3, 177 demand 104, 113–16, 166–7; post-financial crisis 44–5; post-growth economy 162, 164, 166–9, 171–2, 174–5 dematerialisation 102, 143 democratisation, and wellbeing 59 deposit guarantees 35 deregulation 27, 34, 36, 196 desire, role in consumer behaviour 68, 69, 70, 114 destructive materialism 104, 112, 113, 116–17 Deutsche Bank 41 devaluation of currency 30, 45 Dichter, Ernest 114 digital economy 44, 219–20 dilemma of growth xxxi, 66–7, 104, 210; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; decoupling 85, 87, 164; degrowth movement 160–3; economic stability 79–83, 174–6; material abundance 67–72; moving beyond 165, 166, 183–4; role of the state 198 diminishing marginal utility: alternative hedonism 125, 126; wellbeing 51–2, 57, 60, 73, 75–6, 79 disposable incomes 27, 67, 118 distributed ownership 223 Dittmar, Helga 126 domestic debt see credit dopamine 68 Dordogne, mindfulness community 128 double movement of society 198 Douglas, Mary 70 Douthwaite, Richard 178 downshifting 128 driving analogy, managing change 16–17 durability, consumer goods 113, 204, 220 dynamic systems, managing change 16–17 Eastern Europe 76, 122 Easterlin, Richard 56, 57, 59; paradox 56, 58 eco-villages, Findhorn community 128 ecological investment 101, 166–70, 220 see also investment ecological limits see limits (ecological) ecological (ecosystem) services 152, 169, 223 The Ecology of Money (Douthwaite) 178 economic growth see growth economic models see alternatives; business-as-usual model; financial systems; future visions; mathematical models; post-growth macroeconomics economic output see efficiency; productivity ‘Economic possibilities for our grandchildren’ (Keynes) 145 economic stability 22, 154, 157, 161; financial system weaknesses 34, 35, 36, 180; growth 21, 24, 67, 79–83, 174–6, 210; post-growth economy 161–3, 165, 174–6, 208, 219; role of the state 181–3, 195, 198, 199 economic structures: post-growth economy 227; financial system reforms 224; role of the state 205; selfishness 137 see also business-as-usual model; financial systems ecosystem functioning 62–3 see also limits (ecological) ecosystem services 152, 169, 223 Ecuador xxxi, 6 education: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; and income 67, 76, 76; investment in 150–1; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements efficiency measures 84, 86–8, 95, 104, 109–11, 142–3; energy 41, 109–11; growth 111, 211; investment 109, 151; of scale 104 see also labour productivity; relative decoupling Ehrlich, Paul 13, 96 elasticity of substitution, labour and capital 177–8 electricity grid 41, 151, 156 see also energy Elgin, Duane 127 Ellen MacArthur Foundation 144 emissions see greenhouse gas emissions employee ownership 223 employment intensity vs. carbon dioxide emissions 148 see also labour productivity empty self 116, 117 see also consumerism ends above means 159 energy return on investment (EROI) 12, 169 energy services/systems 142: efficiency 41, 109–11; inputs/intensity 87–8, 151; investment 41, 109–10, 151–2; renewable xxxv, 41, 168–9 engine of growth 145; consumerism 104, 108, 161; services 143, 170–4 see also circular flow of the economy enough is enough see limits enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 158 see also novelty/innovation entitlements see basic entitlements entrepreneur as visionary 112 entrepreneurial state 220 Environmental Assessment Agency, Netherlands 62 environmental quality 12 see also pollution environmentalism 9 EROI (energy return on investment) 12, 169 Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus) 9–11, 132–3 evolutionary map, human heart 136, 136 evolutionary theory 132–3; common good 193; post-growth economy 226; psychology 133–5; selfishness and altruism 196 exchange values 55, 61 see also gross domestic product existential fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15 exponential expansion 1, 11, 20–1, 210 see also growth external debt 32, 42 extinctions/biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 Eyres, Harry 215 Fable of the Bees (de Mandeville) 131–2 factor inputs 109–10 see also capital; labour; resource use fast food 128 fatalism 186 FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change) 92 fear of death, existential 69, 104, 115, 212–15 feedback loops 16–17 financial crisis (2008) 6, 23–5, 32, 77, 103; causes and culpability 25–8; financial system weaknesses 32–7, 108; Keynesianism 37–43, 188; nationalisation of financial sector 188; need for financial reforms 175; role of debt 24, 26–32, 27, 81, 179; role of state 191; slowing of growth 43–7, 45; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–21, 119; types/definitions of capitalism 106; youth unemployment 144–5 financial systems: common pool resources 192; debt-based/role of debt 28–32, 153–7; post-growth economy 179, 208; systemic weaknesses 32–7; and wellbeing 47 see also banking system; business-as-usual model; financial crisis; reform Findhorn community 128 finite limits of planet see limits (ecological) Fisher, Irving 156, 157 fishing rights 22 flourishing see capabilities for flourishing; limits; wellbeing flow states 127 Flynt, Larry 40 food 67 see also basic entitlements Ford, Henry 154 forestry/forests 22, 192 Forrester, Jay 11 fossil fuels 11, 20 see also oil Foucault, Michel 197 fracking 14, 15 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) 92 France: GDP per capita 58, 75, 76; inequality 206; life-expectancy 74; mindfulness community 128; working hours 145 free market 106: financial crisis 35, 36, 37, 38, 39; ideological controversy/conflict 186–7, 188 freedom/autonomy: vs. common good 193–4; consumer 22, 68–9; language of goods 212; personal choices for improvement 216–18; wellbeing 49, 59, 62 see also individualism Friedman, Benjamin 176 Friedman, Milton 36, 156, 157 frugality 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 fun (more fun with less stuff) 129, 217 future visions 2, 158, 217–21; community banking 155–6; dilemma of growth 211; enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 147–8, 158; entrepreneur as visionary 112; financial crisis as opportunity 25; and growth 165–6; investment 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208; money as social good 140, 153–7, 158; processes of change 185; role of the state 198, 199, 203; timescales for change 16–17; work as participation 140, 144–9, 148, 158 see also alternatives; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Gandhi, Mahatma 127 GDP see gross domestic product gene, selfish 134–5 Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) 54, 54 geographical community 122–3 Germany xxxi; Federal Ministry of Finance 224–5; inequality 206; relative income effect 58; trade balance 31; work as participation 146 Glass Steagal Act 35 Global Commodity Price Index (1992–2015) 13 global corporations 106–7 global economy 98: culture 70; decoupling 86–8, 91, 93–5, 95, 97, 98, 100; exponential expansion 20–1; inequality 4, 5–6; interconnectedness 91, 227; post-financial crisis slowing of growth 45 Global Research report (HSBC) 41 global warming see climate change Godley, Wynne 179 Goldman Sachs 37 good life 3, 6; moral dimension 63, 104; wellbeing 48, 50 goods see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods Gordon, Robert 44 governance 22, 185–6; commons 190–2; crisis of commitment 192–5, 197; economic stability 34, 35; establishing limits 200–8, 206; growth 195–9; ideological controversy/conflict 186–9; moving towards change 197–200, 220–1; post-growth economy 181–3, 182; power of corporations 106; for prosperity 209; signals 130 government as household metaphor 30, 42 governmentality 197, 198 GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) 54, 54 Graeber, David 28 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act 35 Great Depression 39–40 Greece: austerity xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxvii, 43; energy inputs 88; financial crisis 28, 30, 31, 77; life expectancy 74; schooling 76; relative income effect 58; youth unemployment 144 Green Economy initiative 41 green: growth xxxvii, 18, 85, 153, 166, 170; investment 41 Green New Deal, UNEP 40–1, 152, 188 greenhouse gas emissions 18, 85, 86, 91, 92; absolute decoupling 89–92, 90, 92, 98–101, 100; dilemma of growth 210–11; vs. employment intensity 148; future visions 142, 151, 201–2, 220; Kyoto Protocol 18, 90; reduction targets 19–20; relative decoupling 87, 88, 89, 93, 98–101, 100 see also climate change Greenspan, Alan 35 gross domestic product (GDP) per capita 3–5, 15, 54; climate change 18; decoupling 85, 93, 94; financial crisis 27, 28, 32; green growth 163–5; life expectancy 74, 75, 78; as measure of prosperity 3–4, 5, 53–5, 54, 60–1; post-financial crisis 43, 44; post-growth economy 207; schooling 76; wellbeing 55–61, 58 see also income growth xxxvii; capitalism 105; credit 36, 178–80; decoupling 85, 96–101; economic stability 21, 24, 67, 80, 210; financial crisis 37, 38; future visions 209, 223, 224; inequality 177; labour productivity 111; moving beyond 165, 166; novelty 112; ownership 105; post-financial crisis slowing 43–7, 45; prosperity as 3–7, 23, 66; role of the state 195–9; sustainable investment 166–70; wellbeing 59–60; as zero sum game 57 see also dilemma of growth; engine of growth; green growth; limits to growth; post-growth macroeconomy growth imperative hypothesis 37, 174, 175, 177–80, 183 habit formation, acquisition as 68 Hall, Peter 106, 188 Hamilton, William 134 Hansen, James 17 happiness see wellbeing/happiness Happiness (Layard) 55 Hardin, Garrett 190–1 Harvey, David 189, 192 Hayek, Friedrich 187, 189, 191 health: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; inequality 72–3, 205–6, 206; investment 150–1; and material abundance 67, 68; personal choices for improvement 217; response to economic hardship 80; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements Heath, Edward 66, 82 hedonism 120, 137, 196; alternatives 125–6 Hirsch, Fred xxxii–xxxiii historical perspectives: absolute decoupling 86, 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; relative decoupling 86, 87–9, 89 Holdren, John 96 holistic solutions, post-growth economy 175 household finances: house purchases 28–9; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–20, 119 see also credit household metaphor, government as 30, 42 HSBC Global Research report 41 human capabilities see capabilities for flourishing human happiness see wellbeing/happiness human nature/psyche 3, 132–5, 138; acquisition 68; alternative hedonism 125; evolutionary map of human heart 136, 136; intrinsic values 131; meaning/purpose 49–50; novelty/innovation 116; selfishness vs. altruism 133–8; short-termism/living for today 194; spending vs. saving behaviour 34, 118–21, 119; symbolic role of goods 69 see also intrinsic values human rights see basic entitlements humanitarian perspectives: financial crisis 24; growth 79; inequality 5, 52, 53 see also intrinsic values hyperbolic discounting 194 hyperindividualism 226 see also individualism hyper-materialisation 140, 157 I Ching (Chinese Book of Changes) 7 Iceland: financial crisis 28; life expectancy 74, 75; relative income effect 56; response to economic hardship 79–80; schooling 76; sovereign money system 157 identity construction 52, 69, 115, 116, 212, 219 IEA (International Energy Agency) 14, 152 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 45, 156–7 immaterial goods 139–40 see also intrinsic values; meaning/purpose immortality, symbolic role of goods 69, 104, 115, 212–14 inclusive growth see inequality; smart growth income 3, 4, 5, 66, 124; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; child mortality 74–5, 75; decoupling 96; economic stability 82; education 76; life expectancy 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; poor nations 67; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; tax revenues 81 see also gross domestic product INDCs (intended nationally determined commitments) 19 India: decoupling 99; growth 99; life expectancy 74, 75; philosophy 127; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; savings 27; schooling 76 indicators of environmental quality 96 see also biodiversity; greenhouse gas emissions; pollution; resource use individualism 136, 226; progressive state 194–7, 199, 200, 203, 207 see also freedom/autonomy industrial development 12 see also technological advances inequality 22, 67; basic entitlements 72; child mortality 75, 75; credible alternatives 219, 224; deflationary forces 44; fatalism 186; financial crisis 24; global 4, 5–6, 99, 100; financial system weaknesses 32–3; post-growth economy 174, 176–8; role of the state 198, 205–7, 206; selfishness vs. altruism 137; symbolic role of goods 71; wellbeing 47, 104 see also poverty infant mortality rates 72, 75 inflation 26, 30, 110, 157, 167 infrastructure, civic 150–1 Inglehart, Ronald 58, 59 innovation see novelty/innovation; technological advances inputs 80–1 see also capital; labour productivity; resource use Inside Job documentary film 26 instant gratification 50, 61 instinctive acquisition 68 Institute for Fiscal Studies 81 Institute for Local Self-Reliance 204 institutional structures 130 see also economic structures; governance intended nationally determined commitments (INDCs) 19 intensity factor, technological 96, 97 see also technological advances intentional communities 127–9 interconnectedness, global 91, 227 interest payments/rates 39, 43, 110; financial crisis 29, 30, 33, 39; post-growth economy 178–80 see also credit; debt Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 18, 19, 201–2 International Energy Agency (IEA) 14, 152 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 45, 156–7 intrinsic values 126–31, 135–6, 212; role of the state 199, 200 see also belonging; community; meaning/purpose; simplicity/frugality investment 107–10, 108; ecological/sustainable 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; and innovation 112; loans 29; future visions 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208, 220; and savings 108; social 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 invisible hand metaphor 132, 133, 187 IPAT equation, relative and absolute decoupling 96 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 18, 19, 201–2 Ireland 28; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75; schooling 76; wellbeing 58 iron cage of consumerism see consumerism iron ore 94 James, Oliver 205 James, William 68 Japan: equality 206; financial crisis 27, 45; life expectancy 74, 76, 79; relative income effect 56, 58; resource use 93; response to economic hardship 79–80 Jefferson, Thomas 185 Jobs, Steve 210 Johnson, Boris 120–1 Kahneman, Daniel 60 Kasser, Tim 126 keeping up with the Joneses 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect Kennedy, Robert 48, 53 Keynes, John Maynard/Keynesianism 23, 34, 120, 174, 181–3, 187–8; financial crisis 37–43; financial system reforms 157; part-time working 145; steady state economy 159, 162 King, Alexander 11 Krugman, Paul 39, 85, 86, 102 Kyoto Protocol (1992) 18, 90 labour: child 62, 154; costs 110; division of 158; elasticity of substitution 177, 178; intensity 109, 148, 208; mobility 123; production inputs 80, 109; structures of capitalism 107 labour productivity 80–1, 109–11; Baumol’s cost disease 170–2; and economic growth 111; future visions 220, 224; investment as commitment 150; need for investment 109; post-growth economy 175, 208; services as engine of growth 170; sustainable investment 166, 170; trade off with resource use 110; work-sharing 145, 146, 147, 148, 148, 149 Lahr, Christin 224–5 laissez-faire capitalism 187, 195, 196 see also free market Lakoff, George 30 language of goods 212; material footprint of 139–40; signalling of social status 71; and wellbeing 124 see also consumerism; material goods; symbolic role of goods Layard, Richard 55 leadership, political 199 see also governance Lebow, Victor 120 Lehman Brothers, bankruptcy 23, 25, 26, 118 leisure economy 204 liberal market economies 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6 life expectancy: and income 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; inequality 206; response to economic hardship 80 see also basic entitlements life-satisfaction 73; inequality 205; relative income effect 55–61, 58 see also wellbeing/happiness limits, ecological 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 20–2; climate change 17–20; decoupling 86; financial crisis 23–4; growth 21, 165, 210; post-growth economy 201–2, 226–7; role of the state 198, 200–2, 206–7; and social boundaries 141; wellbeing 62–63, 185 limits, flourishing within 61–5, 185; alternative hedonism 125–6; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 215, 218, 219, 221; paradox of materialism 121–23; prosperity 67–72, 113, 212; role of the state 201–2, 205; selfishness 131–8; shame 123–4; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–21, 119 see also sustainable prosperity limits to growth: confronting 7–8; exceeding 20–2; wellbeing 62–3 Limits to Growth report (Club of Rome) xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16 ‘The Living Standard’ essay (Sen) 50, 123–4 living standards 82 see also prosperity Lloyd, William Forster 190 loans 154; community investment 155–6; financial system weaknesses 34 see also credit; debt London School of Economics 25 loneliness 123, 137 see also alienation long-term: investments 222; social good 219 long-term wellbeing vs. short-term pleasures 194, 197 longevity see life expectancy love 212 see also intrinsic values low-carbon transition 19, 220 LowGrow model for the Canadian economy 175 MacArthur Foundation 144 McCracken, Grant 115 Malthus, Thomas Robert 9–11, 132–3, 190 market economies: coordinated 27, 106; liberal 27, 35–6, 106, 107 market liberalism 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6; wellbeing 47 marketing 140, 203–4 Marmot review, health inequality in the UK 72 Marx, Karl/Marxism 9, 189, 192, 225 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 11, 12, 15 material abundance see opulence material goods 68–9; identity 52; language of 139–40; and wellbeing 47, 48, 49, 51, 65, 126 see also symbolic role of goods material inputs see resource use materialism: and fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; and intrinsic values 127–31; paradox of 121–3; price of 126; and religion 115; values 126, 135–6 see also consumerism mathematical models/simulations 132; austerity policies 181; countercyclical spending 181–2, 182; decoupling 84, 91, 96–101; inequality 176–8; post-growth economy 164; stock-flow consistent 179–80 Mawdsley, Emma 70 Mazzucato, Mariana 193, 220 MDG (Millennium Development Goals) 74–5 Meadows, Dennis and Donella 11, 12, 15, 16 meaning/purpose 2, 8, 22; beyond material goods 212–16; consumerism 69, 203, 215; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 218–20; wellbeing 49, 52, 60, 121–2; work 144, 146 see also intrinsic values means and ends 159 mental health: inequality 206; meaning/purpose 213 metaphors: government as household 30, 42; invisible hand 132, 133, 187 Middle East, energy inputs 88 Miliband, Ed 199 Mill, John Stuart 125, 159, 160, 174 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 74–5 mindfulness 128 Minsky, Hyman 34, 35, 40, 182, 208 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 11, 12, 15 mixed economies 106 mobility of labour, loneliness index 123 Monbiot, George 84, 85, 86, 91 money: creation 154, 157, 178–9; and prosperity 5; as social good 140, 153–7, 158 see also financial systems monopoly power, corporations 106–7 The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (Friedman) 82, 176 moral dimensions, good life 63 see also intrinsic values moral hazards, separation of risk from reward 35 ‘more fun with less stuff’ 129, 217 mortality fears 69, 104, 115, 212–15 mortality rates, and income 74, 74–6, 75 mortgage loans 28–9, 35 multinational corporations 106–7 national debt see debt, public-sector nationalisation 191; financial crisis 38, 188 natural selection 132–3 see also struggle for existence nature, rights of 6–7 negative emissions 98–9 negative feedback loops 16–17 Netherlands 58, 62, 206, 207 neuroscientific perspectives: flourishing 68, 69; human behaviour 134 New Climate Economy report Better Growth, Better Climate 18 New Deal, USA 39 New Economics Foundation 175 nickel, commodity prices 13 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001) 121 Nordhaus, William 171, 172–3 North America 128, 155 see also Canada; United States Norway: advertising 204; inequality 206; investment as commitment 151–2; life expectancy 74; relative income effect 58; schooling 76 novelty/innovation 104, 108, 113; and anxiety 116–17, 124, 211; crisis of commitment 195; dilemma of growth 211; human psyche 135–6, 136, 137; investment 150, 166, 168; post-growth economy 226; role of the state 196, 197, 199; as service 140, 141–4, 158; symbolic role of goods 114–16, 213 see also technological advances Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler and Sunstein) 194–5 Nussbaum, Martha 64 nutrient loading, critical boundaries 17 nutrition 67 see also basic entitlements obesity 72, 78, 206 obsolescence, built in 113, 204, 220 oceans: acidification 17; common pool resources 192 Offer, Avner 57, 61, 71, 194, 195 oil prices 14, 21; decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; resource constraints 15 oligarchic capitalism 106, 107 opulence 50–1, 52, 67–72 original sin 9, 131 Ostrom, Elinor and Vincent 190, 191 output see efficiency; gross domestic product; productivity ownership: and expansion 105; private vs. public 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; new models 223–4; types/definitions of capitalism 105–7 Oxfam 141 paradoxes: materialism 121–3; thrift 120 Paris Agreement 19, 101, 201 participation in society 61, 114, 122, 129, 137; future visions 200, 205, 218, 219, 225; work as 140–9, 148, 157, 158 see also social inclusion part-time working 145, 146, 149, 175 Peccei, Aurelio 11 Perez, Carlota 112 performing arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 personal choice 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy personal property 189, 191 Pickett, Kate 71, 205–6 Piketty, Thomas 33, 176, 177 planetary boundaries see limits (ecological) planning for change 17 pleasure 60–1 see also wellbeing/happiness Plum Village mindfulness community 128 Polanyi, Karl 198 policy see governance political leadership 199 see also governance Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts 41 pollution 12, 21, 53, 95–6, 143 polycentric governance 191, 192 Poor Laws 10 poor nations see poverty population increase 3, 12, 63, 96, 97, 190; Malthus on 9–11, 132–3 porn industry 40 Portugal 28, 58, 88, 206 positional competition 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison positive feedback loops 16–17 post-growth capitalism 224 post-growth macroeconomics 159–60, 183–4, 221; credit 178–80; degrowth movement 161–3; economic stability 174–6; green growth 163–5; inequality 176–8; role of state 181–3, 182, 200–8, 206; services 170–4; sustainable investment 166–70 see also alternatives; future visions; reform poverty 4, 5–6, 216; basic entitlements 72; flourishing within limits 212; life expectancy 74, 74; need for new economic model 101; symbolic role of goods 70; wellbeing 48, 59–60, 61, 67 see also inequality; relative income effect power politics 200 predator–prey analogy 103–4, 117 private credit see credit private vs. public: common good 208; ownership 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; salaries 130 privatisation 191, 219 product lifetimes, obsolescence 113, 204, 220 production: inputs 80–1; ownership 191, 219, 223 productivity: investment 109, 167, 168, 169; post-growth economy 224; services as engine of growth 171, 172, 173; targets 147; trap 175 see also efficiency measures; labour productivity; resource productivity profits: definitions of capitalism 105; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 87; investment 109; motive 104; post-growth economy 224; and wages 175–8 progress 2, 50–5, 54 see also novelty/innovation; technological advances progressive sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 progressive state 185, 220–2; contested 186–9; countering consumerism 202–5; equality measures 205–7, 206; governance of the commons 190–2; governance as commitment device 192–5; governmentality of growth 195–7; limit-setting 201–2; moving towards 197–200; post-growth macroeconomics 207–8, 224; prosperity 209 prosocial behaviour 198 see also social contract prosperity 1–3, 22, 121; capabilities for flourishing 61–5; and growth 3–7, 23, 66, 80, 160; and income 3–4, 5, 66–7; limits of 67–72, 113, 212; materialistic vision 137; progress measures 50–5, 54; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; social perspectives 2, 22, 48–9; state roles 209 see also capabilities for flourishing; post-growth macroeconomics; sustainable prosperity; wellbeing prudence, financial 120, 195, 221; financial crisis 33, 34, 35 public sector spending: austerity policies 189; countercyclical spending strategy 181–2, 182; welfare economy 169 public services/amenities: common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199; future visions 204, 218–20; investment 155–6, 204; ownership 223 see also private vs. public; service-based economies public transport 41, 129, 193, 217 purpose see meaning/purpose Putnam, Robert 122 psyche, human see human nature/psyche quality, environmental 12 see also pollution quality of life: enterprise as service 142; inequality 206; sustainable 128 quality to throughput ratios 113 quantitative easing 43 Queen Elizabeth II 25, 32, 34, 37 quiet revolution 127–31 Raworth, Kate 141 Reagan, Ronald 8 rebound phenomenon 111 recession 23–4, 28, 81, 161–3 see also financial crisis recreation/leisure industries 143 recycling 129 redistribution of wealth 52 see also inequality reforms 182–3, 222; economic structures 224; and financial crisis 103; financial systems 156–8, 180 see also alternatives; future visions; post-growth economy relative decoupling 84–5, 86; historical perspectives 87–9, 89; relationship with absolute decoupling 96–101, 111 relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison religious perspectives 9–10, 214–15; materialism as alternative to religion 115; original sin 9, 131; wellbeing 48, 49 see also existential fear of death renewable energy xxxv, 41, 168–169 repair/renovation 172, 220 resource constraints 3, 7, 8, 11–15, 47 resource productivity 110, 151, 168, 169, 220 resource use: conflicts 22; credible alternatives 101, 220; decoupling 84–9, 92–5, 94, 95; and economic output 142–4; investment 151, 153, 168, 169; trade off with labour costs 110 retail therapy 115 see also consumerism; shopping revenues, state 222–3 see also taxation revolution 186 see also social stability rights: environment/nature 6–7; human see basic entitlements risk, financial 24, 25, 33, 35 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek) 187 Robinson, Edward 132 Robinson, Joan 159 Rockström, Johan 17, 165 romantic movement 9–10 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 35, 39 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 9, 131 Russia 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 sacred canopy 214, 215 salaries: private vs. public sector 130, 171; and profits 175–8 Sandel, Michael 150, 164, 218 São Paulo, Clean City Law 204 Sardar, Zia 49, 50 Sarkozy, Nicolas xxxi, 53 savage state, romantic movement 9–10 savings 26–7, 28, 107–9, 108; investment 149; ratios 34, 118–20, 119 scale, efficiencies of 104 Scandinavia 27, 122, 204 scarcity, managing change 16–17 Schumpeter, Joseph 112 Schwartz, Shalom 135–6, 136 schooling see education The Science of Desire (Dichter) 114 secular stagnation 43–7, 45, 173 securitisation, mortgage loans 35 security: moving towards 219; and wellbeing 48, 61 self-development 204 self-expression see identity construction self-transcending behaviours see transcendence The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) 134–5 selfishness 133–8, 196 Sen, Amartya 50, 52, 61–2, 123–4 service concept/servicization 140–4, 147–8, 148, 158 service-based economies 219; engine of growth 170–4; substitution between labour and capital 178; sustainable investment 169–70 see also public services SFC (stock-flow consistent) economic models 179–80 shame 123–4 shared endeavours, post-growth economy 227 Sheldon, Solomon 214 shelter see basic entitlements shopping 115, 116, 130 see also consumerism short-termism/living for today 194, 197, 200 signals: sent out by society 130, 193, 198, 203, 207; social status 71 see also language of goods Simon, Julian 13 simplicity/simple life 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 simulations see mathematical models/simulations slow: capital 170; movement 128 smart growth 85, 163–5 see also green growth Smith, Adam 51, 106–7, 123, 132, 187 social assets 220 social boundaries (minimum standards) 141 see also basic entitlements social care 150–1 see also caring professions social comparison 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect social contract 194, 198, 199, 200 social inclusion 48, 69–71, 114, 212 see also participation in society social investment 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 social justice 198 see also inequality social logic of consumerism 114–16, 204 social stability 24, 26, 80, 145, 186, 196, 205 see also alienation social status see status social structures 80, 129, 130, 137, 196, 200, 203 social tolerance, and wellbeing 59, 60 social unrest see social stability social wage 40 social welfare: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 socialism 223 Sociobiology (Wilson) 134 soil integrity 220 Solon, quotation 47, 49, 71 Soper, Kate 125–6 Soros, George 36 Soskice, David 106 Soviet Union, former 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 Spain 28, 58, 144, 206 SPEAR organization, responsible investment 155 species loss/extinctions 17, 47, 62, 101 speculation 93, 99, 149, 150, 154, 158, 170; economic stability 180; financial crisis 26, 33, 35; short-term profiteering 150; spending: behaviour of ordinary people 34, 119, 120–1; countercyclical 181–2, 182, 188; economic stability 81; as way out of recession 41, 44, 119, 120–1; and work cycle 125 The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett) 71, 205–6 spiritual perspectives 117, 127, 128, 214 stability see economic stability; social stability stagflation 26 stagnant sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 stagnation: economic stability 81–2; labour productivity 145; post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 see also recession state capitalism, types/definitions of capitalism 106 state revenues, from social investment 222–3 see also taxation state roles see governance status 207, 209, 211; and possessions 69, 71, 114, 115, 117 see also language of goods; symbolic role of goods Steady State Economics (Daly) xxxii steady state economies 82, 159, 160, 174, 180 see also post-growth macroeconomics Stern, Nicholas 17–18 stewardship: role of the state 200; sustainable investment 168 Stiglitz, Joseph 53 stock-flow consistent (SFC) economic models 179–80 Stockholm Resilience Centre 17, 201 stranded assets 167–8 see also ownership structures of capitalism see economic structures struggle for existence 8–11, 125, 132–3 Stuckler, David 43 stuff see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods subjective wellbeing (SWB) 49, 58, 58–9, 71, 122, 129 see also wellbeing/happiness subprime lending 26 substitution, between labour and capital 177–178 suffering, struggle for existence 10 suicide 43, 52, 77 Sukdhev, Pavan 41 sulphur dioxide pollution 95–6 Summers, Larry 36 Sunstein, Cass 194 sustainability xxv–xxvi, 102, 104, 126; financial systems 154–5; innovation 226; investment 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; resource constraints 12; role of the state 198, 203, 207 see also sustainable prosperity Sustainable Development Strategy, UK 198 sustainable growth see green growth sustainable prosperity 210–12; creating credible alternatives 219–21; finding meaning beyond material commodities 212–16; implications for capitalism 222–5; personal choices for improvement 216–18; and utopianism 225–7 see also limits (flourishing within) SWB see subjective wellbeing; wellbeing/happiness Switzerland 11, 46, 157; citizen’s income 207; income relative to wellbeing 58; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75 symbolic role of goods 69, 70–1; existential fear of death 212–16; governance 203; innovation/novelty 114–16; material footprints 139–40; paradox of materialism 121–2 see also language of goods; material goods system dynamics model 11–12, 15 tar sands/oil shales 15 taxation: capital 177; income 81; inequality 206; post-growth economy 222 technological advances 12–13, 15; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 96–8, 100–3, 164–5; dilemma of growth 211; economic stability 80; population increase 10–11; role of state 193, 220 see also novelty/innovation Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 8 terror management, and consumption 69, 104, 115, 212–15 terrorist attacks (9/11) 121 Thailand, Buddhist monasteries 128 Thaler, Richard 194 theatre, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 theology see religious perspectives theory of evolution 132–3 thermodynamics, laws of 112, 164 Thich Nhat Hanh 128 thrift 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 throwaway society 113, 172, 204 timescales for change 16–17 tin, commodity prices 13 Today programme interview xxix, xxviii Totnes, transition movement 128–9 Towards a Green Economy report (UNEP) 152–3 Townsend, Peter 48, 61 trade balance 31 trading standards 204 tradition 135–6, 136, 226 ‘Tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin) 190–1 transcendence 214 see also altruism; meaning/purpose; spiritual perspectives transition movement, Totnes 128–9 Triodos Bank 156, 165 Trumpf (machine-tool makers) Germany 146 trust, loss of see alienation tungsten, commodity prices 13 Turkey 58, 88 Turner, Adair 157 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015) 19 UBS (Swiss bank) 46 Ubuntu, African philosophy 227 unemployment 77; consumer goods 215; degrowth movement 162; financial crisis 24, 40, 41, 43; Great Depression 39–40; and growth 38; labour productivity 80–1; post-growth economy 174, 175, 183, 208, 219; work as participation 144–6 United Kingdom: Green New Deal group 152; greenhouse gas emissions 92; labour productivity 173; resource inputs 93; Sustainable Development Strategy 198 United Nations: Development Programme 6; Environment Programme 18, 152–3; Green Economy initiative 41 United States: credit unions 155–6; debt 27, 31–32; decoupling 88; greenhouse gas emissions 90–1; subprime lending 26; Works Progress Administration 39 universal basic income 221 see also citizen’s income University of Massachusetts, Political Economy Research Institute 41 utilitarianism/utility, wellbeing 50, 52–3, 55, 60 utopianism 8, 38, 125, 179; post-growth economy 225–7 values, materialistic 126, 135–6 see also intrinsic values Veblen, Thorstein 115 Victor, Peter xxxviii, 146, 175, 177, 180 vision of progress see future visions; post-growth economy volatility, commodity prices 14, 21 wages: and profits 175–8; private vs. public sector 130, 171 walking, personal choices for improvement 217 water use 22 Wealth of Nations, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes (Smith) 123, 132 wealth redistribution 52 see also inequality Weber, Axel 46 welfare policies: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 welfare of livestock 220 wellbeing/happiness 47–50, 53, 121–2, 124; collective 209; consumer goods 4, 21, 22, 126; growth 6, 165, 211; intrinsic values 126, 129; investment 150; novelty/innovation 117; opulence 50–2, 67–72; personal choices for improvement 217; planetary boundaries 141; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; simplicity 129; utilitarianism 50, 52–3, 55, 60 see also capabilities for flourishing western lifestyles 70, 210 White, William 46 Whybrow, Peter 68 Wilhelm, Richard 7 Wilkinson, Richard 71, 205–6 Williams, Tennessee 213 Wilson, Edward 134 wisdom traditions 48, 49, 63, 128, 213–14 work: as participation 140–9, 148, 157, 158; and spend cycle 125; sharing 145, 146, 149, 175 Works Progress Administration, USA 39 World Bank 160 World Values Survey 58 youth unemployment, financial crisis 144–5 zero sum game, growth as 57, 71

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
by Naomi Klein
Published 15 Sep 2014

For more than a week Enbridge did not share with the public the very pertinent fact that the substance that had leaked was not conventional crude; it was diluted bitumen, piped from the Alberta tar sands through Michigan. In fact in the early days, Enbridge’s then CEO, Patrick Daniel, flatly denied that the oil came from the tar sands and was later forced to backtrack. “What I indicated is that it was not what we have traditionally referred to as tar sands oil,” Daniel claimed of bitumen that certainly had come from the tar sands. “If it is part of the same geological formation, then I bow to that expert opinion.”82 In the fall of 2010, with many of these disasters still under way, Marty Cobenais of the Indigenous Environmental Network told me that the summer of spills was having a huge impact on communities in the path of new infrastructure projects, whether big rigs, pipelines, or tankers.

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The Calgary event took place at a moment when the San Francisco–based Forest Ethics had been upping the pressure on large corporations to boycott oil derived from the Alberta tar sands because of its high-carbon footprint. A fierce debate was also unfolding over whether new European fuel standards would effectively ban the sale of tar sands oil in Europe. And as early as 2008, the NRDC had sent open letters to fifteen U.S. and Canadian airlines asking them “to adopt their own corporate ‘Low Carbon Fuel Standard’ and to publicly oppose the expansion” of fuel from the tar sands and other unconventional sources, and to avoid these fuels in their own fleets. The group made a special appeal to Branson, citing his leadership in “combating global warming and developing alternative fuels.”54 It seemed like a fair enough demand: the Virgin chief had enjoyed enormous publicity for his very public climate-change promises.

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In explaining his previous denials, Daniel appears to have been trying to argue that because the diluted bitumen traveling in Enbridge’s pipeline had been extracted with newer “in situ” steam injection technology, rather than mined, it would not qualify as tar sands oil: Todd Heywood, “Enbridge CEO Downplays Long-Term Effects of Spill,” Michigan Messenger, August 12, 2010. MORE THAN A WEEK: McGowan and Song, “The Dilbit Disaster”; DANIEL: Kari Lyderson, “Michigan Oil Spill Increases Concern over Tar Sands Pipelines,” OnEarth, August 6, 2010; Kari Lyderson, “Michigan Oil Spill: The Tar Sands Name Game (and Why It Matters),” OnEarth, August 12, 2010. 83. Cobenais interview, October 17, 2010. 84. Dan Joling, “Shell Oil-Drilling Ship Runs Aground on Alaska’s Sitkalidak Island,” Associated Press, January 1, 2013; Rachel D’Oro, “Nobel Discoverer, Shell Oil Drilling Vessel, Shows No Signs of Damage, Coast Guard Claims,” Associated Press, July 15, 2012; John Ryan, “Sea Trial Leaves Shell’s Arctic Oil-Spill Gear ‘Crushed Like a Beer Can,’ ” KUOW.org, November 30, 2012. 85.

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future
by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
Published 30 Jun 2014

In the late twentieth century, Canada was considered an advanced nation with a high level of environmental sensitivity, but this changed around the year 2000 20 T h e F r e n z y o F F o s s i l F u e l s when Canada’s government began to push for development of huge tar sand deposits in the province of Alberta, as well as shale gas in various parts of the country. The Canada was considered an tar sand deposits (which the advanced nation with a high government preferred to call level of environmental sensitiv- ity, but this changed around oil sands, because liquid oil the year 2000 when Canada’s had a better popular image government began to push for than sticky tar) had been development of huge tar sand mined intermittently since deposits in the province of the 1960s, but the rising Alberta, as well as shale gas in cost of conventional oil now various parts of the country.

The Sport and Prey of Capitalists
by Linda McQuaig
Published 30 Aug 2019

As we continue to sell off more and more of what we’ve collectively built as a nation, let’s not desecrate the role of public ownership by falsely invoking the national interest when the only real beneficiaries are a set of immensely wealthy interests based in Houston. A pipeline that facilitates the exploitation of the tar sands is something Canadians don’t need. But something we do need is a strong national infrastructure: public transit, affordable housing, roads, and bridges, as well as hospitals and schools. During the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau promised he would take advantage of historically low interest rates in order to rebuild our national infrastructure.

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Realizing that the heady oil prices wouldn’t last forever, he also established the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, with an initial investment of $1.5 billion in 1976, to hold a portion of the province’s resource revenues as a nest egg for the future. It was Lougheed who launched the development of Alberta’s massive tar sands, or oil sands, as they’ve been renamed to soften their image. He saw the gigantic oil sands deposit as pivotal to the long-term prosperity of the province, as well as offering a chance to break the dominance of foreign corporations. A 1972 document produced for his government describes the oil sands as “a unique opportunity to change the historical trend of ever increasing foreign control of non-renewable resource development in Canada.”3 From its early days, the Lougheed government invested heavily in advancing the oil sands, funding government agencies that developed key technologies to extract bitumen from the gooey, tar-like sands, as well as creating a regulatory framework to supervise the development.

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A 1972 document produced for his government describes the oil sands as “a unique opportunity to change the historical trend of ever increasing foreign control of non-renewable resource development in Canada.”3 From its early days, the Lougheed government invested heavily in advancing the oil sands, funding government agencies that developed key technologies to extract bitumen from the gooey, tar-like sands, as well as creating a regulatory framework to supervise the development. When the privately owned Syncrude consortium seemed on the verge of abandoning its oil sands project in 1975, the Lougheed government stepped in with a two-­hundred-million-dollar investment. Ottawa and the Ontario government also invested, and the three governments became partners (for a while) in oil sands development.

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are Thekeys to Sustainability
by David Owen
Published 16 Sep 2009

(The EROEI of Middle Eastern oil looks worse if you include the cost of American military expenditures, in Iraq and elsewhere, that were intended at least partly to preserve U.S. access to those supplies,d or if you try to include some reckoning of the environmental costs of producing and using various fuels, and it looks better if you factor in the increasing energy efficiency of modern machines.) In addition, fossil fuels are by no means interchangeable; some aren’t even fuels. “Shale oil” is a misnomer, since shale oil—of which the United States has vast deposits—isn’t oil at all but is, rather, a dirty, difficult-to-extract oil precursor, which can be turned into a burnable fuel only with massive environmental disruption and a huge input of energy, giving it an EROEI that is probably much less than 1.

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That ratio has fallen as the world’s shallowest, most accessible deposits have been exhausted; the EROEI of Middle Eastern oil today is more like 10:1, while the EROEI of oil removed from deep-water deposits in places like the Gulf of Mexico is lower still. David Goodstein writes, “As we progress down the fossil fuel list from light crude oil (the stuff we mostly use now) to heavy oil, oil sands, tar sands, and finally shale oil, the cost in energy progressively increases, as do other costs.”24 All such calculations are subject to angry, irresolvable debate. (The EROEI of Middle Eastern oil looks worse if you include the cost of American military expenditures, in Iraq and elsewhere, that were intended at least partly to preserve U.S. access to those supplies,d or if you try to include some reckoning of the environmental costs of producing and using various fuels, and it looks better if you factor in the increasing energy efficiency of modern machines.)

50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know
by Richard Watson
Published 5 Nov 2013

With oil, in particular, technology will rapidly develop alongside demand, as it has done historically. This means that deeper deposits will be accessed alongside new reserves. Furthermore, “peak oil” generally refers to conventional oil, but there are huge reserves of unconventional oils such as tar sands, ultraheavy oils, oil shale and bituminous schist. Over the next few decades we’ll have problems matching rising demand to supply, but the main issues will be price volatility, transport and refining capacity—not a lack of oil. And let’s not forget that higher prices are an incentive for people to use resources more wisely and to develop highly cost-efficient alternatives.

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According to the US Department of Energy, global electricity demand will rise by 77 percent by 2030. Yet simply designing fuel-efficient devices, factories and cars (relatively simple technology) could reduce demand by 20–33 percent. But changing how we use energy is not that straightforward: our infrastructure is largely designed for oil, not alternatives such as shale gas. The argument that we need a radical technology revolution to save the planet, however, is not necessarily true. Resource nationalism Ten of the largest oil companies in the world are “nationals”—state-controlled oil companies. Moreover, many of the owners of the world’s largest remaining oil fields are moving to the far left politically and could potentially nationalize all energy and resource production within their borders.

Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices
by Robert McNally
Published 17 Jan 2017

Carter also famously launched the federal Synthetic Fuels Corporation (SFC)—synfuels—to use chemical engineering to produce liquid fuels, mainly from coal—coming full circle, as 110 years before, petroleum was first commercialized to replace oil refined from coal. The SFC also intended to develop liquid fuels from oil shale (not today’s famous “shale oil” but instead kerogen-laden rocks), oil sands, and heavy oils. (The SFC failed to commercialize alternatives to oil, and was terminated in 1986.78) None of Carter’s measures brought immediate relief and the country spiraled deeper into crisis. During the first weekend of summer—June 23 and 24, 1979—58 percent of the nation’s gasoline stations were closed on Saturday and 70 percent were closed on Sunday.79 To address the immediate problem of soaring oil prices, President Carter also quietly implored Saudi Arabia to increase production.

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ENTER THE SHALE REVOLUTION Since the TRC and Seven Sisters lost control in the early 1970s, it seemed that every five years or so something dramatic and unexpected came along to transform the oil market. Between 2010 and 2015, small and independent U.S. oil producers—whose forebearers ignited the modern oil market and subsequently discovered giant gushers like Spindletop and the Black Giant—once again sprang a surprise on the world oil market: U.S. shale. If the shale boom has a father, it is veteran oilman George Mitchell, —one of Houston’s largest oil and gas producers. In the 1980s, geologists employed by Mitchell noticed that when sinking deep wells through shale rock, geological instruments registered large amounts of natural gas. Shale—“a fine-grained sedimentary rock formed by the compaction of silt and clay-size mineral particles”35—was long known to hold oil and gas, but no one knew how to get it out.

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“It is hard to overstate the degree to which the North American supply boom has, since its onset, consistently defied expectations,” the IEA exclaimed in 2014.46 While OPEC officials tended to publicly express skepticism, as time went on their views ranged from extreme anxiety on the part of OPEC members that competed directly with lighter shale oil like Algeria and Nigeria, to a more nuanced view by Saudi Arabia, who saw the upside of another potential swing producer. HOW SAUDI ARABIA’S REFUSAL TO SWING WRONG-FOOTED OIL PRICE PREDICTIONS By 2014, the shale oil boom was a major factor in the predictions of future oil supply and prices. Leading oil forecasts that year assumed crude oil prices would fall gently by 2019, from about $111 in 2013 to $95,47 while OPEC forecasters expected prices would remain around $110 per barrel through the end of the decade.

Gateway
by Frederik Pohl
Published 15 Dec 1977

All day and all night there’s the roar of the extractor furnaces, heating and grinding the marlstone to get the kerogen out of it, and the rumble of the long-line conveyors, dragging the spent shale away to pile it somewhere. See, you have to heat the rock to extract the oil. When you heat it it expands, like popcorn. So there’s no place to put it. You can’t squeeze it back into the shaft you’ve taken it out of; there’s too much of it. If you dig out a mountain of shale and extract the oil, the popped shale that’s left is enough to make two mountains. So that’s what you do. You build new mountains. And the runoff heat from the extractors warms the culture sheds, and the oil grows its slime as it trickles through the shed, and the slime-skimmers scoop it off and dry it and press it…and we eat it, or some of it, for breakfast the next morning.

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Most days we simply spent deferring decision. It wasn’t all that hard. It was a pretty pleasant way to live, exploring Gateway and each other. Klara took on a maid, a stocky, fair young woman from the food mines of Carmarthen named Hywa. Except that the feedstock for the Welsh single-cell protein factories was coal instead of oil shale, her world had been almost exactly like mine. Her way out of it had not been a lottery ticket but two years as crew on a commercial spaceship. She couldn’t even go back home. She had jumped ship on Gateway, forfeiting her bond of money she couldn’t pay. And she couldn’t prospect, either, because her one launch had left her with a heart arrhythmia that sometimes looked like it was getting better and sometimes put her in Terminal Hospital for a week at a time.

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We contribute five trillion calories a day to the world’s diet, half the protein ration for about a fifth of the global population. It all comes out of the yeasts and bacteria we grow off the Wyoming shale oil, along with parts of Utah and Colorado. The world needs that food. But so far it has cost us most of Wyoming, half of Appalachia, a big chunk of the Athabasca tar sands region…and what are we going to do with all those people when the last drop of hydrocarbon is converted to yeast? It’s not my problem, but I still think of it. It stopped being my problem when I won the lottery, the day after Christmas, the year I turned twenty-six. The prize was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World
by Bethany McLean
Published 10 Sep 2018

America was an oil powerhouse, ready to eclipse both Saudi Arabia and Russia, and was the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Few people saw this coming. This remarkable transformation in the U.S. was brought about by American entrepreneurs who figured out how to literally force open rocks often more than a mile below the surface of the earth, to produce gas, and then oil. Those rocks—called shale, or source rock, or tight rock, and once thought to be impermeable—were opened by combining two technologies: horizontal drilling, in which the drill bit can travel well over two miles horizontally, and hydraulic fracturing, in which fluid is pumped into the earth at a high enough pressure to crack open hydrocarbon bearing rocks, while a so-called proppant, usually sand, holds the rocks open a sliver of an inch so the hydrocarbons can flow.

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“American exceptionalism allowed us to move first,” says Webster. “But given time and incentives, other countries will figure it out if they need to.” As history shows, even oil and gas executives don’t have a clue what’s going to happen next. Charlie Munger might be right. Or shale oil and gas might do what shale oil and gas have done since the revolution began, and surprise to the upside. EOG might discover ways to get oil economically out of other places we never thought we could get oil economically. Or there could be a battery breakthrough tomorrow that renders oil obsolete more quickly than anyone ever dreamed.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
by Daniel Yergin
Published 14 Sep 2020

And how has the coronavirus changed the energy markets and the future roles of the Big Three—the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia—which now dominate world oil. * * * — “America’s New Map” tells the story of the unanticipated shale revolution that is transforming America’s place in the world, upending world energy markets, and resetting global geopolitics. Together, shale oil and shale gas have proven to be the biggest energy innovations so far in the twenty-first century. Wind and solar are both innovations of the 1970s and 1980s, though they came into their own only over the last decade. The United States has surged ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s number one producer of both oil and gas, and is now one of the world’s major exporters of both.

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When it turned out not to be so normal, the oil world was rocked, countries would reel from the shock, and, out of the price crisis, new geopolitical alignments would emerge. Yet what was so surprising was that the price had held so steady for those three years despite turmoil and instability in global supply. The reason was a coincidental of trade-off: U.S. oil production was surging because of shale oil. These gains, however, were offset by disruptions and loss of supplies elsewhere—in Libya, where the chairman of its national oil company said the country had “all but disintegrated,” and in Nigeria, where militants were attacking the country’s pipelines. In Venezuela, the regime established by Hugo Chávez, with its mantra of “socialism of the twenty-first century,” would become, under Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, a great economic and humanitarian disaster, and its oil output was plunging.

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Part of it was that the Saudis hastened to make clear that they would maintain existing export levels by drawing down inventories and reducing supplies to their domestic refineries. They would move quickly to repair the facilities. Moreover, global inventories were high. What also made a difference was the rebalancing of the world oil market by the continuing surge in U.S. oil. For, it turned out, shale has not only reconfigured the world oil market. It has also reconfigured the psychology of the world market, providing a new sense of security. * * * — Yet still turmoil continued in the region. For months, angry demonstrators in Iraq had continued to protest the breakdown of social services, lack of jobs, corruption, and the pervasive Iranian influence.

The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age
by David S. Abraham
Published 27 Oct 2015

At 8:00 a.m., the sun hasn’t yet risen, and, even if it had, Estonia’s flat expanse of white snow changes little along the ride. The homogeny of the natural scenery conceals a resource buried beneath the frozen ground. Trapped within the soft-brown sedimentary rock is oil shale, which the Estonians have been mining for nearly a century. A cheap but dirty fuel, oil shale is still the source of 70 percent of the country’s energy. Aboveground, the brisk, frigid morning air turns warm plumes of smoke, coming from an oil shale energy plant in the distance, into faint billowing clouds. Beyond these clouds, I soon see a promise of a cleaner future—several wind turbines, their blades turning in unison in the Arctic breeze.1 These new wind turbines provide about 10 percent of the country’s total generation capacity.

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Kevin Moore, telephone interview by David Abraham, May 6, 2014. 44. Duclos, “Energy-Critical Materials.” 7 Environmental Needs 1. Isa Soares, “Estonia’s Dirty Energy Drive for Self-Sufficiency,” CNN, December 5, 2013, edition.cnn.com/2013/12/05/business/estonia-oil-shale-industry/. 2. International Energy Agency, “Estonia Is Cleansing Oil Shale,” January 2014, www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2014/january/estoniaiscleansingoilshale.html; Linas Jegelevicius, “Baltics’ Estonia Ramps Up Wind Power Generation,” Renewable Energy World, February 2014, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/02/baltics-estonia-ramps-up-wind-power-generation.

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Stalin chose to build the processing facility in Sillamäe because geologists had reported that the town was rich in uranium; some of it was used to make the country’s first atomic bomb. But, despite the Soviets’ meticulous planning, Factory Number 7, now known as Silmet, was built in the wrong spot. Sillamäe ran out of uranium not long after the mining started. Rumor in town had it that scientists had overestimated the resource buried in the region’s vast oil shale reserves. One wonders whether some unlucky souls spent years in Siberia contemplating this misjudgment.3 After the town’s ore ran out, Silmet started importing it. This imported uranium ore contained contaminants, other metals that complicated the refining process. Instead of discarding these impurities, notably niobium and tantalum, the Soviets set up two more processing lines to extract them.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power
by Steve Coll
Published 30 Apr 2012

One of the rule’s provisions held that “oil and gas producing activities do not include . . . the extraction of hydrocarbons from shale, tar sands, or coal.”15 Tar sands refer to bitumen, a thick form of oil that usually has to be dug out of the ground by techniques that resemble mining, after which it is mixed with chemicals to create a liquid suitable for transport by pipeline to an oil refiner. Canada holds some of the world’s largest tar sands reserves. Exxon, through local affiliates, had been buying into these holdings under Raymond’s spur. Raymond believed it was wrong for the S.E.C. to exclude tar sands from proved oil reserve counting—and so he simply ignored the commission’s rules when he issued press releases.

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The S.E.C. had enacted the tar sands rule because it wanted investors to know when a company was engaged in mining and when it was engaged in oil production—for one thing, the expense of mining was typically higher than the expense of oil drilling, so the value of tar sands reserves over time might be less than an equivalent amount of purer oil. Raymond thought this was wrong, too: The purpose of S.E.C. regulation was to ensure accurate documentation of resources, not to force companies to dance around in outmoded categories devised by bureaucrats. There was no doubt that Exxon owned the Canadian tar sands resources it claimed—outright fraud was not the issue.

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“The mainstream belief that shale plays have ensured North America an abundant supply of inexpensive natural gas is not supported by facts or results to date,” wrote an analyst at The Oil Drum, an independent online energy journal. “The supply is real but it will come at higher cost and greater risk than is commonly assumed. The arrival of ExxonMobil and other major oil companies on the shale gas scene is positive because they will not follow the manufacturing approach, and will do the necessary science that should make shale plays more commercial. This does not, however, ensure success. ExxonMobil has come late to the domestic shale party. . . . It is also possible that XTO has already drilled the best areas in more mature shale plays, while the potential of newer plays has not yet been established.”25 An unsigned memo carrying similar doubts circulated among retired ExxonMobil executives.

What's Next?: Unconventional Wisdom on the Future of the World Economy
by David Hale and Lyric Hughes Hale
Published 23 May 2011

In this case, the Ghanaian government designated the Chinese company CNOOC as the preferred buyer. Kosmos could not accept this decision, which left the Blackstone Group in the uncomfortable position of having to run an oil company rather than take the fruits of their successful risk-taking to another part of the world. The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Its Implications for Deepwater Oil and Shale Gas Restrictions on investors’ freedom of operation do not result only from what tends to be summarily labeled “resource nationalism,” as can be seen from the reassessment of regulations regarding hydrocarbon exploration and development in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform (operated by Transocean for BP) on April 20, 2010, resulted in the death of eleven crewmen and a spill of 4.9 million barrels of oil before the well could be sealed.

…

Canada needs more corporate investment because its productivity performance has lagged during recent years. Canada is better positioned than the United States to cope with the climate change challenge because it obtains only 15 percent of its electric power from coal compared to 50 percent in the United States. Canada’s concerns center on its rapidly growing tar sands industry in Alberta. Some members of the US Congress want to restrict imports of oil from Alberta on the grounds that it is dirty. Therefore, Canada intends to closely coordinate its environmental policies with the new policies that are emerging from the Obama administration. Canada’s problem in the short term is that the Obama administration cannot get support in the US Senate for its own cap-and-trade policy.

…

Yet these decreases in actual and planned investment levels will not impact the oil and gas industry in proportions similar to what the aggregate nominal decreases would suggest. First, the bulk of deferred capacity is in the power sector—in line with the fact that electricity demand has decreased for the first time—and in Canadian tar sands, for which a pause in an overheated sector in search of its ecological balance has a clear silver lining. Indeed, in Edward Morse’s words, “strategy,” rather than reduced cash flow, is the “most significant [factor] that [is] delaying projects today,” as companies “believe that they can negotiate better terms with contractors the longer they wait.”28 Costs had risen to incredibly high levels,29 and the ability to build capacity (for example, increasing the number of drilling vessels) needed to be expanded to tame this source of inflation.

A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout
by Carl Safina
Published 18 Apr 2011

The depth of 2009’s global recession sent global energy consumption down for the first time in twenty-seven years, but only by 1 percent. In the same year, China’s carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose by 9 percent. Global wind and solar generation rose by about 30 percent and 45 percent, respectively, enormous gains. Who says? A BP energy report says. The world’s oil reserves (including yet-to-be-developed Canadian “tar sands”) appear sufficient to last—at 2009 production rates—for forty-five years; gas will last about sixty-five years, and coal will last 120 years. After that, what? Do you or does someone you love plan to be alive forty-five years from now? This is our wake-up call. Don’t touch that snooze button. By mid-June the cap is ferrying about 10,000 barrels of oil a day up to a tanker on the surface.

…

But I’m getting way ahead of the story; we’re not there yet. Not even close. As the whalers were stuck in their remorseless havoc, so we have stuck ourselves, with oil. As we burn the easy oil and tap the deep oil to the limits of technology, sources that hadn’t been worth it are getting attention. Enter: “oil-sands,” “tar sands,” “shale oil,” and other relatively meager sources that are now worth money. Of Canada’s northern Alberta—a province I remember as beautiful when it was younger—I read that as the Athabasca River and several of its tributaries flow past facilities gouging at oilsands (one ugly word), heavy metal neurotoxins like lead and mercury are entering the water at levels hazardous to fish.

The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
by Russell Gold
Published 7 Apr 2014

The trillions of tons of dead organisms baked in the heat of the earth and transformed, slowly, into oil droplets. Oil was expelled from the shale and traveled upward until impassable rock canopies trapped it. This process formed large oil reservoirs, not in underground pools but inside permeable rocks riddled with tiny holes that allowed billions of barrels’ worth of the sought-after liquid to collect. In any given year, Russia is either the world’s largest, or second largest, oil producer. This is due primarily to oil that escaped the Bazhenov. This narrative is a quintessential story of fossil fuel: organic material is converted into oil and gas inside the shale, and then the hydrocarbons escape and travel upward.

…

In 2011, three years after tiny Brigham flirted with financial end days, Norwegian oil giant Statoil bought it for $4.4 billion. (Bud Brigham owned about 2 percent of the outstanding shares.) By then, other oil shales had been discovered, including the giant Eagle Ford oil field in South Texas. And if fracking could unlock the oil in these areas, it could do the same around the world. Argentina, Russia, and the Middle East are all believed to have vast oil deposits in shales. In the mid-2000s, fears of “peak oil” were rife. The Olson 10-15 helped change the narrative. Crude remains a complex and constrained global market. Even if a dozen new Bakkens are discovered on the Great Plains, global oil prices are unlikely to budge much.

…

Its annual budget topped $20 billion in 2012, and it spent a chunk of that on a sophisticated advertising campaign that preaches the gospel of domestic energy production and attempts to calm fears about hydraulic fracturing. Chesapeake drills more than a thousand wells every year and fracks each one. Once the bit churns through the dense rock, the company pumps in millions of gallons of water and chemicals to create a network of sinewy fractures, each one an escape route for trapped hydrocarbons. Gas and oil freed from the shale flows out of the cracks and up the well. The recipe that Chesapeake said it was following was quite simple: just add water. The reality, however, was more complex. My parents’ property was valuable to Chesapeake because it sits atop one of the largest shale formations in the world. The Marcellus Shale was once so obscure that it appeared in only the most detailed geologic maps of the area.

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism
by Jeremy Rifkin
Published 31 Mar 2014

The quick exhaustion of existing shale gas reservoirs requires producers to continuously find new shale gas deposits and dig new wells, which jack up the cost of production. The result, says Hall, is that it is “impossible to maintain production . . . without constant new wells being drilled [which would] require high oil prices.” Hall believes that shale gas euphoria will be a short-lived phenomenon.67 The International Energy Agency (IEA) agrees. In its annual 2013 World Energy Outlook report, the IEA forecast that “light tight oil,” a popular term for shale gas, will peak around 2020 and then plateau, with production falling by the mid-2020s. The U.S. shale gas outlook is even more bearish. The U.S. Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration expects higher shale gas levels to continue only to the late teens (another five years or so) and then slow.68 What hasn’t yet sunk in is that fossil fuel energies are never going to approach zero marginal cost, or even come close.

…

Internet communication is already being generated and shared at near zero marginal cost and so too is solar and wind power for millions of early adopters. The stalwart supporters of fossil fuels argue that tar sands and shale gas are readily available, making it unnecessary to scale up renewable energies, at least in the short term. But it’s only because crude oil reserves are dwindling, forcing a rise in price on global markets, that these other more costly fossil fuels are even being introduced. Extracting oil from sand and rock is an expensive undertaking when compared to the cost of drilling a hole and letting crude oil gush up from under the ground. Tar sands are not even commercially viable when crude oil prices dip below $80-per barrel, and recall that just a few years ago, $80-per-barrel oil was considered prohibitively expensive.

…

Derik Andreoli, “The Bakken Boom—A Modern-Day Gold Rush,” Oil Drum, December 12, 2011, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8697 (October 30, 2013); A. E. Berman, “After the Gold Rush: A Perspective on Future U.S. Natural Gas Supply and Price,” Oil Drum, February 8, 2012, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8914 (accessed October 30, 2013). 67. Ajay Makan and Javier Blas, “Oil Guru Says US Shale Revolution is ‘Temporary,’” Financial Times, May 29, 2013, www.ft.com/cms/s/0/281b118e-c870-11e2-acc6-00144feab7de .html#axzz2UbJC9Zz1 (accessed October 17, 2013). 68. Matthew L. Wald, “Shale’s Effect on Oil Supply Is Forecast to Be Brief,” The New York Times, November 12, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/business/energy-environment/shales -effect-on-oil-supply-is-not-expected-to-last.html?

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
by Matt Ridley
Published 17 May 2010

In 1970, there were 550 billion barrels of oil reserves in the world and between 1970 and 1990 the world used 600 billion barrels of oil. So reserves should have been overdrawn by fifty billion barrels by 1990. In fact, by 1990 unexploited reserves amounted to 900 billion barrels – not counting the Athabasca tar sands of Alberta, the Orinoco tar shales of Venezuela and the oil shale of the Rocky Mountains, which between them contain about six trillion barrels of heavy oil, or twenty times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. These heavy oil reserves are costly to exploit, but it is possible that bacterial refining will soon make them competitive with conventional oil even at ‘normal’ prices.

…

Abbasids 161, 178 Abelard, Peter 358 aborigines (Australian): division of labour 62, 63, 76; farming 127; technological regress 78–84; trade 90–91, 92 abortion, compulsory 203 Abu Hureyra 127 Acapulco 184 accounting systems 160, 168, 196 Accra 189 Acemoglu, Daron 321 Ache people 61 Acheulean tools 48–9, 50, 275, 373 Achuar people 87 acid rain 280, 281, 304–6, 329, 339 acidification of oceans 280, 340–41 Adams, Henry 289 Aden 177 Adenauer, Konrad 289 Aegean sea 168, 170–71 Afghanistan 14, 208–9, 315, 353 Africa: agriculture 145, 148, 154–5, 326; AIDS epidemic 14, 307–8, 316, 319, 320, 322; colonialism 319–20, 321–2; demographic transition 210, 316, 328; economic growth 315, 326–8, 332, 347; international aid 317–19, 322, 328; lawlessness 293, 320; life expectancy 14, 316, 422; per capita income 14, 315, 317, 320; poverty 314–17, 319–20, 322, 325–6, 327–8; prehistoric 52–5, 65–6, 83, 123, 350; property rights 320, 321, 323–5; trade 187–8, 320, 322–3, 325, 326, 327–8; see also individual countries African-Americans 108 agricultural employment: decline in 42–3; hardships of 13, 219–20, 285–6 agriculture: early development of 122–30, 135–9, 352, 387, 388; fertilisers, development of 135, 139–41, 142, 146, 147, 337; genetically modified (GM) crops 28, 32, 148, 151–6, 283, 358; hybrids, development of 141–2, 146, 153; and trade 123, 126, 127–33, 159, 163–4; and urbanisation 128, 158–9, 163–4, 215; see also farming; food supply Agta people 61–2 aid, international 28, 141, 154, 203, 317–19, 328 AIDS 8, 14, 307–8, 310, 316, 319, 320, 322, 331, 353 AIG (insurance corporation) 115 air conditioning 17 air pollution 304–5 air travel: costs of 24, 37, 252, 253; speed of 253 aircraft 257, 261, 264, 266 Akkadian empire 161, 164–5 Al-Ghazali 357 Al-Khwarizmi, Muhammad ibn Musa 115 Al-Qaeda 296 Albania 187 Alcoa (corporation) 24 Alexander the Great 169, 171 Alexander, Gary 295 Alexandria 171, 175, 270 Algeria 53, 246, 345 alphabet, invention of 166, 396 Alps 122, 178 altruism 93–4, 97 aluminium 24, 213, 237, 303 Alyawarre aborigines 63 Amalfi 178 Amazon (corporation) 21, 259, 261 Amazonia 76, 138, 145, 250–51 amber 71, 92 ambition 45–6, 351 Ames, Bruce 298–9 Amish people 211 ammonia 140, 146 Amsterdam 115–16, 169, 259, 368 Amsterdam Exchange Bank 251 Anabaptists 211 Anatolia 127, 128, 164, 165, 166, 167 Ancoats, Manchester 214 Andaman islands 66–7, 78 Andes 123, 140, 163 Andrew, Deroi Kwesi 189 Angkor Wat 330 Angola 316 animal welfare 104, 145–6 animals: conservation 324, 339; extinctions 17, 43, 64, 68, 69–70, 243, 293, 302, 338–9; humans’ differences from other 1, 2–4, 6, 56, 58, 64 Annan, Kofi 337 Antarctica 334 anti-corporatism 110–111, 114 anti-slavery 104, 105–6, 214 antibiotics 6, 258, 271, 307 antimony 213 ants 75–6, 87–8, 192 apartheid 108 apes 56–7, 59–60, 62, 65, 88; see also chimpanzees; orang-utans ‘apocaholics’ 295, 301 Appalachia 239 Apple (corporation) 260, 261, 268 Aquinas, St Thomas 102 Arabia 66, 159, 176, 179 Arabian Sea 174 Arabs 89, 175, 176–7, 180, 209, 357 Aral Sea 240 Arcadia Biosciences (company) 31–2 Archimedes 256 Arctic Ocean 125, 130, 185, 334, 338–9 Argentina 15, 186, 187 Arikamedu 174 Aristotle 115, 250 Arizona 152, 246, 345 Arkwright, Sir Richard 227 Armenians 89 Arnolfini, Giovanni 179 art: cave paintings 2, 68, 73, 76–7; and commerce 115–16; symbolism in 136; as unique human trait 4 Ashur, Assyria 165 Asimov, Isaac 354 Asoka the Great 172–3 aspirin 258 asset price inflation 24, 30 Assyrian empire 161, 165–6, 167 asteroid impacts, risk of 280, 333 astronomy 221, 270, 357 Athabasca tar sands, Canada 238 Athens 115, 170, 171 Atlantic Monthly 293 Atlantic Ocean 125, 170 Attica 171 Augustus, Roman emperor 174 Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony 184–5 Australia: climate 127, 241, 300, 334; prehistoric 66, 67, 69–70, 127; trade 187; see also aborigines (Australian); Tasmania Austria 132 Ausubel, Jesse 239, 346, 409 automobiles see cars axes: copper 123, 131, 132, 136, 271; stone 2, 5, 48–9, 50, 51, 71, 81, 90–91, 92, 118–19, 271 Babylon 21, 161, 166, 240, 254, 289 Bacon, Francis 255 bacteria: cross fertilisation 271; and pest control 151; resistance to antibiotics 6, 258, 271, 307; symbiosis 75 Baghdad 115, 177, 178, 357 Baines, Edward 227 Baird, John Logie 38 baking 124, 130 ‘balance of nature’, belief in 250–51 Balazs, Etienne 183 bald eagles 17, 299 Bali 66 Baltic Sea 71, 128–9, 180, 185 Bamako 326 bananas 92, 126, 149, 154, 392 Bangladesh 204, 210, 426 Banks, Sir Joseph 221 Barigaza (Bharuch) 174 barley 32, 124, 151 barrels 176 bartering vii, 56–60, 65, 84, 91–2, 163, 356 Basalla, George 272 Basra 177 battery farming 104, 145–6 BBC 295 beads 53, 70, 71, 73, 81, 93, 162 beef 186, 224, 308; see also cattle bees, killer 280 Beijing 17 Beinhocker, Eric 112 Bell, Alexander Graham 38 Bengal famine (1943) 141 benzene 257 Berlin 299 Berlin, Sir Isaiah 288 Bernard of Clairvaux, St 358 Berners-Lee, Sir Tim 38, 273 Berra, Yogi 354 Besant, Annie 208 Bhutan 25–6 Bible 138, 168, 396 bicycles 248–9, 263, 269–70 bin Laden, Osama 110 biofuels 149, 236, 238, 239, 240–43, 246, 300, 339, 343, 344, 346, 393 Bird, Isabella 197–8 birds: effects of pollution on 17, 299; killed by wind turbines 239, 409; nests 51; sexual differences 64; songbirds 55; see also individual species bireme galleys 167 Birmingham 223 birth control see contraception birth rates: declining 204–212; and food supply 192, 208–9; and industrialisation 202; measurement of 205, 403; population control policies 202–4, 208; pre-industrial societies 135, 137; and television 234; and wealth 200–201, 204, 205–6, 209, 211, 212; see also population growth Black Death 181, 195–6, 197, 380 Black Sea 71, 128, 129, 170, 176, 180 blogging 257 Blombos Cave, South Africa 53, 83 blood circulation, discovery of 258 Blunt, John 29 boat-building 167, 168, 177; see also canoes; ship-building Boers 321, 322 Bohemia 222 Bolivia 315, 324 Bolsheviks 324 Borlaug, Norman 142–3, 146 Borneo 339 Bosch, Carl 140, 412 Botswana 15, 316, 320–22, 326 Bottger, Johann Friedrich 184–5 Boudreaux, Don 21, 214 Boulton, Matthew 221, 256, 413–14 bows and arrows 43, 62, 70, 82, 137, 251, 274 Boxgrove hominids 48, 50 Boyer, Stanley 222, 405 Boyle, Robert 256 Bradlaugh, Charles 208 brain size 3–4, 48–9, 51, 55 Bramah, Joseph 221 Branc, Slovakia 136 Brand, Stewart 154, 189, 205 Brando, Marlon 110 brass 223 Brazil 38, 87, 123, 190, 240, 242, 315, 358 bread 38, 124, 140, 158, 224, 286, 392 bridges, suspension 283 Brin, Sergey 221, 405 Britain: affluence 12, 16, 224–5, 236, 296–7; birth rates 195, 200–201, 206, 208, 227; British exceptionalism 200–202, 221–2; climate change policy 330–31; consumer prices 24, 224–5, 227, 228; copyright system 267; enclosure acts 226, 323, 406; energy use 22, 231–2, 232–3, 342–3, 368, 430; ‘glorious revolution’ (1688) 223; income equality 18–19, 218; industrial revolution 201–2, 216–17, 220–32, 255–6, 258–9; life expectancy 15, 17–18; National Food Service 268; National Health Service 111, 261; parliamentary reform 107; per capita income 16, 218, 227, 285, 404–5; productivity 112; property rights 223, 226, 323–4; state benefits 16; tariffs 185–6, 186–7, 223; see also England; Scotland; Wales British Empire 161, 322 bronze 164, 168, 177 Brosnan, Sarah 59 Brown, Lester 147–8, 281–2, 300–301 Brown, Louise 306 Bruges 179 Brunel, Sir Marc 221 Buddhism 2, 172, 357 Buddle, John 412 Buffett, Warren 106, 268 Bulgaria 320 Burkina Faso 154 Burma 66, 67, 209, 335 Bush, George W. 161 Butler, Eamonn 105, 249 Byblos 167 Byzantium 176, 177, 179 cabbages 298 ‘Caesarism’ 289 Cairo 323 Calcutta 190, 315 Calico Act (1722) 226 Califano, Joseph 202–3 California: agriculture 150; Chumash people 62, 92–3; development of credit card 251, 254; Mojave Desert 69; Silicon Valley 221–2, 224, 257, 258, 259, 268 Cambodia 14, 315 camels 135, 176–7 camera pills 270–71 Cameroon 57 Campania 174, 175 Canaanites 166, 396 Canada 141, 169, 202, 238, 304, 305 Canal du Midi 251 cancer 14, 18, 293, 297–9, 302, 308, 329 Cannae, battle of 170 canning 186, 258 canoes 66, 67, 79, 82 capitalism 23–4, 101–4, 110, 115, 133, 214, 258–62, 291–2, 311; see also corporations; markets ‘Captain Swing’ 283 capuchin monkeys 96–7, 375 Caral, Peru 162–3 carbon dioxide emissions 340–47; absorption of 217; and agriculture 130, 337–8; and biofuels 242; costs of 331; and economic growth 315, 332; and fossil fuels 237, 315; and local sourcing of goods 41–2; taxes 346, 356 Cardwell’s Law 411 Caribbean see West Indies Carnegie, Andrew 23 Carney, Thomas 173 carnivorism 51, 60, 62, 68–9, 147, 156, 241, 376 carrots 153, 156 cars: biofuel for 240, 241; costs of 24, 252; efficiency of 252; future production 282, 355; hybrid 245; invention of 189, 270, 271; pollution from 17, 242; sport-utility vehicles 45 The Rational Optimist 424 Carson, Rachel 152, 297–8 Carter, Jimmy 238 Carthage 169, 170, 173 Cartwright, Edmund 221, 263 Castro, Fidel 187 Catalhoyuk 127 catallaxy 56, 355–9 Catholicism 105, 208, 306 cattle 122, 132, 145, 147, 148, 150, 197, 321, 336; see also beef Caucasus 237 cave paintings 2, 68, 73, 76–7 Cavendish, Henry 221 cement 283 central heating 16, 37 cereals 124–5, 125–6, 130–31, 143–4, 146–7, 158, 163; global harvests 121 Champlain, Samuel 138–9 charcoal 131, 216, 229, 230, 346 charitable giving 92, 105, 106, 295, 318–19, 356 Charles V: king of Spain 30–31; Holy Roman Emperor 184 Charles, Prince of Wales 291, 332 Chauvet Cave, France 2, 68, 73, 76–7 Chernobyl 283, 308, 345, 421 Chicago World Fair (1893) 346 chickens 122–3, 145–6, 147, 148, 408 chickpeas 125 Childe, Gordon 162 children: child labour 104, 188, 218, 220, 292; child molestation 104; childcare 2, 62–3; childhood diseases 310; mortality rates 14, 15, 16, 208–9, 284 Chile 187 chimpanzees 2, 3, 4, 6, 29, 59–60, 87, 88, 97 China: agriculture 123, 126, 148, 152, 220; birth rate 15, 200–201; coal supplies 229–30; Cultural Revolution 14, 201; diet 241; economic growth and industrialisation 17, 109, 180–81, 187, 201, 219, 220, 281–2, 300, 322, 324–5, 328, 358; economic and technological regression 180, 181–2, 193, 229–30, 255, 321, 357–8; energy use 245; income equality 19; innovations 181, 251; life expectancy 15; Longshan culture 397; Maoism 16, 187, 296, 311; Ming empire 117, 181–4, 260, 311; per capita income 15, 180; prehistoric 68, 123, 126; serfdom 181–2; Shang dynasty 166; Song dynasty 180–81; trade 172, 174–5, 177, 179, 183–4, 187, 225, 228 chlorine 296 cholera 40, 310 Chomsky, Noam 291 Christianity 172, 357, 358, 396; see also Catholicism; Church of England; monasteries Christmas 134 Chumash people 62, 92–3 Church of England 194 Churchill, Sir Winston 288 Cicero 173 Cilicia 173 Cisco Systems (corporation) 268 Cistercians 215 civil rights movement 108, 109 Clairvaux Abbey 215 Clark, Colin 146, 227 Clark, Gregory 193, 201, 401, 404 Clarke, Arthur C. 354 climate change 328–47, 426–30; costs of mitigation measures 330–32, 333, 338, 342–4; death rates associated with 335–7; and ecological dynamism 250, 329–30, 335, 339; and economic growth 315, 331–3, 341–3, 347; effects on ecosystems 338–41; and food supply 337–8; and fossil fuels 243, 314, 342, 346, 426; historic 194, 195, 329, 334, 426–7; pessimism about 280, 281, 314–15, 328–9; prehistoric 54, 65, 125, 127, 130, 160, 329, 334, 339, 340, 352; scepticism about 111, 329–30, 426; solutions to 8, 315, 345–7 Clinton, Bill 341 Clippinger, John 99 cloth trade 75, 159, 160, 165, 172, 177, 180, 194, 196, 225, 225–9, 232 clothes: Britain 224, 225, 227; early homo sapiens 71, 73; Inuits 64; metal age 122; Tasmanian natives 78 clothing prices 20, 34, 37, 40, 227, 228 ‘Club of Rome’ 302–3 coal: and economic take-off 201, 202, 213, 214, 216–17; and generation of electricity 233, 237, 239, 240, 304, 344; and industrialisation 229–33, 236, 407; prices 230, 232, 237; supplies 302–3 coal mining 132, 230–31, 237, 239, 257, 343 Coalbrookdale 407 Cobb, Kelly 35 Coca-Cola (corporation) 111, 263 coffee 298–9, 392 Cohen, Mark 135 Cold War 299 collective intelligence 5, 38–9, 46, 56, 83, 350–52, 355–6 Collier, Paul 315, 316–17 colonialism 160, 161, 187, 321–2; see also imperialism Colorado 324 Columbus, Christopher 91, 184 combine harvesters 158, 392 combined-cycle turbines 244, 410 commerce see trade Commoner, Barry 402 communism 106, 336 Compaq (corporation) 259 computer games 273, 292 computers 2, 3, 5, 211, 252, 260, 261, 263–4, 268, 282; computing power costs 24; information storage capacities 276; silicon chips 245, 263, 267–8; software 99, 257, 272–3, 304, 356; Y2K bug 280, 290, 341; see also internet Confucius 2, 181 Congo 14–15, 28, 307, 316 Congreve, Sir William 221 Connelly, Matthew 204 conservation, nature 324, 339; see also wilderness land, expansion of conservatism 109 Constantinople 175, 177 consumer spending, average 39–40 containerisation 113, 253, 386 continental drift 274 contraception 208, 210; coerced 203–4 Cook, Captain James 91 cooking 4, 29, 38, 50, 51, 52, 55, 60–61, 64, 163, 337 copper 122, 123, 131–2, 160, 162, 164, 165, 168, 213, 223, 302, 303 copyright 264, 266–7, 326 coral reefs 250, 339–40, 429–30 Cordoba 177 corn laws 185–6 Cornwall 132 corporations 110–116, 355; research and development budgets 260, 262, 269 Cosmides, Leda 57 Costa Rica 338 cotton 37, 108, 149, 151–2, 162, 163, 171, 172, 202, 225–9, 230, 407; calico 225–6, 232; spinning and weaving 184, 214, 217, 219–20, 227–8, 232, 256, 258, 263, 283 Coughlin, Father Charles 109 Craigslist (website) 273, 356 Crapper, Thomas 38 Crathis river 171 creationists 358 creative destruction 114, 356 credit cards 251, 254 credit crunch (2008) 8–10, 28–9, 31, 100, 102, 316, 355, 399, 411 Cree Indians 62 Crete 167, 169 Crichton, Michael 254 Crick, Francis 412 crime: cyber-crime 99–100, 357; falling rates 106, 201; false convictions 19–20; homicide 14, 20, 85, 88, 106, 118, 201; illegal drugs 106, 186; pessimism about 288, 293 Crimea 171 crocodiles, deaths by 40 Crompton, Samuel 227 Crookes, Sir William 140, 141 cruelty 104, 106, 138–9, 146 crusades 358 Cuba 187, 299 ‘curse of resources’ 31, 320 cyber-crime 99–100, 357 Cyprus 132, 148, 167, 168 Cyrus the Great 169 Dalkon Shield (contraceptive device) 203 Dalton, John 221 Damascus 127 Damerham, Wiltshire 194 Danube, River 128, 132 Darby, Abraham 407 Darfur 302, 353 Dark Ages 164, 175–6, 215 Darwin, Charles 77, 81, 91–2, 105, 116, 350, 415 Darwin, Erasmus 256 Darwinism 5 Davy, Sir Humphry 221, 412 Dawkins, Richard 5, 51 DDT (pesticide) 297–8, 299 de Geer, Louis 184 de Soto, Hernando 323, 324, 325 de Waal, Frans 88 Dean, James 110 decimal system 173, 178 deer 32–3, 122 deflation 24 Defoe, Daniel 224 deforestation, predictions of 304–5, 339 Delhi 189 Dell (corporation) 268 Dell, Michael 264 demographic transition 206–212, 316, 328, 402 Denmark 200, 344, 366; National Academy of Sciences 280 Dennett, Dan 350 dentistry 45 depression (psychological) 8, 156 depressions (economic) 3, 31, 32, 186–7, 192, 289; see also economic crashes deserts, expanding 28, 280 Detroit 315, 355 Dhaka 189 diabetes 156, 274, 306 Diamond, Jared 293–4, 380 diamonds 320, 322 Dickens, Charles 220 Diesel, Rudolf 146 Digital Equipment Corporation 260, 282 digital photography 114, 386 Dimawe, battle of (1852) 321 Diocletian, Roman emperor 175, 184 Diodorus 169 diprotodons 69 discount merchandising 112–14 division of labour: Adam Smith on vii, 80; and catallaxy 56; and fragmented government 172; in insects 75–6, 87–8; and population growth 211; by sex 61–5, 136, 376; and specialisation 7, 33, 38, 46, 61, 76–7, 175; among strangers and enemies 87–9; and trust 100; and urbanisation 164 DNA: forensic use 20; gene transfer 153 dogs 43, 56, 61, 84, 125 Doll, Richard 298 Dolphin, HMS 169 dolphins 3, 87 Domesday Book 215 Doriot, Georges 261 ‘dot-communism’ 356 Dover Castle 197 droughts: modern 241, 300, 334; prehistoric 54, 65, 334 drug crime 106, 186 DuPont (corporation) 31 dyes 167, 225, 257, 263 dynamos 217, 233–4, 271–2, 289 dysentery 157, 353 eagles 17, 239, 299, 409 East India Company 225, 226 Easter Island 380 Easterbrook, Greg 294, 300, 370 Easterlin, Richard 26 Easterly, William 318, 411 eBay (corporation) 21, 99, 100, 114, 115 Ebla, Syria 164 Ebola virus 307 economic booms 9, 29, 216 economic crashes 7–8, 9, 193; credit crunch (2008) 8–10, 28–9, 31, 100, 102, 316, 355, 399, 411; see also depressions (economic) ecosystems, dynamism of 250–51, 303, 410 Ecuador 87 Edinburgh Review 285 Edison, Thomas 234, 246, 272, 412 education: Africa 320; Japan 16; measuring value of 117; and population control 209, 210; universal access 106, 235; women and 209, 210 Edwards, Robert 306 Eemian interglacial period 52–3 Egypt: ancient 161, 166, 167, 170, 171, 192, 193, 197, 270, 334; Mamluk 182; modern 142, 154, 192, 301, 323; prehistoric 44, 45, 125, 126; Roman 174, 175, 178 Ehrenreich, Barbara 291 Ehrlich, Anne 203, 301–2 Ehrlich, Paul 143, 190, 203, 207, 301–2, 303 electric motors 271–2, 283 electricity 233–5, 236, 237, 245–6, 337, 343–4; costs 23; dynamos 217, 233–4, 271–2, 289 elephants 51, 54, 69, 303, 321 Eliot, T.S. 289 email 292 emigration 199–200, 202; see also migrations empathy 94–8 empires, trading 160–61; see also imperialism enclosure acts 226, 323, 406 endocrine disruptors 293 Engels, Friedrich 107–8, 136 England: agriculture 194–6, 215; infant mortality 284; law 118; life expectancy 13, 284; medieval population 194–7; per capita income 196; scientific revolution 255–7; trade 75, 89, 104, 106, 118, 169, 194; see also Britain Enron (corporation) 29, 111, 385 Erie, Lake 17 Erie Canal 139, 283 ethanol 240–42, 300 Ethiopia 14, 316, 319; prehistoric 52, 53, 129 eugenics 288, 329 Euphrates river 127, 158, 161, 167, 177 evolution, biological 5, 6, 7, 49–50, 55–6, 75, 271, 350 Ewald, Paul 309 exchange: etiquette and ritual of 133–4; and innovation 71–2, 76, 119, 167–8, 251, 269–74; and pre-industrial economies 133–4; and property rights 324–5; and rule of law 116, 117–18; and sexual division of labour 65; and specialisation 7, 10, 33, 35, 37–8, 46, 56, 58, 75, 90, 132–3, 350–52, 355, 358–9; and trust 98–100, 103, 104; as unique human trait 56–60; and virtue 100–104; see also bartering; markets; trade executions 104 extinctions 17, 43, 64, 68, 69–70, 243, 293, 302, 338–9 Exxon (corporation) 111, 115 eye colour 129 Ezekiel 167, 168 Facebook (website) 262, 268, 356 factories 160, 214, 218, 219–20, 221, 223, 256, 258–9, 284–5 falcons 299 family formation 195, 209–210, 211, 227 famines: modern 141, 143, 154, 199, 203, 302; pessimism about 280, 281, 284, 290, 300–302, 314; pre-industrial 45, 139, 195, 197 Faraday, Michael 271–2 Fargione, Joseph 242 farming: battery 104, 145–6; free-range 146, 308; intensive 143–9; organic 147, 149–52, 393; slash-and-burn 87, 129, 130; subsidies 188, 328; subsistence 87, 138, 175–6, 189, 192, 199–200; see also agriculture; food supply fascism 289 Fauchart, Emmanuelle 264 fax machines 252 Feering, Essex 195 Fehr, Ernst 94–6 female emancipation 107, 108–9, 209 feminism 109 Ferguson, Adam 1 Ferguson, Niall 85 Fermat’s Last Theorem 275 fermenting 130, 241 Ferranti, Sebastian de 234 Fertile Crescent 126, 251 fertilisation, in-vitro 306 fertilisers 32, 129, 135, 139–41, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149–50, 152, 155, 200, 337 Fibonacci 178 figs 125, 129 filariasis 310 Finland 15, 35, 261 fire, invention of 4, 50, 51, 52, 60, 274 First World War 289, 309 fish, sex-change 280, 293 fish farming 148, 155 fishing 62, 63–4, 71, 78–9, 81–2, 125, 127, 129, 136, 159, 162, 163, 327 Fishman, Charles 113 Flanders 179, 181, 194 flight, powered 257, 261, 264, 266 Flinders Island 81, 84 floods 128, 250, 329, 331, 334, 335, 426 Florence 89, 103, 115, 178 flowers, cut 42, 327, 328 flu, pandemic 28, 145–6, 308–310 Flynn, James 19 Fontaine, Hippolyte 233–4 food aid 28, 141, 154, 203 food miles 41–2, 353, 392; see also local sourcing food preservation 139, 145, 258 food prices 20, 22, 23, 34, 39, 40, 42, 240, 241, 300 food processing 29–30, 60–61, 145; see also baking; cooking food retailing 36, 112, 148, 268; see also supermarkets food sharing 56, 59–60, 64 food supply: and biofuels 240–41, 243, 300; and climate change 337–8; and industrialisation 139, 201–2; pessimism about 280, 281, 284, 290, 300–302; and population growth 139, 141, 143–4, 146–7, 192, 206, 208–9, 300–302 Ford, Ford Maddox 188 Ford, Henry 24, 114, 189, 271 Forester, Jay 303 forests, fears of depletion 304–5, 339 fossil fuels: and ecology 237, 240, 304, 315, 342–3, 345–6; fertilisers 143, 150, 155, 237; and industrialisation 214, 216–17, 229–33, 352; and labour saving 236–7; and productivity 244–5; supplies 216–17, 229–30, 237–8, 245, 302–3; see also charcoal; coal; gas, natural; oil; peat Fourier analysis 283 FOXP2 (gene) 55, 375 fragmentation, political 170–73, 180–81, 184, 185 France: capital markets 259; famine 197; infant mortality 16; population growth 206, 208; revolution 324; trade 184, 186, 222 Franco, Francisco 186 Frank, Robert 95–6 Franken, Al 291 Franklin, Benjamin 107, 256 Franks 176 Fray Bentos 186 free choice 27–8, 107–110, 291–2 free-range farming 146, 308 French Revolution 324 Friedel, Robert 224 Friedman, Milton 111 Friend, Sir Richard 257 Friends of the Earth 154, 155 Fry, Art 261 Fuji (corporation) 114, 386 Fujian, China 89, 183 fur trade 169, 180 futurology 354–5 Gadir (Cadiz) 168–9, 170 Gaelic language 129 Galbraith, J.K. 16 Galdikas, Birute 60 Galilee, Sea of 124 Galileo 115 Gandhi, Indira 203, 204 Gandhi, Sanjay 203–4 Ganges, River 147, 172 gas, natural 235, 236, 237, 240, 302, 303, 337 Gates, Bill 106, 264, 268 GDP per capita (world), increases in 11, 349 Genentech (corporation) 259, 405 General Electric Company 261, 264 General Motors (corporation) 115 generosity 86–7, 94–5 genetic research 54, 151, 265, 306–7, 310, 356, 358 genetically modified (GM) crops 28, 32, 148, 151–6, 283, 358 Genghis Khan 182 Genoa 89, 169, 178, 180 genome sequencing 265 geothermal power 246, 344 Germany: Great Depression (1930s) 31; industrialisation 202; infant mortality 16; Nazism 109, 289; population growth 202; predicted deforestation 304, 305; prehistoric 70, 138; trade 179–80, 187; see also West Germany Ghana 187, 189, 316, 326 Gibraltar, Strait of 180 gift giving 87, 92, 133, 134 Gilbert, Daniel 4 Gilgamesh, King 159 Ginsberg, Allen 110 Gintis, Herb 86 Gladstone, William 237 Glaeser, Edward 190 Glasgow 315 glass 166, 174–5, 177, 259 glass fibre 303 Global Humanitarian Forum 337 global warming see climate change globalisation 290, 358 ‘glorious revolution’ (1688) 223 GM (genetically modified) crops 28, 148, 151–6, 283, 358 goats 122, 126, 144, 145, 197, 320 Goethe, Johann von 104 Goklany, Indur 143–4, 341, 426 gold 165, 177, 303 golden eagles 239, 409 golden toads 338 Goldsmith, Edward 291 Google (corporation) 21, 100, 114, 259, 260, 268, 355 Gore, Al 233, 291 Goths 175 Gott, Richard 294 Gramme, Zénobe Théophile 233–4 Grantham, George 401 gravity, discovery of 258 Gray, John 285, 291 Great Barrier Reef 250 Greece: ancient 115, 128, 161, 170–71, 173–4; modern 186 greenhouse gases 152, 155, 242, 329; see also carbon dioxide emissions Greenland: ice cap 125, 130, 313, 334, 339, 426; Inuits 61; Norse 380 Greenpeace 154, 155, 281, 385 Grottes des Pigeons, Morocco 53 Groves, Leslie 412 Growth is Good for the Poor (World Bank study) 317 guano 139–40, 302 Guatemala 209 Gujarat 162, 174 Gujaratis 89 Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden 184 Gutenberg, Johann 184, 253 Guth, Werner 86 habeas corpus 358 Haber, Fritz 140, 412 Hadza people 61, 63, 87 Haiti 14, 301, 315 Halaf people 130 Hall, Charles Martin 24 Halley, Edmond 256 HANPP (human appropriation of net primary productivity) number 144–5 Hanseatic merchants 89, 179–80, 196 Hansen, James 426 hanta virus 307 happiness 25–8, 191 Harappa, Indus valley 161–2 Hardin, Garrett 203 harems 136 Hargreaves, James 227, 256 Harlem, Holland 215–16 Harper’s Weekly 23 Harvey, William 256 hay 214–15, 216, 239, 408–9 Hayek, Friedrich 5, 19, 38, 56, 250, 280, 355 heart disease 18, 156, 295 ‘hedonic treadmill’ 27 height, average human 16, 18 Heller, Michael 265–6 Hellespont 128, 170 Henrich, Joe 77, 377 Henry II, King of England 118 Henry, Joseph 271, 272 Henry, William 221 Heraclitus 251 herbicides 145, 152, 153–4 herding 130–31 Hero of Alexandria 270 Herschel, Sir William 221 Hesiod 292 Hippel, Eric von 273 hippies 26, 110, 175 Hiroshima 283 Hitler, Adolf 16, 184, 296 Hittites 166, 167 HIV/AIDS 8, 14, 307–8, 310, 316, 319, 320, 322, 331, 353 Hiwi people 61 Hobbes, Thomas 96 Hock, Dee 254 Hohle Fels, Germany 70 Holdren, John 203, 207, 311 Holland: agriculture 153; golden age 185, 201, 215–16, 223; horticulture 42; industrialisation 215–16, 226; innovations 264; trade 31, 89, 104, 106, 185, 223, 328 Holy Roman Empire 178, 265–6 Homer 2, 102, 168 Homestead Act (1862) 323 homicide 14, 20, 85, 88, 106, 118, 201 Homo erectus 49, 68, 71, 373 Homo heidelbergensis 49, 50–52, 373 Homo sapiens, emergence of 52–3 Hong Kong 31, 83, 158, 169, 187, 219, 328 Hongwu, Chinese emperor 183 Hood, Leroy 222, 405 Hooke, Robert 256 horses 48, 68, 69, 129, 140, 197, 215, 282, 408–9; shoes and harnesses 176, 215 housing costs 20, 25, 34, 39–40, 234, 368 Hoxha, Enver 187 Hrdy, Sarah 88 Huber, Peter 244, 344 Hueper, Wilhelm 297 Huguenots 184 Huia (birds) 64 human sacrifice 104 Hume, David 96, 103, 104, 170 humour 2 Hunan 177 Hungary 222 Huns 175 hunter-gatherers: consumption and production patterns 29–30, 123; division of labour 61–5, 76, 136; famines 45, 139; limitations of band size 77; modern societies 66–7, 76, 77–8, 80, 87, 135–6, 136–7; nomadism 130; nostalgia for life of 43–5, 135, 137; permanent settlements 128; processing of food 29, 38, 61; technological regress 78–84; trade 72, 77–8, 81, 92–3, 123, 136–7; violence and warfare 27, 44–5, 136, 137 hunting 61–4, 68–70, 125–6, 130, 339 Huron Indians 138–9 hurricanes 329, 335, 337 Hurst, Blake 152 Hutterites 211 Huxley, Aldous 289, 354 hydroelectric power 236, 239, 343, 344, 409 hyenas 43, 50, 54 IBM (corporation) 260, 261, 282 Ibn Khaldun 182 ice ages 52, 127, 329, 335, 340, 388 ice caps 125, 130, 313, 314, 334, 338–9, 426 Iceland 324 Ichaboe island 140 ‘idea-agora’ 262 imitation 4, 5, 6, 50, 77, 80 imperialism 104, 162, 164, 166, 172, 182, 319–20, 357; see also colonialism in-vitro fertilisation 306 income, per capita: and economic freedom 117; equality 18–19, 218–19; increases in 14, 15, 16–17, 218–19, 285, 331–2 India: agriculture 126, 129, 141, 142–3, 147, 151–2, 156, 301; British rule 160; caste system 173; economic growth 187, 358; energy use 245; income equality 19; infant mortality 16; innovations 172–3, 251; Mauryan empire 172–3, 201, 357; mobile phone use 327; population growth 202, 203–4; prehistoric 66, 126, 129; trade 174–5, 175, 179, 186–7, 225, 228, 232; urbanisation 189 Indian Ocean 174, 175 Indonesia 66, 87, 89, 177 Indus river 167 Indus valley civilisation 161–2, 164 industrialisation: and capital investment 258–9; and end of slavery 197, 214; and food production 139, 201–2; and fossil fuels 214, 216–17, 229–33, 352; and innovation 38, 220–24, 227–8; and living standards 217–20, 226–7, 258; pessimistic views of 42, 102–3, 217–18, 284–5; and productivity 227–8, 230–31, 232, 235–6, 244–5; and science 255–8; and trade 224–6; and urbanisation 188, 226–7 infant mortality 14, 15, 16, 208–9, 284 inflation 24, 30, 169, 289 influenza see flu, pandemic Ingleheart, Ronald 27 innovation: and capital investment 258–62, 269; and exchange 71–2, 76, 119, 167–8, 251, 269–74; and government spending programmes 267–9; increasing returns of 248–55, 274–7, 346, 354, 358–9; and industrialisation 38, 220–24, 227–8; and intellectual property 262–7, 269; limitlessness 374–7; and population growth 252; and productivity 227–8; and science 255–8, 412; and specialisation 56, 71–2, 73–4, 76–7, 119, 251; and trade 168, 171 insect-resistant crops 154–5 insecticides 151–2 insects 75–6, 87–8 insulin 156, 274 Intel (corporation) 263, 268 intellectual property 262–7; see also copyright; patents intensive farming 143–9 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 330, 331, 332, 333–4, 338, 342, 347, 425, 426, 427, 428 internal combustion engine 140, 146, 244 International Planned Parenthood Foundation 203 internet: access to 253, 268; blogging 257; and charitable giving 318–19, 356; cyber-crime 99–100, 357; development of 263, 268, 270, 356; email 292; free exchange 105, 272–3, 356; packet switching 263; problem-solving applications 261–2; search engines 245, 256, 267; shopping 37, 99, 107, 261; social networking websites 262, 268, 356; speed of 252, 253; trust among users 99–100, 356; World Wide Web 273, 356 Inuits 44, 61, 64, 126 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 330, 331, 332, 333–4, 338, 342, 347, 349, 425, 426, 427, 428 IQ levels 19 Iran 162 Iraq 31, 158, 161 Ireland 24, 129, 199, 227 iron 166, 167, 169, 181, 184, 223, 229, 230, 302, 407 irradiated food 150–51 irrigation 136, 147–8, 159, 161, 163, 198, 242, 281 Isaac, Glyn 64 Isaiah 102, 168 Islam 176, 357, 358 Israel 53, 69, 124, 148 Israelites 168 Italy: birth rate 208; city states 178–9, 181, 196; fascism 289; Greek settlements 170–71, 173–4; infant mortality 15; innovations 196, 251; mercantilism 89, 103, 178–9, 180, 196; prehistoric 69 ivory 70, 71, 73, 167 Jacob, François 7 Jacobs, Jane 128 Jamaica 149 James II, King 223 Japan: agriculture 197–8; birth rates 212; dictatorship 109; economic development 103, 322, 332; economic and technological regression 193, 197–9, 202; education 16; happiness 27; industrialisation 219; life expectancy 17, 31; trade 31, 183, 184, 187, 197 Jarawa tribe 67 Java 187 jealousy 2, 351 Jebel Sahaba cemeteries, Egypt 44, 45 Jefferson, Thomas 247, 249, 269 Jenner, Edward 221 Jensen, Robert 327 Jericho 127, 138 Jevons, Stanley 213, 237, 245 Jews 89, 108, 177–8, 184 Jigme Singye Wangchuck, King of Bhutan 25–6 Jobs, Steve 221, 264, 405 John, King of England 118 Johnson, Lyndon 202–3 Jones, Rhys 79 Jordan 148, 167 Jordan river 127 Joyce, James 289 justice 19–20, 116, 320, 358 Kalahari desert 44, 61, 76 Kalkadoon aborigines 91 Kanesh, Anatolia 165 Kangaroo Island 81 kangaroos 62, 63, 69–70, 84, 127 Kant, Immanuel 96 Kaplan, Robert 293 Kay, John 184, 227 Kazakhstan 206 Kealey, Terence 172, 255, 411 Kelly, Kevin 356 Kelvin, William Thomson, 1st Baron 412 Kenya 42, 87, 155, 209, 316, 326, 336, 353 Kerala 327 Kerouac, Jack 110 Khoisan people 54, 61, 62, 67, 116, 321 Kim Il Sung 187 King, Gregory 218 Kingdon, Jonathan 67 Kinneret, Lake 124 Klasies River 83 Klein, Naomi 291 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (venture capitalists) 259 knowledge, increasing returns of 248–50, 274–7 Kodak (corporation) 114, 386 Kohler, Hans-Peter 212 Korea 184, 197, 300; see also North Korea; South Korea Kuhn, Steven 64, 69 kula (exchange system) 134 !

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature
by George Monbiot
Published 14 Apr 2016

But before oil peaks, demand is likely to outstrip supply and the price will soar. The result is that the oil firms will have an even greater incentive to extract the stuff. Already, encouraged by prices, the pollutocrats are pouring billions into unconventional oil. In December 2007, BP announced a massive investment in Canadian tar sands. Oil produced from tar sands creates even more carbon emissions than the extraction of petroleum. There’s enough tar and kerogen in North America to cook the planet several times over. If that runs out, they switch to coal, of which there is hundreds of years’ supply. Sasol, the South African company founded during the apartheid period (when supplies of oil were blocked) to turn coal into liquid transport fuel, is conducting feasibility studies for new plants in India, China and the US.13 Neither geology nor market forces will save us from climate change.

…

H., 94 Auschwitz, 232 Australia acoustic dispersal devices/acoustic deterrence, 69 coal exports from, 172 destruction of rainforest in, 86 disappearance of predators in, 81 trade agreement with Hong Kong, 250 Avatar (film), 227, 230, 231 B Babiak, Paul, 190 BAE, 244 bail outs, 102, 198, 199, 202, 210 Baker, Norman, 30 Bandar bin Sultan, 242, 244 Bandow, Doug, 223 Bank of England, 156 Barclays Global Power and Utilities, 20 BBC, 41, 90 bears, return of to former ranges, 97 The Bell Curve (Murray and Herrnstein), 163 Bellway Homes, 45, 46 Beowulf, 90 Berlin, Isaiah, 4 Bialowieza Forest (Poland), 96 billionaires Charles and David Koch, 211, 214 freedom of not to pay taxes, 24 Ian Wood, 155 negative freedom enjoyed by, 4 political involvement of, 209–12 on population growth, 106 Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 194 Biological Weapons Convention, 153 Blair, Tony, 219, 244, 264, 266, 281, 287 Blears, Hazel, 149 Block, Fred, 180, 182 Board, Belinda, 189 boarding schools, 64 Boarding Schools Association, 65 Boarding School Syndrome, 64 bosses as allowed to blackmail their workers, 264 and capital gains tax, 280 Carly Fiorina on list of worst, 186 as consuming utility their workers provide, 187 income of as compared to average full-time worker, 12 psychopathic traits of as being rewarded, 189–90 self-attribution of, 191 Boston College, 12 BP, 151 Brazil farming in, 140 genocide in, 230 government’s contraceptive programme, 76 Brembs, Bjorn, 196 Brennan, John, 55 A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Harvey), 218 Britain Unleashed (article series), 216 Britannia Unchained, 216 British Journal of Psychotherapy, 64 British Medical Journal, 75 British Social Attitudes, 287 Brown, Gordon, 219, 263, 264, 267, 281, 287 Buffini, Damon, 264 Bush, George, 76, 266 Bush, George W., 54, 209, 223 Business Council, 264 C Californian condor, decline of, 84–5 Cambridge University, 20, 49, 50, 51 Cameron, David, 76, 275, 282, 283 Cameron, James, 227 Canada greenhouse gas emissions in, 87 revocation of patents by, 251 rise in moose numbers, 86 Canadian tar sands, 151 capital gains tax, 276, 280 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 1 capitalism, 176, 187, 195. See also consumer capitalism capitalists, 193 carbon, governments in rich world exhorting citizens to use less, 148 carbon capture and storage, 147, 150 carbon-cutting programmes, 151 carbon dioxide catching and burying of, 150 contributions of whales in removal of, 83 production of, 86, 148, 204 rise in, 84, 103–4 carbon-fuelled expansion, 176 Carbon Tracker Initiative, 156 Cardigan Bay, 95 care workers, 184–6 Carnegie, Andrew, 1, 191 carnivores, impact of large carnivores, 80 Catholic church, on abortion and contraception, 72–6 CBI (Confederation of British Industry), 263, 267 Center for Responsive Politics, 24 Centre for Policy Studies, 219 chastity, 59 Cherry Orchard estate, 45 Chesterman, Gordon, 51 child prisoners, 69 children.

Energy: A Human History
by Richard Rhodes
Published 28 May 2018

Whale oil comes from whales. Castaneda is wrong about whale oil; not only the world’s largest mammal rendered up its fats and oils for lighting in the first half of the nineteenth century, or whales would have been extirpated. They very nearly were. * * * I. Cannel coal is an older name for what is today called oil shale, a hard, shiny, bituminous mineral with a high oil content. II. The type of flushing fever then associated with consumption. III. Just as some had doubted the possibility of a light without a wick, so did others, including members of Parliament and the Royal Society, assume that the pipes carrying gas would be so hot they would be a fire hazard, especially if confined within walls.

…

A tree might survive seven seasons despite the progressive damage of boxing and chipping to its structure. Loggers then harvested the dead and damaged trees for their dense heartwood.8 By the 1850s, turpentine production was declining in America. A new competitor surged into the lamp oil market: coal oil, distilled from cannel coal (oil shale) or asphalt/bitumen, a heavy hydrocarbon found naturally in semisolid pools such as Pitch Lake on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. (Tar and pitch are traditional terms for asphalt/bitumen, but are also used, confusingly, for tree exudates.) The world’s most extensive reserve of bitumen occurs in the Canadian province of Alberta, where the mineral in the form of oil sands—sand mixed with asphalt/bitumen—covers some fifty-five thousand square miles, an area larger than England.

…

It meant, he went on to explain, that in ten to twenty years, the United States would be dependent entirely upon outside sources for a supply of liquid fuel, “for farm tractors, motor transportation, automobiles, the generation of heat and light for the thousands of country farms, the manufacture of gas, lubricants, paraffin, and the hundreds of other uses in which this indispensable raw material finds an application in our daily life.”35 There was no immediate solution in sight, Hibbert warned, “and it looks as if in the rather near future, this country will be under the necessity of paying out vast sums yearly in order to obtain supplies of crude oil from Mexico, Russia, and Persia.”36 The Yale chemist had a long-term solution to offer, however: the substitution for liquid fuel of alcohol made “from corn and a variety of grains on the one hand, and from wood, on the other.” Beyond waste wood, there were other potential sources of cellulose: corn stalks, flax, seaweed. And beyond alcohol, there was oil shale. Hibbert glanced hostilely at the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition, which had come into effect on 16 January 1920. He called it “pernicious and unenlightened legislation” that made research difficult by restricting access to alcohol (much as the illegality of marijuana later in the twentieth century would make research on the medicinal properties of cannabis difficult).

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet
by Jeffrey Sachs
Published 1 Jan 2008

The common assumption is that peak oil, if true, is a disaster: the world hitting a brick wall of oil supply just as the developing world is ramping up its demand for it. Yet the consequences would not be nearly as dire as some have suggested. We might run out of conventional petroleum in a few decades, but we have centuries left of coal and other nonconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands and oil shale. This may seem like slight consolation, since it is hard to put coal into the gas tank. Yet chemists know precisely how to do that, using an industrial process known as Fischer-Tropsch liquefaction, which converts coal into liquid hydrocarbons such as gasoline at relatively low cost. In the long run, we need to be more concerned about the total supply of fossil fuels than with the supply of oil alone, since the fossil fuels are reasonably changeable from one to the other through known industrial processes.

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
by Parag Khanna
Published 18 Apr 2016

Both will continue to be severely tested in the decades ahead as America becomes even more dependent on foreign investment from and exports to the same rising powers, financial centers, and corporate hubs that compete with it in global markets. Imagine this rosy scenario of 2020: America’s military is mostly anchored at home after two decades of foreign policy disasters, more oil and gas is captured from shale deposits than is produced by Russia and Iran, and California’s tech titans produce breakthrough applications that propel the world’s first trillion-dollar company. The economy cruises at a steady 3 percent growth rate, and more inclusive mortgage standards allow a record 70 percent of Americans to own their own homes.

…

Where supply chains don’t come to people, people move to supply chains. From San Francisco to Johannesburg, nineteenth-century discoveries of gold deposits turned villages of homesteads into bustling cities. In the past decade, fifty thousand Canadians have moved to Fort McMurray, a new oil boomtown in Alberta, to work in the rugged tar sands. In Africa’s extractive industry, hundreds of thousands of miners flock to jobs extracting tungsten, coltan, and other minerals essential for mobile phones, even if they have to work like slaves. The supply chain is a potential escape from state failure in Africa’s largest country of Congo and the smaller nations surrounding it.

Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community
by Karen T. Litfin
Published 16 Dec 2013

An EROEI of 100 means the extracted oil has a hundred times the energy that was used to extract it. As EROEI declines, the payoffs dwindle – unless, of course, production is subsidized. Around 1900, EROEI for US oil was as high as 1,200. Today, EROEI for conventional oil ranges from 5 to 20, depending upon the source. Unconventional hydrocarbons and biofuels are less attractive: tar sands and shale oil are 2–5, while ethanol and biodiesel from conventional US agriculture barely break even.8All fossil fuels warm the planet but coal, the most abundant, also happens to be the dirtiest. Practically speaking, “peak oil” means “peak cheap oil,” which makes petroleum the Achilles heel of globalization.

…

(Dr Ari) 28, 170 Arkin, Lois 30, 114–15, 143 art 8, 13, 58, 88, 119, 122, 138, 141, 183–4 Asia 12, 13, 15, 45, 71, 195 atheism 10, 150, 159, 162 atmosphere (Earth’s) 45, 113, 155, 169, 189 attunement 22, 128–9, 156 Auroville 10, 19, 27, 30–1, 38, 45–6, 63, 71, 88, 104, 114, 133, 137–40, 142, 150, 155, 177, 180–4 Auroville Village Action Group 181 Aurum earth-brick machine 46 Australia 13, 15, 26–7, 46, 53, 73, 181 Ba, Djibril (Jiby) 59, 72, 91 back-to-the-land 11, 22, 56 backyard 73, 97, 127, 189, 190, 205 backyard farm 97, 205 bacteria 29, 51, 60–1 Balde, Djibril 59 Bangladesh 107, 201 Barrel Cluster (Findhorn) 40 Bayer Corporation 199 beauty 25, 39, 47, 75, 78, 82, 89, 101, 108, 147, 163, 174–5, 205 bees 54, 74 belonging (sense of) 14, 30, 31, 136, 144, 146–8, 150, 152, 185 culture of 146–8, 152, 192 story of 185 Berlin 23, 64, 84, 86, 88, 177 Berry, Thomas 154–5 Berry, Wendell 170 Bible (New Testament) 163, 173 bicycle 1, 8, 27, 43, 63–7, 127, 192–4 Big Bang 154–5 bike trains 189 biodiversity 27, 71 see also wildlife biogeochemical cycles 201 biology 4, 25, 36, 51, 53, 57, 72, 135, 154, 159, 162, 163 birds 34, 73, 152, 155 Block, Peter 192 blocking (in consensus decision-making) 8, 41, 64–5, 117–19 Bokaer, Joan 54 Bott, Gabi 166 Brazil 13, 195 Brooks, Joss 181–3 Buddhism 28, 85, 149, 150, 151, 159, 162, 164, 165, 171, 177 building codes 40, 44, 53, 194 bus stop 24, 63, 131, 191 Business Alliance for Local Living Economies 89, 199 Caddy, Peter and Eileen 128, 156 Calera Creek Water Recycling Plant 194 California 6, 29, 43, 69, 74, 111–12, 166, 169, 194 car culture 27, 46, 62, 65–6, 145, 193 Camara, Lamin 90–1 Canada 197 capitalism 79, 88, 106, carbon dioxide 45, 71, 161 Caron, Paul 175–6 Carruba, Capra 16, 125 Catholicism 189 cell phones 70 cement 45, 116 charcoal 33, 72–3 Chennai 181–2 child-rearing practices 11, 17, 18, 24, 94, 111–12, 114, 116, 119, 133–8, 168, 191 children 8, 17, 21–2, 24, 30, 46, 66, 69, 85, 88, 94, 111, 114, 116, 119, 124–5, 127, 131–8, 140–1, 143–4, 147, 153, 163, 168, 180, 189, 193 absence of 30, 137 education of 23, 66, 88, 132, 140, 153, 163, 189 participation of in ecovillage culture 13, 134, 137, 143–5, 147 raised in ecovillages returning 116, 135–7 wellbeing of 24, 30, 46, 111–12, 116, 119, 127, 131, 147, 153 China 36, 59, 62–3, 193 choir 98, 138, 141, 145 Christian, Diana Leafe 113, 119, 206 Christianity (Christian) 149, 150, 151, 159, 162, 168, 185 circle of life 33–4, 74–7, 79, 109–11, 146, 148–9, 188, 202 circus 64, 88–9, 124 Cities for Climate Protection 194 citizenship 35, 49, 75, 92, 100, 122, 124, 136, 189, 202 City Repair 191 climate change 1, 5, 16, 34, 49, 50, 70, 75, 111, 130, 155, 161, 169, 172, 188, 190, 194, 195, 201, 204–5, 211 Club 99 (Sieben Linden) 43, 56–7, 70, 171 cogeneration 40, 49 co-housing 11, 21, 46–7, 93, 127, 207 Cold War 23, 88 collaborative consumption 34, 68–70, 92, 146 collective intelligence 175–9, 185 Colufifa 25–6, 31, 58–60, 66, 90–1, 105, 114, 120, 125, 150, 167–9, 196, 199 common house 17, 27, 43, 46, 50, 69, 70, 92–3, 97, 113, 127, 139, 143, 171 common property 69–70, 80, 92–4, 97, 191, 197, 199 Commoner, Barry 75 commons 191, 197, 199 see also common property commune 95–7, 127, 163 communication 18, 25, 78, 112, 119, 121–3, 125–8, 139, 147, 166, 174–5, 192, 201 communism 95, 106 community meals 70, 83, 162, 195 Community Sustainability Assessment 10, 132 Compassionate Listening 147, 192 complementary currency 99–103, 110 compost 5, 8–9, 32, 34, 54, 59, 128, 129, 137, 146–7, 207 composting toilet 15, 20, 41, 53, 61, 133, 147, 207 compressed-earth building 27–8, 46 conflict 11, 18, 106, 112, 114, 117–23, 137–8, 147, 150, 176, 205 conflict resolution 18, 106, 114, 137–8, 205 connection (sense of) 25, 69, 115, 123–4, 152, 155, 162–3, 166, 171 connectivity 185–6, 202–3 consensus 2, 6, 18, 20, 116–20, 125, 177, 180 consumerism 80, 97, 176 see also consumer society; overconsumption consumer society 15, 80, 92, 102 see also consumerism; overconsumption contraction and convergence 105 cooperative(s) 93, 100–2, 106, 191, 199 Copenhagen 133, 194 corporate lobbying 197–8 cottage industries 27, 87–8, 181–2 Council of Sustainable Settlements of the Americas (CASA) 200–1 courtyard 29, 46, 73, 84, 162 credito 100–3 crisis 3–4, 9, 11, 16, 18, 26, 36, 59, 108, 116, 120, 150, 153, 172, 176, 191, 203 ecological 1–5, 9, 11, 16, 150, 153, 172, 176 extinction 203 of meaning (existential) 150, 153 within ecovillages 18, 26, 108, 116–20 cult 115–16 currency (monetary) 12, 79–80, 98–103 da Silva, Arjuna 48 dairy 56, 83–4, 87 Damanhur 16, 18, 25, 30, 36–40, 42, 46, 57, 63, 87, 100–3, 115, 120, 122–5, 130, 133, 135–6, 150, 155, 157–60, 163, 171, 174, 177, 180, 183 Damanhur Crea 101 Dawson, Jonathan 11, 14, 68, 82, 124, 129, 130, 132 decision-making 17–18, 94, 116–17, 120, 135, 147, 177, 199 Dee, Bhavana 180–1 degrowth 196–7 democracy 66, 94, 106, 116, 117, 120, 177, 185, 188–9, 191, 193 Denmark 12, 22, 49, 92, 95, 97, 134, 197 dinosaurs 153, 155, 203–4 do-it-yourself politics 190 Dongtan (China) 193 downsizing 63, 105, 107, 197 drought-resistant plants 53 Duhm, Dieter 115–16 E2C2 30–5, 76, 80, 110, 151, 188, 191, 193, 195, 199, 203, 207 Earth community 76, 202 Earth System Governance 201 Earthaven 17. 20, 36, 38, 40, 43, 47–9, 53, 57–8, 77–8, 93, 100, 105, 108, 113–21, 129, 141, 150, 160, 165–6 Ecker, Achim 115 eco-home 42, 77, 108 ecological economics 196–7 ecological footprint 7, 21, 24, 26, 34–5, 43, 57, 68, 70, 73, 171, 183 ecology (defined) 34–5 eco-neighborhood 201 see also neighborhoods, sustainability practices in ecosystem 27, 34, 71, 74, 89, 109, 158. 182 ecovillage (defined) 3, 12 Ecovillage at Ithaca (EVI) 17, 21, 36, 41, 46, 50, 54, 63, 69, 83, 86, 93, 107–8, 111–14, 127, 138–9, 152, 194, 198 Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) 38, 132, 195 Ecovillage Network of the Americas 12 EcoYoff (Senegal) 179 Edinburgh 195 education 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, 23, 25, 67, 78, 89, 94, 119, 131–2, 135, 179, 181–2, 198 Effective Micro-organisms 29, 60, 182 efficiency 34, 36, 39–42, 64, 66, 81, 108, 121, 147 ego-village 42, 176 electric cars 36, 81 embodied energy 36, 42 energy 3, 20, 25, 27, 30, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40–5, 47, 48–9, 50–3, 58, 62, 63, 66, 69, 70, 74–5, 78, 82–3, 86, 88, 92, 99, 101, 111, 115, 122, 127, 130, 154–5, 156, 164, 176, 182, 183, 188, 189, 190, 193, 195, 197, 202, 205 cogeneration 40, 49 descent 70, 83, 92, 130, 189–90, 195, 202 fossil fuel 34, 42, 49, 51, 58, 62–3, 74, 92, 161, 167, 171, 192, 197, 200 micro-hydro 48 natural gas 48–9, 63 nonrenewable 5, 15, 49, 83 renewable 3, 38, 40, 48, 49, 63, 78, 82, 83, 88, 135, 156, 190, 197, 205 solar 9, 15, 25, 27, 28, 36, 40–5, 48–9, 63, 81–6, 101, 108, 111, 113, 133, 147, 183, 191, 193, 198, 205 wind 27, 48–51, 63, 73, 133 wood 33–4, 40–2, 48–9, 72, 141, 161 energy return on energy investment (EROEI) 62–3 engineer 43, 69, 84, 111 enlightenment (spiritual) 164, 183 entropy 155, 159 Estonia Ecovillage Network 179 Ethiopia 60 ethnic diversity 115, 155 Europe 4, 5, 12, 13, 15, 19, 26, 44, 49, 50, 55, 56, 58–60, 65–6, 105, 117, 122, 132, 163, 167–8, 178–9, 194, 197 European Union 5, 55–6, 189, 195, 198 evolution 3–4, 146, 148, 149, 152, 154–5, 157, 159–60, 162–3, 166, 175, 178, 185, 203–4 biological 3, 146, 154, 159, 161, 162, 166, 185, 203–4 cosmological 154–5, 159, 163 cultural 4, 148–9, 160, 166, 175, 188, 203–4 evolutionary intelligence 151, 154, 157, 163, 203 exponential growth 92, 102, 186 Falco (Oberto Airaudi) 25, 122, 158 Farmer, Chris 47–8, 58, 118, 141, 160 fermentation 141, 192 Field of Dreams (Findhorn) 42 Findhorn 12–13, 21–2, 30–1, 40, 42, 49, 51–2, 63, 68, 82, 89, 100, 115, 124, 128–9, 133, 138, 142, 150, 155–7, 177–8, 180, 194–5 Findhorn Consultancy Service 98 Findhorn Foundation 98 fish 58, 77–8, 90, 99,106, 188, 198 focalizer 22, 128, 156 forest (include forestry) 20, 33–4, 37, 55, 58, 71–2, 77, 90, 92, 116, 119, 125, 134, 162, 181, 183, 198 Forum (ZEGG practice) 24, 121–2, 132, 147, 192 fossil fuels 34, 42, 49, 51, 58, 62–3, 74, 92, 161, 167, 171, 192, 197, 200 freedom 6, 86, 95, 97, 121, 131, 178 friendship 6, 9, 42, 81, 108, 129, 134, 164, 185 frugality 51, 105 full-cost accounting 80–2, 189, 197–9 funeral 24, 144–5 Furuhashi, Michiyo 95, 176 Gaia 5, 31, 155–6, 163, 201 Gaia Education 10, 31, 132, 155, 190, 195, 198 Gaia Trust 12 Galle (Sri Lanka) 170–1 Gambia 35, 59, 90, 140, 167–8 Game of Life (at Damanhur) 124–5 Gandhi, Mahatma 81, 106 garbage 5, 9, 88–9, 194 Gateway Farm 57–8, 77, 108, 118, 160–1 GEN-Africa 200–1 gender relations 27, 72, 120, 126, 168 GEN-Europe/Africa 12 GEN-Oceania/Asia 12 genetically modified food 16, 25, 36, 54, 57 Germany 23–4, 33, 40, 44, 48–9, 56, 105, 115–16, 129, 143, 166, 177, 193, 197 gift economy 103–4, 147, 191–2, 199 Gilman, Robert and Diane 12 Gilmore, Jeff 69, 111–13, 138 global civilization 189, 200–2 global economy 12, 16, 34, 62, 79, 80, 82, 107, 109 Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) 10–12, 26, 38, 132–3, 179, 200–1 global governance 200–2 global inequality 35, 105, 167–9 global injustice 35, 169 globalization 12, 60, 63, 75, 107, 133, 139, 170, 186, 200–2 goat(s) 60–1, 207 God 61, 102, 136, 149–50, 164, 168–9, 173, 176, 182 Goura (Damanhurian) 57, 171 governance 18, 20, 28, 114, 116–17, 119, 120–1, 125, 134, 188, 190, 198, 200–1 government 72, 73, 83, 92, 94, 102, 106, 183, 190–1, 195–200 see also subsidies Great Depression 102 Great Reskilling 192 Great Unfoldment 152–61, 162–5, 172–4, 177, 178, 185, 186 green building 13, 36, 39–44, 45–8, 75, 175, 182 greenhouse gas emissions 45, 48, 62, 67–8, 71, 167, 169, 184, 193 see also carbon dioxide Greer, John 103 Groundswell Training Center 198 guesthouse 27, 117 guests in ecovillages 20–1, 23, 28, 40, 65, 68, 71, 87, 100, 117, 128, 132, 140, 144 see also visitors Gunambil (Sri Lanka) 106 Guneskoy Village (Turkey) 179 Halbach, Dieter 164 Hall of Metals (Damanhur) 158–60 Harris, Martha 93, 108 Hanover (Germany) 193 Hawken, Paul 200 Higa, Teruro 60 high school 8, 11, 77, 136 high-density building 46, 194 high-tech approaches in ecovillages 16, 25, 36, 40, 47, 113 Hinduism (Hindu) 149, 150, 151, 159 holistic approach 36–9, 126, 155, 166, 170 see also systemic thinking Hollywood 29, 65–7, 193 homeowners’ association 93, 191 Honduras 65 Høngsmark, Kirsten 96–7 horses 36, 56, 134, 143, 145 Hubble Telescope 188 Hübl, Thomas 177–9, 189 human excrement 8, 34, 182 human manure 33–4, 53 see also human waste; urine human subjects review 11 human waste 33–4 , 53, 182 hunger 10, 25–6, 31, 58–60, 69, 84–5, 97, 130, 141, 185, 196 hybrid cars 36 hyper-individualism 29, 185, 192, 193, 203 idealism 6, 17, 47–8, 86, 89, 99, 118, 120, 136 income (ecovillagers’) 16, 20, 22, 88, 95–6, 98, 101, 164; see also salary India 19, 27, 35–6, 57, 59, 62, 81, 140, 165, 169, 180–3 individualism 29, 46, 116, 176, 178, 185, 192, 193, 203 Indus Valley Restaurant 104 industrialized agriculture 105 infrastructure 35, 48, 51, 62, 63, 69, 86, 186, 194, 202 insulation 41–3 integrity 9, 80, 86, 149, 181, 201 intention (in ecovillages) 114–16, 123, 164, 207 see also purpose (sense of) intentional community 12, 93, 123, 164, 207 interdependence 4–5, 9, 17, 27, 28, 46, 49, 75, 79, 108, 117, 152, 184, 185–6, 199–202 ecological 4–5, 9, 36, 75, 108, 117, 184, 185–6 global (planetary) 4–5, 9, 27, 46, 75, 79, 117, 184, 185–6, 199–202 social 4–5, 9, 17, 36, 49, 117, 152, 184, 185–6 interest (monetary) 12, 17, 23, 35, 54, 76, 79, 80, 83, 100, 102–3, 112, 129 internal economy 64, 100 internalizing costs 197 see also full-cost accounting International Consortium of Local Environmental Initiatives 190 international institutions 189, 200 international law 3, 189, 194, 200 International Training Center for Local Authorities (CIFAL) 195 internet 12, 36, 64, 70, 99, 189, 191, 199, 201 interreligious sensitivity 149–50, 168 Isadon (Furuta Isami) 29, 61, 121, 172–3 Islam (Muslim) 26, 149, 150, 151, 159, 162, 168 Italy 16, 18, 25, 49, 100–2, 136, 157 Jackson, Ross 12 Japan 28–9, 60–1, 92, 94, 123, 172 jobs 79, 85–8, 96, 100, 111, 117, 166, 197 joining fee 93, 95 Judaism (Jew) 149, 159, 162 kibbutz 12, 13 Kibbutz Lotan (Israel) 179 Kidokoro, Yuki 84, 123, 143 Kitao, Koichi 60–1, 74 Kloster, Jørgen 55–6 Konohana 28–9, 60–1, 74, 92, 94–5, 121, 150, 155, 172–3, 176–7, 180 laboratory (ecovillage as) 13, 18, 27, 79, 86, 131, 149, 151, 164, 175, 180, 185–6, 205 LA County Bicycle Coalition 65 Læssø, Bø 55–6 Lagoswatte 28 laundry 46, 47, 50, 69 laws 25, 27–8, 93, 97, 106, 155, 170, 191, 197–9 learning author’s 2, 5–9, 13–16, 20, 39, 45, 67, 94. 102, 110, 141, 143, 153, 165, 168, 174–5, 179, 181, 205–7 from ecovillages 11, 14, 18–19, 60–1, 121, 131–4, 141–2, 147, 150, 187–204 in ecovillages 11, 14, 18–19, 28, 47, 51, 53, 60–1, 88, 108, 111, 113, 121, 131–4, 136–8, 147, 164, 177 legal and financial structure 92–7 lessons (from ecovillages) 9, 13, 15, 32, 69, 81, 110, 151, 187–204 libertarianism 190 Lietaer, Bernard 99–100 Lindegger, Max 26, 28, 84 linear model (economic) 33–4, 53, 75, 203 literacy 25, 106, 168, 181 Living Building Challenge 194 Living Machine 51–2, 194 living system 5, 53, 166, 173 Lizama, Jimmy 65–6, 193 localization 16, 54–5, 73–80, 84, 87–9, 97, 99, 110–11, 130, 141, 189–96, 198–9, 201–2 Los Angeles 13, 15, 29–30, 65, 67, 84, 93, 114, 150, 162, 193–4 riots in 30, 114–15 Los Angeles Eco-Village (LAEV) 29–30, 65, 67, 84, 93, 114–15, 123, 127, 137, 142, 150, 162, 193 Love, Brian 58, 77–8, 108 Lovelock, James 155 low-income housing 108 low-tech approaches in ecovillages 16, 36, 40, 47, 70 MacLean, Dorothy 156 Macy, Joanna 154, 165–6 magic 25, 124, 127, 159, 160–1, 163 malaria 25, 181 Marland, Angus 156–7 mass extinction 1, 75, 155, 172, 203 mass transit 23, 63–4, 66, 92, 127, 167, 206 Matrimandir (Auroville) 183–4 Mbackombel (Senegal) 198 meat 22, 25, 55–8, 83 medicine 59–60, 136 meditation 7, 25, 122, 128, 136, 151–2, 156–64, 165, 171, 177 Sarvodaya’s peace 151–2, 165 meetings 7, 17, 27, 46, 92, 95, 98, 105, 107, 112, 115, 117, 119, 120–1, 126, 132, 134, 138–40, 164, 172, 176–7, 179 membership process 22, 93–4, 96 microfinance 25, 59, 106–7, 168, 181, 185, 199 Middle America 21, 108, 194 Middle East 59, 197 Ministry of Ecovillages (Senegal) 198 misanthropic temptation 153 molecular biology lab 25, 36, 57 monasteries 11, 171 Monbiot, George 67–8 money 6, 8, 11, 13, 16, 49, 55, 77–80, 86–7, 98–103, 109–20, 140–1, 161, 168, 169, 180, 192, 198 see also currency (monetary); complementary currency monogamy 24, 115 Morrison, Lara 162 Mount Fuji 28, 172, 174 multinational corporation 112, 161, 200 music 8, 23, 86, 139, 142, 174–5, 185 see also song(s) Music of the Plants (Damanhur) 174–5 mysticism 115, 156, 162, 177, 183, 185 nation-state 117, 200 Nature-Spirit Community 126 Ndao, Babacar 198 neighborhood skills map 64, 70, 87, 192 neighborhoods 6, 21, 29, 32, 43, 54, 46, 50, 52, 56, 64, 67, 70, 87, 97, 108, 109, 110, 114, 138, 141, 146, 167, 171, 187, 188, 190, 191–6, 201, 205 sustainability practices in 80, 87, 97, 109–10, 114, 138, 141, 146, 188, 191–2, 205 New Age 21, 88, 162 New Rural Reconstruction Movement (China) 196 New York City 193 Nonviolent Communication (NVC) 112, 119, 123, 125, 147, 192 Nygren, Kristen 111–13, 138 Obama, Michelle, 199 oikos 74–5, 79 oneness 162, 186 organic food 2, 6, 9, 21, 29, 54–60, 73, 75, 81, 84, 87, 97, 128–9, 133, 191 overconsumption 4–5, 35, 36, 105, 107, 112, 167, 202 see also consumerism; consumer society Owen, David 193 ownership 11, 18, 64, 70, 80, 101–2, 92, 94, 97–8, 146, 199 Pacific Northwest 187 park (public) 73, 92. 97, 189 participatory development 10, 12 particle consciousness 178, 189 passive solar design 40–5, 48, 82, 108, 113 patriarchy 26, 115, 117, 120 Peace Contract with Animals (Sieben Linden) 24, 56 Peace Corps 198 peace movement 164 peak oil 5, 50, 62–3, 130 Pepe, Lucertola 174–5 permaculture 20, 26, 34, 36–9, 54, 58, 73, 75, 117, 162, 188, 195, 200, 205 personal growth 89, 113, 120, 148, 149, 175, 206 pets 73, 127 pioneer species 19 planetary citizen 189, 202 planetary interdependence 9, 27, 46, 186, 189 plants, communication with 162, 174–5 pocket neighborhood 194 policy making 189 polis 74–6, political activism 6, 11, 16, 23, 89, 133, 157, 164, 166 political science 35, 50, 85, 99, 116 politics 1–6, 35, 66, 88–9, 102–4, 113, 117, 129–30, 133, 141, 151, 157, 164–7, 189–90, 196 polyamory 23, 115 Portland (Oregon) 191, 193 postmodern 117, 125, 171 poultry 55, 58–61, 77, 84, 134, 168, 192, 207 Pour Tous Distribution Service (Auroville) 104 poverty 30–1, 43, 60, 81, 95, 151, 181 power of yes 190, 194, 199 power tools 69–70 preschool 107 private property 79–80, 92–4 product stewardship laws 197 prosperity 13, 101, 103, 105, 110 purpose (sense of) core human 188–9, 191, 196, 200, 202, 207 in ecovillages 12, 14, 18, 20, 23, 61, 78, 85, 109, 114–16, 118–19, 124, 132, 135, 138, 172, 182, 188 see also intention (in ecovillages) race 27, 168 rainwater 9, 26–9, 31, 44, 51–3, 71, 82, 113, 192, 205 real estate 54, 79, 92–4, 114 real wealth 97, 107, 109 recycling 3, 6, 188, 194 relational living 150, 165, 167, 192 religion 10, 149–50, 152, 154, 159, 162, 164, 165, 168–9, 172, 186 renters 79, 94 retirement 18, 81, 93–4, 108, 127, 207 retrofitting 41, 81, 114 right livelihood 80, 85–90, 99, 199 risk perception 82 n1 Rio+20 Earth Summit 200 Rosenberg, Marshall 123 rural ecovillages 17, 54, 71, 83, 84 Rylander, Kimchi 118–20 salary 1, 9, 11, 16, 20, 22, 72, 83–4, 88–9, 92 n6, 95–6, 98–9, 101, 105, 107–8, 113, 164, 167, 194, 198 Sarvodaya 13, 28, 31, 104, 106–7, 114, 120, 125–6, 129, 133, 149–52, 155, 165, 170, 187, 196 sauna 69, 93 science 51, 75, 135, 154–5, 162, 164–5, 185–6 Seattle 7, 30, 67, 138, 156, 191, 205–6 secularism 13, 31, 149, 150, 154, 159, 162–4, 168, 177, 185 Sekem (Egypt) 200 self-awareness 137, 170 Senadeera, Bandula 125–6 Senegal 25–6, 59, 66, 72, 167–9, 179, 198–9 Seneviratne, Mahama 151–2 sewage 27, 51, 132 sex 109, 115 Shapiro, Elan 107–8 shared-wall construction 45, 47, 69 sharing 16, 18, 22, 26, 32, 47, 54, 63–4, 69, 70, 81, 87, 92–3, 96–7, 106, 110, 114, 127, 132, 142, 146, 164–5, 172, 189, 191–4, 199, 201, 207 sheep 58, 77 Shelton, Julie 84 shramadana 104, 106, 129 Sieben Linden 24, 33–4, 36, 41, 43–4, 47, 49, 53, 56–7, 70–1, 105, 114, 127, 129, 143–6, 150, 164, 166, 171, 177–9 silence (inner) 128, 143, 157, 159, 169, 171, 178 simplicity 8, 39, 81, 171–4, 180 skills 8, 16, 32, 43, 64, 65, 78, 87, 88, 108–9, 110, 111, 114, 122, 127, 131, 134, 138, 139, 147, 189, 192, 207 SkyRoot 206–7 slavery 167, 185 Slow Cities 192 Slow Food movement 192 see also Slow Money; Slow Cities Slow Money 192 slums 115, 132, 182, 195, 196 socialism 88 sociocracy 120 soil 8, 17, 19, 24, 31, 33, 46, 53, 55, 56, 58–60, 71, 74–5, 84, 89, 103, 131, 145, 147, 156, 161, 196, 207 solar energy 9, 15, 25, 27–8, 36, 40, 48–9, 63, 81, 83, 86, 101, 108, 111, 113, 133, 147, 183, 191, 193,198, 205 solidarity 84–5, 100, 103, 109–10, 133, 169, 192, 200, 205, 207 song(s) 7, 28, 34, 73, 138, 143, 145, 147, 152, 179 see also music sorcerer’s apprentices 160–1 Spain 90, 168 spell 124, 160–1 see also magic spirituality 24, 30–1, 149, 150, 155–7, 162–5, 166, 170, 171–3, 180–5 Sri Aurobindo 180–2 Sri Lanka 13, 28, 106–7, 125–6, 142, 151, 155, 165, 170 steady-state economy 197 story of separation 4, 11, 165, 179, 195–6 straw-bale construction 18, 43–4, 47–8, 171 structural insulated panels (SIPS) 36 subsidiarity 189, 193, 198, 201 subsidies governmental 3, 15, 82–3, 197–8 within ecovillages 83, 96, 197 suburb 21, 41, 69, 97, 127, 193–4 survivalism 112 sustainable development 28, 88, 133 Sustainable Tompkins County 107 Svanholm 22–3, 31, 49, 55–6, 64, 92, 94–7, 114, 127, 134–5, 163–4 Swimme, Brian 154 symbiosis 4–5, 54, 103, 108–9, 120, 147 biological 53, 103, 148 intergenerational 108, 110 social 4, 54, 103, 108–9, 147–8 synchronic lines 158 systemic thinking 51, 188–90, 193, 208 see also holistic approach Tamerice, Macaco 100–2, 122, 158–9 Tamera 115, 122 Tamil Nadu 19, 27, 45, 88, 140, 181 tar sands 62 taxes 83, 93–6, 101, 189, 197 Technakarto (at Damanhur) 122, 125 technological solutions 36–8, 63, 133, 201–2 teenagers 15, 69, 136 Temples of Humankind 25, 157, 160, 183 Tompkins County (New York) 194 toilet 7, 15, 20, 33–4, 41, 51, 53, 61, 106, 131, 133, 147, 179, 207 toilet assumption 53 Tolle, Eckhart 157 tool library 191 tractor 125 traditional villages 10, 46, 105, 125, 196 transformation 28, 41, 70, 129–30, 145, 150, 155, 165, 168, 179, 183, 185, 192, 205 material 31, 140, 183 of consciousness 177–9, 183–5, 189, 192 personal 28, 145, 169, 173, 179, 192, 205 social 129–30, 168, 179, 185, 192 spiritual 150, 155, 183–4 Transition Town 130, 192, 195, 200–1 transparency 22, 24, 96, 164 transportation 8, 34, 39, 58, 60, 62–8, 75, 92, 189, 193, 194, 205 trees 17, 24, 27, 29, 33, 48, 58, 59, 71–3, 90, 97, 119, 140, 155 triple bottom line 199 trust 14, 17, 22, 64, 85, 96–97, 100, 102, 109, 112, 116, 119–23, 130, 146–7, 154, 164, 167, 174–5, 189, 191–2, 200–1, 207 tsunami 28, 88, 133, 170, 170 two-class society 79, 94, 108 UfaFabrik 23, 64–5, 84, 86, 88, 99, 124, 138–9, 150 unconventional hydrocarbons 62, 197 United Nations 21, 107, 132–3, 195 United States of America (US) 5, 8, 12, 15, 20–1, 29, 35, 48–50, 52, 57–8, 60, 62–3, 73, 82–3, 92–3, 105, 122, 126, 140–1, 177, 191, 197–8 universe story 154, 172 urban ecovillages 16, 23, 34, 64, 84 urban farming 54, 97, 205 urban planning 162, 189, 191 urine 53 utopia 18, 193 Van Dam, René 163 veganism 24, 56–7, 171 vehicle sharing 63–4, 92, 146 village model 78–9, 84, 117, 196 visitors (to ecovillages) 21, 23, 65, 68, 71, 87, 100, 117, 132, 140, 144 Wackernagel, Mathis 35 Walker, Liz 152–3, 194 war 5, 6, 17, 23, 80, 123, 133, 138, 151 wastewater 18, 46, 51, 52, 78, 194 see also sewage water conservation 51–3, 74 Way of Monks (Damanhur) 171, wealth 4, 8, 13, 16, 83, 97, 100, 103–4, 107–9, 112, 192, 197, 201 wellbeing 28, 36, 40, 46, 47, 78, 80, 85, 89, 105–6, 197 wells 17, 20, 51, 106, 117–18 West Africa 31, 59, 67, 167 wetland 52, 194 Whidbey Island 205–7 Wiartalla, Werner 86, 99 wildlife 26, 33–4, 38, 63, 70–4, 182, 194, 206 wind energy 27, 48–9, 51, 63, 73, 133 windows 36, 40–4, 43, 81, 127, 137, 143, 174 double-paned 36, 41, 43, 81 triple-paned 30 windows into sustainability 30, 188 Wolf, Stefan 179 women 26, 31, 39, 59, 72, 88, 90, 106, 107, 125–9, 139, 151, 158, 168, 185 empowerment of 26, 31, 88, 106 literacy 96 oppression of 151, 185 Women Empowerment through Local Livelihood (WELL) 88 World Café 192 worldview 10, 31, 149–50, 155, 159, 160, 164, 172, 178 Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) 11, 83 yurt 39, 206, 207 ZEGG 23–4, 41, 49, 63, 115–6, 121–2, 132–3, 137–8, 150, 177 Zeher, Ozzie 63, 190 ZipCar 64, 70, 199

Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil
by Hamish McKenzie
Published 30 Sep 2017

The news site summed up its version of events by suggesting that Fortune was a beneficiary of a multimillion-dollar public relations offensive against electric vehicles, funded by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, whose Koch Industries is one of the largest private companies in the United States. Koch Industries and its subsidiaries own major oil operations, including refineries, pipelines, and leases on at least 1.1 million acres of tar sands in Canada. Electrek pointed out that Fortune had earlier published an opinion piece by Koch Industries board member James Mahoney. In that piece, Mahoney argued that electric cars shouldn’t get government subsidies. “The serious bottom line here is that Fortune is getting Koch money to further their climate changing agenda,” Electrek wrote at the time.

…

Looking at Koch Industries’ businesses and past troubles with the regulatory sector, it’s not hard to see why the brothers—each worth about $50 billion and among the top ten richest people in the world—might object to government action on carbon emissions and other pollution. For example, the Kochs own more acres of Canada’s tar sands than any other non-Canadian company, including Exxon, Chevron, and Conoco. While Koch Industries and its subsidiaries have a diverse set of business interests, from polymers and fibers to forestry and cattle ranches, they also preside over a fossil fuels empire of infrastructure, refineries, pipelines, storage, and shipping, and they profit from fossil- fuels-related financial instruments, such as an oil derivative that they co-invented.

Cadillac Desert
by Marc Reisner
Published 1 Jan 1986

Wayne Aspinall, the chairman of the House Interior Committee, was growing old and politically vulnerable, and Narrows, it seemed, was to be his swan song. The imperious old schoolteacher began pushing it so relentlessly that he even refused to let the project’s opponents testify before his House Interior Committee. At the same time, the first OPEC oil crisis hit, and everyone began eyeing Colorado’s huge reserves of oil shale. Some Coloradans seemed to want to turn the state into an energy colony and grow rich off it; others wanted to lock up as much water as possible so the oil, coal, and uranium industies would be forced to remain relatively small and the state’s rural character, what was left of it, would remain fairly intact.

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Unlike eastern states, which can keep out development only by passing laws, western states have a natural means of halting industries they don’t want at their gates: a scarcity of water. In the early 1970s, Colorado became the first western state that actually wanted to keep an industry out, or at least keep it from overwhelming its economy and way of life. The industry was energy—especially oil shale. And the means of holding back its growth was to try to put the remaining water in agriculture’s hands and let the energy companies worry about wresting it away—or let them import water from somewhere else, as Exxon was proposing to run an aqueduct from Oahe Reservoir in South Dakota. C. J. Kuiper, on the other hand, was charged with putting water to beneficial use, and it seemed silly to him to waste tens of thousands of acre-feet on crops with a low economic return—crops which were subsidized by the Reclamation program and, in the case of some, federal price supports—when half of America’s oil was now coming out of the Middle East.

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Kuiper, on the other hand, was charged with putting water to beneficial use, and it seemed silly to him to waste tens of thousands of acre-feet on crops with a low economic return—crops which were subsidized by the Reclamation program and, in the case of some, federal price supports—when half of America’s oil was now coming out of the Middle East. Privately, Kuiper believed oil shale development was necessary: philosophically, he believed in the doctrine of highest use. Water had become so scarce in Colorado that whoever could pay the most should get what remained. Reclamation farmers paid the least of anyone. Such thinking, however, was ultimately to have very little to do with the position Kuiper took on the Narrows Project.

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
by Daniel Yergin
Published 23 Dec 2008

Farben found a much more important potential partner—Standard Oil of New Jersey.[3] At that time, Standard was midway in its strategic transformation from refiner to integrated oil company, well-supplied with its own crude, both in the United States and abroad. It had also been exploring alternatives to crude oil as a source of liquid fuels; as early as 1921, it had purchased twenty-two thousand acres in Colorado with the hope of finding a commercially successful method for extracting oil from shale. But Standard had been dissatisfied with the results; the production of one barrel of synthetic oil from shale required a ton of rock, and the economics were extremely unattractive. Frank Howard, the head of research at Standard, visited I. G.'s Leuna works in 1926. He was so impressed that he immediately fired off a telegram to Standard's president, Walter Teagle, then visiting in Paris.

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Churchill's proposal for government ownership of a private company was indeed unprecedented, save for Disraeli's purchase of shares in the Suez Canal a half century earlier—a step also taken on strategic grounds. Some M.P.s, representing their local interests, argued for the development of oil from Scottish shale and liquids from Welsh coal (many years later known as synthetic fuels). Both, they said, would provide more reliable supplies. Yet, despite the strong criticism inside Parliament and out, the oil bill passed by an overwhelming vote—254 to 18. The margin was so large that it surprised even Greenway.

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A new Federal agency, the National Security Resources Board, made a similar argument in a major policy review in 1948; importing large amounts of Middle Eastern oil would allow a million barrels per day of Western Hemisphere production to be shut in, in effect creating a military stockpile in the ground—"the ideal storage place for petroleum." Many advocated that the United States do what Germany had done during the war—build a synthetic fuels industry, extracting liquids not only from coal, but also from the oil shale in the mountains of Colorado and from abundant natural gas. Some were confident that synthetic fuels could soon be a major source of energy. "The United States is on the threshold of a profound chemical revolution," said the New York Times in 1948. "The next ten years will see the rise of a massive new industry which will free us from dependence on foreign sources of oil.

Straphanger
by Taras Grescoe
Published 8 Sep 2011

What we are now experiencing is a new phenomenon: the onset of the era of peak cheap oil. As old, easily accessed fields are sucked dry, oil from such unconventional sources as Alberta’s tar sands is coming on line; the extraction process, which requires enormous amounts of water and natural gas, is energy-intensive and punishing to the environment. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in which highly toxic chemicals are used to extract natural gas and oil from shale deposits, is already a suspected cause of groundwater contamination and even earthquakes across North America. The Deepwater Horizon spill, which blackened the Gulf of Mexico with 200 million gallons of oil over three months in 2010, highlighted the desperate measures already being taken to track down the planet’s last remaining reserves of conventional oil.

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In contrast to Europe, where the vast majority of cargo is moved by truck, North America’s rail infrastructure is owned by seven major freight companies, and almost all of them consider the Amtrak and Via passenger trains that run on their rails an unmitigated nuisance. The next time you spend an hour or two sitting in a cornfield, sidelined by a Pennsylvania coal carrier, an 80-car tanker carrying crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands, or what railroaders call a “Wal-Mart Chinese Doodad Train,” blame it on companies like Union Pacific, Canadian National, and Burlington Northern, who prioritize on-time goods delivery over the travel needs of human beings. At Puttgarden, where Germany runs out of land, our Inter-City Express slowed to a crawl as we advanced over a specially adapted wharf and, without stopping, directly into the belly of a Scandline Ferry.

Everything Under the Sun: Toward a Brighter Future on a Small Blue Planet
by Ian Hanington
Published 13 May 2012

If we ensure that care is taken to use technologies with minimal environmental impact and to locate turbines in areas where effects on humans and animals are also minimal, there is no good reason to oppose wind power. The trouble with tar sands IF YOU WANT to be scared, you don’t need to watch a horror movie or read the latest Stephen King bestseller. Real terror can be found by simply firing up Google Earth, the computer program that allows users to look at satellite pictures of any place on the planet. By mousing over and zooming in, you can see what Alberta’s tar sands look like from space. It is not a pretty sight. In fact, it’s scary—and for good reason. A book by celebrated journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, explores what these grey spots on Google Earth mean to Canada’s environment and economy.

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Or maybe there’s something more frightening to consider. Perhaps we’re the bogeyman—when we put the short-term economic value of the tar sands above the priceless value of our environment and our health. Rebranding won’t make tar sands oil “ethical” RIPPING A PAGE—or the cover—from fellow Conservative and former tobacco industry lobbyist Ezra Levant’s book Ethical Oil, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and his environment minister, Peter Kent, have been referring to the product of the Alberta tar sands as “ethical oil.” The prime minister and Levant go back a long way. It was Levant who reluctantly stepped aside as the Alliance candidate in Calgary Southwest so that Harper could run in a by-election there in 2002.

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In the end, the only truly ethical solution is to phase out oil. The black eye that tar sands oil is sporting can’t be remedied with meaningless phrases such as “ethical oil.” To be seen as truly ethical when it comes to energy policy, Canada must slow down tar sands development, clean up the environmental problems, implement a national carbon tax, improve the regulatory and monitoring regime, and make sure that Canadians are reaping their fair share of the revenues. The U.S. must also look for ways to conserve energy and use cleaner sources so that it doesn’t have to rely on dirty oil from the tar sands. We must start taking clean energy seriously.

The End of Indexing: Six Structural Mega-Trends That Threaten Passive Investing
by Niels Jensen
Published 25 Mar 2018

A post-World War II drive away from using coal as a direct source of motive power towards using it indirectly via electricity also boosted productivity – and hence GDP growth – in the 1950s and 1960s64. In the decades that followed, global energy production continued to increase as the economy expanded, but at a slowing pace. Despite the sharp ramp-up in oil production from shale reserves, in the seven years from 2010 to 2016, the annual increase in energy production was only 1.3% – the slowest pace since 1900. Moreover, the effect shale has had on overall growth in energy production has been surprisingly modest. Exhibit 7.2: Annual energy production (mtoe) growth by decade and the seven years 2010–16 Source: The MacroStrategy Partnership LLP (2017,1).

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In two of the largest ones – Bakken and Eagle Ford – growth in production began to decelerate a couple of years before oil prices collapsed in 2014. With oil prices being well over $100 when the growth rate began to decelerate, you would have thought other reasons to be behind the slowdown – not oil prices. When shale first emerged as a serious contender, typical production costs were in the $80s, but they have since dropped quite dramatically. The top US shale fields are now cash flow positive when oil prices are in the low $50s, and that obviously makes the industry a more serious contender at prevailing oil prices.

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
by Jared Diamond
Published 6 May 2019

Resource scarcities are already undermining societies or threatening to cause wars in many parts of the world today. Let’s begin by considering one example in detail: the fossil fuels that we use primarily for energy, and also as starting materials for chemical synthesis of many products. (The term “fossil fuels” means hydrocarbon fuel sources formed long ago in the Earth’s mantle: oil, coal, oil shale, and natural gas.) Humans require energy for all of our activities, and we require especially large quantities for transporting and lifting things. For millions of years of human evolution, human muscle power was our sole energy source for transporting and lifting. Around 10,000 years ago, we began to domesticate large animals and harness them to pull vehicles, carry packs, and raise weights by systems of pulleys and gears.

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As those first sources became depleted, we shifted to sources that were less accessible, deeper underground, more expensive to extract, or more damaging. Thus, the first industrial-scale fuel use was of coal from shallow mines, used to power steam engines for pumping water and then for powering spinning wheels, and (eventually in the 1800’s) steamships and railroad engines. Industrial exploitation of coal was followed by exploitation of oil, oil shale, and natural gas. For instance, the first oil well that extracted oil from underground was a shallow well drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, followed by progressively deeper wells. There are debates about whether we have already reached “peak oil”—that is, whether we have consumed so much of the Earth’s accessible oil reserves that oil production will soon start to decline.

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Instead, wells have to be dug deeper (a mile deep or more), and not just on land but also under the ocean floor, and not just in shallow ocean waters but in deeper waters, and not just in Pennsylvania in the U.S.’s industrial heartland but far away in New Guinea rainforests and in the Arctic. Those deeper, more remote oil deposits are much more expensive to extract than were Pennsylvania’s shallow deposits. The resulting potential for oil spills producing costly damages is higher. As costs of oil extraction increase, alternative but more damaging fossil fuel sources of oil shale and coal, and non-fossil-fuel sources such as wind and solar, are becoming more economic. Nevertheless, oil prices today still permit big oil companies to continue to be highly profitable. I just mentioned the apparently low cost of oil. Let’s pause to consider the actual cost of oil (or of coal).

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need
by Naomi Klein
Published 12 Jun 2017

Fracking for oil and gas in the United States has cooled off, with devastating human costs: an estimated 170,000 oil and gas workers have lost their jobs after the 2014 price collapse. Investment in the Alberta tar sands dropped by an estimated 37 percent in the year following, and continues to fall. Shell pulled back from the Arctic and has sold most of its tar sands reserves. The French oil company Total has retreated from the tar sands as well. Even ExxonMobil has been forced to write off nearly 3.5 million barrels of tar sands oil because the market considered these reserves to be no longer worth extracting at current oil prices. Deepwater drilling is also in a lull.

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But the environmental costs were enormous: the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was intimately connected to the fact that these companies are drilling deeper than they ever have before. The reason the tar sands in Alberta are so controversial is that Indigenous lands and waterways have been badly contaminated by the invasive and carbon-intensive process of mining for that heavy crude. Rex Tillerson’s ExxonMobil went wild buying up high-cost heavy-oil reserves; it reached the point where fully one-third of the company’s reserves were located in the Alberta tar sands. When the price of oil collapsed, it came as a major shock. Oil prices began to crash in 2014, with Brent crude—the global benchmark for oil—plummeting from $100 a barrel to $50 in just six months, and the price has hovered at around $55 a barrel ever since.

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Exhibit A of this phenomenon was the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which helped send the price of oil soaring from around $30 a barrel at the start of the invasion to above $100 by 2008. That, in turn, is what triggered the boom in tar sands investment and the rush to the Arctic. And this dynamic could be repeated. A war that takes large state-owned oil reserves offline, or which significantly weakens the power of OPEC, would be a boon for the oil majors. ExxonMobil, loaded with tar sands reserves and with megaprojects pending in the Russian Arctic, would have a huge amount to gain. Perhaps the only person who would have more to gain from this kind of instability is Vladimir Putin, head of a vast petro-state that has been in economic crisis since the price of oil collapsed.

The Burning Answer: The Solar Revolution: A Quest for Sustainable Power
by Keith Barnham
Published 7 May 2015

Any conflict will affect oil supplies, as the latter two are major oil producers. These geopolitical concerns and the threat of oil depletion drive governments and oil companies to spend vast amounts on developing technology to exploit the so called ‘unconventional’ fossil fuel sources: shale oil, tar sands and fracking. These technologies are damaging the environment and have high carbon footprints. If these new fossil fuel resources are burned they will greatly add to the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere; which brings us full circle back to the threat posed by global warming. The solar technologies give us the chance to break the cycle.

Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One
by Meghnad Desai
Published 15 Feb 2015

They rely on a combination of longer run forces such as demographic trends and cycles, or bursts of innovation, such as the discovery of gold and silver (relevant for the Gold Standard during the nineteenth century) or innovations in credit creation, as happened in the late twentieth century, or oil/shale discoveries, and also political events which may change the geography of the markets, as the fall of the Berlin Wall did. Kondratieff did, however, cover data going back to the Industrial Revolution. The first Kondratieff cycle has an upswing from the 1780s to 1810/17 and a downward phase from 1810/17 to 1844/51.The next long cycle peaked somewhere between 1870 and 1875 and then entered a downward phase which ended in the 1890s.

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Despite this negative real rate of interest there was no demand for bank loans in developed economies as they were going through a period of stagflation. The banks began to aggressively lend to developing economies, especially to the governments on the benign assumption that there was no such thing as sovereign default. The recipients of this largesse invested it in oil exploration, especially shale oil, ambitious real estate schemes or just gross corruption. In a way the market rate of interest was so low that almost any investment would have a higher natural rate. This duality of a Wicksellian boom in developing countries and stagflation in developed economies prevailed through the 1970s.

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
Published 14 Apr 2018

If you are a manager or a leader who is trying to rapidly scale a project or a business unit within a larger company, blitzscaling can help you too. And while we draw these lessons primarily from the world of high tech, many of the principles and frameworks the book lays out (especially regarding people management) are applicable to high-growth companies in most industries worldwide, from European fast-fashion retailers to Texan oil shale companies. Even organizations outside the business world can use blitzscaling to their advantage. Upstart presidential campaigns and nonprofits serving the underprivileged have used the levers of blitzscaling to overturn conventional wisdom and achieve massive results. You’ll read all these stories, and many more, in the pages of this book.

Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming
by Mckenzie Funk
Published 22 Jan 2014

“How do I get to something that is under, around, below, or inside an object—or is very large and very far away from me?” Myhrvold had recently taken a helicopter tour of Canada’s tar sands along with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They were guests of the $6-billion-a-year tar sands contractor Kiewit Corporation, which also had a hand in lining the All-American Canal. Myhrvold had noticed mounds of sulfur, a by-product of tar sands mining—and the main ingredient in geoengineering schemes then being patented by IV. “There were big yellow mountains of it, like a hundred meters high by a thousand meters wide!”

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Within a year, it had dropped all new funding for wind, solar, and hydrogen energy. It began securing government funding in Stephen Harper’s Canada to build Quest, a first-of-its-kind, $1.35 billion CCS facility at the Athabasca tar sands that would inject captured carbon into porous rock more than a mile underground. But also, controversially, Shell invested heavily in the carbon-spewing tar sands themselves. If it extracted them without functional CCS, activist groups alleged in a 2009 report, it would become the most carbon-intensive oil company in the world. Jeremy Bentham’s team of futurists moved on to their next set of scenarios, which explored the “stress nexus” between water, energy, and food—a vital topic in a world adapting to climate change.

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Farther north, in the Arctic, the ice albedo feedback effect—the fact that sea ice, which reflects 85 to 90 percent of solar radiation, melts to become seawater, which absorbs all but 10 percent of radiation—would help keep temperatures climbing at twice the global rate. Northern economies seemed poised to grow at least as rapidly. Canada’s farmers already had two extra growing days a year, and studies said its Athabasca tar sands might someday be accessible from the north, via the Mackenzie River. Under Stephen Harper, a country many Americans considered well-meaning to the point of naïveté was becoming one of the villains of international climate conferences. Canada was a party to the Kyoto Protocol, a weak 1997 treaty that mostly excluded big emitters like China and the United States but nonetheless remains the world’s first and only binding international agreement on greenhouse gases.

The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself-and Profit-from the Coming Energy Crisis
by Stephen Leeb and Donna Leeb
Published 12 Feb 2004

But the reason we’ve put them in this chapter is because of their stake in Canada’s enormous tar sands reserves, which by some estimates contain as much oil as Saudi Arabia. We haven’t mentioned tar sands up to now because we really don’t expect them to play a significant role in solving our energy problems. Converting tar sands into usable oil causes a lot of pollution and requires tremendous amounts of water. Further, production costs are sensitive to the underlying costs of energy; they rise as energy prices rise. Even under the most optimistic assumptions, Canada’s tar sands will be producing less than 2 million barrels of oil a day by the end of the decade.

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Even under the most optimistic assumptions, Canada’s tar sands will be producing less than 2 million barrels of oil a day by the end of the decade. And that projection doesn’t factor in any possible restraints that might arise from Canada’s adherence to the Kyoto agreement’s environmental standards. But if tar sands will be only a niche alternative to oil and gas, they nonetheless have the potential to make a big contribution to the bottom lines of the few companies that can produce and market them. For EnCana and Petro-Canada, their stake in tar sands is likely to be the added kicker that will make them standouts among energy producers. Earlier, noting that alternative energies and conservation are generally thought of as two facets of the same solution, we argued that they really are quite different and that efforts to mandate conservation could prove counterproductive.

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Moreover, it’s possible that despite the huge cost of building new nuclear plants—stemming in large part from the need to address environmental and safety concerns—at some point as fossil fuel prices rise it may start to make economic sense to construct new nuclear facilities. Exelon would be the most likely manager of any new nuclear plants. This would clearly boost profits even more. We consider Exelon an attractive choice for all investors. Two Canadian energy producers are double plays: they qualify both as energy stocks and, because of their position in tar sands, as alternatives to current fossil fuels. EnCana, based in Calgary, is the largest independent natural gas producer in North America, while Petro-Canada is an integrated Canadian oil company. In terms of their primary energy businesses alone, both are very attractive companies. Each is growing reserves and production much faster than its competitors, and each can reasonably expect to increase production by 10 percent a year over the next three to five years.

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
by Bill McKibben
Published 15 Apr 2019

Consider the asphalt shingle, which tops most homes in the West and is itself, doubtless, the dullest of all forms of roofing. The earliest examples date to 1901, and the first manufacturer was the H.M. Reynolds Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which sold its product under the slogan “The Roof That Stays Is the Roof That Pays.” Asphalt occurs naturally in a few places on Earth—the tar sands of Alberta, for instance, are mostly bitumen, which is the geologist’s word for asphalt. But the asphalt used in shingles comes from the oil-refining process: it’s the stuff that still hasn’t boiled at five hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Vacuum distillation separates it from more valuable products such as gasoline, diesel, and naphtha; it then is stored and transported at high temperatures until it can be used, mostly for making roads.

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I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic, just realistic—enough to know engagement is our only chance. I said before that the human game we’ve been playing has no rules and no end, but it does come with two logical imperatives. The first is to keep it going, and the second is to keep it human. 2 To walk the roads through even a corner of Alberta’s vast tar sands complex is to visit a kind of hell. This may be the largest industrial complex on our planet—the largest dam on Earth holds back one of the many vast settling “ponds,” where sludge from the mines combines with water and toxic chemicals in a black soup. Because any bird that landed on the filthy water would die, cannons fire day and night to scare them away.

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Because any bird that landed on the filthy water would die, cannons fire day and night to scare them away. If you listen to the crack of the guns, and to the stories of the area’s original inhabitants, whose forest was ripped up for the mines, you understand that you are in a war zone. The army is mustered by the Kochs (the biggest leaseholders in the tar sands) and ConocoPhillips and PetroChina and the rest, and their enemy is all that is wild and holy. And they are winning. It is hideous, a vandalism of the natural and human world that can scarcely be imagined. I’ve spent years working to end it, and my efforts have been small compared to the unending fight of the people who live there.

Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire
by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian
Published 1 Nov 2012

The energy system is a key part of this integration. The tar sands in Canada are a huge source of potential energy—and of environmental destruction. There’s a controversy going on about who is going to exploit the tar sands. The United States wants to, but Canada occasionally warns that it will partner with China, which is eager to develop these fields if the United States won’t.9 This is a major issue now. In his 2012 State of the Union address, Obama was very enthusiastic about the idea that we could have a century of energy independence by making use of fossil fuels in North America—natural gas in the United States and fuel from tar sands.10 He didn’t talk about what kind of a world it would be in one hundred years if we use these fossil fuels.

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Just at the time that these emissions reports were coming out, the Financial Times euphorically suggested that the United States was entering a new age of plenty and might have a century of energy independence, even global hegemony, ahead of it thanks to the new techniques of extracting fossil fuels from shale rock and tar sands.32 Leaving aside the debates about whether these predictions are right or wrong, celebrating this prospect is like saying, “Fine, let’s commit suicide.” I’m sure the people who write such articles have read the same climate change reports I have and take them seriously. But their institutional role makes such positions a social or cultural necessity.

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In his 2012 State of the Union address, Obama was very enthusiastic about the idea that we could have a century of energy independence by making use of fossil fuels in North America—natural gas in the United States and fuel from tar sands.10 He didn’t talk about what kind of a world it would be in one hundred years if we use these fossil fuels. There’s some discussion of the local environmental effects of developing the Canadian tar sands, but there’s a much broader question about the general effect on the global environment. These are very serious issues. Canada is also one of the major centers of mining operations around the world. Conflicts over mining of natural resources are leading to wars and violence globally, from Latin America to India. Internally, India is practically at war over natural resources.11 The same is true of Colombia and other countries.

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
by Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman
Published 2 Jan 1980

Does it really make sense to commit the taxpayers to spending, directly or indirectly, $40 or more for a barrel of oil from shale while prohibiting the owners of domestic wells from receiving more than $5.94 for some categories of oil? Or, as Edward J. Mitchell put it in a Wall Street Journal article (August 27, 1979), "We may well question ... how spending $88 billion to obtain a modest amount of $40 per barrel synthetic oil in 1990 'protects' us from $20 per barrel OPEC oil either today or in 1990." Fuel from shale, tar sands, and so on, makes sense if and only if that way to produce energy is cheaper than alternatives—account being taken of all costs.

The Oil Age Is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil, 2005-2050
by Matt Savinar
Published 2 Jan 2004

The worldwide disruptions that follow the peak serve as a global wake-up call. A methane-based economy is successful in bridging the gap temporarily while nuclear power plants are built and the infrastructure for other alternative fuels is put in place. The world watches anxiously as each new Hubbert's peak estimate for uranium and oil shale makes front-page news. Worst case? After the peak, all efforts to produce, distribute, and consume alternative fuels fast enough to fill the gap between falling supplies and rising demand fail. Runaway inflation and worldwide depression leave many billions of people with no alternative but to burn coal in vast quantities for warmth, cooking, and primitive industry.

Energy and Civilization: A History
by Vaclav Smil
Published 11 May 2017

Production platforms installed at major offshore fields are among the most massive structures ever built. And the most recent production advance is the rising extraction from nonconventional sources of crude oil, including heavy oils (in many places around the world), oil embedded in tar sands (Alberta, Venezuela), and extraction by hydraulic fracturing to produce oil from shales. This technique, pioneered in the United States, has proved so successful that America became once again the world’s largest producer of crude oil and other petroleum liquids—but if only crude oil is considered, Saudi Arabia was still a tiny bit ahead in 2015, producing 568.5 Mt compared to 567.2 Mt for the United States.

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As we recover higher shares of originally available resources, the best measure of their availability is the cost of producing a marginal unit of a mineral. This approach takes into account improvements in our exploitation techniques and our ability to pay the price of recovery. The impressive post-2005 rise in the recovery of crude oil from America’s abundant shale deposits—relying on a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (Smil 2015a) and making the country, once again, the world’s largest producer of oil and gas—illustrates enormous opportunities that remain to be fully exploited. Resource exhaustion is thus not a matter of actual physical depletion but rather a burden of eventually insupportable cost increases.

Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits
by Richard Davies
Published 4 Sep 2019

Over a period of just four days in March 1949 over 20,000 kulak Estonians were rounded up, put on special trains and deported to Siberian cities such as Khabarovsk and Krasnoyarsk over 5,000 km away. The Estonian industrial base changed too, with factories set up all along the north-east coast: Kunda was the site of a huge cement factory and pulp mill; Kohtla-Järve had plentiful oil-shale deposits and became an important source of energy; Sillamäe, once a peaceful resort where Russia’s cultural elite, including Tchaikovsky, had vacationed, was repurposed as a centre for uranium enrichment, the nature of the work so secretive that the town was removed from maps. The economic model, planned from Moscow, was catastrophic for Estonia.

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But Estonia carries deep scars, says Marianna Makarova, who leads research at Integratsiooni Sihtasutus, the Estonian ‘Integration Foundation’. Many of the problems stem from the way people were moved around by state decree under the Soviet system. ‘You had no choice over where you went,’ she explains. Young Russian engineers who had completed degrees in nearby St Petersburg would be sent to work in the factories and oil-shale plants in Narva and the easternmost county of Estonia (Ida-Viru) that was home to these facilities. These were not the plum jobs – the standard of living in Moscow was then far higher than in Estonia – but an energy worker with no family connections took what they were given (jobs at the coal mines of Karaganda and Vorkuta, both north of the Arctic Circle, were far worse gigs).

Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change
by Dieter Helm
Published 2 Sep 2020

As the price is credibly kept well above $5 a barrel, other supplies come into the market which would not otherwise be produced. The North Sea oil and gas industry developed because of the oil shocks in the 1970s, with much higher costs than in the Middle East. So too did Alaska, the offshore Gulf of Mexico, and eventually even the tar sands of Alberta in Canada could turn a profit at the higher prices. These high-cost producers need the Saudis and others to manipulate the market to keep the price up. The relevance of all this for carbon and climate change is that this premium on the costs of production has an effect similar to a carbon price.

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy
by Philip Coggan
Published 6 Feb 2020

The key measure is energy return on investment (EROI), or “the ratio between the energy delivered by a particular fuel to society and the energy expended in the capture and delivery of this energy”.4 The earliest uses of fossil fuels had very high EROIs; in 1919, the ratio for US oil and gas may have been 1,000:1.5 That explains why coal, and then oil, transformed the global economy. But as time has gone on, fossil fuels are being exploited in more difficult places: under the North Sea, for example, or locked in rock (requiring fracking), and EROIs have declined. Getting oil from deep-lying Canadian tar sands, for example, may have an EROI of under 3:1, and even less if the full cost of transport and refining is included.6 The first fossil fuel to be exploited was coal, the remnants of plants that lived in swampy forests millions of years ago. The Chinese developed coal from the fourth century CE onwards.7 England was lucky enough to have substantial coal deposits, some of which were close to the surface and thus easy to develop; in the 1560s, they were producing around 177,000 tons a year.8 But the English had also cut down large areas of woodland and were short of timber, which was needed for constructing houses and ships as well as for fuel; the cost of firewood in London more than doubled between 1500 and 1592.

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Balogh, “EROI of different fuels and the implications for society”, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856 5. Ibid. 6. Rachel Nuwer, “Oil sands mining uses up almost as much energy as it produces”, Inside Climate News, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130219/oil-sands-mining-tar-sands-alberta-canada-energy-return-on-investment-eroi-natural-gas-in-situ-dilbit-bitumen 7. E. A. Wrigley, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution 8. Ibid. 9. Rhodes, Energy: A Human History, op. cit. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Wrigley, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, op. cit. 13.

Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement
by Amy Lang and Daniel Lang/levitsky
Published 11 Jun 2012

In advancement of this position, to stand in solidarity with the Cree nations, whose territories are located in occupied northern Alberta, Canada, in their opposition to the Tar Sands development, the largest industrial project on earth. Further, to demand that President Barack Obama deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, proposed to run from the Tar Sands in Canada into the United States, and that the United States prohibit the use or transportation of Tar Sands oil in the United States. 7. To assert that Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions.

…

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological. These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.

…

Both these companies were granted trading monopolies by the British Crown, and were able to extract resources and amass massive profits as a direct result of the subjugation of local communities through the use of the British Empire’s military and police forces. The attendant processes of corporate expansion and colonization continue today, most evident in this country with the Alberta tar sands. In the midst of an economic crisis, corporations’ ability to accumulate wealth is dependent on discovering new frontiers from which to extract resources. This disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples and destroys the land base required to sustain their communities, while creating an ecological crisis for the planet as a whole.

American Made: Why Making Things Will Return Us to Greatness
by Dan Dimicco
Published 3 Mar 2015

The new American gas and oil boom reminds us all that energy is the cornerstone of all economic development. Everyone depends on it. In terms of cost and availability, natural gas has never been cheaper or more readily available domestically than it is right now. With each passing year, we find more of the stuff. Energy companies are getting better at using technology to extract oil and gas from the vast shale formations under much of the central and eastern United States. Horizontal drilling and new wells leave a much smaller footprint on the landscape than traditional methods. When energy costs are low, not only do you stimulate economic growth, you also stimulate the innovation you need to create high-paying jobs and strengthen the middle class.

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization
by Jeff Rubin
Published 19 May 2009

In the process, Calgary’s Petroleum Club has been suddenly thrust from relative obscurity into the limelight of the world energy industry, triggering an enormous boom in Alberta, where for a while the people serving coffee in doughnut shops were making $40 an hour. That was the good news I had tried to tell them five years earlier: high oil prices would suddenly make expensive tar-sands oil a hot commodity. But what is good news for Alberta is not necessarily good news for the rest of the world. Every time the price of a barrel of oil dips by a few dollars, someone tells me I’m out to lunch. And when prices went from $147 to briefly below $40, not a few people figured I had been proven wrong pretty decisively.

…

What matters on payday is not your gross salary, but what is left after taxes and other deductions have been taken off. You don’t get to spend your gross salary—you have to make do with your take-home pay. It is the same with oil, or any other energy resource. There may be 165 billion barrels of oil in the Canadian tar sands, but that is not the same thing as finding 165 billion barrels of light sweet crude in the desert in the Middle East. The “take-home” energy from the oil-sand reserves would be a fraction of what you get from conventional reserves. There are a lot of deductions when it comes time to calculate the take-home energy of a barrel of synthetic crude from the oil sands: the huge energy costs of a sprawling open-pit mine, the additional energy it takes to refine bitumen as opposed to crude oil (one of the main differences between the two is that bitumen contains less hydrogen than crude and the process in which hydrogen is added is itself very energy intensive, as is the process of producing the hydrogen in the first place).

…

There are a lot of deductions when it comes time to calculate the take-home energy of a barrel of synthetic crude from the oil sands: the huge energy costs of a sprawling open-pit mine, the additional energy it takes to refine bitumen as opposed to crude oil (one of the main differences between the two is that bitumen contains less hydrogen than crude and the process in which hydrogen is added is itself very energy intensive, as is the process of producing the hydrogen in the first place). But the biggest energy deduction really stings: if you want to produce a single barrel of synthetic oil from a load of tar sand, you are going to have to burn 1,400 cubic feet of natural gas first. And there is not an inexhaustible supply of cheap natural gas in North America. So while soaring oil prices can temporarily manufacture attractive financial returns from nonconventional sources like oil sands, they mask the sharp decline in the energy rate of return.

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex
by Rupert Darwall
Published 2 Oct 2017

And the President of the United States wanted America to follow China. It was a new twist to the Obama doctrine of leading from behind. * For Nixon and Carter’s energy policies, see Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming—A History (London, 2013), pp. 82–86. † In any case, Ford was referring to oil shale, or kerogen, which is different from the shale oil being produced from fracking in the Obama years. ‡ This represents another continuity between President Obama and the last phase of George W. Bush presidency: “And let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases” (State of the Union address, January 28, 2008).

Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism
by Sharon Beder
Published 1 Jan 1997

Palese is comfortable with the fact that Ecos clients are often Greenpeace targets, denying that she has any conflicts of interest.34 One example of the conflict between Ecos Corporation and Greenpeace was the development of an oil-shale deposit in Queensland, which was opposed by Greenpeace Australia because of the fossil fuel emissions associated with it and the damage it could do to the Barrier Reef. The developers, Canadian company Suncor and Australian company Southern Pacific Petroleum (SPP) were clients of Ecos. Greenpeace Australia press releases accused Suncor and SPP of “misleading the public and their own shareholders over the amount of greenhouse pollution” from the planned development, and argued that “oil shale is the most polluting source of energy currently being developed,” with much higher carbon dioxide emissions than conventional oil sources.35 Ecos literature, on the other hand, named Suncor as “one of the leading fossil fuel focussed energy companies in the world on climate change”.36 According to its literature, “Ecos Corporation provides strategic support and advice to corporate clients and partners seeking commercial advantage through a focus on sustainability . . .

The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World
by John Michael Greer
Published 30 Sep 2009

Most official estimates place the arrival of peak oil sometime between 2020 and 2030, close enough that efforts to deal with the resulting energy crisis ought already to be under way, but these estimates have already been overrun by events. World production of conventional petroleum, in fact, peaked in 2005 and has been in a shallow decline ever­­since.5 That decline has been masked so far by rising production of natural gas liquids, tar sand extractives and biofuels, but these are not really replacements for conventional petroleum. Natural gas ­liquids are subject to sharp depletion problems of their own, while the ­others all require large investments of energy, most of which comes from petroleum. In a real sense, to count ethanol production as part of petroleum production without subtracting the diesel fuel, ­petroleum-based agricultural chemicals and other inputs needed to grow the ethanol feedstock and convert it into ethanol is to count the same oil twice over.

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In a real sense, to count ethanol production as part of petroleum production without subtracting the diesel fuel, ­petroleum-based agricultural chemicals and other inputs needed to grow the ethanol feedstock and convert it into ethanol is to count the same oil twice over. The same issue holds for the massive energy inputs needed to turn tar sand into barrels of oil and for other nonconventional fuels as well. For the time being, this dubious number 9 10 T he E cotechnic F u t u re juggling has kept production figures up, which may well be the point of the exercise. Yet the economic consequences of the peak of petroleum production are already beginning to show themselves.

…

If the peak of Hubbert’s curve remains at 2005, in other words, the amount of oil produced in 2030 will likely be somewhere near the amount produced in 1980; production in 2060 will fall near production in 1950, and production in 2100 will approximate production in 1910. Even after the peak comes and goes, in other words, there will still be a great deal of oil for many years to come. The same rule applies to other energy resources. This lesson could have been learned from the growth of nonconventional oil sources like the Alberta tar sands, and the reopening of hundreds of formerly abandoned stripper wells in pumped-out oil regions like Pennsylvania. As oil production falters, market forces and political pressures guarantee that every possible replacement will be brought online. Right now, attempts to increase production are struggling to keep up with slumping yields at existing fields, and it’s a struggle that will only get harder as more fields reach their own Hubbert peaks.

The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better
by Annie Leonard
Published 22 Feb 2011

Ceasing development of Canada’s tar sands. Tar sands consist of heavy crude oil mixed with sand, clay, and bitumen. Extracting the oil entails burning natural gas to generate enough heat and steam to melt it out of the sand and uses up to five barrels of water for each barrel of oil produced. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) says that tar sands oil is the worst type for the climate, producing three times the greenhouse gas emissions of conventionally produced oil because of the energy required to extract and process it. RAN is organizing to redirect the $70 to $100 billion the United States plans to invest in tar sands infrastructure into research and development of sustainable energy alternatives such as electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, and solar and wind energy.

…

B., 140–141 Madagascar, 2, 3, 35 Makeup, 76–77 Makower, Joel, 185, 186 Malaysia, 8 Mandela, Nelson, 222 Maniates, Michael, 112, 159, 239, 240 Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 (Ocean Dumping Act), 98 Markey, Ed, 195 Marshall, James, 24 Mascara, 75 Massachusetts, toxics use reduction in, 218–219 Mazzochi, Tony, 85–86 McDonough, Bill, 52, 103 McKibben, Bill, 141 McRae, Glenn, 201 Mechanical pulping, 53 Medical waste, 185, 201–202 Mercury, 24, 25, 30, 34–35, 42, 54–55, 59, 61, 62, 69, 73, 74–75, 77, 79, 86, 91, 95, 203, 221–223, 257 Methane, 36, 209 Methyl-3-methoxyproprionate, 60 Methyl alcohol, 60 Methyl ethyl ketone, 60 Methyl isocyanate (MIC), 90, 91, 93 Mexico, 72, 135 Mickey Mouse Goes to Haiti (National Labor Committee), 49, 50 Microchips, 59–61 Microsoft, 71, 203 Minerals, 20–29 Minerals Policy Institute, 253 Mines, Minerals and People, 253 Mining, 20–25, 35, 36, 59, 64, 75 Mirex, 79 Mitchell, Stacy, 121, 125 Mobil Chemical Company, 230–231 Mobile phone chargers, 103–104 Monitors, 61 Monocropping, 47 Montague, Peter, 211–212 Moosewood Cookbook (Katzen), 158 Morris, David, 34 MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People), 31–33 Mountaintop removal mining, 36, 254 Mozambique, 66 Mudslides, 4, 7 Muir, John, 7 Municipal solid waste (MSW), 185, 190–199 Municipal supply of discards (MSD), 190 Myers, John Peterson, 45 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 126, 136, 255 Nair, Shibu, 236 National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, 88 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, 95 National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, 96 National Foreign Trade Council, 258 National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), 85, 96, 205 National Labor Committee, 49 National Marine Fisheries Service, 96 National Memorial for the Mountains, 36 National Ocean Service, 96 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 96 National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit (1991), 88 National Priorities Project (NPP), 243, 244 National Recycling Coalition (NRC), 196 National Weather Service, 96 Native Americans, 24, 196 New Economics Foundation, 152 New Leaf Paper, 56 Newsom, Gavin, 235–236 Newsweek, 234 Nickel, 59 Nigeria, 30–33, 35 Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, 33 Nike, 71, 108, 109, 165, 188 9/11 terrorist attacks, 147 Nitrates, 61 Nitric acid, 60, 61 Nitrogen dioxide, 65 Njehu, Njoki Njoroge, 39 No Dirty Gold campaign, 25 t-Nonachlor, 79 North Cascades National Park, 6–7, 10, 11 Obesity, 150 Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, 96 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 96, 123 Office Depot, 9 Office of Environmental Quality, 95 Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, 96 Ogoni 9, 33 Ogoniland, Nigeria, 31–33 Oil, 29–35, 246, 254 Oil Pollution Act of 1990, 98 One Planet Living program, 40 Online shopping, 118–119 Only the Paranoid Survive (Grove), 58 Open-pit mining, 20–22 Oreskes, Michael, 173 Organic cotton, 51 Organic matter, in water, 11 O’Rourke, Dara, 62, 108–112, 117, 140 Orris, Peter, 84 Our Stolen Future (Colborn, Myers and Dumanoski), 45 Overproduction, 102 Overspent American, The (Schor), 167, 168 Overworked American, The (Schor), 156 Oxfam America, 21 Oxychlordane, 79 Pacific Institute, 17 Packaging, 194–198 Packard, Vance, 163, 194 Paglia, Todd, 10 Paolino & Sons, 224 Paper, 1, 8–9, 14, 51–56, 52–55 Papyrus, 52 Parchment, 52 Patagonia, 50–51 PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), 60, 73, 261 Peak oil, 29 Peek, Bobby, 223 PepsiCo, 196 Perceived obsolescence, 162–163 Perot, Ross, 126 Personal care products, 76–77, 264 Personal consumption expenditures, 146–147, 177–178 Pesticide Action Network Organic Cotton Briefing Kit, 47 Pesticides, 5, 46, 47, 79, 231, 262 Petroleum, 20, 29–34, 55, 230 PFCs (perfluorocarbons), 65, 79 PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), 73 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 224–227 Phosphoric acid, 60 Phosphorus, 59 Phthalates, 69, 71–72, 76, 124 Planned obsolescence, 160, 161–163 Plant-derived pharmaceuticals, 2–3 Plastics, 44, 194–195, 230–232 PVC (polyvinyl chloride), 42, 51, 61–63, 68–72, 124, 170–172, 184, 188, 257, 261, 265–267 Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, 98 Polyester, 44 Polymers, 44 POPs (persistent organic pollutants), 73 Poverty, 178–179 Prescription drugs, 2–3 Print-on-demand technology, 119 Printers, 203, 204 Privatization of water systems, 16 Processed chlorine free (PCF) process, 54, 56 Procter & Gamble, 112 Product Policy Institute (PPI), 198–199 Production, 44–105, 255–256 Progress, redefining, 242–243 Project Return to Sender, 225–226 Project Underground, 31 Puckett, Jim, 205, 210 Puget Sound, 11 Pulping, 53 Putnam, Robert, 149, 238–239 PVC (polyvinyl chloride), 42, 51, 61–63, 68–72, 124, 170–172, 184, 188, 257, 261, 265–267 Quante, Heidi, 226 Quinine, 2 Rainforest Action Network (RAN), 5, 254–255 Rainforests, 2–4, 30–31 REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals) Act, 82, 83 ReBuilders Source, 200–201 Reciprocity, culture of, 238–239 Recycle-Bank, 229 Recycling, 9, 42, 52, 55, 56, 64, 66–67, 69–70, 190, 196, 197–199, 204–207, 216, 228–234, 266–267 Rendell, Edward, 225–226 Repairs, 192–194 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 and 1986, 98 Hazardous and Solid Wastes Amendments of 1984, 98 Resource curse, 37 Responsible Care program, 93 Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Sierra Leone, 26 Rivers, 10–11, 24, 25 Roane County, Tennessee, 35 Rocks, 20–29 Rogers, Heather, 228, 232 Rosario, Juan, 65 Rosy periwinkle, 2–3, 35 Rwanda, 27, 28 Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, 97 Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Campaign, 84 Salt water, 15 San Francisco, California, 235–236 Sarangi, Satinath, 91 Saro-Wiwa, Ken, 31–33 Schettler, Ted, 74, 78, 79 Schor, Juliet, 156, 167, 168, 246, 247 Scorecard, 94 Scott, Lee, 122 Sea levels, 13 Seattle, Washington, 133–134 Seinfeld, Jerry, 182 Seldman, Neil, 228 Sequestration, 2 Sewage systems, 12 Shaman Pharmaceuticals, 3 Sharing and borrowing, 43, 237–238 Shell Oil, 31–33 Shoe repairs, 194 Shopping, 147–148 Shopping malls, 124–125 Shower curtains, 69 Shukla, Champa Devi, 91 Sierra Leone, 26, 35 Silent Spring (Carson), 98 Silicon, 59 Silicon Valley, 57–58 Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 63 Silicosis, 59 Silver, 59 SmartWay Transport program, 115 Smith, Alisa, 140–141 Smith, Kari, 165 Smith, Ted, 58 Sodium hydroxide, 60 Soesterberg Principles, 63 Soil, 7, 12 Solar power, 34, 36 South Africa, 23–24, 26, 221–223, 258 South Korea, 135 Soy inks, 55 Spain, 31, 71 Species extinction, 4 Speth, Gus, 167 Stainless steel, 44 Staples, 9 Steam engine, invention of, 101 Stevens, Brooks, 161, 163 Stewart, Howard, 225 Stoller Chemical, 219 Story of Stuff, The (film), 56, 147, 162 Suicide, teen, 150 Sulfonamides, 48 Sulfur dioxide, 65 Sulfuric acid, 48, 60 Superfund sites, 57, 97, 208 Supply chains, 107–113, 117, 256 Sustainable Biomaterials Collaborative, 34, 231 Sustainable Forestry Initiative, 10 Sweatshops, 49–50, 51 Switkes, Glenn, 66 Synthetic materials, 44–45, 75, 78, 80 Take-back programs, 29, 206 Talberth, John, 242 Tantalum (coltan), 27–29, 35, 246 Tar sands, 254 Target, 118 Television, 167–168, 262 Tetramethylammonium, 60 Texaco, 30 Text messages, 57 Thor Chemicals, 221–223 Thoreau, Henry David, 147 Thornton, Thomas, 245 Timber plantations, 5 Tin, 59 Toluene, 55 Total economic value framework, 18 Totally chlorine free (TCF) process, 54, 56 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, 82, 97 Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987–2007 (United Church of Christ), 89 Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (United Church of Christ), 88 Toxics Release Inventory, 93–94 Toxics Use Reduction Act (TURA), 218 Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), 218–219 Toyota, 71, 108, 111 Toys, 74, 111 Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act, 136, 255 Trans-Atlantic Network for Clean Production, 63 Transition Towns, 141–142 Trees, 2–10, 21 Triclosan, 79 Trucks, 113–115, 123 Ts’ai Lun, 52 Tucker, Cora, 88 Turkey, 50, 157–158 Tweeting, 57 Uganda, 27 Underground (subsurface) mining, 20 Unhappiness/happiness, 149–155 UNICOR, 205 Union Carbide Corporation, 90–93 United Church of Christ (UCC), 88, 89 United Nations, 38, 146 Center for Trade and Development, 228 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16 Environment Programme (UNEP), 75 Food and Agriculture Organization, 47 Human Development Index, 242 Human Poverty Index, 151 U.S.

Undoing Border Imperialism
by Harsha Walia
Published 12 Nov 2013

Such visions are in the service of stubborn survival, and hold the vehement faith that there are millions subverting the system and liberating themselves from its chains. Just over the year that this book was written, hundreds of thousands have defiantly taken to the streets and won victories as part of the Idle No More movement, Quebec student strike, Tar Sands blockade, Arab Spring uprising, European-wide antiausterity strike, Undocumented and Unafraid campaign, and Boycott Divest Sanctions movement. This work is a humble project; a modest effort born out of a decade of social movement organizing, for which no single individual can take credit or attempt to objectively describe.

…

Canadian mining corporations, which represent 75 percent of the world’s mining and exploration companies, are protected and enabled by the Canadian state in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, even though they have been responsible for, and in some cases charged with, environmental destruction, human and labor rights violations, and the forced displacement of surrounding communities.(26) Likewise, multinational corporations are welcomed by the Canadian state to exploit and export tar sands, the world’s most environmentally destructive industrial project that disproportionately impacts Indigenous nations. In a submission to the United Nations, the Indigenous Yinka Dene Alliance writes, “Canada has indicated that it is contemplating conduct that would infringe our Aboriginal Title and Rights. . . .

…

Similarly, the southern territories of the Unist’ot’en and Likhts’amisyu clans of the Wet’suwet’en were flooded for a hydroelectric project. Habitat that nurtured seemingly unlimited natural resources was turned into wastelands. Today, the Wet’suwet’en are faced with even more forced industrialization. Pipeline companies are lining up to force their way from the fracking fields of the Peace River area and tar sands of the Athabasca region to the coastal community. The international markets that hope to be the recipients of the oil and gas rush are pouring unimaginable amounts of funds into the pockets of corrupt governments and Indigenous leadership as well as deliberately ignorant settler populations. Thankfully, beneath the layers of Westernized rule there remain many grassroots people who remember their old teachings; they remember the stories, songs, and dances; they remember the hopes and dreams of those who fell victim to the first diseases; they remember that they are still warriors.

The Future Is Asian
by Parag Khanna
Published 5 Feb 2019

All of the top ten foreign holders of US dollar reserves—including Saudi Arabia, South Korea, India, and Singapore—are Asian economies, collectively holding more than 55 percent of US Treasuries.19 Furthermore, Asian foreign investment in the US economy, led by Japan, totals more than $1 trillion (compared to Europe’s $2 trillion FDI in the United States), especially in industries such as energy, manufacturing, and real estate. Asian investors have helped keep oil pumping in the shale patches of Texas when prices slumped. Both the China Investment Corporation (CIC) and Korea Investment Corporation (KIC) allocate more than 50 percent of their public equity portfolios to US equities, and GIC Private Limited of Singapore (formerly known as Government of Singapore Investment Corporation) invests 34 percent of its assets in North America.

When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Published 4 May 2015

Without realizing it, the author just invoked basic economics to invalidate the entire premise of the article! Just for good measure, he goes on to write: High prices can have another unfortunate effect for producers. When crude costs $10 a barrel or even $30 a barrel, alternative fuels are prohibitively expensive. For example, Canada has vast amounts of tar sands that can be rendered into heavy oil, but the cost of doing so is quite high. Yet those tar sands and other alternatives, like bioethanol, hydrogen fuel cells and liquid fuel from natural gas or coal, become economically viable as the going rate for a barrel rises past, say, $40 or more, especially if consuming governments choose to offer their own incentives or subsidies.

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I imagine that getting slammed in the clinker after protesting a massive pipeline project is a lot better for 350.org’s profile than staying at home, munching kale, and advising others to explore veganism. In this respect, the comparative beneficial impact of global veganism versus eliminating natural gas from Canadian tar sands matters none. What matters is grabbing a headline or two. Hence the “problem” with veganism and environmentalism. Ever since Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s exposé of dangerous insecticides, modern environmentalism has depended on high-profile media moments to shore up the activist base. Veganism, however, hardly lends itself to this role.

The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption - Endangering Our Democracy
by Frank Vogl
Published 14 Jul 2021

I traveled with his engineers to the Rocky Mountains to see his project, and I wrote that article, featured prominently on the front page of the Times (UK).22 But environmental demands made by the authorities in Colorado so escalated OXY’s cost estimates that they never pursued the scheme. More than three decades later, the greatly improved techniques for “fracking” and securing oil and gas from shale would lead to large new supplies coming onstream in the United States and, in fact, making the United States no longer dependent on OPEC. The giant oil companies, for their part, were swift to do deals with the OPEC governments, but the terms of those agreements were secret. The key to OXY’s financial success, for example, was in the deals that Armand concluded in Libya with dictator Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi.

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Published by Profile Books, UK, 2019. 19. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, by Daniel Yergin. Published by Simon & Schuster, 1991. 20. Ibid. 21. The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies & the World They Shaped, by Anthony Sampson. Published by The Viking Press, 1975. 22. “American Hopes of Oil from Shale Face Crucial Test”: headline on article reported by Frank Vogl, May 1975, the Times (UK). 23. Reuters, November 30, 2010, headline: “U.S. Legislation Takes Aim at ‘Resource Curse.’” 24. African Progress Panel Report 2013, “Equity in Extractives: Stewarding Africa’s Natural Resources for All.”

The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World
by Ruchir Sharma
Published 5 Jun 2016

The factories first rule says that a strong flow of investment is a big plus, particularly if it is going to productive industries like technology and, above all, manufacturing. In this respect, the billions of dollars that have been pouring into tech-driven U.S. businesses has been a very good investment binge, fueling the rise of new methods for extracting oil and gas from shale rock and of the country’s world-leading software and Internet companies. By 2015 the top ten companies in the world, in terms of stock market value, were all based in the United States—the first time this has happened since 2002. This dominant American group is led by Apple and includes Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, which has spawned trend-stamping acronyms like the unfortunate “FANG.”

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt
by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco
Published 7 Apr 2014

The fossil-fuel industry’s dirty game of corporate politics was on display following the arrests in the fall of 2011 of 1,253 activists from the environmental group 350.org outside the White House. The protestors opposed the proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from the tar sands in Canada through the United States to the Gulf Coast. James Hansen, NASA’s leading climate scientist, has said that the building of the pipeline would mean “game over for the climate.”5 President Barack Obama, ducking the issue, said he would review the proposal and make a decision after the November 2012 presidential election.

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Gangster Disciples, 38 Gary, Albert, 132 Gary, West Virginia, 130, 132, 143 drug addiction in, 154 Gem of the Ocean (Wilson), 64 General Allotment Act, 12 General Electric, 72 General Motors, 72, 117 Genocide, 4, 11, 12, 48 Germino, Laura, 204, 205–206 Geronimo, resistance by, 13 Giant, 182, 206 Giardina, Denise, 174 quote of, 115 Gibson, Larry, 116, 120, 149 on being poor, 117–118 coal companies and, 119, 121, 123 coal waste and, 121–123 government accountability, 124 illustration of, 122–123 Global warming, 130, 150 Globalization, 72, 205, 269 Gold, 9, 11, 23 Goldman Sachs, 69, 129, 160, 233, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270 Gomez, Sebastian: sentence for, 198 Google, 69 Göring, Herman, 170 Graft, political/corporate, 90 Grant, Ulysses S., 9, 11 Great Mystery, 55 Great Sioux Reservation, 17 Great Spirit, 53, 54 Guadalupe Center, 191, 199, 202 Guantánamo Bay, penal colony in, 263 Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), 16, 50 Gunnoe, Maria: on coal companies, 148–149 Gural, John, 89, 90 Habitat for Humanity, 38 Hansen, James: tar sands and, 128 Harrington, John, 89 Harvest of Shame (Murrow), 196 Hatfield, Sid: assassination of, 173 Havel, Václav, 229, 230, 243, 244 Hawkins, Michael “Doc Money,” 62, 64 Hayes, Brenda, 101–102 Haywood, “Big” Bill, 160 Health care, 235, 236, 237, 239 Health issues, 160, 169, 172 Heart of Camden project, 102, 109 Hechler, Ken, 169–170, 172 Heineman, Dave, 41, 43–44 Heizer, Neil, 154, 155, 156, 157 death of, 158 illustration of, 156–157 Hepburn, Katherine, 238 Hernandez, Oscar Medina, 61, 62, 97 Herzen, Alexander: quote of, 225 Highway Safety Program, 51 Hitler, Adolf, 244 Ho Chi Minh, 40, 45 Homelessness, 68, 69, 99, 182, 251 Homer, 23 Homicides, 72, 88 Honecker, Erich, 228 Hookers, 99 interviewing, 100–101 Hovack, Wayne, 154, 155, 156 illustration of, 156–157 Huff, Muriah Ashley, 64 Huxley, Aldous, 239 “I Sit and Look Out” (Whitman), text of, 59 Immigrants, 191, 219 undocumented, 62, 78, 187, 190, 204, 205 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 184, 187 Immokalee, Florida, 178, 204, 221 coffee shops/tiendas in, 222 dancing in, 198 (illus.)

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Department of Labor), 180 National Council of Churches, 48 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), 263 National Guard, 72 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 183 National Park Service, Occupy movement and, 234 Native American culture, assault on, 12 Native American language, 12 Native Americans, 231 eradicating, 4, 11 Native history, American history and, 40–41 NATO, 264 Navajos, 250 Navarrete, Cesar, 200, 203 Navarrete, Geovanni, 200, 203 Navarrete, Virginia, 200 New Deal, 196, 237 New Forum, 228 New Jersey Racing Commission, 92 New Jersey Turnpike, 76 New York City Police Department, Occupy Wall Street and, 231 New York City Police Foundation, 245 New York Private Bank & Trust, 233 New York Shipbuilding Corporation, 73 New York Times, 69, 168 News Corp, 129 Night Comes to the Cumberlands (Caudill), 153 1984 (Orwell), 12, 239, 241, 265 “99% Deficit Proposal: How to Create Jobs, Reduce the Wealth Divide and Control Spending, The” (report), 237 Nixon, Richard, 46, 172 Nonviolence, 73, 234, 236, 241, 242, 244, 263 police and, 260 Norcross, Donald, 93 Norcross, George, III business of, 92–93 Camden and, 88–89 as political boss, 90–91 politics and, 91–92, 95 Norcross, George Edwin, Jr., 92 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 186, 203–204, 205 Northern Cheyenne, 9 Nuremberg Trials, 170 Oakes, Richard: protest by, 46 Obama, Barack, 69, 236, 240 corporate state and, 233–234, 238 MTR and, 174 pipeline and, 129 tar sands and, 128 Occupy encampments, 40, 68, 231, 234, 235, 237–238, 241, 242, 248, 249, 263 expansion of, 264 shutting down, 241 Occupy Oakland, supporting, 242 Occupy Super Committee, 236–237 Occupy Wall Street, 68, 219, 220, 228, 233, 244, 245, 267, 269 activists of, 242–243 hearing for, 237 hope and, 266 police and, 231, 260 revolt and, 248 rules of, 257 slandering, 262 as template, 232 working groups of, 247 Occupy Washington, 236–237 Oceania, 239 Odyssey (Homer), 23 Office of Surface Mining, 162 Oglala Lakota College, 16 Oglala Sioux, 17, 23, 41, 46 Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, 50 Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, 124 Oil Change International, 129 Oprah Winfrey Show, The, 238 Ortiz, Rodrigo: story of, 178–179, 180–181 Orwell, George, 12, 239, 240, 241, 265 Ott, Dwight, 88 OxyContin, 149, 154, 157 Pacific Tomato Growers, 200 Palach, Jan, 230 Palach Square, 230 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 227 Palestinian uprising, 244 Paquito, Don, 199–200, 202 illustration of, 201 Parker, Dorothy, 238 PATCO, 66 Peace Corps, 204 Peltier, Leonard, 20, 48, 51 People’s History of the United States, A (Zinn), 94, 245 People’s mic, 253, 257 illustration of, 254 Pequot War, 11 Pesticides, 182, 183, 184 Pharm parties, described, 154 Phencyclidine (PCP), 97 Philadelphia Inquirer, 88, 91, 93 Philadelphia Magazine, 90, 92 Pine Ridge Agency, 17 Pine Ridge Indian Health Service Hospital, 17 Pine Ridge Reservation, 8, 22, 41, 44, 46–47, 52, 54, 62 activists on, 46–48 agriculture on, 21 alcoholism on, 3 described, 13, 16–17 illustration of, 14–15 poverty on, 21, 226 Pines, the, 132, 154 Pittston Coal Company, 145 Pocahontas Fuel Company, 145, 146 Police, 38, 73, 99, 251, 253, 263 confrontations with, 260, 262, 264 Political consciousness, 248, 249 Politics, 91–92, 95, 233, 250, 262, 266 coal industry and, 165 fossil-fuel industry and, 128 Poor Bear, Webster, 56–57 Poverty, 4, 17, 21, 44, 62, 64, 72, 96, 110–111, 112, 117–118, 166, 180, 182, 194, 200, 227, 239 business of, 88 farmworkers, 221, 223 mitigation of, 237 violence of, 65 Pow Wows, 44–45 Powder River Basin, 130 Powell, Kuasheim “Presto,” 64 Power, 243, 250, 265, 267 corporate, 236, 237, 238, 242 narrative of, 226 structures of, 263 “Power of the Powerless, The” (Havel), 243 “Prayer for Marta” (song), 229 Prisons, 64, 68 as growth industry, 158–159 Proletarian revolution, 244–245 Prostitutes, 99, 100 illustration of, 99 Publix, 182, 206 Pullman strike (1894), 160 Purchasing power, concentrating, 182 Puritans, 10 Quan, Jean, 242 Racism, 4, 5, 64 Ramos, Sylvia, 61, 62, 97 Raney, Bill, 152 Rape, 5, 6, 7, 8–9, 199 Rasmussen, Donald: challenge by, 172 Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, The, 239 Red Cloud, Chief, 22, 23, 24 Red Cloud, Michael, 22, 23, 24, 38, 54–55 story of, 24–37 (illus.)

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
by Michael Shellenberger
Published 28 Jun 2020

As a result, when an electric utility didn’t build a nuclear plant, it usually built one that burned coal, instead.90 Antinuclear environmentalists openly favored coal and other fossil fuels over nuclear. “We do not need nuclear power,” said Nader. “We have a far greater amount of fossil fuels in this country than we’re owning up to . . . the tar sands . . . oil out of shale . . . methane in coal beds . . .”91 The Sierra Club’s energy consultant, Amory Lovins, wrote, “Coal can fill the real gaps in our fuel economy with only a temporary and modest (less than twofold at peak) expansion of mining.”92 The Sierra Club deliberately sought to make nuclear plants expensive.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
by Kate Raworth
Published 22 Mar 2017

Many in the prepare-for-landing crowd believe it cannot be installed fast enough to match the economy’s demand for energy, especially if fossil fuels are phased out at the speed required. What’s more, in comparison to the easy-to-access oil, coal and gas reserves of the twentieth century, a far larger proportion of renewable energy that is generated must be used by the energy industry itself simply to generate more – as is the case for energy from sources such as shale gas and tar sands. Some analysts believe the economic implications are stark. ‘It is time to re-examine the pursuit of economic growth at all costs,’ concludes US energy economist David Murphy; ‘we should expect the economic growth rates of the next 100 years to look nothing like those of the last 100 years.’39 Furthermore, some in the prepare-for-landing crowd doubt that the weightless economy can be as dematerialised as its name implies, given the material- and energy-intensive infrastructure that underpins the coming digital revolution.40 Others, meanwhile, doubt that the weightless economy will contribute as much to GDP growth as the growth optimists expect.

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They privatise public services – from hospitals to railways – turning public wealth into private revenue streams. They add the living world into the national accounts as ‘ecosystem services’ and ‘natural capital’, assigning it a value that looks dangerously like a price. And, despite committing to keep global warming ‘well below 2°C’, many such governments chase after the ‘cheap’ energy of tar sands and shale gas, while neglecting the transformational public investments needed for a clean-energy revolution. These policy choices are akin to throwing precious cargo off a plane that is running out of fuel, rather than admitting that it may soon be time to touch down. Learning how to land What would it mean to prepare high-income economies for landing so that they could touch down safely and become thriving, growth-agnostic economies when the time was right?

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Page numbers in italics denote illustrations A Aalborg, Denmark, 290 Abbott, Anthony ‘Tony’, 31 ABCD group, 148 Abramovitz, Moses, 262 absolute decoupling, 260–61 Acemoglu, Daron, 86 advertising, 58, 106–7, 112, 281 Agbodjinou, Sénamé, 231 agriculture, 5, 46, 72–3, 148, 155, 178, 181, 183 Alaska, 9 Alaska Permanent Fund, 194 Alperovitz, Gar, 177 alternative enterprise designs, 190–91 altruism, 100, 104 Amazon, 192, 196, 276 Amazon rainforest, 105–6, 253 American Economic Association, 3 American Enterprise Institute, 67 American Tobacco Corporation, 107 Andes, 54 animal spirits, 110 Anthropocene epoch, 48, 253 anthropocentrism, 115 Apertuso, 230 Apple, 85, 192 Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), 148 Arendt, Hannah, 115–16 Argentina, 55, 274 Aristotle, 32, 272 Arrow, Kenneth, 134 Articles of Association and Memoranda, 233 Arusha, Tanzania, 202 Asia Wage Floor Alliance, 177 Asian financial crisis (1997), 90 Asknature.org, 232 Athens, 57 austerity, 163 Australia, 31, 103, 177, 180, 211, 224–6, 255, 260 Austria, 263, 274 availability bias, 112 AXIOM, 230 Axtell, Robert, 150 Ayres, Robert, 263 B B Corp, 241 Babylon, 13 Baker, Josephine, 157 balancing feedback loops, 138–41, 155, 271 Ballmer, Steve, 231 Bangla Pesa, 185–6, 293 Bangladesh, 10, 226 Bank for International Settlements, 256 Bank of America, 149 Bank of England, 145, 147, 256 banking, see under finance Barnes, Peter, 201 Barroso, José Manuel, 41 Bartlett, Albert Allen ‘Al’, 247 basic income, 177, 194, 199–201 basic personal values, 107–9 Basle, Switzerland, 80 Bauwens, Michel, 197 Beckerman, Wilfred, 258 Beckham, David, 171 Beech-Nut Packing Company, 107 behavioural economics, 11, 111–14 behavioural psychology, 103, 128 Beinhocker, Eric, 158 Belgium, 236, 252 Bentham, Jeremy, 98 Benyus, Janine, 116, 218, 223–4, 227, 232, 237, 241 Berger, John, 12, 281 Berlin Wall, 141 Bermuda, 277 Bernanke, Ben, 146 Bernays, Edward, 107, 112, 281–3 Bhopal gas disaster (1984), 9 Bible, 19, 114, 151 Big Bang (1986), 87 billionaires, 171, 200, 289 biodiversity, 10, 46, 48–9, 52, 85, 115, 155, 208, 210, 242, 299 as common pool resource, 201 and land conversion, 49 and inequality, 172 and reforesting, 50 biomass, 73, 118, 210, 212, 221 biomimicry, 116, 218, 227, 229 bioplastic, 224, 293 Birmingham, West Midlands, 10 Black, Fischer, 100–101 Blair, Anthony ‘Tony’, 171 Blockchain, 187, 192 blood donation, 104, 118 Body Shop, The, 232–4 Bogotá, Colombia, 119 Bolivia, 54 Boston, Massachusetts, 3 Bowen, Alex, 261 Bowles, Sam, 104 Box, George, 22 Boyce, James, 209 Brasselberg, Jacob, 187 Brazil, 124, 226, 281, 290 bread riots, 89 Brisbane, Australia, 31 Brown, Gordon, 146 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 193, 194, 258 Buddhism, 54 buen vivir, 54 Bullitt Center, Seattle, 217 Bunge, 148 Burkina Faso, 89 Burmark, Lynell, 13 business, 36, 43, 68, 88–9 automation, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 boom and bust, 246 and circular economy, 212, 215–19, 220, 224, 227–30, 232–4, 292 and complementary currencies, 184–5, 292 and core economy, 80 and creative destruction, 142 and feedback loops, 148 and finance, 183, 184 and green growth, 261, 265, 269 and households, 63, 68 living metrics, 241 and market, 68, 88 micro-businesses, 9 and neoliberalism, 67, 87 ownership, 190–91 and political funding, 91–2, 171–2 and taxation, 23, 276–7 workers’ rights, 88, 91, 269 butterfly economy, 220–42 C C–ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support), 153 C40 network, 280 calculating man, 98 California, United States, 213, 224, 293 Cambodia, 254 Cameron, David, 41 Canada, 196, 255, 260, 281, 282 cancer, 124, 159, 196 Capital Institute, 236 carbon emissions, 49–50, 59, 75 and decoupling, 260, 266 and forests, 50, 52 and inequality, 58 reduction of, 184, 201, 213, 216–18, 223–7, 239–41, 260, 266 stock–flow dynamics, 152–4 taxation, 201, 213 Cargill, 148 Carney, Mark, 256 Caterpillar, 228 Catholic Church, 15, 19 Cato Institute, 67 Celts, 54 central banks, 6, 87, 145, 146, 147, 183, 184, 256 Chang, Ha-Joon, 82, 86, 90 Chaplin, Charlie, 157 Chiapas, Mexico, 121–2 Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), 100–101 Chicago School, 34, 99 Chile, 7, 42 China, 1, 7, 48, 154, 289–90 automation, 193 billionaires, 200, 289 greenhouse gas emissions, 153 inequality, 164 Lake Erhai doughnut analysis, 56 open-source design, 196 poverty reduction, 151, 198 renewable energy, 239 tiered pricing, 213 Chinese Development Bank, 239 chrematistics, 32, 273 Christianity, 15, 19, 114, 151 cigarettes, 107, 124 circular economy, 220–42, 257 Circular Flow diagram, 19–20, 28, 62–7, 64, 70, 78, 87, 91, 92, 93, 262 Citigroup, 149 Citizen Reaction Study, 102 civil rights movement, 77 Cleveland, Ohio, 190 climate change, 1, 3, 5, 29, 41, 45–53, 63, 74, 75–6, 91, 141, 144, 201 circular economy, 239, 241–2 dynamics of, 152–5 and G20, 31 and GDP growth, 255, 256, 260, 280 and heuristics, 114 and human rights, 10 and values, 126 climate positive cities, 239 closed systems, 74 coffee, 221 cognitive bias, 112–14 Colander, David, 137 Colombia, 119 common-pool resources, 82–3, 181, 201–2 commons, 69, 82–4, 287 collaborative, 78, 83, 191, 195, 196, 264, 292 cultural, 83 digital, 82, 83, 192, 197, 281 and distribution, 164, 180, 181–2, 205, 267 Embedded Economy, 71, 73, 77–8, 82–4, 85, 92 knowledge, 197, 201–2, 204, 229, 231, 292 commons and money creation, see complementary currencies natural, 82, 83, 180, 181–2, 201, 265 and regeneration, 229, 242, 267, 292 and state, 85, 93, 197, 237 and systems, 160 tragedy of, 28, 62, 69, 82, 181 triumph of, 83 and values, 106, 108 Commons Trusts, 201 complementary currencies, 158, 182–8, 236, 292 complex systems, 28, 129–62 complexity science, 136–7 Consumer Reaction Study, 102 consumerism, 58, 102, 121, 280–84 cooking, 45, 80, 186 Coote, Anna, 278 Copenhagen, Denmark, 124 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 14–15 copyright, 195, 197, 204 core economy, 79–80 Corporate To Do List, 215–19 Costa Rica, 172 Council of Economic Advisers, US, 6, 37 Cox, Jo, 117 cradle to cradle, 224 creative destruction, 142 Cree, 282 Crompton, Tom, 125–6 cross-border flows, 89–90 crowdsourcing, 204 cuckoos, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 54, 60, 159, 244, 256, 271 currencies, 182–8, 236, 274, 292 D da Vinci, Leonardo, 13, 94–5 Dallas, Texas, 120 Daly, Herman, 74, 143, 271 Danish Nudging Network, 124 Darwin, Charles, 14 Debreu, Gerard, 134 debt, 37, 146–7, 172–3, 182–5, 247, 255, 269 decoupling, 193, 210, 258–62, 273 defeat device software, 216 deforestation, 49–50, 74, 208, 210 degenerative linear economy, 211–19, 222–3, 237 degrowth, 244 DeMartino, George, 161 democracy, 77, 171–2, 258 demurrage, 274 Denmark, 180, 275, 290 deregulation, 82, 87, 269 derivatives, 100–101, 149 Devas, Charles Stanton, 97 Dey, Suchitra, 178 Diamond, Jared, 154 diarrhoea, 5 differential calculus, 131, 132 digital revolution, 191–2, 264 diversify–select–amplify, 158 double spiral, 54 Doughnut model, 10–11, 11, 23–5, 44, 51 and aspiration, 58–9, 280–84 big picture, 28, 42, 61–93 distribution, 29, 52, 57, 58, 76, 93, 158, 163–205 ecological ceiling, 10, 11, 44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 218, 254, 295, 298 goal, 25–8, 31–60 and governance, 57, 59 growth agnosticism, 29–30, 243–85 human nature, 28–9, 94–128 and population, 57–8 regeneration, 29, 158, 206–42 social foundation, 10, 11, 44, 45, 49, 51, 58, 77, 174, 200, 254, 295–6 systems, 28, 129–62 and technology, 57, 59 Douglas, Margaret, 78–9 Dreyfus, Louis, 148 ‘Dumb and Dumber in Macroeconomics’ (Solow), 135 Durban, South Africa, 214 E Earning by Learning, 120 Earth-system science, 44–53, 115, 216, 288, 298 Easter Island, 154 Easterlin, Richard, 265–6 eBay, 105, 192 eco-literacy, 115 ecological ceiling, 10, 11, 44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 218, 254, 295, 298 Ecological Performance Standards, 241 Econ 101 course, 8, 77 Economics (Lewis), 114 Economics (Samuelson), 19–20, 63–7, 70, 74, 78, 86, 91, 92, 93, 262 Economy for the Common Good, 241 ecosystem services, 7, 116, 269 Ecuador, 54 education, 9, 43, 45, 50–52, 85, 169–70, 176, 200, 249, 279 economic, 8, 11, 18, 22, 24, 36, 287–93 environmental, 115, 239–40 girls’, 57, 124, 178, 198 online, 83, 197, 264, 290 pricing, 118–19 efficient market hypothesis, 28, 62, 68, 87 Egypt, 48, 89 Eisenstein, Charles, 116 electricity, 9, 45, 236, 240 and Bangla Pesa, 186 cars, 231 Ethereum, 187–8 and MONIAC, 75, 262 pricing, 118, 213 see also renewable energy Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, 145 Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 220 Embedded Economy, 71–93, 263 business, 88–9 commons, 82–4 Earth, 72–6 economy, 77–8 finance, 86–8 household, 78–81 market, 81–2 power, 91–92 society, 76–7 state, 84–6 trade, 89–90 employment, 36, 37, 51, 142, 176 automation, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 labour ownership, 188–91 workers’ rights, 88, 90, 269 Empty World, 74 Engels, Friedrich, 88 environment and circular economy, 220–42, 257 conservation, 121–2 and degenerative linear economy, 211–19, 222–3 degradation, 5, 9, 10, 29, 44–53, 74, 154, 172, 196, 206–42 education on, 115, 239–40 externalities, 152 fair share, 216–17 and finance, 234–7 generosity, 218–19, 223–7 green growth, 41, 210, 243–85 nudging, 123–5 taxation and quotas, 213–14, 215 zero impact, 217–18, 238, 241 Environmental Dashboard, 240–41 environmental economics, 7, 11, 114–16 Environmental Kuznets Curve, 207–11, 241 environmental space, 54 Epstein, Joshua, 150 equilibrium theory, 134–62 Ethereum, 187–8 ethics, 160–62 Ethiopia, 9, 226, 254 Etsy, 105 Euclid, 13, 15 European Central Bank, 145, 275 European Commission, 41 European Union (EU), 92, 153, 210, 222, 255, 258 Evergreen Cooperatives, 190 Evergreen Direct Investing (EDI), 273 exogenous shocks, 141 exponential growth, 39, 246–85 externalities, 143, 152, 213 Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989), 9 F Facebook, 192 fair share, 216–17 Fama, Eugene, 68, 87 fascism, 234, 277 Federal Reserve, US, 87, 145, 146, 271, 282 feedback loops, 138–41, 143, 148, 155, 250, 271 feminist economics, 11, 78–81, 160 Ferguson, Thomas, 91–2 finance animal spirits, 110 bank runs, 139 Black–Scholes model, 100–101 boom and bust, 28–9, 110, 144–7 and Circular Flow, 63–4, 87 and complex systems, 134, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145–7 cross-border flows, 89 deregulation, 87 derivatives, 100–101, 149 and distribution, 169, 170, 173, 182–4, 198–9, 201 and efficient market hypothesis, 63, 68 and Embedded Economy, 71, 86–8 and financial-instability hypothesis, 87, 146 and GDP growth, 38 and media, 7–8 mobile banking, 199–200 and money creation, 87, 182–5 and regeneration, 227, 229, 234–7 in service to life, 159, 234–7 stakeholder finance, 190 and sustainability, 216, 235–6, 239 financial crisis (2008), 1–4, 5, 40, 63, 86, 141, 144, 278, 290 and efficient market hypothesis, 87 and equilibrium theory, 134, 145 and financial-instability hypothesis, 87 and inequality, 90, 170, 172, 175 and money creation, 182 and worker’s rights, 278 financial flows, 89 Financial Times, 183, 266, 289 financial-instability hypothesis, 87, 146 First Green Bank, 236 First World War (1914–18), 166, 170 Fisher, Irving, 183 fluid values, 102, 106–9 food, 3, 43, 45, 50, 54, 58, 59, 89, 198 food banks, 165 food price crisis (2007–8), 89, 90, 180 Ford, 277–8 foreign direct investment, 89 forest conservation, 121–2 fossil fuels, 59, 73, 75, 92, 212, 260, 263 Foundations of Economic Analysis (Samuelson), 17–18 Foxconn, 193 framing, 22–3 France, 43, 165, 196, 238, 254, 256, 281, 290 Frank, Robert, 100 free market, 33, 37, 67, 68, 70, 81–2, 86, 90 free open-source hardware (FOSH), 196–7 free open-source software (FOSS), 196 free trade, 70, 90 Freeman, Ralph, 18–19 freshwater cycle, 48–9 Freud, Sigmund, 107, 281 Friedman, Benjamin, 258 Friedman, Milton, 34, 62, 66–9, 84–5, 88, 99, 183, 232 Friends of the Earth, 54 Full World, 75 Fuller, Buckminster, 4 Fullerton, John, 234–6, 273 G G20, 31, 56, 276, 279–80 G77, 55 Gal, Orit, 141 Gandhi, Mohandas, 42, 293 Gangnam Style, 145 Gardens of Democracy, The (Liu & Hanauer), 158 gender equality, 45, 51–2, 57, 78–9, 85, 88, 118–19, 124, 171, 198 generosity, 218–19, 223–9 geometry, 13, 15 George, Henry, 149, 179 Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, 252 geothermal energy, 221 Gerhardt, Sue, 283 Germany, 2, 41, 100, 118, 165, 189, 211, 213, 254, 256, 260, 274 Gessel, Silvio, 274 Ghent, Belgium, 236 Gift Relationship, The (Titmuss), 118–19 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 112–14 Gintis, Herb, 104 GiveDirectly, 200 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 87 Glennon, Roger, 214 Global Alliance for Tax Justice, 277 global material footprints, 210–11 Global Village Construction Set, 196 globalisation, 89 Goerner, Sally, 175–6 Goffmann, Erving, 22 Going for Growth, 255 golden rule, 91 Goldman Sachs, 149, 170 Gómez-Baggethun, Erik, 122 Goodall, Chris, 211 Goodwin, Neva, 79 Goody, Jade, 124 Google, 192 Gore, Albert ‘Al’, 172 Gorgons, 244, 256, 257, 266 graffiti, 15, 25, 287 Great Acceleration, 46, 253–4 Great Depression (1929–39), 37, 70, 170, 173, 183, 275, 277, 278 Great Moderation, 146 Greece, Ancient, 4, 13, 32, 48, 54, 56–7, 160, 244 green growth, 41, 210, 243–85 Greenham, Tony, 185 greenhouse gas emissions, 31, 46, 50, 75–6, 141, 152–4 and decoupling, 260, 266 and Environmental Kuznets Curve, 208, 210 and forests, 50, 52 and G20, 31 and inequality, 58 reduction of, 184, 201–2, 213, 216–18, 223–7, 239–41, 256, 259–60, 266, 298 stock–flow dynamics, 152–4 and taxation, 201, 213 Greenland, 141, 154 Greenpeace, 9 Greenspan, Alan, 87 Greenwich, London, 290 Grenoble, France, 281 Griffiths, Brian, 170 gross domestic product (GDP), 25, 31–2, 35–43, 57, 60, 84, 164 as cuckoo, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 54, 60, 159, 244, 256, 271 and Environmental Kuznets Curve, 207–11 and exponential growth, 39, 53, 246–85 and growth agnosticism, 29–30, 240, 243–85 and inequality, 173 and Kuznets Curve, 167, 173, 188–9 gross national product (GNP), 36–40 Gross World Product, 248 Grossman, Gene, 207–8, 210 ‘grow now, clean up later’, 207 Guatemala, 196 H Haifa, Israel, 120 Haldane, Andrew, 146 Han Dynasty, 154 Hanauer, Nick, 158 Hansen, Pelle, 124 Happy Planet Index, 280 Hardin, Garrett, 69, 83, 181 Harvard University, 2, 271, 290 von Hayek, Friedrich, 7–8, 62, 66, 67, 143, 156, 158 healthcare, 43, 50, 57, 85, 123, 125, 170, 176, 200, 269, 279 Heilbroner, Robert, 53 Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland, 180 Hepburn, Cameron, 261 Herbert Simon, 111 heuristics, 113–14, 118, 123 high-income countries growth, 30, 244–5, 254–72, 282 inequality, 165, 168, 169, 171 labour, 177, 188–9, 278 overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–9 resource intensive lifestyles, 46, 210–11 trade, 90 Hippocrates, 160 History of Economic Analysis (Schumpeter), 21 HIV/AIDS, 123 Holocene epoch, 46–8, 75, 115, 253 Homo economicus, 94–103, 109, 127–8 Homo sapiens, 38, 104, 130 Hong Kong, 180 household, 78 housing, 45, 59, 176, 182–3, 269 Howe, Geoffrey, 67 Hudson, Michael, 183 Human Development Index, 9, 279 human nature, 28 human rights, 10, 25, 45, 49, 50, 95, 214, 233 humanistic economics, 42 hydropower, 118, 260, 263 I Illinois, United States, 179–80 Imago Mundi, 13 immigration, 82, 199, 236, 266 In Defense of Economic Growth (Beckerman), 258 Inclusive Wealth Index, 280 income, 51, 79–80, 82, 88, 176–8, 188–91, 194, 199–201 India, 2, 9, 10, 42, 124, 164, 178, 196, 206–7, 242, 290 Indonesia, 90, 105–6, 164, 168, 200 Indus Valley civilisation, 48 inequality, 1, 5, 25, 41, 63, 81, 88, 91, 148–52, 209 and consumerism, 111 and democracy, 171 and digital revolution, 191–5 and distribution, 163–205 and environmental degradation, 172 and GDP growth, 173 and greenhouse gas emissions, 58 and intellectual property, 195–8 and Kuznets Curve, 29, 166–70, 173–4 and labour ownership, 188–91 and land ownership, 178–82 and money creation, 182–8 and social welfare, 171 Success to the Successful, 148, 149, 151, 166 inflation, 36, 248, 256, 275 insect pollination services, 7 Institute of Economic Affairs, 67 institutional economics, 11 intellectual property rights, 195–8, 204 interest, 36, 177, 182, 184, 275–6 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 25 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 170, 172, 173, 183, 255, 258, 271 Internet, 83–4, 89, 105, 192, 202, 264 Ireland, 277 Iroquois Onondaga Nation, 116 Israel, 100, 103, 120 Italy, 165, 196, 254 J Jackson, Tim, 58 Jakubowski, Marcin, 196 Jalisco, Mexico, 217 Japan, 168, 180, 211, 222, 254, 256, 263, 275 Jevons, William Stanley, 16, 97–8, 131, 132, 137, 142 John Lewis Partnership, 190 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 37 Johnson, Mark, 38 Johnson, Todd, 191 JPMorgan Chase, 149, 234 K Kahneman, Daniel, 111 Kamkwamba, William, 202, 204 Kasser, Tim, 125–6 Keen, Steve, 146, 147 Kelly, Marjorie, 190–91, 233 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 37, 250 Kennedy, Paul, 279 Kenya, 118, 123, 180, 185–6, 199–200, 226, 292 Keynes, John Maynard, 7–8, 22, 66, 69, 134, 184, 251, 277–8, 284, 288 Kick It Over movement, 3, 289 Kingston, London, 290 Knight, Frank, 66, 99 knowledge commons, 202–4, 229, 292 Kokstad, South Africa, 56 Kondratieff waves, 246 Korzybski, Alfred, 22 Krueger, Alan, 207–8, 210 Kuhn, Thomas, 22 Kumhof, Michael, 172 Kuwait, 255 Kuznets, Simon, 29, 36, 39–40, 166–70, 173, 174, 175, 204, 207 KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, 56 L labour ownership, 188–91 Lake Erhai, Yunnan, 56 Lakoff, George, 23, 38, 276 Lamelara, Indonesia, 105–6 land conversion, 49, 52, 299 land ownership, 178–82 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 Landesa, 178 Landlord’s Game, The, 149 law of demand, 16 laws of motion, 13, 16–17, 34, 129, 131 Lehman Brothers, 141 Leopold, Aldo, 115 Lesotho, 118, 199 leverage points, 159 Lewis, Fay, 178 Lewis, Justin, 102 Lewis, William Arthur, 114, 167 Lietaer, Bernard, 175, 236 Limits to Growth, 40, 154, 258 Linux, 231 Liu, Eric, 158 living metrics, 240–42 living purpose, 233–4 Lomé, Togo, 231 London School of Economics (LSE), 2, 34, 65, 290 London Underground, 12 loss aversion, 112 low-income countries, 90, 164–5, 168, 173, 180, 199, 201, 209, 226, 254, 259 Lucas, Robert, 171 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 124 Luxembourg, 277 Lyle, John Tillman, 214 Lyons, Oren, 116 M M–PESA, 199–200 MacDonald, Tim, 273 Machiguenga, 105–6 MacKenzie, Donald, 101 macroeconomics, 36, 62–6, 76, 80, 134–5, 145, 147, 150, 244, 280 Magie, Elizabeth, 149, 153 Malala effect, 124 malaria, 5 Malawi, 118, 202, 204 Malaysia, 168 Mali, Taylor, 243 Malthus, Thomas, 252 Mamsera Rural Cooperative, 190 Manhattan, New York, 9, 41 Mani, Muthukumara, 206 Manitoba, 282 Mankiw, Gregory, 2, 34 Mannheim, Karl, 22 Maoris, 54 market, 81–2 and business, 88 circular flow, 64 and commons, 83, 93, 181, 200–201 efficiency of, 28, 62, 68, 87, 148, 181 and equilibrium theory, 131–5, 137, 143–7, 155, 156 free market, 33, 37, 67–70, 90, 208 and households, 63, 69, 78, 79 and maxi-max rule, 161 and pricing, 117–23, 131, 160 and rational economic man, 96, 100–101, 103, 104 and reciprocity, 105, 106 reflexivity of, 144–7 and society, 69–70 and state, 84–6, 200, 281 Marshall, Alfred, 17, 98, 133, 165, 253, 282 Marx, Karl, 88, 142, 165, 272 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 17–20, 152–5 massive open online courses (MOOCs), 290 Matthew Effect, 151 Max-Neef, Manfred, 42 maxi-max rule, 161 maximum wage, 177 Maya civilisation, 48, 154 Mazzucato, Mariana, 85, 195, 238 McAfee, Andrew, 194, 258 McDonough, William, 217 Meadows, Donella, 40, 141, 159, 271, 292 Medusa, 244, 257, 266 Merkel, Angela, 41 Messerli, Elspeth, 187 Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson), 38 Mexico, 121–2, 217 Michaels, Flora S., 6 micro-businesses, 9, 173, 178 microeconomics, 132–4 microgrids, 187–8 Micronesia, 153 Microsoft, 231 middle class, 6, 46, 58 middle-income countries, 90, 164, 168, 173, 180, 226, 254 migration, 82, 89–90, 166, 195, 199, 236, 266, 286 Milanovic, Branko, 171 Mill, John Stuart, 33–4, 73, 97, 250, 251, 283, 284, 288 Millo, Yuval, 101 minimum wage, 82, 88, 176 Minsky, Hyman, 87, 146 Mises, Ludwig von, 66 mission zero, 217 mobile banking, 199–200 mobile phones, 222 Model T revolution, 277–8 Moldova, 199 Mombasa, Kenya, 185–6 Mona Lisa (da Vinci), 94 money creation, 87, 164, 177, 182–8, 205 MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), 64–5, 75, 142, 262 Monoculture (Michaels), 6 Monopoly, 149 Mont Pelerin Society, 67, 93 Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, The (Friedman), 258 moral vacancy, 41 Morgan, Mary, 99 Morogoro, Tanzania, 121 Moyo, Dambisa, 258 Muirhead, Sam, 230, 231 MultiCapital Scorecard, 241 Murphy, David, 264 Murphy, Richard, 185 musical tastes, 110 Myriad Genetics, 196 N national basic income, 177 Native Americans, 115, 116, 282 natural capital, 7, 116, 269 Natural Economic Order, The (Gessel), 274 Nedbank, 216 negative externalities, 213 negative interest rates, 275–6 neoclassical economics, 134, 135 neoliberalism, 7, 62–3, 67–70, 81, 83, 84, 88, 93, 143, 170, 176 Nepal, 181, 199 Nestlé, 217 Netherlands, 211, 235, 224, 226, 238, 277 networks, 110–11, 117, 118, 123, 124–6, 174–6 neuroscience, 12–13 New Deal, 37 New Economics Foundation, 278, 283 New Year’s Day, 124 New York, United States, 9, 41, 55 Newlight Technologies, 224, 226, 293 Newton, Isaac, 13, 15–17, 32–3, 95, 97, 129, 131, 135–7, 142, 145, 162 Nicaragua, 196 Nigeria, 164 nitrogen, 49, 52, 212–13, 216, 218, 221, 226, 298 ‘no pain, no gain’, 163, 167, 173, 204, 209 Nobel Prize, 6–7, 43, 83, 101, 167 Norway, 281 nudging, 112, 113, 114, 123–6 O Obama, Barack, 41, 92 Oberlin, Ohio, 239, 240–41 Occupy movement, 40, 91 ocean acidification, 45, 46, 52, 155, 242, 298 Ohio, United States, 190, 239 Okun, Arthur, 37 onwards and upwards, 53 Open Building Institute, 196 Open Source Circular Economy (OSCE), 229–32 open systems, 74 open-source design, 158, 196–8, 265 open-source licensing, 204 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 38, 210, 255–6, 258 Origin of Species, The (Darwin), 14 Ormerod, Paul, 110, 111 Orr, David, 239 Ostrom, Elinor, 83, 84, 158, 160, 181–2 Ostry, Jonathan, 173 OSVehicle, 231 overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–200 ownership of wealth, 177–82 Oxfam, 9, 44 Oxford University, 1, 36 ozone layer, 9, 50, 115 P Pachamama, 54, 55 Pakistan, 124 Pareto, Vilfredo, 165–6, 175 Paris, France, 290 Park 20|20, Netherlands, 224, 226 Parker Brothers, 149 Patagonia, 56 patents, 195–6, 197, 204 patient capital, 235 Paypal, 192 Pearce, Joshua, 197, 203–4 peer-to-peer networks, 187, 192, 198, 203, 292 People’s QE, 184–5 Perseus, 244 Persia, 13 Peru, 2, 105–6 Phillips, Adam, 283 Phillips, William ‘Bill’, 64–6, 75, 142, 262 phosphorus, 49, 52, 212–13, 218, 298 Physiocrats, 73 Pickett, Kate, 171 pictures, 12–25 Piketty, Thomas, 169 Playfair, William, 16 Poincaré, Henri, 109, 127–8 Polanyi, Karl, 82, 272 political economy, 33–4, 42 political funding, 91–2, 171–2 political voice, 43, 45, 51–2, 77, 117 pollution, 29, 45, 52, 85, 143, 155, 206–17, 226, 238, 242, 254, 298 population, 5, 46, 57, 155, 199, 250, 252, 254 Portugal, 211 post-growth society, 250 poverty, 5, 9, 37, 41, 50, 88, 118, 148, 151 emotional, 283 and inequality, 164–5, 168–9, 178 and overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–200 and taxation, 277 power, 91–92 pre-analytic vision, 21–2 prescription medicines, 123 price-takers, 132 prices, 81, 118–23, 131, 160 Principles of Economics (Mankiw), 34 Principles of Economics (Marshall), 17, 98 Principles of Political Economy (Mill), 288 ProComposto, 226 Propaganda (Bernays), 107 public relations, 107, 281 public spending v. investment, 276 public–private patents, 195 Putnam, Robert, 76–7 Q quantitative easing (QE), 184–5 Quebec, 281 Quesnay, François, 16, 73 R Rabot, Ghent, 236 Rancière, Romain, 172 rating and review systems, 105 rational economic man, 94–103, 109, 111, 112, 126, 282 Reagan, Ronald, 67 reciprocity, 103–6, 117, 118, 123 reflexivity of markets, 144 reinforcing feedback loops, 138–41, 148, 250, 271 relative decoupling, 259 renewable energy biomass energy, 118, 221 and circular economy, 221, 224, 226, 235, 238–9, 274 and commons, 83, 85, 185, 187–8, 192, 203, 264 geothermal energy, 221 and green growth, 257, 260, 263, 264, 267 hydropower, 118, 260, 263 pricing, 118 solar energy, see solar energy wave energy, 221 wind energy, 75, 118, 196, 202–3, 221, 233, 239, 260, 263 rentier sector, 180, 183, 184 reregulation, 82, 87, 269 resource flows, 175 resource-intensive lifestyles, 46 Rethinking Economics, 289 Reynebeau, Guy, 237 Ricardo, David, 67, 68, 73, 89, 250 Richardson, Katherine, 53 Rifkin, Jeremy, 83, 264–5 Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, The (Kennedy), 279 risk, 112, 113–14 Robbins, Lionel, 34 Robinson, James, 86 Robinson, Joan, 142 robots, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 Rockefeller Foundation, 135 Rockford, Illinois, 179–80 Rockström, Johan, 48, 55 Roddick, Anita, 232–4 Rogoff, Kenneth, 271, 280 Roman Catholic Church, 15, 19 Rombo, Tanzania, 190 Rome, Ancient, 13, 48, 154 Romney, Mitt, 92 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 37 rooted membership, 190 Rostow, Walt, 248–50, 254, 257, 267–70, 284 Ruddick, Will, 185 rule of thumb, 113–14 Ruskin, John, 42, 223 Russia, 200 rust belt, 90, 239 S S curve, 251–6 Sainsbury’s, 56 Samuelson, Paul, 17–21, 24–5, 38, 62–7, 70, 74, 84, 91, 92, 93, 262, 290–91 Sandel, Michael, 41, 120–21 Sanergy, 226 sanitation, 5, 51, 59 Santa Fe, California, 213 Santinagar, West Bengal, 178 São Paolo, Brazil, 281 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 43 Saumweder, Philipp, 226 Scharmer, Otto, 115 Scholes, Myron, 100–101 Schumacher, Ernst Friedrich, 42, 142 Schumpeter, Joseph, 21 Schwartz, Shalom, 107–9 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 163, 167, 204 ‘Science and Complexity’ (Weaver), 136 Scotland, 57 Seaman, David, 187 Seattle, Washington, 217 second machine age, 258 Second World War (1939–45), 18, 37, 70, 170 secular stagnation, 256 self-interest, 28, 68, 96–7, 99–100, 102–3 Selfish Society, The (Gerhardt), 283 Sen, Amartya, 43 Shakespeare, William, 61–3, 67, 93 shale gas, 264, 269 Shang Dynasty, 48 shareholders, 82, 88, 189, 191, 227, 234, 273, 292 sharing economy, 264 Sheraton Hotel, Boston, 3 Siegen, Germany, 290 Silicon Valley, 231 Simon, Julian, 70 Sinclair, Upton, 255 Sismondi, Jean, 42 slavery, 33, 77, 161 Slovenia, 177 Small Is Beautiful (Schumacher), 42 smart phones, 85 Smith, Adam, 33, 57, 67, 68, 73, 78–9, 81, 96–7, 103–4, 128, 133, 160, 181, 250 social capital, 76–7, 122, 125, 172 social contract, 120, 125 social foundation, 10, 11, 44, 45, 49, 51, 58, 77, 174, 200, 254, 295–6 social media, 83, 281 Social Progress Index, 280 social pyramid, 166 society, 76–7 solar energy, 59, 75, 111, 118, 187–8, 190 circular economy, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226–7, 239 commons, 203 zero-energy buildings, 217 zero-marginal-cost revolution, 84 Solow, Robert, 135, 150, 262–3 Soros, George, 144 South Africa, 56, 177, 214, 216 South Korea, 90, 168 South Sea Bubble (1720), 145 Soviet Union (1922–91), 37, 67, 161, 279 Spain, 211, 238, 256 Spirit Level, The (Wilkinson & Pickett), 171 Sraffa, Piero, 148 St Gallen, Switzerland, 186 Stages of Economic Growth, The (Rostow), 248–50, 254 stakeholder finance, 190 Standish, Russell, 147 state, 28, 33, 69–70, 78, 82, 160, 176, 180, 182–4, 188 and commons, 85, 93, 197, 237 and market, 84–6, 200, 281 partner state, 197, 237–9 and robots, 195 stationary state, 250 Steffen, Will, 46, 48 Sterman, John, 66, 143, 152–4 Steuart, James, 33 Stiglitz, Joseph, 43, 111, 196 stocks and flows, 138–41, 143, 144, 152 sub-prime mortgages, 141 Success to the Successful, 148, 149, 151, 166 Sugarscape, 150–51 Summers, Larry, 256 Sumner, Andy, 165 Sundrop Farms, 224–6 Sunstein, Cass, 112 supply and demand, 28, 132–6, 143, 253 supply chains, 10 Sweden, 6, 255, 275, 281 swishing, 264 Switzerland, 42, 66, 80, 131, 186–7, 275 T Tableau économique (Quesnay), 16 tabula rasa, 20, 25, 63, 291 takarangi, 54 Tanzania, 121, 190, 202 tar sands, 264, 269 taxation, 78, 111, 165, 170, 176, 177, 237–8, 276–9 annual wealth tax, 200 environment, 213–14, 215 global carbon tax, 201 global financial transactions tax, 201, 235 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 non-renewable resources, 193, 237–8, 278–9 People’s QE, 185 tax relief v. tax justice, 23, 276–7 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), 202, 258 Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 61, 63, 93 Texas, United States, 120 Thailand, 90, 200 Thaler, Richard, 112 Thatcher, Margaret, 67, 69, 76 Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith), 96 Thompson, Edward Palmer, 180 3D printing, 83–4, 192, 198, 231, 264 thriving-in-balance, 54–7, 62 tiered pricing, 213–14 Tigray, Ethiopia, 226 time banking, 186 Titmuss, Richard, 118–19 Toffler, Alvin, 12, 80 Togo, 231, 292 Torekes, 236–7 Torras, Mariano, 209 Torvalds, Linus, 231 trade, 62, 68–9, 70, 89–90 trade unions, 82, 176, 189 trademarks, 195, 204 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 92 transport, 59 trickle-down economics, 111, 170 Triodos, 235 Turkey, 200 Tversky, Amos, 111 Twain, Mark, 178–9 U Uganda, 118, 125 Ulanowicz, Robert, 175 Ultimatum Game, 105, 117 unemployment, 36, 37, 276, 277–9 United Kingdom Big Bang (1986), 87 blood donation, 118 carbon dioxide emissions, 260 free trade, 90 global material footprints, 211 money creation, 182 MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), 64–5, 75, 142, 262 New Economics Foundation, 278, 283 poverty, 165, 166 prescription medicines, 123 wages, 188 United Nations, 55, 198, 204, 255, 258, 279 G77 bloc, 55 Human Development Index, 9, 279 Sustainable Development Goals, 24, 45 United States American Economic Association meeting (2015), 3 blood donation, 118 carbon dioxide emissions, 260 Congress, 36 Council of Economic Advisers, 6, 37 Earning by Learning, 120 Econ 101 course, 8, 77 Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989), 9 Federal Reserve, 87, 145, 146, 271, 282 free trade, 90 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 87 greenhouse gas emissions, 153 global material footprint, 211 gross national product (GNP), 36–40 inequality, 170, 171 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 political funding, 91–2, 171 poverty, 165, 166 productivity and employment, 193 rust belt, 90, 239 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 92 wages, 188 universal basic income, 200 University of Berkeley, 116 University of Denver, 160 urbanisation, 58–9 utility, 35, 98, 133 V values, 6, 23, 34, 35, 42, 117, 118, 121, 123–6 altruism, 100, 104 anthropocentric, 115 extrinsic, 115 fluid, 28, 102, 106–9 and networks, 110–11, 117, 118, 123, 124–6 and nudging, 112, 113, 114, 123–6 and pricing, 81, 120–23 Veblen, Thorstein, 82, 109, 111, 142 Venice, 195 verbal framing, 23 Verhulst, Pierre, 252 Victor, Peter, 270 Viner, Jacob, 34 virtuous cycles, 138, 148 visual framing, 23 Vitruvian Man, 13–14 Volkswagen, 215–16 W Wacharia, John, 186 Wall Street, 149, 234, 273 Wallich, Henry, 282 Walras, Léon, 131, 132, 133–4, 137 Ward, Barbara, 53 Warr, Benjamin, 263 water, 5, 9, 45, 46, 51, 54, 59, 79, 213–14 wave energy, 221 Ways of Seeing (Berger), 12, 281 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith), 74, 78, 96, 104 wealth ownership, 177–82 Weaver, Warren, 135–6 weightless economy, 261–2 WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic), 103–5, 110, 112, 115, 117, 282 West Bengal, India, 124, 178 West, Darrell, 171–2 wetlands, 7 whale hunting, 106 Wiedmann, Tommy, 210 Wikipedia, 82, 223 Wilkinson, Richard, 171 win–win trade, 62, 68, 89 wind energy, 75, 118, 196, 202–3, 221, 233, 239, 260, 263 Wizard of Oz, The, 241 Woelab, 231, 293 Wolf, Martin, 183, 266 women’s rights, 33, 57, 107, 160, 201 and core economy, 69, 79–81 education, 57, 124, 178, 198 and land ownership, 178 see also gender equality workers’ rights, 88, 91, 269 World 3 model, 154–5 World Bank, 6, 41, 119, 164, 168, 171, 206, 255, 258 World No Tobacco Day, 124 World Trade Organization, 6, 89 worldview, 22, 54, 115 X xenophobia, 266, 277, 286 Xenophon, 4, 32, 56–7, 160 Y Yandle, Bruce, 208 Yang, Yuan, 1–3, 289–90 yin yang, 54 Yousafzai, Malala, 124 YouTube, 192 Yunnan, China, 56 Z Zambia, 10 Zanzibar, 9 Zara, 276 Zeitvorsoge, 186–7 zero environmental impact, 217–18, 238, 241 zero-hour contracts, 88 zero-humans-required production, 192 zero-interest loans, 183 zero-marginal-cost revolution, 84, 191, 264 zero-waste manufacturing, 227 Zinn, Howard, 77 PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Illustrations are reproduced by kind permission of: archive.org

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
by Harsha Walia
Published 9 Feb 2021

In 2002, Ned Peart was crushed to death on a tobacco farm, Paul Roach and Ralston White collapsed in a giant tank filled with toxic fumes on an apple farm in 2010, and Omar Graham was fatally injured when the pickup truck and trailer pack he was driving flipped off the road in 2011. In the province of Alberta, the toxic tar sands, the world’s largest energy project and Canada’s largest source of industrial greenhouse gas emissions, is poisoning Indigenous people and their lands as well as killing migrant workers. In 2007, four migrant workers were critically injured and two migrant workers from China, Genbao Ge and Hongliang Lui, died when a storage tank roof collapsed on them at a tar sands industrial site. Fifty-three workplace charges were laid but the companies got away with pleading guilty to only three charges.

…

In recognition of mounting climate displacement, an unprecedented (though not legally binding) ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee in 2019 determined that countries cannot deport people who have sought asylum for climate-related threats violating the right to life.67 Climate disasters displace an average of 25.3 million people annually—one person every one to two seconds—representing an astounding 86 percent of all internal displacement.68 In 2016, new displacements caused by climate disasters outnumbered new displacements as a result of persecution by a ratio of three to one.69 By 2050, an estimated 143 million people will be displaced in just three regions, with projections for global climate displacement ranging as high as one billion people.70 Acute weather disasters are compounded by longer-term dispossession caused by desertification, soil erosion, monocropping, ocean acidification, pollution, and strip mining. Indonesia is moving its capital city as Jakarta sinks, Canada is clear-cutting one million acres of boreal forest on Indigenous lands every year for toilet paper and tar sands production, 85 percent of Shanghai’s rivers are undrinkable because toxic waste is dumped into them by multinational corporations and manufacturing factories, and powerful states scramble over oil and gas resources under melting Arctic ice caps.71 Extreme drought and crop failures contributed to the Syrian civil war, which then led to one of the world’s largest refugee displacements.

The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East
by Andrew Scott Cooper
Published 8 Aug 2011

Nixon and Kissinger did not blanch when the Shah said they should expect additional increases in the price of oil. Higher prices were seen as providing insurance for the Shah and enabling Iran to fulfill its security guarantees: “Oil policy is sufficiently crucial. We have asked for atomic stations even for Iran. The normal trend will be that oil will rise in price until shale or gasification of coal becomes profitable. We have produced stability in the oil negotiations. No other country can do this.” The Shah asked for help in building an Iranian navy. He said he had invited Hughes and Westinghouse to establish an electronics industry in Iran. He was also keen to start co-production in the defense industry.

…

THE SAFETY OF ALL YOUR LIVES MAY DEPEND ON IT Throughout the October War the Shah believed he had more than proven his credentials as an ally to the West. But he viewed oil prices as the one nonnegotiable issue in bilateral relations with the United States. Back in July, the Shah had warned Nixon and Kissinger that oil prices would rise “until shale or gasification of coal becomes profitable.” Nixon had given him a blank check to raise oil prices three years earlier. The Americans did not ask him to explain what he meant or why the price of one commodity should be contingent on another. The Shah’s views on oil pricing were never more clearly spelled out than in an interview that appeared in the December 1, 1973, issue of The New Republic.

…

He urged them not to raise the price of oil to the point where it hurt the industrial nations whose capital was essential for their own development. But he also inveighed against wasting oil for use in “power generation, moving ships or heating homes. Oil must be reserved for use in more sophisticated industries such as petrochemicals.” He recommended they adopt his own price formula which was “a price comparable to the price of coal oil derived from shale or other sources such as coal gasification or coal liquefaction.” It was the same pricing formula he had mentioned to Nixon and Kissinger in July. The Shah ended his remarks by assuring the delegates that if they adopted his proposal he was “quite prepared to bear the consequences. I shall defend our action before the entire world, confident that my nation will support me.”

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
by Jeremy Rifkin
Published 27 Sep 2011

And because oil is aggregated and priced in a single world market, there is no magic formula by which any particular country can isolate itself under the banner of “energy independence.” As for conventional natural gas, the global production curve roughly shadows that of oil. What about coal in China, tar sands in Canada, heavy oil in Venezuela, and shale gas in the United States? While still relatively abundant, these energy sources are costly to extract and emit far more carbon dioxide than either crude oil or conventional natural gas. Were we to make a significant shift into these more polluting fuels to stave off the closure of the fossil fuel era, the dramatic rise in global temperatures might inevitably be the final arbiter of our fate.

Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
by Alan Weisman
Published 23 Sep 2013

But as the century drew to a close, that rate inevitably had slowed. “We’ve picked the low-hanging fruit,” said Bartlett. “Finding more gets progressively harder.” Albert Bartlett didn’t know back then about twenty-first-century technologies for fracturing bedrock to release trapped natural gas, or squeezing the petroleum out of tar sands—or rather, he did, but at the time, when the price of oil was around sixteen dollars per barrel, their cost seemed prohibitively high, as in higher-hanging fruit. But even so, they were just the equivalent of finding a couple of new bottles: As demand keeps increasing exponentially with countries like China and India zooming past the United States, they at best give us a few more decades—and a lot more CO2.

…

The transition alone will be daunting, because throughout human history, we’ve been doing exactly the opposite, and nearly everyone alive knows no other way. What worked fine for our ancestors—run out of game, pick up and move to new hunting grounds—doesn’t work when there’s nowhere else to go that we haven’t already picked over. But it’s hard for most of us to see that, because, like Alberta tar sands, we keep squeezing more out of soil and water. The fact that they give steadily less is mainly apparent to a growing fringe at the bottom of the human tapestry: more hungry people than the population of the entire human race before industrialization began blowing the lid off our numbers. So how do we get those of us at the top of the food chain to comprehend, lest we join their ranks?

Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline . . . And the Rise of a New Economy
by Daniel Gross
Published 7 May 2012

And Europe-based suppliers such as Bach Composite, a Danish manufacturer of wind turbine components, have followed Vestas to Colorado. Foreign companies also deploy capital in the United States to get access to technology and expertise. As we’ve seen, America still has much to show the world about how to tap into existing internal resources. It has led the world in developing new techniques for liberating natural gas and oil from shale. Foreign energy companies, eager to get a piece of the U.S. action and, more important, to learn how to bring hydraulic fracking to their own substrata, have invested in U.S. companies. In October 2010 CNOOC, the Chinese state oil company, agreed to invest more than $2 billion in a Texas oil and natural gas project with the natural gas titan Chesapeake.

Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants
by Jane Goodall
Published 1 Apr 2013

“Yakusugi Land [pamphlet],” Conservation & Stewardship Council for Yakushima Recreation Forest, accessed August 21, 2013, http://yakushima.injapan.org/docs/Yakusugi.pdf. 50. “known as Wilson’s Stump” “Wilson’s Stump,” Japan Ministry of the Environment, accessed September 10, 2013, http://www.env.go.jp/nature/isan/worldheritage/en/yakushima/area/a04.html. 51. “exploitation of the tar sands” “Pipeline Project Could Turn Maine into ‘Dirty Tar Sands Oil’ Capital of the Eastern U.S. [press release],” Natural Resources Council of Maine, August 31, 2011, http://www.nrcm.org/news_detail.asp?news=4362. 52. “persuading African governments” “Growing Africa: Unlocking the Potential of Agribusiness,” The World Bank, January 2013, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTAFRICA/Resources/africa-agribusiness-report-2013.pdf.

…

—China is buying timber (and mineral) concessions in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Canada, wherever forests have been left standing. Western countries did exactly the same thing—but China is very much larger. Of course, China is not alone. The Canadian government is allowing the exploitation of the tar sands in Alberta that is leading to the desecration of thousands of square miles of pristine forests. American agribusiness is persuading African governments, with false promises of the wealth it will bring, to lease (or sell) hundreds of square miles of their precious rain forests for the growing of monocrops or biofuel.

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
by Max Chafkin
Published 14 Sep 2021

Thiel had wanted to bet on rising oil prices, and his traders found a perfect way to do it in Canada’s barren far north. The region had never produced much conventional crude oil, but it had enormous deposits of a very heavy form of petroleum called bitumen that was mixed into the sandy soil. These tar sands were known to contain lots of oil, but for most of the twentieth century, no one knew how to separate it from the dirt cheaply enough. In the 1950s, the Canadian government had considered detonating a 9-kiloton nuclear warhead in Alberta—the first of as many as one hundred nuclear explosions envisioned—which, in theory at least, would melt the soil and make it easy to drill.

…

He’d tended to describe the technology stagnation as the inevitable result of liberals’ obsession with their racial, ethnic, and gender identities to the exclusion of good ideas. But, of course, he’d fanned the flames of the culture wars throughout his career. He’d bet money on the stagnation by shorting the U.S. economy and investing in Canadian tar sands, rather than investing all his capital in American startups. And, of course, he’d given capital to Mark Zuckerberg. The stagnation, like Facebook, might have been bad for America, but it had been damn good for Peter Thiel. As part of the IPO, Facebook insiders had to agree to wait ninety days after the stock started trading to sell their equity.

…

Canada’s barren far north: Eric Savitz, “A Second Payday for PayPal Founder,” Barron’s, February 13, 2006, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113961793285971352. “most destructive oil operation”: Stephen Leahy, “This Is the World’s Most Destructive Oil Operation—and It’s Growing,” National Geographic, April, 2019, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/alberta-canadas-tar-sands-is-growing-but-indigenous-people-fight-back/. doubled in value: Savitz, “Second Payday.” explained it in 2006: Gopiath, “Macro Man.” $6.4 billion under management: Dane Hamilton, “Clarium Hedge Fund Posts Gains of 57.9 Percent,” Reuters, July 9, 2008, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-clarium-hedge/clarium-hedge-fund-posts-gains-of-57-9-percent-idUSN0948639720080709.

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future
by Ed Conway
Published 15 Jun 2023

That might sound like a technicality, but for an example of how it shapes the modern world, consider the current predicament in the United States. Most American refineries are set up for the kinds of heavy, sour crudes you get from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. That made sense when it looked as if the US was running out of domestic oil, but then came the shale oil revolution. American shale oil, it turns out, is typically light and high quality, meaning it is not best-suited for domestic refineries. The upshot is that while arithmetically America is energy independent – producing far more oil than it consumes – in practice it is anything but. It must keep sucking in heavy oils from elsewhere to feed its refineries while sending Texan crude off to Europe and Asia to be refined.

…

Mitchell instinctively felt it must be the latter, but he was fighting the geological consensus, so when in 1981 one of his team wrote a paper suggesting that the consensus might be wrong, he seized upon it. The gist of the study was that one might be able to get gas directly from the ‘source rock’ where it was forming, rather than the reservoirs where it eventually ends up. The idea was tantalising. It was well-established that the US had enormous quantities of oil and gas forming inside the shales that underlie much of Texas and elsewhere besides. But despite extensive research and development going back decades, no one had worked out how to exploit them. So, over time, geologists had become ever more convinced that there was really no alternative but to wait the necessary millions of years until the oil or gas bubbled up to reservoirs, as it had in Ghawar.

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth
by Jeremy Rifkin
Published 9 Sep 2019

While Canada is regarded as a country fiercely dedicated to the environment and protection of its natural resources, there is another, darker Canadian persona deeply tied to fossil fuel energies. Like the United States, the Canadian government, several of the provinces, the financial community, and businesses are awash in fossil fuels. In recent years, much of the criticism by environmental organizations has centered on tar-sand extraction in the province of Alberta, with periodic protests, lawsuits, and legislative battles attempting to rein in one of Canada’s most lucrative economic enterprises. Canada is the fourth-largest producer of crude oil in the world, after the United States, which is ranked number one, Saudi Arabia, and Russia.

…

Eighteen insurers, mostly in Europe, with assets of at least $10 billion each, have already begun to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Several of the biggest insurers—AXA, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Allianz, and Zurich—have either limited or eliminated insuring coal projects. AXA and Swiss RE have also limited underwriting tar sands projects.48 Yet, only two of the ten largest American insurance companies—AIG and Farmers—have modified their investment strategies in response to climate change, which is remarkable considering the US West Coast has been devastated by climate change–induced droughts and wildfires for years, with $12.9 billion in insured losses in 2017 alone.49 Texas and the southeastern states of Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia have been ravaged by hurricanes, and the midwestern states of Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri have experienced ever-worsening 1,000-year historic floods yearly, all brought on by climate change in just the past decade, with loss of lives and property damage.

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made
by Gaia Vince
Published 19 Oct 2014

Across the globe, from the Amazon to the Siberia, oil formed millions of years ago from the burial of algae and plankton has been spilt and spread around the terrestrial surface with ecologically devastating consequences. Currently, the world uses over 85 million barrels of petroleum every day, and as its price rises companies are becoming ever more ambitious in their extractions, even trying to harvest crude oil from tar sands. Although tar sands can hold large volumes of bituminous oil, extracting it is a filthy, energy-intensive process that leaves the landscape devastated in its wake. Nevertheless, for countries such as Canada, the allure of domestically available supplies of such an essential commodity is strong and could well outweigh the substantial environmental and public-health concerns.

…

Foundation 342 Goodall, Chris 322 Google 28, 44 Google Earth/Maps 51, 366, 367 Goreau, Thomas 167 gorillas 237, 248, 276 granite 299 graphene 317 grasses/grasslands 7, 106, 109, 129, 221, 222, 231, 238, 240, 271, 287 Great Acceleration 3, 8, 307, 320 Great Barrier Reef, Australia 169 Green Revolution 109, 114, 133, 317 greenhouse gases 8, 23, 34, 35, 51, 67, 68, 144, 146 and biofuel production 145 see also carbon dioxide; methane greenhouses 65 desalinated seawater 219–20 Greenland 73, 177, 178, 182, 215 Greenpeace 183 Gregory, John and Sue 153 Grindr app 367 groundwater 47 contamination of 310 extraction of 50, 72, 115, 203, 215, 379 Groupon (online shopping network) 367 guanacos 74 guano 108 Gujarat, India 110–14, 115–16, 212 Guyana Shield 267 Haber, Fritz 108 Hadley Cell 15–16 Hadley Centre for Climate Research 66 Hadzabe people 223–7, 320 Haiti 28, 366 Haiyan, typhoon 66 Hansen, James 177 Hartmann, Peter 80–82, 85, 86 Haywood, Jim 66 HCFCs 374 helium 298, 329 H5N1 influenza 349 HidroAysén (company) 79–80, 86–7 high-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines 213–14 Hilbertz, Wolf 167 Himalayas 19, 40, 46, 47, 51–3 Hippocrates 304 hippopotamuses 207, 229 Hiroshima, bombing of 327 HIV/Aids 135, 198, 234, 245, 283, 349 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 89, 380 Ho Tong Yen 360–61, 362 Hoatzin/‘stink bird’ 271–2 Hobbs, Richard 253–4 Hofmeister, Anke 172 Holocene epoch 4, 7, 8, 9, 17, 238, 264, 299, 338 honey badgers 199–200, 226 honey birds 199–200, 226 Hong Kong 90, 346, 340, 369–70 Hooker, Joseph 285–6 Hoover Dam, USA 77 Huaneng Group: carbon capture facility 330 huemal deer 82, 83 Hulhumalé, the Maldives 162 Hunt Oil 280 hunter gatherers 7, 11, 94, 107, 124, 223–7, 233, 238, 279, 338, 345 Hurricane Katrina (2005) 380 Hurricane Sandy (2012) 379 Huvadhoo atoll, the Maldives 164 hydrocarbon fuels 214, 296 hydrodams see dams hydroelectricity/hydropower 31–2, 39–42, 52, 77–8, 213–14, 327 see also dams hydrogen 16, 214, 298, 329, 365 ‘hydropeaking’ 85 hydropower see dams; hydroelectricity Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol 98 ibex 50, 260 ice ages 7, 17, 34, 264 ice melt 177–81 see also glaciers Iceland 184, 213 ICRISAT see International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics IGCC see integrated gasification combined cycle power plants IMF 135 Imja glacial lake, Nepal 52 Incas, the 62, 270, 333, 334 Independent 178 India 34, 37, 116–17, 147, 320 air-conditioning units 374 air pollution/‘brown cloud’ 37, 38 aquifers 111, 112, 114 biofuel production 145, 332 coal-fired stations 325 GM crops 140, 141 groundwater extraction 115, 117 irrigation 114, 115, 211 land bought in Africa 102–3 mobile phones 28 Slum-Dwellers International network 350 tanka system 115–16, 117 tigers 244, 247 water shortages 110, 114–15 see also Ladakh India Space Research Centre 112 indium 315–16 indium tin oxide (ITO) 316 Indonesia 2, 35, 129, 256 ‘Indus Oasis’ (casino) 113 Indus River 53, 71–2 Industrial Revolution 3, 35, 263, 300, 307, 310 industrial symbiosis manufacture see ‘closed-loop’ manufacture insects 1, 17, 71, 108, 141, 142, 263, 271, 291 as food 97, 148, 388--9 and pest-control 134 see also ants; bees integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants 330, 331, 332 Interface (carpet manufacturer) 319 International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) 139–40 International Energy Agency (IEA) 213, 318, 325 International Institute for Environment and Development 98 International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) 328–9 Internet, the 11, 18, 24, 26, 27, 29–34, 136, 322, 367–9 Inuit, the 182 invasive species 250, 252–6 iron 298, 299, 306, 307 Irrawaddy River 53 irrigation 72, 79, 109, 114, 115, 118, 121, 132, 133, 143 with desalinated seawater 219–20 in deserts 107 drip 112, 113, 114, 120 in India 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 211 in Libya 215 solar-powered 211 Isiolo, Kenya 193, 194 Isla Incahuasi, Bolivia 334 Israel: electric cars 373 Itaipu dam, Brazil/Paraguay border 102 ITER see International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITO see indium tin oxide Ito, Akinori 326 Ituri Forest, Democratic Republic of Congo 246 ivory trade 198, 246 Jadeja, Hardevsinh 110–14, 143 jaguars 240–43, 237, 247, 260, 270, 275, 278 Janjaweed, the 245 Japan 102, 147, 161, 186, 318–19, 327, 340 jatropha 145 jellyfish 185–6 JET experiment 329 jet stream, the 180–81 Jinja, Uganda 122 Jones, Steve 378 Kalinowski, Celestino 279, 280 Kalinowski, Jan 279–80 Kalundborg, Denmark 320 Kampala, Uganda 112 Kandholhudhoo, the Maldives 160, 161, 163 Karachi, Pakistan: Orangi slum 350 Kathmandu, Nepal 18, 30, 32, 36–7, 39, 42 Kenya 135 drought 193, 195–6, 200–1, 206 education 204–5 206 M-Pesa 28 missionaries/missions 193–4, 199, 202, 204–5, 206–7, 208 pastoralists 196, 201, 205–6, 210 road-building 197–8 shanty towns 350 tribal conflict 193, 194–5, 196–7, 201, 206 see also missionaries; Turkana, Lake Kenya, Mount 46, 235 Kew Gardens, London 286 kha-nyou (rodent) 94 Khone Phaphene Falls, Laos 97 Khulna, Bangladesh 343, 346, 347, 352 Kikwete, Jakaya Mrisho, President of Tanzania 230, 259 Kilimanjaro, Mount 46 Kilimo Trust 120 Kinabalu, Mount 46 kingfishers 268, 271 Kipling, Rudyard 18 Kiribati 174–7 Kissinger, Henry 109 koala bears 237, 250 Kolkata, India: 2 Nehru Colony 366–7 Konik ponies 236 Korea, South 90, 102, 124, 346, 365 POSCO iron and steel consortium 336 krill 180 Kubuqi Desert, China 192 Kyakamese village, Uganda 118–20 Laama, Ringin 40 labour, division of 339 Lackner, Klaus 294, 295–6 Ladakh, India 48–51 artificial glaciers 53, 56–61 Laetoli, Tanzania 223–4 landslides 40, 46, 52 languages 26, 55, 62, 224, 273, 277, 347, 378 Lanzhou, China 362 Laos 88, 97, 98, 99 cluster bombs 90 Communist government 90, 91, 94 opium use 89 road-building 91–2 slash-and-burn 89 see also Mekong River La Paz, Bolivia 274, 275, 310 Las Vegas, Nevada 103, 193 ‘Late Heavy Bombardment’ 298 Laurance, Bill 255 lead/lead mining 301, 310, 315, 316 Leakey, Mary 223–4, 232 legumes 38, 133, 134 Leh, Ladakh, India 50–51, 54–5 leishmaniasis 274 lemurs, Madagascan 247, 250, 256 Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, Columbia University 294 León, German Cardinas 348 Leonard, Annie: The Story of Stuff 319 leopards 94, 227, 229 snow leopards 33, 260 leprosy 343 Li Quan 247 Libya: Great Man-made River project 215 Licancabur volcano, Bolivia 333 Licapa, Peru 62–4 ‘light-bulb conspiracy’ 312 lighting/light bulbs 315, 371 Lima, Peru 216–17 asentamientos humanos (AAHH; slums) 62, 217, 218, 347–8, 352 fog-harvesting 217–19 lions 227, 228, 229, 239–40, 248 Liquiñe–Ofqui fault line 85 lithium 332, 335–6 Liverpool 349 livestock 147, 148, 196, 200–1, 206 see also cattle; sheep; yaks llamas 74, 221, 300, 334 logging industry 9, 267, 268, 270, 273, 274, 276, 277, 283, 288, 289--90 Loiyangalani, Kenya 199, 204–5, 206–8 London 317, 349, 350, 364, 372, 378 ‘Gherkin’ 374 ‘guerrilla gardeners’ 377 smog 3, 35 Thames Barrier 379 Lopes, Antonio Francisco Bonfim (‘Nem’) 356 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) 126, 245 Loshner, Gabriella 83 Lovelock, James 294 Lowoi (schoolteacher) 201, 202 Luang Prabang, Laos 89 Lugo, Ariel 254 Luis Val, Adalberto 291, 292 Lummerich, Anne 218 Luna, Javier Torres 217–18 Lyme disease 242 lysine 138 Ma’aden aluminium mine, Saudi Arabia 104 Maasai, the 224, 229–31 macaws 268, 271, 278, 281 McDougall, Gerald 188–9 McKinsey (consultants) 103, 319 Macquarie Island: rabbits 255 Madagascan lemurs 247, 250, 256 Madagascar 93, 124, 237, 264 Madidi National Park, Amazon Basin 267, 269–72, 273–4, 277–8 Madre de Dios region, Peru 278–84 Madre de Dios River, Peru 280–81, 283 Madrid: Canada Real Galiana 344 mahogany trees 270, 275, 279, 289 maize 125, 129, 130, 138, 144, 250 Makerere University, Kampala 137, 138 malaria 43, 121, 135, 199, 224, 274, 283, 293, 341, 367 Malawi 135 Malaysia 28 Petronas Towers 370 see also Singapore Maldives, the 152–3, 156--9, 175, 186 artificial islands/floating islands 157, 162–3 coral reefs 158, 159, 160, 161–2, 164, 166–8 ‘designer islands’ 160–61 heroin dependency 156 overfishing 169–70, 171–2 Soneva Fushi 172–3 tourists 153–4, 156, 158, 160, 163, 171, 172, 173 Malé, the Maldives 153, 154, 156, 161 Mamang-Kanga, Jean-Baptiste 245 Manaus, Brazil 290–91 manta rays 170, 185, 245 Manu National Park, Madre de Dios, Peru 278–80 Manu River 280–81 Manu Wildlife Centre 279, 281 marijuana 357, 369 marine reserves 186–7 Mascho-Piro tribe 279 Masdar, Abu Dhabi 366 Matterhorn, the 48 Mawlamyaing, Burma 91 meat consumption 147, 148, 290, 322 Medellín, Colombia 353–4, 357 Mekong River 53, 88–9, 90–91, 95, 99–101, 105 fish/fishing 95–6, 100, 101 hydrodams 83, 88, 89, 91, 92–4, 95–6 meltwater see glaciers Mesozoic era 221 metals 298, 299–300 rare earth 305, 315, 373 see also copper; gold; gold mining; iron; silver; silver mining methane 41, 78, 129, 134, 178, 214 methanol 296 metro/underground systems 346, 353, 354, 357, 364, 372, 373 Mexico City 379 miconia shrub 252 ‘microloan’ cooperatives 130 millets 130, 139, 143 minerals 191, 272, 298–9, 300, 305 mining 8, 9, 300, 308–9 see also coal; copper mining; gold mining; silver mining miscarriages 203 missionaries/missions see Kenya mobile phones/smartphones 27–9, 34, 118, 136, 210, 212, 231, 300, 304, 311, 312, 315–16, 335, 367 see also M-Pesa Mohammed, Fatima 161 Mojave Desert, California 209, 213, 214 monkeys 275, 291 chimpanzees 3–4, 306 howler monkeys 271, 281 spider monkeys 267, 271, 275–6, 277, 278, 281 Monsanto (company) 140–41 Montana, USA 236 Morales, Evo, President of Bolivia 274, 277, 278, 282, 335, 336 Morgan, Ned 121 mosquitoes 47, 274, 293, 341 moths, urban 377 mountains 8, 45–8, 66–7 painting white 62–4 M-Pesa mobile phone banking service 28, 208, 211, 350 mulch/mulching 133, 134, 145 Mumbai, India 344, 374 Murray River 72 Museveni, Yuweri, President of Uganda 126 mussels 187 Mutharika, Bingu wa, President of Malawi 135 Mwanawasa, Levy, President of Zambia 175 Nagasaki, bombing of 327 Nairobi 200, 207, 209, 210, 344 Nakai, Laos 92–4 Nam Theun II dam, Laos 92–4 Namibia 215, 216, 362 Nangi, Nepal 21, 24, 25–7, 30–32, 33, 36, 43 Napoleon Bonaparte 285 NASA 177, 294, 333 NaSARRI see under Uganda Nasheed, Laila 154 Nasheed, Mohamed (‘Anni’), President of the Maldives 153–8, 160, 161, 163, 172, 173–5, 190 National Geographic 273 Neanderthals 2, 238, 259, 306 Neem trees 134 Nepal 18–20, 21–3, 24–7, 43 Bengal tigers 243–5 electricity 20, 27, 41–2, see also hydropower (below) glacier melt 37, 40–41 hydropower 31–2, 39–40, 41 Internet/Wi-Fi 24, 27, 30–31, 32, 33, 34 tourism 32–3, 39 yak herders 24, 33, 37, 40 see also Kathmandu; Nangi Netherlands, the 236–7, 379 New Guinea: rainforest 264 New Orleans: and Hurricane Katrina 380 New Songdo City, South Korea 365 New York City 35, 317, 349, 350, 365, 378, 379 Bank of America Tower 371 raised railway park 377 water sources 104 New York Times 77 New Zealand 47, 175, 184, 237, 308 Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania 224, 228–30 Niger Delta 309 Nigeria 114 Nile, River 71–2, 79, 103, 122, 204, 207 Nineveh 339, 340 nitrogen 8–9, 16, 108, 133, 146, 373 nitrogen-’fixing’ plants 133, 136, 142, 143–4 Nomura’s jellyfish 186 Norphel, Chewang 53–9, 60–61, 69 North-East Passage 181 North Pole, the 177, 182 Norway: hydroelectricity 213–14 Nottingham, University of: Frozen Ark project 259 Nubian Sandstone Aquifer 215 nuclear energy/power stations 327–8 nuclear fusion plants 328–30 nylon stockings/tights 312 obsolescence, planned 312–14 oceans 150–52 acidification 3, 9, 152, 153, 165, 168–9 conservation zones/reserves 186–7 phytoplankton 152, 180, 190 pollution 152, 187–9 see also Arctic Ocean; sea-levels, rising ocelots 240 Odentethes hatcheri (fish) 83 Ohtake, Ruy 358 oil/oil industry 23–4, 181–2, 183, 280, 284, 296, 308, 309, 318, 326 oil spills 182 Okehampton, Devon 349 Okello, David Kalule 135–9 Olmaikorit-Oumo, Florence 130 Ologara village, Uganda 125–6, 127–31 Oman: peridotite 296 Omo Valley, Ethiopia 203, 204 Omoding, Ephrem 125, 127 Omoding, Winifred 125–7, 129–33, 143 One-Laptop-One-Child organisation 31 Oostvaardersplassen, the Netherlands 236–7 opium industry 89–90 orang-utans 248, 273, 276–7 Ordos, Inner Mongolia 331, 359 organic farming 133–4 orius (pirate bugs) 219 oryx, Arabian 256 oscar (fish) 291–2 ostriches 197 otters 83, 270 oxygen 16, 142, 214, 285, 293–4 lack of 133, 185, 186, 187, 291–2 and photosynthesis 263, 264, 284, 299 oysters 168 ozone 35, 37, 38, 373 ozone layer 3, 11, 17, 66 painting mountains/roofs white 62–4, 374 palm oil 276, 290 palm trees 172, 204, 266, 270, 293, 343 Panama Canal 320–21 pandas, Chinese 257 Pangaea 45 pangolins 245 Pantanal, the 240–42 Paraguay 102, 240 Parana River 102 Parco, Salamon 62–4 Paris 347, 364, 373 Parker, Ted 280 parks, national 236 see Bardia, Madidi, Manu, Serengeti and Yellowstone National Park Pascua River dam, Patagonia 73, 75–6 passenger pigeons 259 pastoralists 205–6, 210, 214, 220, 225 see also Maasai, the Patagonia 74–5, 81, 86 hydroelectric dams 73–4, 75–7, 79–88 Peak District, England 310 peanuts 118–19, 120, 129, 132–3, 136, 143 genetically modified 138, 139–40 peas 51, 139 peat 263, 310 Pemuteran, Bali 167 peridotite 296 Peru 41, 52, 108, 278–84, 332 mountain painting 62–4 pest-control/pesticides 129, 132, 134, 136, 141, 143, 185, 219, 243, 293 petrels 186 petroleum 309, 325–6 Petronas Towers, Malaysia 370 Phakding, Himalayas 39 pharmaceuticals 272 Philippines 28, 65, 66 Phnom Penh, Cambodia 100 Phoenix, Arizona 103, 193 photography 304 photosynthesis 2, 16, 38, 143–4, 165, 180, 190, 214, 263, 264, 265, 284–5, 291, 293–4, 297, 299, 317 photovoltaic (PV) panels see solar energy Phuktse, Ladakh, India: artificial glacier 58–9 phytoplankton 152, 180, 190 piezoelectric generators 363 Pilon Lajas Biosphere Reserve, Bolivia 278 Pinatubo, Mount (Philippines): eruption of (1991) 65 pine beetles 236 Piñera, Sebastian, President of Chile 80, 87 PlanIT Valley, Portugal 365 plankton 84, 168, 185, 309, 386 see also phytoplankton plants 1–2, 47, 70–71, 262, 263, 288, 326 plastic 5, 187–8, 311 bags 4, 128, 189, 323, 341 3D-printed items 317 turning back into oil 326 plate tectonics see tectonic movements platinum 214, 298 Playas de Rosarito, Mexico: proposed desalination plants 102 Pleistocene epoch 236, 237, 238 plutonium 328 Pokhara, Nepal 18, 19–20, 30 polar bears 178, 187 polio vaccination 367 pollution 310, 312, 318, 321, 330, 360–61 and environmental services fees 322–3 radioactive 7, 11 see also air pollution; ocean; waste; polyester garments 187 population growth 3, 9, 11, 36, 146–7, 251 POSCO iron and steel consortium 336 potatoes, sweet 140, 143 Potosí, Bolivia: silver mines 300–6, 307, 310 prickly pear 251, 256 printers, electronic 313 3-D 317 public transport 345, 372–3, see also metro Puerto Maldonado, Peru 283–4, 288 Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria: International Institute of Tropical Forestry 254 pumas 73 pumps, groundwater 50, 51, 115, 121, 122 see also boreholes; wells Pun, Mahabir 18–19, 21–7, 30–33, 37 Pun tribe 24, 27, 41 Putin, Vladimir, President of Russia 181–2 PV panels see solar energy pyrolysis 326 Qatar 219 Quechua 62, 347 Racoviteanu, Adina 60–61 radio 17–18 Rahmsdorf, Stefan 177 rain/rainfall 15, 37–8, 46, 47, 150, 151 acid rain 3, 310 in Africa 118, 122, 195 artificial production of 66, 132 harvesting and storing 115–17, 121–2, 216 in India 49–50, 111 in Lima, Peru 216, 217 in Uganda 118, 119, 122, 128 rainforests 15–16, 262, 264–5, 272–3 Borneo 264, 276–7 see also Amazon rainforests Raj-Samadhiyala, Gujarat, India 110–14 Rajkot, Gujarat, India 110, 115 Rajoelina, Andry, President of Madagascar 124 rats 250, 255 Ravalomanana, Marc, President of Madagascar 124 recycling see waste; water REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) 287–8, 289 redwoods, Californian 218, 293 Rees, Richard 171 refrigerants 17 Reid, Brian 84 reservoir-building 53, 77–8, 104, 112 Restore and Revive 259 rhinoceroses 227, 228, 246, 248, 258 rhododendrons 250 Ribeiro da Silva, José Claudio 268 rice/rice-growing 78, 90, 97, 101, 109, 134, 136, 143–4, 147, 185, 250 genetically modified 140, 141 Rift Valley 203, 223, 232 Rimac River 216 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: favelas 354–8, 367 Rio Grande 72 rivers 4, 8, 50, 53, 70–73, 104, 308 see also dams and specific rivers road-building Amazon rainforest 281–4 Burma–Vietnam 91–2 Serengeti 258–9 Robichaud, Bill 92, 94 Robinah, Byarindaba 118–20, 121 Rockefeller Foundation 138, 139 ‘rock glaciers’ 60 rocks 2, 46, 74, 108, 299–300 Rome/Romans 34, 307 roofs, whitewashing 64, 374 Roosevelt, Theodore, US President 227 Rotterdam, Netherlands 379 Rubbish Island, 163 Ruiz, Rosa Maria 266–72, 273–4, 275, 277, 278 ruminants 221–2, see cattle Rurrenabaque, Bolivia 265–6, 269 Rwanda: gorillas 276 Sahara Desert 195 aquifers 215 Desertec solar power plant 213 Great Green Wall 192 minerals from 191, 272 salamander, jumping 257 Sale, Peter 164, 167 salmon, farmed 185 salt production 334 Salter, Stephen 66 Samburu tribe 195, 197, 201, 204, 208 Samso island, Denmark 325 San Cristobel, Bolivia: silver/zinc mine 333 San Diego, California: Zoo 259 San people 232–5 Sánchez de Lozada, Gonzalo 273 sand dams 198, 216 sanitation 11, 20–21, 38, 115, 339 see also toilets Santa Cruz, island of, Galapagos 251–3 Charles Darwin Research Station 251–2, 253, 254 Santiago, Chile 75 São Paulo, Brazil: Heliopolis favela 358 saola antelope 94 Sarima, Kenya 201–3 SARS 349 satellites 18, 22–3 mapping by 60–61, 112, 367 Saudi Arabia 102, 104, 308 solar-powered desalination plants 216 superfarms 148 savannahs 221–3, 238, 265 Save the Children 135 scalesia (Scalesia pedunculata) 251, 252, 253 schizophrenia 377 schools see education seabirds 186 sea cucumbers 168–9 seagulls 377 sea-levels, rising 5, 9, 52, 151, 153, 159–60, 174–8, 189–90, 343, 379 Seasteading Institute 189 Semiletov, Igor 178 Seoul, South Korea 346 Serengeti National Park 223, 227–32, 256, 258 Serere bird 271–2 Serere Sanctuary, Amazon Basin 268 service manuals 313–14 sesame seeds 125, 131, 138 Shabab, the 245 Shanghai 35, 89, 211, 321, 322, 379 shanty towns see slums sharks 164, 171–2, 185, 242 whale 170–71 shearwaters 186 sheep 74, 81, 82, 221, 236 Shemenauer, Bob 219 ships 65, 317, 320–21 Shivdasani, Sonu 172–3 Shrestha, Alok 41 Siem Reap, Cambodia 99 silica 84 silicosis 301, 302, 303, 306 silver 304–5, 312 silver mining, Bolivian 300–6, 333 silver nitrate 304 Silvestre, Elizabeth 216–17 Simpson Valley, Chile 83 Singapore 90, 346, 360, 362, 369 Marina Bay Sands 376 Si Phan Don, Laos 95 Siteram (Nepali guide) 243–4 Skarra, Ladakh, India 53 Skinner, Jamie 98 skyscrapers 370–71 slash-and-burn 107, 128, 277 sleeping sickness 225 sloths 237, 250, 270 slums/shanty towns 341–4, 346, 347, 348–53, 366–7, 378 in Brazil (favelas) 354–8, 367 smartphones see mobile phones Smil, Vaclav 250–51 Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC 227 Smits, Willie 276–7 social media sites see Facebook; Twitter soil(s) 108, 127–9, 142 solar energy/power 30, 211–14 combined with wind projects 209, 213, 361 for desalination plants 193, 216, 219–20 for public and private buildings 363–4, 366 panels/photovoltaic (PV) panels 116, 211–12, 214, 315, 331, 332 and payback schemes 211, 212, 323 storage and distribution 213–14, 365 solar radiation management 63–5, 68–9, 132 Soneva Fushi, the Maldives 172–3 sorghum 120, 125, 130, 139, 143, 144 Soroti, Uganda 125–6, 132, 135 Soules, Luke 313, 314 South Africa 118, 236, 351–2 Southern Ice Field 73 soya/soybean 281, 289, 290 Spain 65, 128, 184, 213, 216, 301, 307 spotted fever 242 Stakmo, Ladakh, India 48–50, 61 Stanbic Bank Uganda 120 star coral 257 Starbucks 368 steam power 213, 219, 307, 365 Stone Age 2–3, 307 stoves see cooking stromatolites 16 sturgeon 71 sugar cane 122, 144, 145, 290 Sumatra: rainforest 264 Sumerian cities 339 Sundrop Farms, South Australia 219 sunflowers 125, 131, 138, 145 sunlight see solar energy; solar radiation management Survival International 234 sustainability 323–5, 369, 371, 375–6 Suzano (Brazilian consortium) 290 Svalbard islands, the Arctic 37 Switzerland 20, 21, 48, 60 Syncrude mine, Athabasca oil sands, Canada 4 syngas 296, 330 Syngenta 140–41 Tacana people 269, 277 Taiwan 90, 146–7 tamarin, pied 291 tanka system 115–16 Tanzania 223–4 road-building 258–9 tourism 227, 231 UAE hunting reserves 227, 230 see also Serengeti National Park tapirs 237, 240, 270, 275, 281 tar sands 309 tara trees 218 Target (supermarket) 369 tarpans 236 Tashi (Indian farmer) 48, 49, 61 Tasmanian devils 247 Tasmanian tigers 260 taxes 97, 123, 194, 324, 350, 356, 357, 368, 372 tectonic movements 45–6, 73, 85, 250, 263, 299, 334 telegraphy 27 television sets 313, 314, 315 tenebrionid desert beetle 218 Thailand 90, 91, 93, 100, 256 Thakek, Laos 91, 95 Thar Desert, Rajasthan, India 209 Thiel, Peter 189 Thiladhunmathi atoll, the Maldives 164 Thilafushi, the Maldives 163 Thompson, Lonny 64 thorium/thorium reactors 315, 328 3D printing 317 Three Gorges Dam, China 83 Thupstan (Indian farmer) 50 Tianjin, China Eco-city 360–63, 375 GreenGen energy plant 330 Tiedemann, Kai 218 tigers 94, 243–5, 246–8, 249, 260 tiger wine 245, 246 Tigris, River 71–2 tilapia 207, 208 tin/tin mining 299, 301, 310, 316 tin oxides, non-stochiometric 316 Toba, Indonesia: volcanic eruption 2 toilets 20–21, 25, 26, 113, 115, 116, 348, 363 tokamaks 329 tokay geckos 256 Tokyo: population 340 Tomasetti, Roberto 166–7 Tong, Anote, President of Kiribati 174–6, 190 Tonle Sap, Lake 99–100 Torres, Geronimo 63–4 tortoises 214, 250, 251, 252, 253, 255 Toshiba 314 tourism industry/tourists Amazon rainforest 270, 273, 276, 279 Cambodia 99 and ‘conservation fees’ 248 India 50–51, 57, 244 Maldives 153–4, 156, 158, 160, 163, 171, 172, 173 Nepal 32–3, 39 Serengeti 228, 231 in Tanzania 227, 231 TRAFFIC 245, 246 trains, maglev 372 trees 129, 263 artificial 295–6, 297 fog-trapping 218 see also deforestation; forests tryptophan 138 tsetse flies 225 Tsodilo Hills, Botswana 233 tsunamis 160, 161, 328 tuberculosis 135, 234 Tullow Oil 210 tuna 169–70, 185, 187 tundra, Arctic 178, 293 tungsten 298 tunqui (bird) 279 Turkana, Lake (Kenya) 193, 199, 203–4, 205, 208, 209 and see below ‘Turkana Boy’ 203 Turkana Corridor Low Level Jet Stream 208–9 Turkana solar power station 210–11 Turkana tribe 194–5, 197, 201–2, 204, 207–8, 242, 316 Turkana wind farm 208–9, 210 Turkmenistan 59 turtles 170, 174, 185, 187, 268, 280 Tuvalu 174 Twitter 28–9, 367, 368 Uganda 26, 118–22 agriculture 118–22, 125, 126–33, 135, 136, 137–8, 140, 144 gorillas 276 National Semi-Arid Resources Research Institute (NaSARRI) 130–31, 136, 138 roads 144 United Arab Emirates: Tanzanian hunting reserves 227, 230 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity 247 Environment programme 37, 248 Food and Agriculture programme 145 GRIDMAP programme 203 United States of America 157 Agency for International Development 133 biofuel production 145 dams 77, 98 maglev trains 372 meat consumption 147, 148 National Ignition Facility, California 329 Natural Resources Defense Council 374 no-till agriculture 142 oil consumption 318 water use 102, 362 see also specific states and towns Ur 339 uranium 308, 315, 327, 328 Uribe, Freddie 342 Uunartoq Qeqertaq 178 Uyuni, Bolivia 332–3, 336–7 salar (salt flats) 333–6, 337 Vabbinfaru, the Maldives 166–7 Vanua Levu, Fiji 176 VCRs 313–14 vegetables 26, 61, 65, 97, 272 see also legumes Venice 168 vetifer 129 Victoria, Queen 27 Vientiane, Laos 91 Vietnam 90, 92, 100–1 floating markets 101 Villa Hermosa, Colombia 341, 342–3, 344, 346, 347, 352 villages 338–9, 378 Vio, Francisco 82 Vishwanath (‘Zen Rainman’) 116–17 vitamin A deficiency 140 VoIP phones 31 volcanoes/volcanic eruptions 2, 5, 36, 65, 66, 68, 73, 79, 85, 299, 333 Vong, Mr (restaurateur) 96–7 Wageningen, Carlo van 210 Walker, Barry 279, 280–81 warthogs 229 waste 310–11, 312–13, 361 electronic 311–12, 313 food 144, 147 plastic 5, 187–8, 326 recycling 319–20, 322, 323, 324, 351 waste-pickers 350, 351–2 water 11, 46–7, 72–3, 215 fetching 202–3 recycling 115, 323, 362–3 ‘virtual water’ trade 102–3 see also aquifers; boreholes; dams; desalination; fossil water; glaciers; groundwater; irrigation; rain; reservoirs; rivers; wells water shortages 72–3, 103–4, 215–16 Africa 118, 121, 122–3, 215 India 49–51, 57, 110, 111–13, 114–15 see also droughts wattieza (plants) 263 wells, hand-dug 121, 122, 132 Westpoint Island, Belize 188–9 wetlands 53, 71, 78, 85 artificial 104–5 whale sharks 170–71 whales 73, 164, 180 wheat 7, 23, 38, 43, 51, 88, 109, 136, 138, 193, 250, 251 Wiens, Kyle 313, 314–15 Wi-Fi 24, 30–31, 32, 356 Wikipedia 12 wildebeest 228, 229, 231, 258 wildlife see animals and specific animals Wilson, E.

Let them eat junk: how capitalism creates hunger and obesity
by Robert Albritton
Published 31 Mar 2009

In the 1940s for every barrel of oil spent searching for oil, 100 barrels of oil were produced, and now for every barrel of oil spent, we get only 10 barrels.7 As we reach the point of “peak oil”, it takes almost as much oil to expand the supply as is gained by the new supply. For example, the ecological damage involved in retrieving oil from the Alberta oil sands, and the amount of energy it takes to produce a single barrel of oil from the tar sands, raise serious doubts about the desirability and viability of the entire project.8 The Canadian oil sands are enriching many people at immense long-term environmental costs. It now takes one barrel of oil to produce three barrels of oil from oil sands, and as a result, three times the quantity of greenhouse gases are produced per barrel of oil from oil sands than for conventional oil.9 Further, because it takes up to 4.5 barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil from oil sands, aquifers are being drained and huge toxic tailing ponds are created.10 While there has been awareness of the problem of peak oil along with the problem of global warming for years, the lobbying and propaganda power of the oil, chemical and auto industries have delayed for at least two decades most efforts to wean the US economy and especially agriculture off petroleum.

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Index A abstract theory 10–12, 18–50 see also deep structure, inner logic, pure capitalism accountability 205–10 see also democracy addiction 43, 45, 95–6, 177, 179, 222 advertising 70, 167–8, 172–4, 177 Africa 153, 156, 158 agriculture 7, 11, 18, 32, 40, 125, 127, 128, 132, 134, 141, 158, 185, 202, 205 American 8, 135, 148–9 non-food crops 7, 142, 157 (see also cotton, tobacco) see also aid to agriculture, exportoriented agriculture, family farms, industrial farms aid 134 see also aid to agriculture, food aid, foreign aid AIDS 153, 178 Alberta tar sands 148, 206 see also peak oil algae blooms 156, 159 see also chemical fertilizer allergies 118, 161–2 American hegemony 52, 76, 91, 125 see also US hegemony American Council on Science and Health 195 American Sugar Association 188 anaemia 107 anti-depressants 178 antibiotics 103 anxiety 173 Archer Daniels Midland 186, 189 asthma 149 atomism 72–3 see also individualism, islandization, possessive individualism Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) 63, 114, 173 austerity policies 135 see also structural adjustment policies automobile 57, 59–60, 72–3 see also car-dependent development B Baby Milk Action Group 96 balance of payments 58, 68, 220 balance of trade 136, 220 banana workers 136–8, 143 Bangladesh 142 Bernay, Edward 168 biodiesel 142 see also biofuel, ethanol biofuel 151–2 blacklisting 127 Borneo 155 bottom trawling 160 bovine growth hormone 116, 236 boycotts 206 brand loyalty 166, 169, 173, 176 see also advertising, marketing Brandt, Allan 8, 168, 170 Brazil 139, 140, 151, 155 [ 251 ] 252 INDEX Bretton Woods monetary system 68 Buffet, Warren 84 bulimia 176 Bush, President George W. 149, 152 Butz, Earl (US Secretary of Agriculture) 59, 68–9, 75 C Califano, Joseph 170 California 127, 159 cancer 63 see also carcinogen capitalism x, 8–11, 50–1, 61, 82–3, 93, 122, 124, 126, 178, 183, 184, 190, 197, 201–2, 204, 210, 213 capitalist farms 130–1, 214 capitalist ideology 73–4, 165, 168, 183, 196–7 car-dependent development 60, 64 see also automobile carbon dioxide (CO2) 149, 151, 154 carbon tax 209 carcinogens 111–12, 114, 137, 178, 191, 194 Carson, Rachel 61, 77, 111 causality 169–70 causes ix, 90, 180 Center for Consumer Freedom 188, 196 Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) 93, 174 Channel One 176 chemical fertilizers 58, 129, 149, 151, 159–60, 217 chemicalization 83, 158–9, 202 see also chemical fertilizers, nemagon, pesticides Chicago Board of Trade 153 child labour 138–9 see also slavery China 122, 142, 155, 175 choice 165–81, 187 see also consumer sovereignty, freedom chronic illnesses 94 class 99, 168, 213 class struggle 12 Clinton, President Bill 100 coal 151 cocoa 135, 138, 202 codex alimentarius 97, 188 coffee 135, 140–3, 202 cold war 58–9, 61–2, 74–6 collective bargaining 127 colonialism 18, 25, 44–5, 71, 124, 153 see also developing countries command economy 202 commodification 12, 21, 37–8, 39, 214–15 commodities 12, 20 commodity futures 89, 108, 142, 145, 153 see also Chicago Board of Trade concentration/centralization 25, 45, 114, 120, 131–2, 137, 187, 216 competition 11, 26, 43, 127–8, 135 confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) 101–2, 150, 153, 155, 159, 163 consumer sovereignty 165, 178–80 see also choice, freedom, rights consumerism xii, 42, 68–9, 72, 125, 173, 176, 180 consumers 28, 144, 166, 178 consumption 9, 165 contradiction x, 25 see also irrationality, rationality cooking skills 121–2 cooperation 144, 200–11 see also movements coral 159 corn 108, 111, 136, 151–3 see also ethanol, subsidies corporate lobbies 186 corporations xi, 8, 14–15, 45, 60–1, 70, 87, 123, 130, 132, 136, 138, 141–2, 145, 147–8, 162, 165, 168–9, 172, 183,–4, 186, 193–5, 197, 203, 206–7, 218–19 Costa Rica 138 INDEX cotton 111, 129, 143 see also non-food crops, pesticides, subsidies crises 12, 25, 38, 39, 42, 216 ecological crisis 146–7 see also food crisis D Dalley, George 187 death rate 127, 130 debt 42–3 64, 66, 68, 70, 122, 129, 134, 141, 205, 208 ecological debt 43, 147 health debt 43 decline of civilization 7 deep cause/deep structure ix, 12, 16, 18–50, 52, 106 see also abstract theory, inner logic, levels of analysis, pure capitalism deforestation 35, 86, 102, 140 142–3, 151, 155, 157 democracy x, 9, 19, 52, 85, 162, 166, 181, 197, 206 see also accountability, equality, freedom, inequality, liberaldemocracy, rights democratization of corporations xii, 14, 15, 205–8 of markets xii, 15, 208–10 Department of Agriculture (US) 171 deportation 126–7 depression 94, 222 desertification 157 see also deforestation developing countries 45, 58–9, 69, 76, 78, 85–6, 104, 106, 111, 129, 134–37, 140–3, 162, 193, 203, 205 diabetes 94, 96, 99, 100 diet 174, 191 distributive justice 8, 10, 16, 91, 142, 194, 209–10 division of labour 6 Doll, Sir Richard 194–5 Dominican Republic 128 253 drought 158 see also water dumping 59, 129, 135, 205 see also developing countries, food prices, subsidies E E.

Food and Fuel: Solutions for the Future
by Andrew Heintzman , Evan Solomon and Eric Schlosser
Published 2 Feb 2009

The 1970s saw an ever-growing number of proposals for new energy megaprojects coming under consideration, and many people — mostly environmentalists, but others as well — in Canada, the United States, and around the world began turning their attention to issues raised by such unprecedentedly large projects. These issues were as diverse as the projects, which ranged from hydro dams in wilderness areas to oil and gas production in the Arctic and the offshore, to tar-sands plants, to oil tanker and liquefied natural gas terminals, to nuclear generating stations and the new uranium mines and refineries that supply them. Given the potentially huge impacts of these projects, social and economic as well as biophysical, environmentalists began to raise questions about the actual need for so much energy.

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Increasing tensions between the Islamic world and the West are likely to compound the threat to our access to affordable oil. Rising oil prices will assuredly plunge developing countries even further into debt, ensuring that much of the Third World remains in the throes of poverty for years to come. In desperation, many nations may turn to dirtier fossil fuels — coal, oil from tar sands, and heavy oil — which will only worsen global warming and imperil the Earth’s already beleaguered ecosystems. Looming oil shortages will make industrial life vulnerable to massive disruptions and possibly even collapse. Hydrogen has the potential to end the world’s reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf, the most politically volatile region on the planet.

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism
by David Harvey
Published 1 Jan 2010

Oil rents and oil futures therefore get capitalised as a form of fictitious capital and claims also circulate in such a way that all operators in these markets hedge their bets, create all manner of derivatives and then seek to manipulate the market in ways that match their bets. As oil prices rise, of course, all sorts of marginal fields get exploited (or in some cases re-opened) simply because the definition of the margin fluctuates with singular volatility. Canada’s Athabaska tar sands are expensive to exploit but become highly profitable when oil goes to $150 a barrel. But the problem is that it takes considerable time to bring new fields into production and so the response time to a surge in demand is slow unless there is existing capacity, such as that controlled by OPEC, which can more easily be brought into play.

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Index Numbers in italics indicate Figures; those in bold indicate a Table. 11 September 2001 attacks 38, 41–2 subject to perpetual renewal and transformation 128 A Abu Dhabi 222 Académie Française 91 accumulation by dispossession 48–9, 244 acid deposition 75, 187 activity spheres 121–4, 128, 130 deindustrialised working-class area 151 and ‘green revolution’ 185–6 institutional and administrative arrangements 123 ‘mental conceptions of the world’ 123 patterns of relations between 196 production and labour processes 123 relations to nature 123 the reproduction of daily life and of the species 123 slums 152 social relations 123 subject to perpetual renewal and transformation 128 suburbs 150 technologies and organisational forms 123 uneven development between and among them 128–9 Adelphia 100 advertising industry 106 affective bonds 194 Afghanistan: US interventionism 210 Africa civil wars 148 land bought up in 220 neocolonialism 208 population growth 146 agribusiness 50 agriculture collectivisation of 250 diminishing returns in 72 ‘green revolution’ 185–6 ‘high farming’ 82 itinerant labourers 147 subsidies 79 AIG 5 alcoholism 151 Allen, Paul 98 Allende, Salvador 203 Amazonia 161, 188 American Bankers Association 8 American Revolution 61 anarchists 253, 254 anti-capitalist revolutionary movement 228 anti-racism 258 anti-Semitism 62 après moi le déluge 64, 71 Argentina Debt Crisis (2000–2002) 6, 243, 246, 261 Arizona, foreclosure wave in 1 Arrighi, Giovanni: The Long Twentieth Century 35, 204 asbestos 74 Asia Asian Currency Crisis (1997–98) 141, 261 collapse of export markets 141 growth 218 population growth 146 asset stripping 49, 50, 245 asset traders 40 asset values 1, 6, 21, 23, 26, 29, 46, 223, 261 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) 200 Athabaska tar sands, Canada 83 austerity programmes 246, 251 automobile industry 14, 15, 23, 56, 67, 68, 77, 121, 160–61 Detroit 5, 15, 16, 91, 108, 195, 216 autonomista movement 233, 234, 254 B Baader-Meinhof Gang 254 Bakunin, Michael 225 Balzac, Honoré 156 Bangalore, software development in 195 Bangkok 243 Bank of England 53, 54 massive liquidity injections in stock markets 261 Bank of International Settlements, Basel 51, 55, 200 Bank of New England 261 Bankers Trust 25 banking bail-outs 5, 218 bank shares become almost worthless 5 bankers’ pay and bonuses 12, 56, 218 ‘boutique investment banks’ 12 de-leveraging 30 debt-deposit ratio 30 deposit banks 20 French banks nationalised 198 international networks of finance houses 163 investment banks 2, 19, 20, 28, 219 irresponsible behaviour 10–11 lending 51 liquidity injections by central banks vii, 261 mysterious workings of central banks 54 ‘national bail-out’ 30–31 property market-led Nordic and Japanese bank crises 261 regional European banks 4 regular banks stash away cash 12, 220 rising tide of ‘moral hazard’ in international bank lending practices 19 ‘shadow banking’ system 8, 21, 24 sympathy with ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ bank robbers 56 Baran, Paul and Sweezey, Paul: Monopoly Capital 52, 113 Barings Bank 37, 100, 190 Baucus, Max 220 Bavaria, automotive engineering in 195 Beijing declaration (1995) 258 Berlin: cross-border leasing 14 Bernanke, Ben 236 ‘Big Bang’ (1986) 20, 37 Big Bang unification of global stock, options and currency trading markets 262 billionaire class 29, 110, 223 biodiversity 74, 251 biomass 78 biomedical engineering 98 biopiracy 245, 251 Birmingham 27 Bismarck, Prince Otto von 168 Black, Fischer 100 Blackstone 50 Blair, Tony 255 Blair government 197 blockbusting neighbourhoods 248 Bloomberg, Mayor Michael 20, 98, 174 Bolivarian movement 226, 256 bonuses, Wall Street 2, 12 Borlaug, Norman 186 bourgeoisie 48, 89, 95, 167, 176 ‘boutique investment banks’ 12 Brazil automobile industry 16 capital flight crisis (1999) 261 containerisation 16 an export-dominated economy 6 follows Japanese model 92 landless movement 257 lending to 19 the right to the city movement 257 workers’ party 256 Bretton Woods Agreement (1944) 31, 32, 51, 55, 171 British Academy 235 British empire 14 Brown, Gordon 27, 45 Budd, Alan 15 Buenos Aires 243 Buffett, Warren 173 building booms 173–4 Bush, George W. 5, 42, 45 business associations 195 C California, foreclosure wave in 1, 2 Canada, tightly regulated banks in 141 ‘cap and trade’ markets in pollution rights 221 capital bank 30 centralisation of 95, 110, 113 circulation of 90, 93, 108, 114, 116, 122, 124, 128, 158, 159, 182, 183, 191 cultural 21 devalued 46 embedded in the land 191 expansion of 58, 67, 68 exploitations of 102 export 19, 158 fixed 191, 213 industrial 40–41, 56 insufficient initial money capital 47 investment 93, 203 and labour 56, 88, 169–70 liquid money 20 mobility 59, 63, 64, 161–2, 191, 213 and nature 88 as a process 40 reproduction of 58 scarcity 50 surplus 16, 28, 29, 50–51, 84, 88, 100, 158, 166, 167, 172, 173, 174, 206, 215, 216, 217 capital accumulation 107, 108, 123, 182, 183, 191, 211 and the activity spheres 128 barriers to 12, 16, 47, 65–6, 69–70, 159 compound rate 28, 74, 75, 97, 126, 135, 215 continuity of endless 74 at the core of human evolutionary dynamics 121 dynamics of 188, 197 geographic landscape of 185 geographical dynamics of 67, 143 and governance 201 lagging 130 laws of 113, 154, 160 main centres of 192 market-based 180 Mumbai redevelopment 178 ‘nature’ affected by 122 and population growth 144–7 and social struggles 105 start of 159 capital circulation barriers to 45 continuity of 68 industrial/production capital 40–41 inherently risky 52 interruption in the process 41–2, 50 spatial movement 42 speculative 52, 53 capital controls 198 capital flow continuity 41, 47, 67, 117 defined vi global 20 importance of understanding vi, vii-viii interrupted, slowed down or suspended vi systematic misallocation of 70 taxation of vi wealth creation vi capital gains 112 capital strike 60 capital surplus absorption 31–2, 94, 97, 98, 101, 163 capital-labour relation 77 capitalism and communism 224–5 corporate 1691 ‘creative-destructive’ tendencies in 46 crisis of vi, 40, 42, 117, 130 end of 72 evolution of 117, 118, 120 expansion at a compound rate 45 first contradiction of 77 geographical development of 143 geographical mobility 161 global 36, 110 historical geography of 76, 117, 118, 121, 174, 180, 200, 202, 204 industrial 58, 109, 242 internal contradictions 115 irrationality of 11, 215, 246 market-led 203 positive and negative aspects 120 and poverty 72 relies on the beneficence of nature 71 removal of 260 rise of 135, 192, 194, 204, 228, 248–9, 258 ‘second contradiction of’ 77, 78 social relations in 101 and socialism 224 speculative 160 survival of 46, 57, 66, 86, 107, 112, 113, 116, 130, 144, 229, 246 uneven geographical development of 211, 213 volatile 145 Capitalism, Nature, Socialism journal 77 capitalist creed 103 capitalist development considered over time 121–4 ‘eras’ of 97 capitalist exploitation 104 capitalist logic 205 capitalist reinvestment 110–11 capitalists, types of 40 Carnegie, Andrew 98 Carnegie foundation 44 Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 195 Carson, Rachel: Silent Spring 187 Case Shiller Composite Indices SA 3 Catholic Church 194, 254 cell phones 131, 150, 152 Central American Free Trade Association (CAFTA) 200 centralisation 10, 11, 165, 201 Certificates of Deposit 262 chambers of commerce 195, 203 Channel Tunnel 50 Chiapas, Mexico 207, 226 Chicago Board Options Exchange 262 Chicago Currency Futures Market 262 ‘Chicago School’ 246 Chile, lending to 19 China ‘barefoot doctors’ 137 bilateral trade with Latin America 173 capital accumulation issue 70 cheap retail goods 64 collapse of communism 16 collapse of export markets 141 Cultural Revolution 137 Deng’s announcement 159 falling exports 6 follows Japanese model 92 ‘Great Leap Forward’ 137, 138 growth 35, 59, 137, 144–5, 213, 218, 222 health care 137 huge foreign exchange reserves 141, 206 infant mortality 59 infrastructural investment 222 labour income and household consumption (1980–2005) 14 market closed after communists took power (1949) 108 market forcibly opened 108 and oil market 83 one child per family policy 137, 146 one-party rule 199 opening-up of 58 plundering of wealth from 109, 113 proletarianisation 60 protests in 38 and rare earth metals 188 recession (1997) 172 ‘silk road’ 163 trading networks 163 unemployment 6 unrest in 66 urbanisation 172–3 and US consumerism 109 Chinese Central Bank 4, 173 Chinese Communist Party 180, 200, 256 chlorofluoral carbons (CFCs) 74, 76, 187 chronometer 91, 156 Church, the 249 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) 169 circular and cumulative causation 196 Citibank 19 City Bank 261 city centres, Disneyfication of 131 City of London 20, 35, 45, 162, 219 class consciousness 232, 242, 244 class inequalities 240–41 class organisation 62 class politics 62 class power 10, 11, 12, 61, 130, 180 class relations, radical reconstitution of 98 class struggle 56, 63, 65, 96, 102, 127, 134, 193, 242, 258 Clausewitz, Carl von 213 Cleveland, foreclosure crisis in 2 Cleveland, foreclosures on housing in 1 Clinton, Bill 11, 12, 17, 44, 45 co-evolution 132, 136, 138, 168, 185, 186, 195, 197, 228, 232 in three cases 149–53 coal reserves 79, 188 coercive laws of competition see under competition Cold War 31, 34, 92 Collateralised Bond Obligations (CBOs) 262 Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) 36, 142, 261, 262 Collateralised Mortgage Obligations (CMOs) 262 colonialism 212 communications, innovations in 42, 93 communism 228, 233, 242, 249 collapse of 16, 58, 63 compared with socialism 224 as a loaded term 259–60 orthodox communists 253 revolutionary 136 traditional institutionalised 259 companies joint stock 49 limited 49 comparative advantage 92 competition 15, 26, 43, 70 between financial centres 20 coercive laws of 43, 71, 90, 95, 158, 159, 161 and expansion of production 113 and falling prices 29, 116 fostering 52 global economic 92, 131 and innovation 90, 91 inter-capitalist 31 inter-state 209, 256 internalised 210 interterritorial 202 spatial 164 and the workforce 61 competitive advantage 109 computerised trading 262 computers 41, 99, 158–9 consortia 50, 220 consumerism 95, 109, 168, 175, 240 consumerist excess 176 credit-fuelled 118 niche 131 suburban 171 containerisation 16 Continental Illinois Bank 261 cooperatives 234, 242 corporate fraud 245 corruption 43, 69 cotton industry 67, 144, 162 credit cards fees vii, 245 rise of the industry 17 credit crunch 140 Credit Default swaps 262 Crédit Immobilièr 54 Crédit Mobilier 54 Crédit Mobilier and Immobilier 168 credit swaps 21 credit system and austerity programmes 246 crisis within 52 and the current crisis 118 and effective demand problem 112 an inadequate configuration of 52 predatory practices 245 role of 115 social and economic power in 115 crises crises of disproportionality 70 crisis of underconsumption 107, 111 east Asia (1997–8) 6, 8, 35, 49, 246 financial crisis of 1997–8 198, 206 financial crisis of 2008 34, 108, 114, 115 general 45–6 inevitable 71 language of crisis 27 legitimation 217 necessary 71 property market 8 role of 246–7 savings and loan crisis (US, 1984–92) 8 short sharp 8, 10 south-east Asia (1997–8) 6, 8, 35, 49, 246 cross-border leasing 142–3 cultural choice 238 ‘cultural industries’ 21 cultural preferences 73–4 Cultural Revolution 137 currency currency swaps 262 futures market 24, 32 global 32–3, 34 options markets on 262 customs barriers 42, 43 cyberspace 190 D Darwin, Charles 120 DDT 74, 187 de-leveraging 30 debt-financing 17, 131, 141, 169 decentralisation 165, 201 decolonisation 31, 208, 212 deficit financing 35, 111 deforestation 74, 143 deindustrialisation 33, 43, 88, 131, 150, 157, 243 Deleuze, Gilles 128 demand consumer 107, 109 effective 107, 110–14, 116, 118, 221, 222 lack of 47 worker 108 Democratic Party (US) 11 Deng Xiaoping 159 deregulation 11, 16, 54, 131 derivatives 8 currency 21 heavy losses in (US) 261 derivatives markets creation of 29, 85 unregulated 99, 100, 219 Descartes, René 156 desertification 74 Detroit auto industry 5, 15, 16, 91, 108, 195, 216 foreclosures on housing in 1 Deutsches Bank 20 devaluation 32, 47, 116 of bank capital 30 of prior investments 93 developing countries: transformation of daily lives 94–5 Developing Countries Debt Crisis 19, 261 development path building alliances 230 common objectives 230–31 development not the same as growth 229–30 impacts and feedbacks from other spaces in the global economy 230 Diamond, Jared: Guns, Germs and Steel 132–3, 154 diasporas 147, 155, 163 Dickens, Charles: Bleak House 90 disease 75, 85 dispossession anti-communist insurgent movements against 250–51 of arbitrary feudal institutions 249 of the capital class 260 China 179–80 first category 242–4 India 178–9, 180 movements against 247–52 second category 242, 244–5 Seoul 179 types of 247 under socialism and communism 250 Domar, Evsey 71 Dongguan, China 36 dot-com bubble 29, 261 Dow 35,000 prediction 21 drug trade 45, 49 Dubai: over-investment 10 Dubai World 174, 222 Durban conference on anti-racism (2009) 258 E ‘earth days’ 72, 171 east Asia crash of 1997–8 6, 8, 35, 49, 246 labour reserves 64 movement of production to 43 proletarianisation 62 state-centric economies 226 wage rates 62 eastern European countries 37 eBay 190 economic crisis (1848) 167 economists, and the current financial crisis 235–6 ecosystems 74, 75, 76 Ecuador, and remittances 38 education 59, 63, 127, 128, 221, 224, 257 electronics industry 68 Elizabeth II, Queen vi-vii, 235, 236, 238–9 employment casual part-time low-paid female 150 chronic job insecurity 93 culture of the workplace 104 deskilling 93 reskilling 93 services 149 Engels, Friedrich 89, 98, 115, 157, 237 The Housing Question 176–7, 178 Enron 8, 24, 52, 53, 100, 261 entertainment industries 41 environment: modified by human action 84–5 environmental movement 78 environmental sciences 186–7 equipment 58, 66–7 equity futures 262 equity index swaps 262 equity values 262 ethanol plants 80 ethnic cleansings 247 ethnicity issues 104 Eurodollars 262 Europe negative population growth in western Europe 146 reconstruction of economy after Second World War 202 rsouevolutions of 1848 243 European Union 200, 226 eastern European countries 37 elections (June 2009) 143 unemployment 140 evolution punctuated equilibrium theory of natural evolution 130 social 133 theory of 120, 129 exchange rates 24, 32, 198 exports, falling 141 external economies 162 F Factory Act (1848) 127 factory inspectors 127 ‘failed states’ 69 Fannie Mae (US government-chartered mortgage institution) 4, 17, 173, 223 fascism 169, 203, 233 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) 8 rescue of Continental Illinois Bank 261 Federal Reserve System (the Fed) 2, 17, 54, 116, 219, 236, 248 and asset values 6 cuts interest rates 5, 261 massive liquidity injections in stock markets 261 rescue of Continental Illinois Bank 261 feminists, and colonisation of urban neighbourhoods 248 fertilisers 186 feudalism 135, 138, 228 finance capitalists 40 financial institutions awash with credit 17 bankruptcies 261 control of supply and demand for housing 17 nationalisations 261 financial services 99 Financial Times 12 financialisation 30, 35, 98, 245 Finland: Nordic cris (1992) 8 Flint strike, Michigan (1936–7) 243 Florida, foreclosure wave in 1, 2 Forbes magazine 29, 223 Ford, Henry 64, 98, 160, 161, 188, 189 Ford foundation 44, 186 Fordism 136 Fordlandia 188, 189 foreclosed businesses 245 foreclosed properties 220 fossil fuels 78 Foucault, Michel 134 Fourierists 168 France acceptance of state interventions 200 financial crisis (1868) 168 French banks nationalised 198 immigration 14 Paris Commune 168 pro-natal policies 59 strikes in 38 train network 28 Franco-Prussian War (1870) 168 fraud 43, 49 Freddie Mac (US government-chartered mortgage institution) 4, 17, 173, 223 free trade 10, 33, 90, 131 agreements 42 French Communist Party 52 French Revolution 61 Friedman, Thomas L.: The World is Flat 132 futures, energy 24 futures markets 21 Certificates of Deposit 262 currency 24 Eurodollars 262 Treasury instruments 262 G G7/G8/G20 51, 200 Galileo Galilei 89 Gates, Bill 98, 173, 221 Gates foundation 44 gays, and colonisation of urban neighbourhoods 247, 248 GDP growth (1950–2030) 27 Gehry, Frank 203 Geithner, Tim 11 gender issues 104, 151 General Motors 5 General Motors Acceptance Corporation 23 genetic engineering 84, 98 genetic modification 186 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) 186 gentrification 131, 256, 257 geographical determinism 210 geopolitics 209, 210, 213, 256 Germany acceptance of state interventions 199–200 cross-border leasing 142–3 an export-dominated economy 6 falling exports 141 invasion of US auto market 15 Nazi expansionism 209 neoliberal orthodoxies 141 Turkish immigrants 14 Weimar inflation 141 Glass-Steagall act (1933) 20 Global Crossing 100 global warming 73, 77, 121, 122, 187 globalisation 157 Glyn, Andrew et al: ‘British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze’ 65 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 156 gold reserves 108, 112, 116 Goldman Sachs 5, 11, 20, 163, 173, 219 Google Earth 156 Gould, Stephen Jay 98, 130 governance 151, 197, 198, 199, 201, 208, 220 governmentality 134 GPS systems 156 Gramsci, Antonio 257 Grandin, Greg: Fordlandia 188, 189 grassroots organisations (GROS) 254 Great Depression (1920s) 46, 170 ‘Great Leap Forward’ 137, 138, 250 ‘Great Society’ anti-poverty programmes 32 Greater London Council 197 Greece sovereign debt 222 student unrest in 38 ‘green communes’ 130 Green Party (Germany) 256 ‘green revolution’ 185–6 Greenspan, Alan 44 Greider, William: Secrets of the Temple 54 growth balanced 71 compound 27, 28, 48, 50, 54, 70, 75, 78, 86 economic 70–71, 83, 138 negative 6 stop in 45 Guggenheim Museu, Bilbao 203 Gulf States collapse of oil-revenue based building boom 38 oil production 6 surplus petrodollars 19, 28 Gulf wars 210 gun trade 44 H habitat loss 74, 251 Haiti, and remittances 38 Hanseatic League 163 Harrison, John 91 Harrod, Roy 70–71 Harvey, David: A Brief History of Neoliberalism 130 Harvey, William vii Haushofer, Karl 209 Haussmann, Baron 49, 167–8, 169, 171, 176 Hawken, Paul: Blessed Unrest 133 Hayek, Friedrich 233 health care 28–9, 59, 63, 220, 221, 224 reneging on obligations 49 Health Care Bill 220 hedge funds 8, 21, 49, 261 managers 44 hedging 24, 36 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 133 hegemony 35–6, 212, 213, 216 Heidegger, Martin 234 Helú, Carlos Slim 29 heterogeneity 214 Hitler, Adolf 141 HIV/AIDS pandemic 1 Holloway, John: Change the World without Taking Power 133 homogeneity 214 Hong Kong excessive urban development 8 rise of (1970s) 35 sweatshops 16 horizontal networking 254 household debt 17 housing 146–7, 149, 150, 221, 224 asset value crisis 1, 174 foreclosure crises 1–2, 166 mortgage finance 170 values 1–2 HSBC 20, 163 Hubbert, M.

The Locavore's Dilemma
by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu
Published 29 May 2012

Despite the obvious finiteness of their surroundings, humans have long been able to develop profitable new technologies to achieve the same or better results while using less resources; to extract valuable materials from more remote locations (for example, offshore drilling) or from less interesting materials (such as less concentrated ores); and to create substitutes out of previously worthless raw materials and industrial residuals that proved their advantage over previous alternatives, such as being more powerful and/or abundant; stronger and/or lighter; and/or easier to produce, handle, transport, and/or store. For instance, because they did not burn cleanly without modern technologies, coal and petroleum were not very valuable for most of human history. In recent years, in North America alone, the advent of shale gas, increased onshore oil production from shale rock, new recovery techniques that make it economical to extract oil left in old wells, new oil field discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico, and advances that have drastically reduced production costs in the Canadian oil sands, have all ensured an abundant supply of affordable transportation fuels for at least several decades, if not for a few centuries.73 Sure, one day humanity will move beyond fossil fuels, but it will not be because we have run out of them, but rather because better alternatives have come along.

Unfinished Business
by Tamim Bayoumi

Such markets have helped the economy to adapt to unexpected changes such as the rise in oil prices in the 1970s (which supported the oil-producing Southwest region while hurting the manufacturing core of the Great Lakes economy), through the slump in oil prices later in the 1980s, the rise in the information technology sector in the 1990s, and the more recent oil shale boom. While these shocks have all involved regional winners and losers, the costs have been reduced by the ability of the US economy to adapt. An important expectation for European monetary union was that the constraints of a single currency would inspire deregulation of labor and product markets.23 This would increase the rate of growth of the region and make it more flexible and hence a better currency union.

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions
by Greta Thunberg
Published 14 Feb 2023

The good news is that some of the most vibrant and inspiring alternatives to this extractive, racist system are being led by BIPOC communities. Incinerators and coal plants are closing, and the Dakota Access and Atlantic Coast Pipelines have lost their permits, while the struggle against Line 3 – which would double the amount of oil going from the Alberta Tar Sands to northern Wisconsin – rages on. From Brooklyn, New York, to Boise, Idaho, to Laredo, Texas, sparks of light can be seen in the actions of people from the communities that are most at risk. These range from local food movements to recycling initiatives, clean energy projects, and more. One illuminating example comes from the Jenesse Center in Los Angeles, which takes an intersectional approach to advancing liberation and sustainability, showing how we can move from away from an extractive economy and towards a living one.

…

This is the opposite of fossil fuel: oil, gas and coal do not get cheaper over time, because we’ve already used up most of the deposits that are easy to get at: where once drillers in the Texas Panhandle would hit ‘gushers’ shooting crude into the sky, now they have to drill miles beneath the ocean, or heat tar-sand oil until the gunk will flow through pipelines. By this point, renewable energy is the cheapest source of energy almost everywhere on Earth – and that’s even before you start to figure in the huge economic cost of overheating the planet. You would think that would mean we’d quickly convert to renewable energy, and indeed it’s starting to happen.

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See also individual movement and organisation name advertising, 29, 272, 285–9, 295, 332, 334, 377, 432 aerosol emissions, 55, 57–9, 60–61, 99, 119, 121, 233, 303–4 Africa: access to modern energy in, 222; agriculture in, 245, 400, 402–4; carbon dioxide emissions from territorial and consumption-based accounting perspectives 258; climate conflicts in, 189, 190; colonization of, 388, 398; Covid-19 and, 378; diet transitions in, 249; equity in, 398; historical carbon dioxide emissions, 383; Homo sapiens evolution and, 9, 11; locust swarms, 378; per capita carbon dioxide emissions 408; plastic pollution, 296; rainfall, 171–2; refugees, climate, 167; rewilding projects in, 350; Sahel region, 167, 171–2; slavery and, 162; sub-Saharan, 88–9, 145, 162, 167, 171–2, 245, 273, 291, 292, 293, 383, 408; transport greenhouse gas emissions, 266, 267; undernutrition in, 246; vector-borne disease in, 143, 145; vulnerability to climate change, 402; waste generation in, 291, 292, 293, 425; water crises, 88–9; women and climate change in, 402–4 African Americans, 163, 164, 412 aggregates, 116, 187, 224 agriculture. See farming air-conditioning, 52, 138–9, 157, 183 air pollution, 25, 28, 51–2, 57–9, 96, 133, 135, 137, 138, 140–42, 141, 157, 163, 290, 378–9, 427 Alberta Tar Sands, Canada, 164, 221 algae, 7, 15, 233, 246, 340, 345 Amazon rainforest, 14, 38, 39, 82, 91, 93, 96, 97, 99–101, 176 American Clean Energy and Security Act (2009), 30 amines, 238 ammonia 55, 273 Amsterdam, 333–4 Andhra Pradesh, India, 151, 152–3 Anishinaabe people, 415 ‘announced pledges’ 261 Antarctica, 33, 38, 39, 72, 76–7, 80, 82, 85, 91, 114, 124 Anthropocene, 32, 33, 37, 76, 310, 380 antibiotic resistance, 147–8 apathy, overcoming climate, 337–9 aquifers, 88, 170 Arctic: Indigenous people of, 173–5, 418; jet stream and, 62–6, 63, 64; methane release, 118–21, 120, 239; permafrost deposits, 91, 118–21, 120; sea ice melt, 24, 33, 38, 39, 51, 62–6, 63, 64, 76, 91, 93, 114, 115, 124, 173–5, 233; wildfires, 98 Arctic Ocean, 62, 86, 91, 118, 124 Arrhenius, Svante, 23 Asia: climate refugees in 167; Covid-19 and, 380–81; diet transition in, 249; food systems, 253, 254; heat-related deaths in, 137; monsoon, 83; per capita carbon dioxide emissions (2019) 408; plastic pollution, 296, 297; rewilding in, 350; transport greenhouse gas emissions, 266, 266, 267, 273, 275, 276–7; undernutrition in, 246; waste generation, 291, 292, 293, 425; water supply, 73; wealth and greenhouse gas emissions in, 406; weather events, 65 Atlantic Coast Pipelines, 164 Atlantic Ocean 38, 39, 75, 121, 164, 170, 192, 293, 294, 325, 349; Atlantic heat conveyer, 39; Atlantification, 121; Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), 39, 81–3, 82, 344 Attenborough, Sir David, 370 attribution science, 67–9, 75, 97 Australia, 4, 9, 11–15, 16–17, 27, 51, 74, 75, 97–8, 109, 155, 209, 221, 250, 254, 258 authoritarian regimes, 181, 192, 412, 433 averaged relative environmental impact (AREI), 249, 249, 250, 250 aviation: carbon dioxide emissions statistics and, 4, 156, 212, 269–70, 306, 389, 429, 430, 434; carbon taxes and, 407; as driver of global warming, 55; electrification of, 271, 273; equity and carbon dioxide emissions from, 275; flygskam (flight shame), 329; frequent flying, 207, 270, 325, 333; greenhouse gas emissions from in 1970, 1990 and 2010, 266, 266, 269–70; offsets, 209; private jets, 280, 312, 333; reducing/giving up flying, 325, 328, 329, 434 B Badain Jaran Desert, China, 241, 242–3 Bangladesh, 69, 159–60, 282, 371, 413–14 bark beetle, 192 barn swallow, 115 Batagaika crater, Siberia, 93, 94–5 batteries, 26, 56, 220, 222, 226, 228, 268, 272, 273 BBC, 370 BC Provincial Inventory Report (2021), 105 beaches, 86, 169–70, 296 beavers, 12, 349, 415 BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage), 212, 216, 237, 238, 303 beef, 248–51, 288, 312, 338, 341–2, 343 bees, 108, 110, 111, 339 beetles, 104 Bergmann’s rule, 114 Bernays, Edward: Propaganda 332, 333 big-eared hopping mouse, 13 biodiversity: Aichi Biodiversity Targets (2010), 90, 93; Amazon rainforest and, 101; BECCS and, 212; biomass energy and, 229; food systems and, 246–7, 248–9, 252, 253, 254–5, 342; forests and, 101, 102–9, 103, 104, 105, 108, 231, 232; GDP and, 307; ‘hotspots’ 14, 96, 111, 418; Indigenous communities and, 172, 177, 417–19; insect, 111, 112; ocean, 85, 344–5, 346, 347; planting trees and, 430; sea-level rise and, 170; severe threats to around the world 108; soil and, 116; solar power and, 228; Sustainable Development Goals and, 90; terrestrial, 32, 34, 106–9, 108; transport and, 265; wildfires and, 96 biofuels, 140, 211, 226–7, 237, 268, 271, 431, 432 biogenic emissions, 4, 156, 212, 389, 429, 430 biogeography, 85 biomass burning, 91–2, 99, 211, 212, 216, 225, 226, 229, 231, 237, 238, 280, 302, 303, 431 birds: biomass, 244; extinction, 12–13, 107, 150, 360, 415–17; habitat loss, 102, 250; migratory, 113–15; songbirds, 415–17 black-and-white issues, 2, 20 black carbon, 53, 55, 99, 119, 121, 190–91 Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities, 163 Black Panther Party, 413 body size, reductions in species, 114 Bondo, Switzerland, 91 border controls, 168 boreal forest, 38, 91, 93, 102–4, 103, 104, 105, 109, 115, 121, 230, 231, 245 both-sidesism, 91, 432 Bramble Cay melomys, 14–15, 109 Brazil, 93, 100, 176, 245, 258, 350, 413 Break Free From Plastic, 296 bridge fuel, 30 bridging technology, 232 British Columbia, 50, 98, 102, 104–5, 104, 322–3, 325, 408–9 British Petroleum, 326 British Virgin Islands, 170 Broecker, Wallace (Wally), 78, 83 burgers, 341 ‘burning embers’ graph, 39 Bush, George H.

An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies
by Tyler Cowen
Published 11 Apr 2012

The good news, if I can call it that, is that carbon taxes are likely to prove more effective over time at limiting carbon production. For instance, as the global economy pumps and uses more fossil fuels, the most profitable supply sources—which get used first—tend to dry up. In other words, we used readily available, “suck it up with a straw” Texas oil and Saudi oil quite early on, and we will use oil from tar sands—a far more expensive technology—later in time, and indeed we are already making that switch to the tougher processes. That means we have a world of only marginally profitable fossil fuel producers, and it is easier to induce everyone to switch to new technologies. In contrast, we’re not going to get the Saudis out of their oil-pumping game until they run out of the easy stuff, no matter what kind of tax we enact.

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See also shipping and transportation infrastructure and the Aztecs, 143 and barbecue, 89 and chili peppers, 207 and cities, 143–44 and cross-subsidies, 65 and French food, 226–27, 229 and Genetically Modified Organisms, 165 historical influences on, 36 and home cooking, 245–46 and immigrants, 28–29 impact on quality of American food, 17–19 and Mexican food, 196, 210 and Nicaraguan food, 5 and poverty, 155–56 and Singaporean foods, 221–22 sushi, 58, 118, 122–23, 216, 218, 258 Susur: A Culinary Life (Lee), 249 Swanson, 35 sweets shops, 224, 240 Switzerland, 222, 235–37 Syngenta, 162 Syria, 157 tacit knowledge, 251 Taco Bell, 188 tacos, 190 Tad’s, 17 Taino culture, 89–90 Taiwanese restaurants, 136 tamales, 7 Tanzania, 129–30 tapas, 20, 239–40 taquerías, 188 Tarahumaras, 251 tariffs, 192 tar sands, 181 Tastee Chinese Food, 52 tastes of consumers, 183–84 taxi drivers, 3–4, 216–17 tax policy, 149, 158, 178–80 teas, 49 technological progress and agricultural revolutions, 146 changing pace of, 13 and home cooking, 258–59 and hunger and malnutrition, 151–52 and kitchen appliances, 35 mechanization of food production, 96, 100–107, 143–44, 154, 203, 205–6 and Mexican food, 209 and modern food market, 154 telegraph, 144 television, 18, 33–37 Teochew food, 221 teosinte, 143 Texas and barbecue, 12, 88, 105–7, 109, 111, 259 and food trucks, 76 and immigration restrictions, 31 and liquor laws, 25–26 and Mexican food, 189, 190, 192, 195, 199, 203, 206 and oil, 181 and perceptions of American food, 19 Texas de Brazil, 111 Texas Monthly, 88 Tex-Mex food, 31, 188 Thai Food (Thompson), 118–19 Thailand and Thai food and agricultural revolutions, 146 described, 116–22 and ethnic supermarkets, 50 and influential cookbooks, 251 in London, 232 and low-rent areas, 75 and seafood, 59 Thai Street Food (Thompson), 119 Thai X-ing, 119–20 Thermomix, 255–56 Thompson, David, 118–19 Ticciati, Laura, 164 Ticciati, Robin, 164 Tijuana, Mexico, 195 Time Out, 237 Tim Hortons, 94 Tlaxcala, Mexico, 98 tofu, 217 Tokyo, Japan, 214–19 tomatoes, 90, 206, 208–10, 246 Tony Roma’s, 96 torta sandwich, 202 tortillas, 141–42, 201–6, 246 tort law, 197 tourism and foods of Istanbul, 241 and foods of London, 231 and French food, 226, 229, 231 and Italian food, 237 and rules for finding good food, 70, 73, 74 traffic patterns, 74 trains, 193 transportation.

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans
by Mark Lynas
Published 3 Oct 2011

With the all-important political tipping point not crossed, companies that had begun to reposition for the post-carbon age instead began to fall back into their old roles. For example BP, which for a few years rebranded itself as “Beyond Petroleum” and flirted with solar power, moved strongly back into fossil fuels, even investing heavily in oil extraction in the dirty Canadian tar sands. Of course, it is also important to recognize that moving out of fossil fuels was always going to be orders of magnitude harder than disavowing CFCs—oil, coal, and gas provide most of the energy powering modern industrial civilization, rather than being important for just a small number of specific uses and processes.

…

Again, this is to misunderstand the physical and ecological nature of the proposed boundaries: It makes no difference to the biosphere if humans run out of iron, for example. Nor does it make any difference if we use up all the cheaply extractable oil—as has recently become the concern of the “peak oil” crowd—except to the extent that humanity’s response to declining oil supplies, like burning more coal or extracting more tar sands, will negatively affect real planetary boundaries like climate change. But peak oil might also be a good thing if it adds to rising prices of fossil fuels sufficiently to encourage the faster uptake of low-and zero-carbon alternatives. Either way, the planetary boundaries are the metric by which humanity’s response to resource crunches should be judged—they are not concerned with resource shortages in and of themselves.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Published 11 Apr 2005

Just for good measure, he goes on to write: High prices can have another unfortunate effect for producers. When crude costs $10 a barrel or even $30 a barrel, alternative fuels are prohibitively expensive. For example, Canada has vast amounts of tar sands that can be rendered into heavy oil, but the cost of doing so is quite high. Yet those tar sands and other alternatives, like bioethanol, hydrogen fuel cells and liquid fuel from natural gas or coal, become economically viable as the going rate for a barrel rises past, say, $40 or more, especially if consuming governments choose to offer their own incentives or subsidies.

Scotland Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

James Watt (1736–1819) didn’t invent the steam engine (that was done by an Englishman, Thomas Newcomen), but it was Watt’s modifications and improvements – notably the separate condenser – that led to its widespread usefulness in industry. The chemical engineer James Young (1811–83), known as ‘Paraffin’ Young, developed the process of refining crude oil and established the world’s first oil industry, based on extracting oil from the oil shales of West Lothian. Not only did John Logie Baird (1888–1946) from Helensburgh invent TV, but it was his own company that produced (with the BBC) the world’s first TV broadcast, the first broadcast with sound and the first outside broadcast. He also developed the concept of colour TV and took out a patent on fibre optics.

…

The geological divide – the Southern Uplands Fault – runs in a line from Girvan (Ayrshire) to Dunbar (East Lothian). The Central Lowlands lie in a broad band stretching from Glasgow and Ayr in the west to Edinburgh and Dundee in the east. This area is underlaid by sedimentary rocks, including the beds of coal and oil shale that fuelled Scotland’s Industrial Revolution. Though it’s only a fifth of the nation by land area, most of the country’s industry, its two largest cities and 80% of the population are concentrated here. Seventeen per cent of Scotland is forested, compared with England’s 7%, Finland’s 74% and a worldwide average of 30%.

Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization
by Vaclav Smil
Published 16 Dec 2013

Annual consumption has recently fluctuated around 25 Mt/year: about 40% of this total is pure silica used in glassmaking, and a fifth goes to foundries to make moldings and refractories as well as silicon carbide for flux and metal smelting. Smaller but functionally irreplaceable uses include abrasives used in blasting and sanding, sands for water filtration, and sands for creating artificial beaches and sporting areas. A new, and rapidly rising, market is for the special kinds of sands used in hydraulic fracturing of gas- and oil-bearing shales, well-packing, and cementing. Other materials aggregated by the USGS into the heterogeneous group of industrial minerals include elements (carbon in the form of graphite and diamonds, boron, bromine, hafnium, helium, lithium, nitrogen, sulfur, strontium, zirconium) as well as both abundant (phosphate, potash, salt) and relatively rare (gemstones, industrial garnet, quartz crystal) compounds.

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The simplest mining and preparation sequence to produce fairly clean sand and uniformly-sized sand may require no more than 100 MJ/t, and even more costly gravel sorting (or crushing as needed) should have an energy cost well below 500 MJ/t. The highest energy input is required for the preparation of the industrial sand that is used in glassmaking, ceramics and refractory materials, metal smelting and casting, paints, and now also increasingly in hydraulic fractioning of gas- and oil-bearing shales: its moisture must be reduced (in heavy-duty rotary or fluidized-bed dryers) to less than 0.5%, and this may consume close to 1 GJ/t. Bricks fired in inefficient rural furnaces in Asia may require as much as 2 GJ/t, just 1.1–1.2 GJ/t is typical for Chinese enterprises (Global Environmental Facility, 2012; Li, 2012) while US production of high-quality bricks requires 2.3 GJ/t (USEPA, 2003).

No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends
by Richard Dobbs and James Manyika
Published 12 May 2015

Today, three major areas of innovation in energy could transform the supply picture over the coming decade: oil and gas technologies, renewable energy, and advanced battery technology. In oil and gas, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling have enabled the large-scale extraction of gas and oil from shale rock and are already making a difference in global markets. Although fracking is controversial on environmental grounds, there is no doubting its extraordinary impact. In the United States, where natural gas production soared 25 percent between 2000 and 2013, winter gas prices have halved since 2008.53 Driven by new technology, as we’ve noted earlier, the United States in 2013 surpassed Russia as the world’s largest producer of hydrocarbons, and by 2020, it could become the world’s largest producer of oil, according to the International Energy Agency.54 In addition to improving cost and access to new oil reserves, government efforts on researching and developing technology have also contributed to dramatic improvement in recovery rates of existing reserves.

Paper Promises
by Philip Coggan
Published 1 Dec 2011

In terms of our earlier equation, we have to put in a lot more units of energy to extract the same amount of utility. The profit margins of the global ‘company’ have declined. Some numbers may help. The oil deposits found in the 1930s produced about 100 times as much energy as they took to exploit; in the 1970s, the ratio was around 30 to 1.14 But Canadian tar sands require a lot of heat and energy to refine; one estimate suggests they only produce 70 per cent more energy than it costs to extract them, or a ratio of 1.7 to 1.15 16 Biofuels may be even worse. Why does this matter? We are accustomed to improvements in productivity; creating more output with fewer inputs.

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Index AAA Status of US Adams, Douglas Adams, John Addison, Lord Adenauer, Konrad adjustable rate mortgages adulterating coins affluent society Afghanistan ageing populations agrarian revolution Ahamed, Liaquat AIG air miles Alaska Amazon.com Angell, Norman Anglo Irish Bank annuities Argentina Aristophanes Arkansas Asian crisis of 1997 – 8 asset prices assignats Athens Austen, Jane austerity Austria Austrian school Austro-Hungarian empire Aztecs B&Q baby boomers Babylon Bagehot, Walter bailouts balanced budget Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem Balfour, Arthur Bancor Bank for International Settlements bank notes Bank of England bank reserves bank runs bankruptcy codes Banque Generale Barclays Capital Baring, Peter Baring Brothers Barnes & Noble barter Basle Accords Bastiat, Frederic BCA Research BCCI bear markets Bear Stearns Beaverbrook, Lord Belgium Belloc, Hillaire Benn, Tony Benn, William Wedgwood Bernanke, Ben Bernholz, Peter bezant Big Bang Big Mac index bills of exchange bimetallism biofuels Bismarck, Otto von Black Death Black Monday black swan Blackstone Blair, Tony Blum, Léon BMW Bodencreditanstalt Bohemia Bolsheviks Bonnet, Georges Bootle, Roger Brady, Nicholas Brady bonds Brazil Bretton Woods system Brodsky, Paul Brooke, Rupert Brown, Gordon Bruning, Heinrich Brutus Bryan, William Jennings bubbles budget deficits budget surplus building societies Buiter, Willem Bundesbank Burns, Arthur Bush, George W. Business Week Butler, Eamonn Calder, Lendol California Callaghan, Jim Calvin, John Canada Canadian Tar Sands capital controls capital economics capital flows capital ratios carried interest carry trade Carville, James Cassano, Joseph Cato Institute Cayne, Jimmy CDU Party ‘Celtic tiger’ central bank reserves Cesarino, Filippo ‘Chapter’ Charlemagne Charles I, King of England cheques/checks chief executive pay Chile China Churchill, Winston civil war (English) civil war (US) Citigroup clearing union Clientilism Clinton, Bill CNBC collateralized debt obligations commerical banks commercial property commodity prices Compagnie D’Occident comparative advantage conduits confederacy Congdon, Tim Congress, US Connally, John Conservative Party Consols Constantine, Emperor of Rome consumer price inflation continental bonds convergence trade convertibility of gold suspended Coolidge, Calvin copper Cottarelli, Carlo Council of Nicea Cowen, Brian cowrie shells Credit Anstalt credit cards credit crisis of 2007 – 8 credit crunch credit default swaps ‘cross of gold’ speech Cunliffe committee Currency Board currency wars Dante Alighieri David Copperfield Davies, Glyn debasing the currency debit cards debt ceiling debt clock debt deflation spiral debt trap debtors vs creditors, battle defaults defined contribution pension deflation Defoe, Daniel Delors, Jacques Democratic convention of 1896 Democratic Party Democratic Republic of Congo demographics denarii Denmark deposit insurance depreciation of currencies derivatives Deutsche Bank Deutschmark devaluation Dickens, Charles Dionysius of Syracuse Dodd – Frank bill dollar, US Dow Jones Industrial Average drachma Duke, Elizabeth Dumas, Charles Duncan, Richard Durst, Seymour Dutch Republic East Germany East Indies companies Economist Edward III, King of England Edwards, Albert efficient-market theory Egypt Eichengreen, Barry electronic money embedded energy energy efficiency estate agents Estates General Ethelred the Unready euro eurobonds eurodollar market European Central Bank European Commission European Financial Stability Facility European Monetary System European Union eurozone Exchange Rate Mechanism, European exorbitant privilege farmers Federal Reserve Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Federalist party fertility rate ‘fiat money’ Fiji final salary pension Financial Services Authority Financial Times Finland First Bank of the United States First World War fiscal policy fiscal union Fisher, Irving fixed exchange rates floating currencies florin Florio, Jim Ford, Gerald Ford, Henry Ford Motor Company Foreign & Colonial Trust foreign direct investment foreign exchange reserves Forni, Lorenzo Forsyte Saga France Francis I, King of France Franco-Prussian War Franklin, Benjamin French Revolution Friedman, Milton Fuld, Dick futures markets Galbraith, John Kenneth Galsworthy, John GATT Gaulle, Charles de Geithner, Tim General Electric General Motors general strike of 1926 Genghis Khan Genoa conference George V, King of England Germany gilts Gladstone, William Glass – Steagall Act Gleneagles summit Glorious Revolution GMO Gokhale, Jagadeesh gold gold exchange standard gold pool gold standard Goldman Sachs goldsmiths Goodhart, Charles Goodhart’s Law Goschen, George Gottschalk, Jan government bonds government debt Graham, Frank Granada Grantham, Jeremy Great Compression Great Depression Great Moderation Great Society Greece Greenspan, Alan Gresham, Sir Thomas Gresham’s Law Gross, Bill G7 nations G20 meeting Guinea Habsburgs Haiti Haldane, Andrew Hamilton, Alexander Hammurabi of Babylon Havenstein, Rudolf von Hayek, Friedrich Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative hedge funds Henderson, Arthur Henry VIII, King of England Hien Tsung, Chinese emperor Hitler, Adolf Hoar, George Frisbie Hohenzollern monarchy Holy Roman Empire Homer, Sydney Hoover, Herbert House of Representatives houses Hume, David Hussein, Saddam Hutchinson, Thomas Hyde, H.

With Liberty and Dividends for All: How to Save Our Middle Class When Jobs Don't Pay Enough
by Peter Barnes
Published 31 Jul 2014

“It has concentrated on the inside game, at the expense of broad-based organizing.”22 As Bill McKibben has said, the environmental movement needs to become a movement again. McKibben’s new organization, 350.org, is trying to make it that, using the Internet to connect self-organizing chapters. So far, its focus has been on stopping things, like the Keystone pipeline, which would bring Canadian tar sand oil to Gulf Coast refineries. But its larger goal—getting the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide concentration below 350 parts per million—is indelibly engraved in its name, and its preferred mechanism—charging polluters and paying dividends to all—has the potential to rally broad support. IN THE PAST, EACH GENERATION of Americans believed it would live better than the one that came before it.

Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent
by Douglas Coupland
Published 29 Sep 2014

Our species now has a babysitter, and we’re still trying to figure out just why it is that for an activity that’s so intensely and utterly private–going online–its net effect is that of locating and amplifying allegiances to groups. Fleetingly, I wonder if the Bell Labs building has free WiFi, but I wonder that wherever I go now. Fun fact: Starbucks has the world’s largest Internet footprint. Another fun fact: the tar sands processing town of Fort McMurray, Alberta, (population 76,000) has a disproportionately male population, and it also has North America’s highest video streaming rate per capita–all those dateless nights spent watching old M*A*S*H reruns, one supposes. Passing through the Bell Labs security gate, I look up once again at the purple A L logo.

Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations
by Norman Davies
Published 30 Sep 2009

An encyclopedia of Russia published in London in 1961, for example, was not so much factually inaccurate as incapable of distinguishing the wood from the trees: Estonia (Estonian Eesti or Eestimaa), Union Republic of the U.S.S.R, bordering on the Gulf of Finland, Latvia, the Baltic Sea and Lake Chudskoye in the east; it is mainly lowland plain, partially forested, with many lakes and marshes and a soft, almost maritime climate; Area 17,800 sq. m.; population (1959) 1,197,000 (56 per cent urban), mostly Estonians (73 per cent), also Russians (22 per cent), before the war also Germans. There are oil-shale extraction and processing, electrical engineering, textile, wood-processing and food (bacon and butter) industries; dairy farming and pig raising are carried on, and grain, potatoes, vegetables and flax cultivated. Principal towns: Tallinn (capital), Tartu, Pärnu, Narva, Kohtla-Järve… During the period of Estonian independence (1919–40) the country’s industry declined, being cut off from the Russian market, but agriculture flourished with the export of butter and bacon to Britain and Germany.

…

Several Estonian garrison towns, like Paldiski, were closed to civilians for decades. In the socio-economic sphere, it is true that Soviet planning promoted industrialization and urbanization, yet one can hardly refer to the subject without discussing the harsh, exploitative methods and their baleful consequences. The unrestrained exploitation of Estonia’s oil-shale beds for the benefit of Leningrad, for example, has ruined the town of Kohtla-Järve, which is now overshadowed by towering slag heaps. The nearby town of Ailamae was blessed with a Soviet nuclear processing plant, and has been left with a hopelessly polluted man-made lake that was used as a dump for dangerous waste.

Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe
by Norman Davies
Published 27 Sep 2011

An encyclopedia of Russia published in London in 1961, for example, was not so much factually inaccurate as incapable of distinguishing the wood from the trees: Estonia (Estonian Eesti or Eestimaa), Union Republic of the U.S.S.R, bordering on the Gulf of Finland, Latvia, the Baltic Sea and Lake Chudskoye in the east; it is mainly lowland plain, partially forested, with many lakes and marshes and a soft, almost maritime climate; Area 17,800 sq. m.; population (1959) 1,197,000 (56 per cent urban), mostly Estonians (73 per cent), also Russians (22 per cent), before the war also Germans. There are oil-shale extraction and processing, electrical engineering, textile, wood-processing and food (bacon and butter) industries; dairy farming and pig raising are carried on, and grain, potatoes, vegetables and flax cultivated. Principal towns: Tallinn (capital), Tartu, Pärnu, Narva, Kohtla-Järve … During the period of Estonian independence (1919–40) the country’s industry declined, being cut off from the Russian market, but agriculture flourished with the export of butter and bacon to Britain and Germany.

…

Several Estonian garrison towns, like Paldiski, were closed to civilians for decades. In the socio-economic sphere, it is true that Soviet planning promoted industrialization and urbanization, yet one can hardly refer to the subject without discussing the harsh, exploitative methods and their baleful consequences. The unrestrained exploitation of Estonia’s oil-shale beds for the benefit of Leningrad, for example, has ruined the town of Kohtla-Järve, which is now overshadowed by towering slag heaps. The nearby town of Ailamae was blessed with a Soviet nuclear processing plant, and has been left with a hopelessly polluted man-made lake that was used as a dump for dangerous waste.

Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life
by George Monbiot
Published 13 May 2013

For Canada today is providing the world with a third parable: the remarkable, perhaps unprecedented story of a complex, diverse economy slipping down the development ladder towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The tar sands poisoned the politics first of Alberta then of the entire nation. Their story recapitulates that of the Grand Banks. To accommodate rapacious greed, science has been both co-opted and ignored, the Providential Principle has been widely deployed, laws have been redrafted and public life corrupted. The government’s assault on behalf of the tar sands corporations on the common interests of all Canadians has licensed and empowered destructive tendencies throughout the nation.

Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies
by Judith Stein
Published 30 Apr 2010

Not only did the energy story take a backseat to the political story, which was a lot more appealing and comprehensible to reporters, but the public could wonder about the soundness of an energy plan which was put together by men who were then fired.40 Nevertheless, the Congress embraced the energy program, approving the Energy Security Corporation in June 1980. Containing something for everyone—incentives for oil shale, alcohol fuels, geothermal energy, solar, etc.—the corporation would guarantee loans, support prices, buy fuel, and even own production facilities. Funded up to $88 billion by a windfall profits tax, it seemed both self-financing and guaranteed to provide an elusive energy security. By 1985, the United States was 25 percent more energy efficient and 32 percent more oil efficient than it had been in 1973.

Because We Say So
by Noam Chomsky

The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction. Thus Ecuador, with its large indigenous population, is seeking aid from the rich countries to allow it to keep its substantial oil reserves underground, where they should be. Meanwhile the U.S. and Canada are seeking to burn fossil fuels, including the extremely dangerous Canadian tar sands, and to do so as quickly and fully as possible, while they hail the wonders of a century of (largely meaningless) energy independence without a side glance at what the world might look like after this extravagant commitment to self-destruction. This observation generalizes: Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness.

Losing Earth: A Recent History
by Nathaniel Rich
Published 4 Aug 2018

By accelerating industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, they could alter weather patterns, forcing mass migration, starvation, drought, and economic collapse. In the decade since, MacDonald had grown alarmed to see humankind accelerate its pursuit of this particular weapon of mass destruction, not maliciously, but unwittingly. President Carter’s initiative to develop high-carbon synthetic fuels—gas and liquid fuel extracted from shale and tar sands—was a frightening blunder, the equivalent of building a new generation of thermonuclear bombs. During spring 1977 and summer 1978, the Jasons met in Boulder at the National Center for Atmospheric Research to determine what would happen once the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled from pre–Industrial Revolution levels.

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era
by Craig Nelson
Published 25 Mar 2014

Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore, Gaia theorist James Lovelock, NASA climate scientist James Hansen, and Earth Institute director Jeffrey Sachs, among many others in the environmental movement, are convinced that we need nuclear power to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a greenhouse gas. Like most of the world, “Americans have never met a hydrocarbon they didn’t like,” journalist Elizabeth Kolbert said. “Oil, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, tar-sands oil, coal-bed methane, and coal, which is, mostly, carbon—the country loves them all, not wisely, but too well. To the extent that the United States has an energy policy, it is perhaps best summed up as: if you’ve got it, burn it.” For of all the ways we have right now of producing electricity, nuclear is in many ways the least of our worries, so much so that perhaps antinuclear activists should refocus on the far greater menace of coal.

Culture and Prosperity: The Truth About Markets - Why Some Nations Are Rich but Most Remain Poor
by John Kay
Published 24 May 2004

Alaskan temperatures are so low that the ground is permanently frozen and oil cannot easily be piped. The costs of finding and extracting this oil are much higher. Other oil deposits are even more difficult to tap. There is oil beneath the major oceans, beyond the reach of existing drilling capabilities; at great cost, these capabilities could be extended to make exploitation possible. In the tar sands in Venezuela and at Athabasca in Canada, there is enough oil to satisfy the demands of motorists, airlines, and power stations for decades, even centuries; but the cost of extraction is well above current oil prices. 2 The availability of oil is a commercial rather than a technological question.

…

The reserves of oil that are available at $100 a barrel are many times the reserves available at $10 a barrel. And the more oil is needed, the more of these different sources of supply are required. If the demand for oil were lower, it would be met entirely from the Middle East. As things are, we draw on Alaska and the North Sea, but not the ocean beds or the Athabascan tar sands. 3 Culture and Prosperity { 139} (b) Milk New Zealand has a wet, temperate climate and more than enough land for 4 million people. New Zealand had no cows until European settlers arrived just over 150 years ago. But today there are more cows than people. New Zealand is ideal dairying country.

Braiding Sweetgrass
by Robin Wall Kimmerer

What’s more, your grandma would be heartbroken, and not inclined to bake more cookies for you any time soon. As a culture, though, we seem unable to extend these good manners to the natural world. The dishonorable harvest has become a way of life—we take what doesn’t belong to us and destroy it beyond repair: Onondaga Lake, the Alberta tar sands, the rainforests of Malaysia, the list is endless. They are gifts from our sweet Grandmother Earth, which we take without asking. How do we find the Honorable Harvest again? If we’re picking berries or gathering nuts, taking only what is given makes a lot of sense. They offer themselves and by taking them we fulfill our reciprocal responsibility.

…

The carrion stench of his breath mixes with the reek of shit as the buckthorn loosens his bowels. A small dose of buckthorn is a laxative. A strong dose is a purgative, and a whole kettle, an emetic. It is Windigo nature: he wanted every last drop. So now he is vomiting up coins and coal slurry, clumps of sawdust from my woods, clots of tar sand, and the little bones of birds. He spews Solvay waste, gags on an entire oil slick. When he’s done, his stomach continues to heave but all that comes up is the thin liquid of loneliness. He lies spent in the snow, a stinking carcass, but still dangerous when the hunger rises to fill the new emptiness.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline
by Andreas Malm
Published 4 Jan 2021

After Barack Obama had failed to push through the promised cap-and-trade legislation at home and delivered the mortal blow to COP15, a frustrated movement left the halls of policy-making for the streets and launched a sustained campaign of civil disobedience. It focused on Keystone XL. A proposed pipeline for transporting oil from the Canadian tar sands to the refineries ringing the Gulf Coast, the project required the approval of Obama, who was made to feel some ‘people power’: in August 2011, more than one thousand were arrested at a weeklong sit-in outside the White House. Tens of thousands came back to encircle it with a human chain and lock themselves with plastic ties to its fences.

Masters of Mankind
by Noam Chomsky
Published 1 Sep 2014

The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing forward enthusiastically toward destruction. Thus Ecuador, with a large indigenous population, is seeking aid from the rich countries to allow it to keep its substantial oil reserves underground, where they should be. Meanwhile, the US and Canada enthusiastically seek to burn fossil fuels, including the extremely dangerous Canadian tar sands, and to do so as quickly and fully as possible while they hail the wonders of a century of (largely meaningless) energy independence without a side glance at what the world might look like after this extravagant commitment to self-destruction. The observation generalizes. Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness.

What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World
by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian
Published 1 Oct 2007

People talk about it as a catastrophe, but what they’re failing to notice is that continued use of oil could cause a worse catastrophe, maybe only one generation from now. Oil is finite. So at some point it will no longer be economical to use oil. When that will be, nobody really knows. There are many ambiguities, including whether it’s not going to be economically possible to refine oil from tar sands or to exploit other oil that’s currently hard to access. It may turn out that Venezuela has the largest reserves in the world, by some measures.42 It’s just very hard to get to. But peak oil will come. If this situation leads to sensible steps toward reconstructing our society and we accommodate to the fact that we cannot keep polluting the atmosphere, we cannot keep destroying the environment or else we’ll all die; if that happens sooner, fine.

Chief Engineer
by Erica Wagner

That clay, however, hid a greater treasure: “Had your grandfather only known what was under his land at that time—The great Golden eagle well that spouted 3,000 barrels a day!” He told the story to Reta, his daughter-in-law, too: “In 1859 when I was in Pittsburg with my father he was offered an interest in the original Rockefeller syndicate for drilling oil wells, refining oil and buying oil land—At the same time some friends who own Oil shale deposits asked him to go in with them—He reasoned that the oil wells would all give out in a short time—that refining was too costly—So he put all his money in shale and lost every cent he put in, but at the same time escaped being a second Rockefeller. Thank God, what would I have done with a billion of dollars!

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made
by Vaclav Smil
Published 2 Mar 2021

We are now trying to shorten the fossil fuel era not because of any imminent concerns about running out of resources or because of unbearably high costs of their recovery and use. Not so long ago a vocal peak-oil movement forecast an imminent end of the oil era, but these were unfounded concerns. A combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing opened oil shales, a previously unexploitable resource, to mass-scale commercial recovery and, despite increasing demand, the world has experienced problems stemming from record crude oil production (with the United States once again in the lead), saturated markets, and falling crude oil prices. The ultimate goal of the unfolding transition is easily stated: to satisfy the world’s energy requirements without burning any fossil fuels.

Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World's Most Successful Companies
by Charles de Ganahl Koch
Published 14 Sep 2015

These new pursuits have not meant the neglect of our refineries. On the contrary, we continue to invest heavily in order to anticipate and meet refining’s ever-changing market and environmental conditions. This includes meeting the tightening standards on emissions and energy use and efficiently processing the new supplies of crude oil resulting from shale and oil sands innovations. These have already become a boon to the U.S. and Canadian economies, bringing cheaper and more reliable energy to hundreds of millions of people and substantial good profit to many companies. Our belief that crude oil from the Canadian oil sands benefits the U.S. economy is why we are in favor of the Keystone Pipeline.

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State
by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Published 14 May 2014

More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next
by Andrew McAfee
Published 30 Sep 2019

Making the Future: The Unipolar Imperial Moment
by Noam Chomsky
Published 15 Mar 2010

Later reports speak of delays in the bidding. Much is happening in secrecy, and it would be no surprise if new scandals emerge. Concern over control of Iraqi oil is not hard to understand. Iraq contains perhaps the second-largest oil reserves in the world, which are, furthermore, very cheap to extract: no permafrost or shale or tar sands or deep-sea drilling. For U.S. planners, it is a priority that Iraq remain under U.S. control, to the extent possible, as an obedient client state that will also house major U.S. military bases, right at the heart of the world’s major energy reserves. That these were the primary goals of the invasion was always clear enough through the haze of successive pretexts: weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s links with al-Qaida, democracy promotion and the war against terrorism, which, as predicted, sharply increased as a result of the invasion.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
by Jane Mayer
Published 19 Jan 2016

By 2015, Pine Bend was processing some 350,000 barrels of Canadian crude a day, and according to David Sassoon of the Reuters-affiliated InsideClimate News, Koch Industries was the world’s largest exporter of oil out of Canada. In 2012, he wrote, “This single Koch refinery is now responsible for an estimated 25 percent of the 1.2 million barrels of oil the U.S. imports each day from Canada’s tar sands territories.” The Kochs’ good fortune, however, was the globe’s misfortune, because crude oil derived from Canada’s dirty tar sands requires far greater amounts of energy to produce and so is especially harmful to the environment. In 1970, a year after Koch Industries completed the Pine Bend deal, the twins joined their elder brother at Koch Industries, with David working out of New York and Bill near Boston.

Magic Internet Money: A Book About Bitcoin
by Jesse Berger
Published 14 Sep 2020

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning
by James E. Lovelock
Published 1 Jan 2009

With modest effort and discernment they are available on the internet, but I will include some comments on the fuels now in use and on our food prospects for the coming century. There are huge reserves of coal, oil and natural gas still left, and in addition there are even larger reserves of less efficient fuels such as tar sands, shale and peat. The catch is this natural fuel is renewed very slowly, at one‐hundredth the pace we burn it. It is not the amount that we have burnt but the rapidity with which we are doing it that matters. However, if in your car you used petrol or diesel fuel made from atmospheric carbon dioxide using nuclear energy or solar thermal energy you would be doing something good for the planet.

Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy (Bicycle)
by Elly Blue
Published 29 Nov 2014

The truck was too large for the bridge, taller than the maximum height indicated for crossing and larger than the bridge’s designers, half a century earlier, had likely ever imagined a truck could be. At the time of the collapse, the truck was in service delivering heavy oil-drilling equipment from the Port of Vancouver, Washington to the Alberta Tar Sands oil fields. The equipment was housed in large containers for the trip, and it is one of these empty containers that struck the bridge struts on the southbound trip.201 Such equipment is not normally carried on freeways. In fact, the route that the trucking company had originally planned to use was through the Montana wilderness.

Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything
by Becky Bond and Zack Exley
Published 9 Nov 2016

Elijah Zarlin, who had worked in the Chicago headquarters of President Obama’s 2008 campaign and at the time worked for CREDO, wrote an email to CREDO’s members. The email began, “This isn’t an everyday request. I’d like you to consider doing something really big.” That big thing was to go to jail in peaceful civil disobedience to send a message to the president to reject a tar sands oil pipeline. Keystone XL wasn’t just any pipeline, it was the fuse on a veritable carbon bomb lying below the surface of western Canada—oil that we had to keep in the ground. When Elijah was arrested in front of the White House with over a hundred other protesters (including Becky), he had to sit for hours in the hot August sun in a white dress shirt and the tie he had last worn on Election Day in 2008 celebrating his team’s historic win—a win that put the man he was now protesting into the White House.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It
by Arthur Herman
Published 27 Nov 2001

Knox himself was never charged, while Hare turned king’s evidence. William Burke went to the gallows—and ended up as a cadaver for dissection at the medical school. His skeleton is still there, preserved in its museum. 30 Here again, oddly enough, a Scot proved to be the pioneer: James “Paraffin” Young, who developed a technique for extracting kerosene from oil shale from the Lothian mountains in the 1840s, and created the foundations of the petroleum industry. 31 Legend has it the volunteers took the kiss and gave the guinea away to their neighbors. 32 Literally hardheaded: one day Jardine was walking on the street in Canton when an iron bar fell from a construction site and hit him on the head.

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources
by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy
Published 25 Feb 2021

In 2011, Vitol invested in a network of petrol stations in Africa that made it the second-largest retailer in the whole continent, excluding South Africa. 6 The same year, Cargill bought one of the world’s largest manufacturers of animal feed, with processing plants from Vietnam to Russia. The family of Theodor Weisser, the man who had traded Soviet oil in the 1950s for Mabanaft, emerged as the owner of one of the world’s largest networks of oil-storage tanks. When, a few years later in 2015, soaring production of oil from shale rock formations turned the US into a meaningful crude oil exporter for the first time in forty years, the commodity traders were first in line not only to buy the oil, but also to build the infrastructure needed to connect American oilfields with the rest of the world. 7 Trafigura, for example, spent $1 billion building a terminal in Texas able to berth large tankers. 8 Mercuria also invested in a US port facility, which the company used to ship crude from as far away as North Dakota to the global market.

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place)
by Tim Marshall
Published 10 Oct 2016

It is situated halfway down Argentina, in Patagonia, and abuts the western border with Chile. It is the size of Belgium—which might be relatively small for a country but is large for a shale formation. So far so good, unless you are against shale-produced energy—but there is a catch. To get the gas and oil out of the shale will require massive foreign investment, and Argentina is not considered a foreign-investment-friendly country. There’s more oil and gas farther south—in fact, so far south it’s offshore in and around islands that are British and have been since 1833. And therein lies a problem, and a news story that never goes away.

Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality
by Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett
Published 27 Aug 2018

Bringing Beauty to “Oil Country” Many North American cities have tried to reinvent themselves in recent years, with few as poignant as Detroit, which attempted to shed its “Motor City” reputation (despite being home to a number of bicycle manufacturers) after a 2013 bankruptcy and become a city known for innovation and creativity. North of the border, in Calgary, Alberta, a similar revolution is taking place. Most Canadians know Alberta as “Oil Country” due to its economic dependence on the oil-rich tar sands, and Calgary, Canada’s third-largest city, is home to a number of oil and gas headquarters. Covering a 848-square-kilometer (327-square-mile) area—eight times the size of San Francisco—and sprawling endlessly into the prairies, it’s easy to see why driving has become the default mode of transportation for the vast majority of Calgarians.

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century
by Ronald Bailey
Published 20 Jul 2015

When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures
by Richard D. Lewis
Published 1 Jan 1996

It then went further and started producing Rossignol skis for the U.S. market. Unfortunately, this business has not proven viable in the long run. The versatility of Estonian businesspeople is a quality born of necessity. Although Estonia has several advantages over neighboring Latvia and Lithuania—it has enormous oil-shale deposits and is a net exporter of electricity— its small economy makes it difficult for Estonians to compete in mass markets. Niche products are the solution. In this respect, high-quality Estonian handicrafts are among the most original in the world. At meetings Estonians present their products and policies confidently and with frankness.

Tomorrowland: Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact
by Steven Kotler
Published 11 May 2015

In places where water shortages are a problem, SMRs could be used to run desalination plants; in places too remote for other options, SMRs could be the best alternative to trucking in barrels of diesel. Much interest is centered around providing power for remote mining operations (like extracting oil from tar sands, which currently uses more oil than it produces), backing up intermittently plagued solar or wind facilities, or even — in the very long term — serving as hydrogen generators. All that said, as a pilot project of sorts, Toshiba has spent five years trying to give their SMR — known as the 4S for “super safe, small, and simple” — to the remote town of Galena, Alaska.

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel
Published 12 Aug 2020

It means destroying habitats and carbon sinks. It means soil depletion, ocean dead zones and overfishing. Ramping up the extraction of fossil fuels means more carbon emissions, more climate breakdown and more ocean acidification. It means more mountaintop removal, more offshore drilling, more fracking and more tar sands. Ramping up the extraction of ores and construction materials means more open-cast mining, with all the downstream pollution that entails, and more cars and ships and buildings that demand yet more energy. And all this entails more waste: more landfills in the countryside, more toxins in our rivers, and more plastics in the sea.

Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future
by Robert Bryce
Published 26 Apr 2011

On July 3, 2008, near-month natural-gas futures prices hit a near-record $13.58 per thousand cubic feet.25 By April 2009, gas futures had fallen to about $3.50,26 and numerous forecasters were estimating the U.S. natural gas prices would stay under $4 for months, perhaps even years to come. Just as the East Texas Field changed the American oil business, the Barnett Shale has fundamentally changed the U.S. gas business—and that change is just getting started. CHAPTER 24 America’s Secret Google J. PAUL GETTY, one of the world’s first billionaires, once declared that “the meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.”1 Getty—who made his first million dollars in the Oklahoma oil fields—was on to something.

The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification
by Paul Roberts
Published 1 Sep 2014

And to speed that evolution, a burgeoning national community of local activists, heavily made up by Millennials, is using new “occupation” tactics to ramp up the political pressure nationally in ways that more established green groups no longer do. Case in point: more than 75,000 activists stand ready to block the development of Keystone XL, a pipeline project that would carry carbon-heavy oil from the Canadian tar sands—a threat that may help explain why the Obama administration has stalled the project’s approval. Perhaps the greatest opportunity for this top-down, bottom-up dynamic is in education. The sector has suffered under the Impulse Society. Our dismal academic performance, compared to “lesser” industrial nations, is already undercutting our capacity to revive our economy or even think about long-term prosperity.

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism
by John Elkington
Published 6 Apr 2020

“Rethinking Food and Agriculture, 2020-2030: The Second Domestication of Plants and Animals, the Disruption of the Cow and the Collapse of Industrial Livestock Farming,” RethinkX. 73.https://conservationxlabs.com 74.http://power.nridigital.com/power_technology_jun19/the_big_exit_why_capital_is_deserting_coal 75.Anjli Raval, “Green Energy Switch Risks Leaving Oil Tanker Owners High and Dry,” Financial Times, July 17, 2019. 76.https://www.carbontracker.org/reports/carbon-bubble/ 77.Simon Edelsten, “The Investment Case for Cockroaches,” Financial Times, July 20, 2019. 78.https://unepinquiry.org/publication/roadmap-for-a-sustainable-financial-system/ 79.Mark Anderson, “A (Very) Close Look at Carbon Capture and Storage,” IEEE Spectrum, July 16, 2019. See also: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/a-very-close-look-at-carbon-capture-and-storage. 80.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/alberta-canadas-tar-sands-is-growing-but-indigenous-people-fight-back/ 81.Azeem Azhar, “Capitalism Without Capital,” Exponential View, July 5, 2019. See also: https://www.exponentialview.co/p/capitalism-without-capital. 82.Andrew Ellson, “High-flyers Must Save the Planet, Says Jet Boss,” The Times, July 20 2019. 83.https://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/about/news/cisl-hosts-economic-transformation-discussions-250-senior-leaders-30th-anniversary 84.Peter Diamandis, “Elon’s Neuralink & Brain-Machine Symbiosis,” Peter Diamandis’s blog, July 21, 2019.

740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building
by Michael Gross
Published 18 Dec 2007

French was an investor from a Southern family that had had its ups and downs since arriving in America in colonial days. In their heyday, they’d owned a plantation with twenty-five slaves. French had made a small fortune as an early venture capitalist, providing seed money for electronics ventures in the 1960s and, in the late 1970s, an Australian oil shale operation. He was married to his second wife, Sally Phelps, a retired banker who chose the former Morris Hadley apartment, 6/7D, just below the Ohrstroms and bought it in her name. They paid $1.1 million in 1980 and were interviewed by Tony Gebauer. They had Robert Denning decorate the place in 1930s style and moved in a year later.

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters
by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
Published 21 Jun 2023

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
by Mark Lynas
Published 1 Apr 2008

‘Synfuels’ still supply half of South Africa's petrol and diesel, and with high world oil prices, coal ‘synfuels’ are becoming competitive elsewhere too. The liquidation of coal produces much more CO2 than conventional refining-so peak oil in this case would worsen global warming. Other ‘unconventional oil’ sources are similarly polluting-the extraction of oil from the tar sand deposits in the Canadian province of Alberta uses vast quantities of steam and natural gas, meaning that the ‘energy returned on energy invested’ ratio is dangerously low and emissions dangerously high. Global gas supplies will last longer than oil, but not indefinitely-estimates of the date for ‘peak gas’ vary from one to eight decades away from now.

Who Rules the World?
by Noam Chomsky

Not part of the debate are a very large number of experts, including those in the climate change program at MIT, among others, who criticize the scientific consensus because it is too conservative and cautious, arguing that the truth when it comes to climate change is far more dire. Not surprisingly, the public is confused. In his 2012 State of the Union speech, President Obama hailed the bright prospects of a century of energy self-sufficiency, thanks to new technologies that permit extraction of hydrocarbons from Canadian tar sands, shale, and other previously inaccessible sources.40 Others agree; the Financial Times forecasts a century of energy independence for the US.41 Unasked in these optimistic forecasts is the question of what kind of a world will survive the rapacious onslaught. In the lead in confronting the crisis throughout the world are indigenous communities, those who have always upheld the Charter of the Forests.

My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un)Popular Culture
by Guy Branum
Published 29 Jul 2018

And if you’ve learned anything from this book thus far, it’s that my only childhood gesture of rebellion was a deep desire to learn the things the world told me I did not need to know. We had good times together, the M encyclopedia and I, but our affair was over. I had found a new love, full of tar sands and mystery. The True North, Proud and Free Margaret Atwood, Canada’s greatest living author,4 once described the U.S.-Canadian border as the world’s longest undefended one-way mirror. Our nations share a language and a continent and—we, as Americans, would like to assert—a culture. We will make jokes about the tiny differences, the ways they pronounce “drama,” “about,” or, most egregiously, “pasta,”5 but we do not give them the dignity of imagining that there is anything, culturally, that is theirs.

Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner
by Po Bronson
Published 14 Jul 2020

A few scientists overheard us chatting—and then, like spontaneous combustion, a bullshit session on the origin of life broke out. But this session was different. Because Shane Kilpatrick had brought his notebook of equations. Shane is the CEO of a startup called Membio. He worked in bioremediation in the tar sands of Canada, where he learned to capture methane pollution and transform it into more desired compounds. He brought that biochemistry to the realm of human health care and started a company that makes synthetic blood—or, more specifically, that makes red blood cells from scratch. In that sense, he’s sorta growing life out of a bioreactor and some raw ingredients.

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction
by Adrian Hon
Published 5 Oct 2020

For two centuries, oil—or, more broadly, petroleum—was the lifeblood of the world economy thanks to its high energy density and its ease of transportation through pipelines and on tankers. At its peak, more than one hundred million barrels of oil were transported and consumed per day, with the US, EU, China, and India accounting for much of the total. By the twenty-first century, new extraction methods from shale rock, tar sands, and deep-sea drilling meant that peak oil was not considered to be a major problem. Even so, the grave political and environmental costs of an overdependence on oil led many countries to seek alternatives. But what could replace it? The vast majority was used to fuel cars, planes, and other vehicles.

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order
by Colin Kahl and Thomas Wright
Published 23 Aug 2021

Neil Quilliam, “Russia and Saudi Arabia Power Risks OPEC+ Break-Up,” Chatham House, November 24, 2020, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/11/russia-and-saudi-arabia-power-risks-opec-break.   63.  Grant Smith, Javier Blas, and Salma El Wardany, “OPEC+ Works Silently to Repair Crack at Oil Coalition’s Core,” Bloomberg, December 1, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-01/opec-splits-at-its-core-risking-deal-that-underpins-oil-price.   64.  Pippa Stevens, “Shale Industry Will Be Rocked by $300 Billion in Losses and a Wave of Bankruptcies, Deloitte Says,” CNBC, June 22, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/22/shale-industry-will-be-rocked-by-300-billion-in-losses-and-a-wave-of-bankruptcies-deloitte-says.html.   65.  Rebecca Elliot, “ConocoPhillips to Buy Shale Rival Concho for $9.7 Billion,” Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/conocophillips-to-buy-concho-resources-in-9-7-billion-stock-deal-11603107949; Paul Takahashi, “Chevron Completes $13B Acquisition of Noble Energy,” Houston Chronicle, October 5, 2020, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Chevron-13-billion-acquisition-Noble-Houston-Texas-15621496.php.   66.  

Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations
by Nicholas Carr
Published 5 Sep 2016

It does worry me just a bit, though, that the Glass palette eschews green altogether. Is that a political statement? In fact, now that I think about it, the Glass palette places a disconcerting emphasis on fossil fuels. Charcoal? Shale? One can almost smell the carbon emissions rising into Sky, almost see Cotton and Tangerine wilting in the heat. Maybe they should have included Tar Sands as a color option. No, that would have been a downer. “Charcoal” has a much nicer lilt. Its emotional connotations diverge from its real-world denotations, in a way that nicely underscores both the semiotic and the marketing possibilities of reality augmentation. What would be really cool is if the color of your Glass also determined the way the device augmented your reality.

Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places
by Andrew Blackwell
Published 22 May 2012

One sunny autumn day, not long after my visit, Hudema and several of his colleagues had gone for a walk through Albian Sands, an oil sands mine owned by Shell. Of course, no group of Greenpeace activists can go strolling through a mine without chaining themselves to something. In this case, they attached themselves to an excavator and a pair of sand haulers and rolled out a large banner reading TAR SANDS—CLIMATE CRIME. The entire mine was shut down for the better part of a shift, and Hudema and company spent thirty-some hours camping out on the machinery before agreeing to leave. (Later Greenpeace oil sands protesters met with arrests and prosecution.) The protesters’ purpose—what other could there be—was to make the news, to raise awareness, to convince the world that there was something at stake worth getting arrested for.

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
by Paul Mason
Published 29 Jul 2015

As the Carbon Tracker Initiative warned investors: ‘they need to understand that 60–80% of coal, oil and gas reserves of listed firms are unburnable’5 – that is, if we burn them, the atmosphere will warm to a catastrophic degree. Yet rising energy prices are a market signal. They tell energy firms that it’s a good idea to invest in new and more expensive ways of finding carbon. In 2011, they invested $674 billion on exploration and development of fossil fuels: tar sands, fracking and deep-sea oil deposits. Then, as global tensions increased, Saudi Arabia decided to collapse the price of oil, with the aim of destroying America’s new hydrocarbon industries, and in the process bankrupting Putin’s Russia. This, too, acted as a market signal to American drivers: buy more cars and do more miles.

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions
by Jason Hickel
Published 3 May 2017

When the entire global political establishment puts its force behind the goal of GDP growth, human and natural systems come under enormous pressure. In India it might come in the form of land grabs. In the UK, it’s privatisation of public services. In Brazil it looks like deforestation in the Amazon basin. In the US and Canada it brings fracking and tar sands. Around the world it means longer working hours, more expensive housing, depleted soils, polluted cities, wasted oceans and – above all – climate change. All for the sake of GDP growth. People who push against these destructive trends will tell you how futile it feels. It is futile because our governments don’t care.

Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist
by Ray C. Anderson
Published 28 Mar 2011

Though efficiencies can produce a lot more energy—faster, cheaper, and with greater social and environmental benefits—that is Economics 201, and most folks haven’t signed up for that course yet. So, it naturally follows that oil companies will—if Congress allows—go after those restricted coastal blocs—difficult, expensive deposits found in the deep ocean, the high Arctic, or locked up in tar sands and western shales. And this won’t happen just in the United States, either. It reminds me of how a drug addict, having used up all the easy veins in his arm, switches to the ones between his toes to inject his daily fix. It is only a temporary solution for that poor addict. He will either die from his addiction or overcome it.

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay
by Guy Standing
Published 13 Jul 2016

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, had the UK used tax receipts from its oil and gas fields to build up a wealth fund, it could now have a fund with £450 billion of assets, bigger than those of Kuwait, Qatar and Russia combined.11 The ultimate irony is that privatisation has enabled Chinese state enterprises to own a significant stake in UK oil fields, channelling profits to a nominally communist superpower. One doubts that is what Thatcher and Nigel Lawson, her Chancellor, intended. But the outcome stemmed from their ideological decision. That error should not be repeated with fracking – the extraction of gas and oil from shale rock. These resources belong to the people. If fracking is permitted to continue, part of those profits should go into a sovereign wealth fund. Contributions from exploitation of a country’s natural resources should be supplemented by a levy on all other forms of rental income, including royalties and fees from intellectual property and the rental income gained by online labour brokers and other platforms.

Quality Investing: Owning the Best Companies for the Long Term
by Torkell T. Eide , Lawrence A. Cunningham and Patrick Hargreaves
Published 5 Jan 2016

Code of the Lifemaker
by James P. Hogan
Published 1 Jan 1983

Thirg had never seen the city looking quite so beautiful, with the fading light of bright's-end softening the hues of the trees along the avenue and painting a delicate blue haze over the rolling forests outside the city and the mountains rising distantly behind. Ahead, he could see the tall, clean lines of the new buildings of the central city rising proudly above the intervening suburbs as if in anticipation of the new era about to be born. A gentle breeze was blowing from the east, carrying the fragrant scents of distilled tar-sands and fumace-gas ventings, and a family of dome-backed concrete-pourers was laying out filter beds on the far bank of the bend where the river flanked the avenue, downstream from the ingot-soaking pits. From somewhere off in the distance he could hear the muted strains of a power hammer thudding contentedly while nearer to the road a flock of raucous coilspring winders was playing counterpoint with the warbling of a high-pressure relief valve, and on all sides the undergrowth chirped happily with piezoelectric whines and whistles.

Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm
by Isabella Tree
Published 2 May 2018

While Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland – Europe’s environmental pioneers – have consistently driven up standards and encouraged massive growth in green business, the UK has tried to dilute the EU energy efficiency directive, lift the ban on imports of carbon-intensive oil from tar-sands and for years tried to block the EU pesticide ban protecting pollinating bees. In a recent reversal, welcomed by environmentalists, Environment Secretary Michael Gove declared the UK government would now be supporting the EU’s extended ban on the bee pesticides neonicotinoids, but it remained stalwart in its opposition to a ban proposed by the EU in 2017 on the herbicide glyphosate.

The Railways: Nation, Network and People
by Simon Bradley
Published 23 Sep 2015

.** The Metropolitan’s coal-gas method did not become generally popular and the company itself gave it up in 1876 in favour of the oil-gas lighting developed by Julius Pintsch in Prussia (one instance among many of technical initiative passing to Germany). This became the standard system used across Britain’s railways. Compressed gas was carried in steel cylinders beneath the floor of each carriage, which thus became self-sufficient in supply. The gas could be distilled from oil shale, available in the central belt of Scotland, or increasingly from imported crude oil; the Great Western set up a refinery for the purpose within its mighty works at Swindon in 1893, and the Great Eastern built one at its only slightly smaller works at Stratford, now vanished into the 2012 Olympics site.

The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy
by Mervyn King
Published 3 Mar 2016

Although there is some trading in oil futures in London and New York, contracts are for delivery on dates no more than five or six years ahead, whereas an oilfield might take thirty years or more to develop and exploit.7 There is one very good economic reason why a liquid futures market for oil to be delivered at dates many years into the future has not developed. It would be attractive to many potential oil producers, such as those developing the Canadian tar sands, to be able to sell oil today for delivery in the future. That would remove the uncertainty about price and make the investment decision a matter of mere calculation rather than entrepreneurial judgement. Equally, those considering investing in alternative sources of energy would have more confidence about the future because they would know the price they would have to match.

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
by Charles Eisenstein
Published 11 Jul 2011

But when we lose this alignment, we must use increasingly violent methods (coffee, motivational techniques, threats) to jerk the life force through the adrenals. Similarly, the technologies we use to access fossil fuels have become more and more violent—hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), mountaintop removal, tar sand exploitation, and so on—and we are using these fuels for frivolous or destructive purposes that are evidently out of alignment with the purpose of the human species on earth. The personal and planetary mirror each other. The connection is more than mere analogy: the kind of work that we use coffee and external motivation (e.g., money) to force ourselves to do is precisely the kind of work that contributes to the despoliation of the planet.

Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers
by Stephen Graham
Published 8 Nov 2016

Sebald’s Apocalyptic Vision: The World Will End in 2013’, New Statesman, 4 June 2013. 2Pascal Peduzzi, ‘Sand, Rarer Than One Thinks’, Environmental Development 11, 2014, p. 208. 3Simon Price, Jonathan Ford, Anthony Cooper and Catherine Neal, ‘Humans as Major Geological and Geomorphological Agents in the Anthropocene: The Significance of Artificial Ground in Great Britain’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369:1938, 2011, pp. 1056–84. 4Roger Hooke, ‘On the History of Humans as Geomorphic Agents’, Geology 28:9, 2000, pp. 843–6. 5Gavin Bridge, ‘Material Worlds: Natural Resources, Resource Geography and the Material Economy’, Geography Compass, 3:3, 2009, pp. 1217–44. 6Seth Denizen, ‘Three Holes: In the Geological Present’, in Etienne Turpin, ed., Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, New York: Anexact, 2013, p. 40. 7Price, ‘Humans as Geomorphic Agents’. 8Matt Edgeworth, ‘The Relationship between Archaeological Stratigraphy and Artificial Ground and Its Significance in the Anthropocene’, Geological Society, London, Special Publications 395:1, 2014, pp. 91–108. 9Eric Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, New York: Abrams, 2013. 10See Christian Neal MilNeil, ‘Inner-City Glaciers’, in Elizabeth Ellsworth, Jamie Kruse and Reg Beatty, eds, Making the Geologic Now: Responses to Material Conditions of Contemporary Life, New York: Punctum Books, 2013, pp. 79–81. 11Jamie Kruse and Elizabeth Ellsworth, Geologic City: A Field Guide to the Geoarchitecture of New York, New York: Smudge Studio, 2011. 12See Björn Wallsten, The Urk World: Hibernating Infrastructures and the Quest for Urban Mining, Linköping: Linköping University, 2015. 13Björn Wallsten, ‘Urks and the Urban Underworld as Geosocial Formation’, Science, Technology and Human Values, forthcoming. 14James McCarthy and Kate Driscoll Derickson, ‘Manufacturing Consent for Engineering Earth: Social Dynamics in Boston’s Big Dig’, in Stan Brunn, ed., Engineering Earth, Rotterdam: Springer, 2011, pp. 697–713. 15Cited in Pete Brook, ‘The Toxic Landscape of Johannesburg’s Gold Mines’, Wired, 18 June 2014. 16See Martin J. Murray, City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. 17See Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2010. 18See Julia Fox, ‘Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia: An Environmental Sacrifice Zone’, Organization and Environment 12:2, 1999, pp. 163–83. 19‘E-Waste up a Third by 2017: UN’, Melbourne Age, 17 December 2013. 20Edgeworth, ‘Archaeological Stratigraphy’. 21Ibid. 22Max Page, The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900–1940, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 23Peter Del Tredici, ‘The Flora of the Future’, Places Journal, April 2014, available at placesjournal.org. 24Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003, p. 234. 25Quoted in Alex Marshall, Beneath the Metropolis: The Secret Lives of Cities, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006, p. 56. 26Maja Gori, ‘The Stones of Contention: The Role of Archaeological Heritage in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict’, Archaeologies 9:1, 2013, p. 223. 27Eyal Weizman, ‘The Politics of Verticality: Excavating Sacredness’, Open Democracy, 28 April 2002, available at opendemocracy.net. 28Cited in Gori, ‘Stones of Contention’, p. 226. 29Weizman, ‘Politics of Verticality’. 30See Chiara De Cesari, ‘Hebron, or Heritage as Technology of Life’, Jerusalem Quarterly 41, 2010, pp. 6–28. 31Scott Kirsch, Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving, New York: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 32See Brian Hudson, Cities on the Shore: The Urban Littoral Frontier, London: Pinter, 1996. 33Réné Kolman, ‘New Land in the Water: Economically and Socially, Land Reclamation Pays’, Terra et Aqua 128, September 2012. 34Lizette Alvarez, ‘Where Sand Is Gold, the Reserves Are Running Dry’, New York Times, 24 August 2013. 35Sand is also necessary to produce glass, the concrete used in vertical construction, and in high-tech industries. 36Joshua Comaroff, ‘Built on Sand: Singapore and the New State of Risk’, Harvard Design Magazine 39, 2014, p. 138. 37Peduzzi, ‘Sand, Rarer Than One Thinks’. 38Maria Franke, ‘When One Country’s Land Gain Is Another Country’s Land Loss’, Working Paper No. 36, Institute for International Political Economy, Berlin, 2014, available at ideas.repec.org. 39Comaroff, ‘Built on Sand’. 40See Denis Deletrac’s 2012 documentary at sand-wars.com. 41See Fazlin Abdullah and Goh Ann Tat, ‘The Dirty Business of Sand: Sand Dredging in Cambodia’, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 2012, available at http://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg. 42The $60 billion debt the project created for the developer, Dubai World, was a major reason that forced Dubai to go to its rich Emirati neighbour, Abu Dhabi, for a $10 billion bailout in 2008. 43Adam Luck, ‘How Dubai’s $14bn Dream to Build The World Is Falling Apart’, Daily Mail, 11 April 2010. 44Mark Jackson and Veronica Della Dora, ‘“Dreams So Big Only the Sea Can Hold Them”: Man-Made Islands as Cultural Icons, Travelling Visions, and Anxious Spaces’, Environment and Planning A 41:9, 2009, p. 2092. 45Jacks and della Dora ‘“Dreams so big only the sea can hold them” ‘, p. 2088. 46Dia Saleh, ‘Bahrain: An Island without Sea’, Arteast, Fall 2013, available at arteeast.org. 47Martin Lukacs, ‘New, Privatized African City Heralds Climate Apartheid’, Guardian, 21 January 2014. 48Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative, Mischief Reef, January 2015, at amti.csis.org/mischief-reef/. 49See John Burt, ‘The Environmental Costs of Coastal Urbanization in the Arabian Gulf’, City 18:6, 2014, pp. 760–70; Paul Erftemeijer et al., ‘Environmental Impacts of Dredging and Other Sediment Disturbances on Corals: A Review’, Marine Pollution Bulletin 64:9, 2012, pp. 1737–65. 50‘No Place to Land: Loss of Natural Habitats Threatens Migratory Birds Globally’, New York: United Nations Environment Programme, 2011. 51Susan Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, New York: Macmillan, 1999, p. 15. 52Cinzia Scarpino, ‘Ground Zero/Fresh Kills: Cataloguing Ruins, Garbage, and Memory’, Altre Modernità, 2011, pp. 237–53. 53Daniel Hoornweg and Perinaz Bhada-Tata, ‘What a Waste: A Global Review’, Urban Development Series 2012, no. 15, Washington, DC: World Bank, March 2012. 54Thelma Gutierrez and George Webster, ‘Trash City: Inside America’s Largest Landfill Site’, CNN, Atlanta, 2012. 55See Rodney Harrison and John Schofield, After Modernity: Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 56Quoted in Thelma Gutierrez ‘Trash City: Inside America’s Largest Landfill Site’, available at cnn.com, 28 April 2012. 57‘Street Children, India’, 2006, available at gvnet.com. 58Dave Petley, ‘Garbage Dump Landslides’, American Geophysical Union Blog, 22 June 2008, available at blogs.agu.org. 59Quoted in Petley, ‘Garbage Dump Landslides’. 60Karl Mathiesen, ‘Is the Shenzhen Landslide the First of Many More?’

The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World
by Oliver Morton
Published 26 Sep 2015

In parts of the Andes and the Alps a glacier unprotected from the sun is now a rare sight. In Greenland there are projects aimed at refreezing the base of the icecap to the island’s bedrock at various strategic points by pumping liquefied air down arrays of boreholes. It takes a great deal of effort and energy – the effort is similar to that needed to exploit a large tar-sand play, not that anyone does that any more – but it does seem to be stopping the flow of some of the bigger glaciers towards the sea, and thus bottling up some of the avenues which would allow the ice sheet to collapse catastrophically. Whether it can stop such a collapse indefinitely is as yet unknown.

Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back
by Guy Shrubsole
Published 1 May 2019

But with ongoing efforts by shale gas companies to frack across large swathes of northern England, there are fears the Church could seek to cash in. Rights to oil and gas were nationalised long ago, but the Commissioners could still profit by charging companies wanting to drill through mineral layers belonging to the Church. And though the C of E has divested itself of all investments in coal and tar sands, citing climate-change concerns, it still argues that fracking can be ‘morally acceptable’ if properly regulated. In 2016, the Church Commissioners gave permission to a fracking firm to carry out underground seismic surveys on their Ormskirk Estate in Lancashire, the first step towards fracking.

Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration
by Kent E. Calder
Published 28 Apr 2019

A brief review of global oil and gas reserves and the prominent position of Eurasia in both categories makes clear the potential of Eurasia for continental autarky in energy. As indicated in Table 4.1, nearly half of the proved oil reserves on earth are concentrated in the Persian Gulf, while an additional 8 percent are in the former Soviet Union (FSU).8 If the high costs and political risks of extracting Canadian tar sands and Venezuelan heavy oil respectively are taken into consideration, the Persian Gulf and the FSU loom even larger. A similar picture prevails in natural gas, with some important additional nuances. The Persian Gulf dominates, in terms of proved reserves, with close to 40 percent of the global total, although the Gulf ’s share in gas is not quite as large as in oil.

Wanderers: A Novel
by Chuck Wendig
Published 1 Jul 2019

Here, Matthew couldn’t repress a laugh. He heard the rough, serrated edge in his voice when he explained: “You haven’t been out there, have you? It’s all gone to pieces. Gas is dried up. The roads are…blocked with trucks and cars, some of them crashed. Wheat fields and corn on fire. Coal mines and oil shales, too. People are losing their minds to White Mask. They’re roaming in packs. Some of them are armed with knives and guns. Others are just…wanderers. Wandering this way and that like they don’t know where to go, or why, or how. You get near the cities, it gets worse. It’s not safe. It’s slow going.

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking
by Michael Bhaskar
Published 2 Nov 2021

‘Controlled and/or super-effective relaxation and sleep’? There are drugs for those, but no one would say we have it nailed. Sure, we have video cassette players and home computers (remember those?), satellite TV, ‘extensive use of transplantation of human organs’ and ‘commercial extraction of oil from shale’. But it's hard not to feel that the authors, Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, anticipated something more radical and decisive. Years on from the millennium many, if not most, of their ‘very likely technical innovations’ have not been made despite the authors’ belief they would in ‘90–95 per cent’ of cases.

The Rare Metals War
by Guillaume Pitron
Published 15 Feb 2020

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
by Michio Kaku
Published 15 Mar 2011

Speaking to the experts in energy, I could see that a rough consensus is emerging: we are either at the top of Hubbert’s peak for world oil production, or are perhaps a decade away from that fateful point. This means that in the near future, we may be entering a period of irreversible decline. Of course, we will never totally run out of oil. New pockets are being found all the time. But the cost of extracting and refining these will gradually skyrocket. For example, Canada has huge tar sands deposits, enough to supply the world’s oil for decades to come, but it is not cost-effective to extract and refine it. The United States probably has enough coal reserves to last 300 years, but there are legal restrictions, and the cost of extracting all the particulate and gaseous pollutants is onerous.

Spin
by Robert Charles Wilson
Published 2 Jan 2005

Every woman for herself, that was Moll's philosophy. Especially, she said, if the world was coming unglued and none of us was going to live past fifty. "I don't intend to spend that time kneeling." She was tough by nature. Molly's folks were dairy farmers. They had spent ten years in legal arguments over a tar-sands oil-extraction project that bordered their property and was slowly poisoning it. In the end they traded their ranch for an out-of-court settlement large enough to buy a comfortable retirement for themselves and a decent education for their daughter. But it was the kind of experience, Molly said, that would grow calluses on an angel's ass.

Why We Can't Afford the Rich
by Andrew Sayer
Published 6 Nov 2014

On its website BP offers visitors an energy (carbon footprint) calculator.57 It thereby encourages them to think that reducing carbon emissions is just an issue for us as individuals, rather than for the likes of BP, as if it just passively responded to whatever consumers demanded. James Marriot calculates that the carbon footprint of BP’s production and distribution processes and its products is twice that of the UK.58 BP is massively investing in the extraction of oil from bitumen (‘tar sands’) in Canada, an extraordinarily energy-intensive and polluting technology. The cartoon by Robert Mankoff in Figure 21.2, originally published in The New Yorker, hits the nail on the head. Figure 21.2: ‘Unprecedented opportunities for profit’ Whatever they may say, the last thing energy companies want to see is declining demand for energy.

Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order
by Parag Khanna
Published 4 Mar 2008

China has also renovated other Central American ports and factories to expedite the delivery of its goods to the United States. And just as China has expanded its influence to its north across Russian Siberia, it is also reaching east toward another Arctic country—Canada—quietly becoming its second-largest trading partner and jointly building a $2 billion pipeline to transport oil extracted from Alberta’s oil-rich tar sands to the Pacific coast of British Columbia. America always seeks an external enemy. Ronald Reagan’s myth-making about the Soviet Union included claims that it planned to organize Asia’s hordes and even the people of Latin America—after which America’s fall would be all but automatic.13 Some now see China as this nefarious force, exploiting Latin America’s mineral resources and promoting high-level ties among defense officials.14 They further worry that just as the United States has ceased to support Latin military dictatorships, China’s presence could undermine America’s human rights and democratization agenda, while contributing to another round of volatile natural-resource dependency.15 For Latin Americans, China represents a new way of doing business outside of America’s thicket of codes and regulations, one that imposes no political conditionality whatsoever other than lobbying Latin American countries to rescind their recognition of Taiwan, which for years had purchased diplomatic loyalty across the region, particularly in Central America, and received market economy status in their trade relations.

Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now
by Alan Rusbridger
Published 14 Oct 2018

An FT comment piece about the behaviour of investment institutions by John Plender remarked: ‘something momentous is going on’.37 What had been a trickle of divestment became a stream. Universities, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds began to get their money out of the most polluting fossil fuels, with pledges to ditch $2.6 trillion from coal. Cambridge University blacklisted coal and tar sands companies. Within a year the FT was reporting a poll that showed two thirds of adults agreeing that fossil fuel investments were risky. In March 2016, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sold its entire holding in BP. One year after Paris nearly 700 institutions had committed to some form of divestment, to the tune of $5 trillion.

Generation Kill
by Evan Wright
Published 19 May 2004

After returning from the battalion headquarters, he sits him down beside the Humvee and says, “Trombley, no matter what you might think, or what anybody else might say, you did your job. You were following my orders.” Colbert then strips down to his T-shirt—the first time he’s removed his MOPP in more than a week. He crawls under the Humvee and spends several hours chipping away at the three-inch layer of tar and sand clinging to it from the sabka field. Late in the afternoon, Fick comes by, gathers the team for a morale talk and tells them, “We made a mistake today, collectively and individually. We must get past this. We can’t sit around and call it quits now.” Gunny Wynn is harsher. “We’re Americans,” he lectures the men.

The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse
by Mohamed A. El-Erian
Published 26 Jan 2016

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
by Simon Winchester
Published 19 Jan 2021

Their father was a bricklayer, then ran a successful masonry firm. Once his sons reached their majority, they had a stroke of luck: they managed to get in on the ground floor of the fracking industry, setting up a company selling equipment that is used to pump chemically infused water at high pressure deep into oil-bearing shales, breaking up the rocks and allowing the gas and oil they contain to escape. Forest roads like this, in Placerville, Idaho, were long used freely by walkers, snowmobilers, and the like—until the publicity-shy Wilks brothers, fracking billionaires from Texas, bought the lands and closed off all access.

European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess - and How to Put Them Right
by Philippe Legrain
Published 22 Apr 2014

Aerotropolis
by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
Published 2 Jan 2009

In the fifties, he predicted that America’s own oil production would peak by 1970, and nailed it. For an encore, he predicted a global peak by 2000. That day of reckoning has been postponed by new discoveries, higher efficiency, alternative energy, and un-conventional sources (such as the Canadian tar sands), but in any case where the resource in question is finite and nonrenewable, a peak is inevitable. Especially when global demand is projected to reach 125 million barrels a day by 2030. And then there is peak oil, the reckoning. Once we tip, rising demand will forever outstrip supply, and the widening gap between the two will place unparalleled stress on the global economy.

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
by Daniel Immerwahr
Published 19 Feb 2019

And, however painful the 1970s oil shock was for the U.S. economy, its danger was a matter of rising prices rather than of absolute, “we can’t fight a war” shortages. At no point in the twentieth century was there a serious possibility that oil would actually run out. Today, with new technologies enabling the exploitation of Canadian tar sands and the partial substitution of natural gas for oil, that danger seems as remote as ever. * * * In 1969 the United States achieved what was probably its most technically difficult goal since the Second World War: the moon landing. The most powerful rocket engines in history had to blast the spacecraft into the sky, where the whole thing would progressively dismantle itself mid-flight, shooting a smaller module safely into the lunar gravity well.

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
by Ron Chernow
Published 1 Jan 1990

Bob Baldwin had said in 1980, “We’re so client-oriented and so busy that most of us have done very poor jobs of investing our money. That would not be the case with some firms, which have had all kinds of entrepreneurial investments.”36 That year, the firm conquered its prudery. It took a share in an Exxon oil-shale project in Australia, scouted timber investments, expanded its real-estate portfolio, and started to invest in high-tech start-ups. For the first time, Morgan Stanley was acting as a principal (investing its own money) and not just as an agent (advising clients on investing their money.) These investments foreshadowed a Wall Street fad that would entail a retrogression to some of the worst excesses of the robber baron era.

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning
by Jeremy Lent
Published 22 May 2017

Can technology save us? Tainter thinks not. He points to what is known as the “Jevons paradox,” which shows that whenever technology makes the use of a resource more efficient, this only increases its use, as consumption goes up to exploit the new efficiencies. The oil industry's recent desperate rush into tar sands and “fracking” seems to confirm Tainter's thesis, as our global economy invests billions of dollars into technological solutions to extract ever more fossil fuels, even while their carbon emissions are threatening the future of our civilization.24 Many have looked at this situation and arrived at the same gloomy prognosis.

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams
Published 1 Oct 2015

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Published 20 Jan 2014

When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence
by Stephen D. King
Published 17 Jun 2013

Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green
by Henry Sanderson
Published 12 Sep 2022

Uncharted: How to Map the Future
by Margaret Heffernan
Published 20 Feb 2020

In ‘Mountains’, power remains concentrated in elites; entrenched power hampers globalisation and economic development, making political reform difficult. Individualism remains a prevalent mindset, with a belief that people get what they deserve. The internet becomes balkanised, with elite access for the few. Oil loses ground, shale gas becomes a global success; clean coal and nuclear energy expand while renewables struggle to compete. Mass migration drives defence spending. ‘Mountains’ portrayed a world of volatile peaks and valleys. ‘Oceans’, by contrast, describes a world of greater cohesion, where power is more broadly shared.

How to Own the World: A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely
by Andrew Craig
Published 6 Sep 2015

The same is true in the oil market, where companies are having to go to extraordinary lengths to find new oil and many energy experts believe that the “cheap”, which is to say relatively easily accessible oil, is now essentially gone. Those aware that the oil price has recently plummeted on the back of a glut of cheap oil from US shale production might disagree with this statement, but there is a great deal of evidence that this cheap oil will be shortlived and three to five years from now supply could again be scarce. We are also inevitably running into supply constraints with “soft” commodities (things that grow) as the world exhausts its supplies of arable land, fish and fresh water in a bid to feed so many billion people.

Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together
by Andrew Selee
Published 4 Jun 2018

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History
by Lewis Dartnell
Published 13 May 2019

As the shale becomes buried deeper and deeper it is warmed by the interior heat of the planet, until it passes into what is known as the ‘oil window’–a temperature range of about 50–100 °C. Simmering slowly, the complex organic compounds of the dead marine life are broken down into the long-chain hydrocarbon molecules of oil. If the shales are exposed to higher temperatures, up to about 250 °C, the deep chemistry breaks apart even these long chains into small carbon-containing molecules, mostly methane, but also some ethane, propane and butane–that is, natural gas. The oil window generally occurs at a depth of between 2 and 6 kilometres, and it can take the shale over 10 million years to become buried this deep by the continuing sedimentation above.

Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism
by Richard Brooks
Published 23 Apr 2018

It will also commit the taxpayer to underwriting the consortium’s debts and, above a certain amount, the costs of dealing with the waste from what most nuclear experts consider an overpriced project based on flawed, out-of-date technology.52 Once the financial terms were agreed, the civil servant responsible for nuclear energy advice to government ministers, Simon Virley, left the government on a five-year ‘career break’ to become ‘head of power and utilities’ at none other than KPMG. The firm pronounced itself ‘delighted’ with its new man, trumpeting his experience with ‘overall responsibility for advice to the UK Government on renewables, nuclear, oil and gas, shale, carbon capture and storage, and UK energy security issues’.53 Needless to say, KPMG has a long roster of corporate clients in these areas, including the French company behind the Hinkley Point deal, EDF, and others that are standing by to capitalize on any nuclear building renaissance that it might mark.

Does Capitalism Have a Future?
by Immanuel Wallerstein , Randall Collins , Michael Mann , Georgi Derluguian , Craig Calhoun , Stephen Hoye and Audible Studios
Published 15 Nov 2013

Several Latin American countries are significant oil exporters and some, like Brazil, are also emerging powers. The United States has reduced its dependence on international energy sources partly by investments during the financial crisis, including new hydraulic fracturing technologies. New capacity to extract oil and gas from shale is perhaps the clearest example of a possible technological fix to one of the major threats to the future of capital accumulation (more so than “greener” technologies that so far have proved harder to scale up proportionately to energy demand). But the technological fix brings new environmental concerns.

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty
by Benjamin H. Bratton
Published 19 Feb 2016

The overleveraged early 2000s “Bilbao effect” architectural projects were supposed to give way to massive public spending on large built systems that actually did things, but the new New Deal didn't happen.50 For some bets, attention turned toward compressed natural gas development at the expense of more difficult-to-solve renewable energy sources and systems, and for others to actively preventing infrastructural development of, for example, airport expansion or the Keystone tar sands pipeline from Canada into the United States. For the most part, the new infrastructuralism sought less to mitigate against the risks of algorithmic capital and anthropocenic growth than to update their armatures: think Sir Norman Foster's Beijing Airport (built) versus the North Sea wind farms proposed by OMA (not built).

Basic Economics
by Thomas Sowell
Published 1 Jan 2000

But now, thanks to rising global oil prices and improved technology, most oil-industry experts count oil sands as recoverable reserves. That recalculation has vaulted Venezuela and Canada to first and third in global reserves rankings. . .{34} The Economist magazine likewise reported: Canada’s oil sands, or tar sands, as the goo is known, are outsized in every way. They contain 174 billion barrels of oil that can be recovered profitably, and another 141 billion that might be worth exploiting if the oil price rises or the costs of extraction decrease—enough to give Canada bigger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.{35} In short, there is no fixed supply of oil—or of most other things.

Siege: Trump Under Fire
by Michael Wolff
Published 3 Jun 2019

Germany Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

In Darmstadt, the DB Service counter inside the Hauptbahnhof can supply you with a free map of the city. Trams 2, 3 and 5 link the Hauptbahnhof with Luisenplatz. GRUBE MESSEL Die-hard fossil fans might want to check out Grube Messel (Messel Pit), a Unesco World Heritage Site and one-time coal and oil shale quarry, famed for its superbly preserved animal and plant remains from the Eocene era (around 49 million years ago). Early horses found here illustrate the evolutionary path towards the modern beast. Many of the most interesting finds can be seen at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt and the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, but some are at Grube Messel’s own museum (www.messelmuseum.de; Langgasse 2, Messel; admission free; 11am-5pm Apr-Oct, 11am-5pm Sat, Sun & holidays Nov-Mar), in a pretty half-timbered house.

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
by Malcolm Harris
Published 14 Feb 2023

The firm filled with what was fast becoming a recognizable Thiel type: handsome young white men with elite credentials and very conservative politics, many sourced from the Stanford Review and its equivalents. Thiel lavished his hires with perks and cash while requiring little of them in terms of work besides repeating his ideas back. Some of the Clarium moves scored big, including a bet on increasing oil prices via investment in Canadian tar sands extraction. Others didn’t pan out. But on the whole Thiel’s profile was headed in the direction he planned. He certainly wasn’t above putting his heavy thumb on the scale: When the vibrant online gossip publication Gawker and its Bay Area subsidiary, Valleywag, kept needling Thiel and his crew, suggesting that his genius reputation was far overblown and eventually outing him as gay, Thiel cooked up a revenge strategy.

Toast
by Stross, Charles
Published 1 Jan 2002

They’re building a fusion reactor in France and a space shuttle in Russia. We’ve got fullerene tape that promises to be strong enough to support a space elevator with another ten years of development. The price of oil is at an all-time high, but it looks likely to make the extrac- tion of oil from coal and shale viable—we’re not going to run out in the short term. My mobile phone today is more powerful than the UNIX workstation I was using when I prepared the original manuscript of Toast. Multi-user virtual reality environments (initially marketed as games, but rapidly finding other uses) have passed the million-user mark—Gibson’s cyberspace turned out to be so appealing that, although it bore no resemblance to the way real computer networking worked back in the 80s, we’re getting the real thing.

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff
by Fred Pearce
Published 30 Sep 2009

Gladstone wallows in another ecological mess, created as the town annexed once extensive mangrove swamps across a river delta. It has a nice harbour, where you can take boat trips out to the southern end of the reef. But it also has a cement works, a nickel refinery, a nitrate factory, and a mothballed operation for extracting oil from local shales. And it vies with Newcastle, down the coast in New South Wales, and Richards Bay in South Africa for the title of the world’s largest coal port. Some 68 million tonnes a year come here by rail from mines in the Queensland interior. Burning that coal ultimately puts into the air about 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Hedgehogging
by Barton Biggs
Published 3 Jan 2005

Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused To Let Go
by Emily Cockayne
Published 15 Aug 2020

The old macadamised roads had become pitted and potholed; they were noisy; and they could be alternately puddly and dusty.57 Sweepings lifted from macadamised roads incorporated ‘so much of granite’ that it was ‘very little use indeed’ as a manure.58 Cassell’s innovation smoothed over the bumps in the road by blanketing a boiling mixture of coal tar, gravel, sand and ‘road stuff’ over the dry substratum.59 The success of Richard Tappin Claridge, a tea dealer who brought over Seyssel asphalting from the Continent, increased interest in Cassell’s paving.60 In 1835 Cassell published his Treatise on Roads (essentially just a sales catalogue); the publisher was Dean & Munday who were based on Threadneedle Street, the first street in London to get a full surface of asphalt, applied by the Val de Travers company in 1869.61 To go full circle, the recycling of asphalt was first recorded in 1915, and the reuse of bituminous materials increased after the 1930s.62 Masticating From coating timber to lining coffins and creating roads there were yet more uses to be found for coal tar.

Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History
by Thomas Rid
Published 27 Jun 2016

One of the most remarkable articulations of this myth comes from Herman Kahn, one of America’s most celebrated strategic minds. In a notable book published in 1967, The Year 2000, Kahn made a number of bold, yet stunningly accurate, predictions about the end of the millennium. He foresaw the widespread use of nuclear reactors for power, new techniques for birth control, commercial oil extraction from shale, “pocket phones,” and the use of home computers. Nineteen sixty-seven was one year before Intel was founded and two years before ARPANET was launched, the famous predecessor to the internet initially funded by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, later called DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750-2010
by T M Devine
Published 25 Aug 2011

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
by James Rickards
Published 7 Apr 2014

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy
by Adam Tooze
Published 15 Nov 2021

The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World
by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro
Published 11 Sep 2017

These restrictions made significant capital investment in Russia difficult and expensive. In the long term, they were expected to hinder the Russian economy substantially, but they did not threaten a sudden shock to the global economy.84 The United States and Europe also blocked exports of Western technology essential to Russian oil exploration of shale, Arctic, and deepwater oil deposits.85 The restrictions forced ExxonMobil to abandon a joint venture with the Russian energy company Rosneft in the Kara Sea.86 These sanctions, like the others deployed against Russia, were fine-tuned to address a state that seemed “too big to outcast.” Instead of blockading an entire sector, sanctions pinpointed vulnerabilities—instances where Western resources or technology were valuable and difficult to replace—while minimizing the direct economic impact on the sanctioning countries.

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017
by Ian Kershaw
Published 29 Aug 2018

Atomic energy, following the catastrophes at Chernobyl in the 1980s and, more recently, in March 2011 at Fukushima in Japan, has lost much of its early allure, and is outrightly rejected by the citizens of some major European countries. Meanwhile, the more recent introduction of fracking (following its development in the USA) to extract gas and oil from shale rock deep below the earth’s surface is highly controversial on account of its potential damage to the environment and the possible increased likelihood of earthquakes. European countries are proceeding with energy policies in different ways and according to national priorities. But individually and collectively they all face the problem of ensuring future energy supplies if old sources fail, or are ruled out politically, and new sources of renewable energy are not found and rapidly promoted.

The Art of Corporate Success: The Story of Schlumberger
by Ken Auletta
Published 28 Sep 2015

Smart Grid Standards
by Takuro Sato
Published 17 Nov 2015

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?
by Brett Christophers
Published 17 Nov 2020

The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World
by Steve Levine
Published 5 Feb 2015

Data Action: Using Data for Public Good
by Sarah Williams
Published 14 Sep 2020

The Citizen Sense project, for example, which began at the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was run by Jennifer Gabrys, uses open-source hardware sensors to measure PM and byproduct toxins released by fracking in Pennsylvania (nitrates, sulfates, organic chemicals, metals, oil). Many residents in Pennsylvania shale country believe that compressor stations—facilities that pressurize natural gas extracted from shale for transport through pipelines—were polluting the air and causing health problems. In 2014, the Citizen Sense team suggested that people living near these compressor stations use a sensor called Speck (which is part of a sensor package they call FrackBox) to measure the quality of the air in and surrounding their homes.

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them
by Nouriel Roubini
Published 17 Oct 2022

SuperFreakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Published 19 Oct 2009

Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles
by Ruchir Sharma
Published 8 Apr 2012

Over the last decade several major emerging-market currencies have risen against the dollar—none more than the Brazilian real—which is the main reason why the long-term decline in the U.S. share of global exports bottomed out in 2008 at 8 percent and has since been inching higher. U.S. dependence on foreign energy has steadily fallen from 30 percent a decade ago to 22 percent today, owing to new discoveries of oil and gas trapped in shale rock and the development of new technologies to extract it. The United States has now overtaken Russia as the number one producer of natural gas, and could reemerge as a major energy exporter in the next five years. Basic American strengths—including rapid innovation in a highly competitive market—are producing the revival of its energy industry and extending its lead in technology; all the hot new things from social networking to cloud computing seem to be emerging once again from Silicon Valley or from rising tech hotspots like Austin, Texas.

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems
by Linda Yueh
Published 4 Jun 2018

After decades during which production had been leaving the United States, American companies like Stanley Black & Decker, which were manufacturing in countries like China, have been returning. Stanley Black & Decker recently produced their first power tool in the US in over twenty-five years. The catalyst is an almost perfect storm of factors that have boosted American manufacturing. The extraction of oil from the country’s shale has lowered energy costs and made the US competitive again. Rising wages in emerging markets such as China is another reason. Stanley Black & Decker calculates that it costs about the same to produce in America as it does in China, once logistics and transport costs are taken into account.

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today
by Linda Yueh
Published 15 Mar 2018

After decades during which production had been leaving the United States, American companies like Stanley Black & Decker, which were manufacturing in countries like China, have been returning. Stanley Black & Decker recently produced their first power tool in the US in over twenty-five years. The catalyst is an almost perfect storm of factors that have boosted American manufacturing. The extraction of oil from the country’s shale has lowered energy costs and made the US competitive again. Rising wages in emerging markets such as China is another reason. Stanley Black & Decker calculates that it costs about the same to produce in America as it does in China, once logistics and transport costs are taken into account.

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
by Ray Kurzweil
Published 14 Jul 2005

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 15 Mar 2015

The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times
by Lionel Barber
Published 5 Nov 2020

Putin declares at one point that he is delighted to speak freely without journalists present. This could be a calculated insult to me and John Micklethwait, editor of The Economist; more likely a rare oversight. Mickle asks Putin about America’s shale-gas revolution and its impact on world energy prices, especially Russia’s oil and gas output. Putin: ‘Shale gas is temporary phenomenon.’ Guests nod approvingly. Putin raises a glass of red wine. ‘This is colour of water in North Dakota.’ Dinner ends after precisely two hours. Putin thanks his guests and rises from the table, only to spot a piano in the corner of the room. ‘I’ve been practising playing the piano,’ he says, casually.

The Rough Guide to France (Travel Guide eBook)
by Rough Guides
Published 1 Aug 2019

French painters such as Pierre Soulages (b.1919) and Jean Dubuffet (1901–85) pursued Tachisme, also known as l’Art informel. Dubuffet was heavily influenced by Art Brut – that is, works created by children, prisoners or the mentally ill. He produced thickly textured, often childlike paintings, pioneering the depreciation of traditional artistic materials and methods, fashioning junk, tar, sand and glass into the shape of human beings. His work (which provoked much outrage) influenced the French-born American, Arman (1928–2005), and César (1921–98), both of whom made use of scrap metals – their output ranging from presentations of household debris to towers of crushed and compressed cars.

Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story
by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Peter Petre
Published 30 Sep 2012

The Rough Guide to Wales
by Rough Guides
Published 24 Mar 2010

NGLESEY OR THE #AMBRIAN COAST WERE DRIVEN TO MARKET IN %NGLAND AVOIDING THE VALLEY mOOR TOLL ROADS BY TAKING HIGHLAND ROUTES THAT CAN STILL BE TRACED .IGHTS WERE SPENT WITH THE CATTLE CORRALLED IN A HALFPENNY lELD SO CALLED BECAUSE THIS WAS THE NIGHTLY RATE PER ANIMAL NEXT TO A LONELY HOMESTEAD HERALDED BY THREE 3COTS PINES WHICH OPERATED AS AN INN )T WAS A TOUGH JOURNEY FOR MEN AND CATTLE BUT EASIER THAN FOR GEESE WHOSE WEBBED FEET WERE TOUGH ENED FOR THE LONG WALK WITH TAR AND SAND !T HOME WOMEN GROUND THE WHEAT AIDED BY MILLS DRIVEN BY THE SAME FAST mOWING MOUNTAIN STREAMS THAT LATER PROVIDED POWER FOR TEXTILE MILLS SPRINGING UP ALL OVER THE COUNTRY4HE #ISTERCIANS HAD LAID THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY FOR BOTH WOOL AND mANNEL BUT IT HAD GENERALLY REMAINED IN THE COTTAGES WITH NEARLY EVERY SMALLHOLDING KEEPING A SPINNING WHEEL NEXT TO THEIR HARP 4HE SAME SORT OF DAMP CLIMATE THAT MADE ,ANCASHIRE THE CENTRE OF THE WORLDS COTTON INDUSTRY ENCOURAGED THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A TEXTILE INDUSTRY IN 2UTHIN $ENBIGH .EWTOWN ,LANDEILO AND ALONG THE 4EIl 6ALLEY BUT A LACK OF EFlCIENT TRANSPORT MADE THEM UNCOMPETITIVE 4HE NEXT MAJOR SHIFT IN LAND USE CAME WITH A WAVE OF ENCLOSURE ACTS FROM  TO  WHICH EFFECTIVELY REMOVED SMALLHOLDERS FROM UPLAND COMMON PASTURE AND GRANTED THE LAND TO HOLDERS OF ALREADY LARGE ESTATES 7ITH THE FASH ION FOR GROUSE SHOOTING TAKING HOLD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY LARGE TRACTS OF HILL COUNTRY BEGAN TO BE MANAGED AS HEATHER MOOR WITH FREQUENT CONTROLLED lRES TO ENCOURAGE THE NEW GROWTH THAT THE GROUSE FED ON 4HE PEOPLE WERE DEPRIVED OF THEIR LIVELIHOOD AND ACCESS TO OPEN COUNTRY WAS DENIED TO FUTURE GENERATIONS OF WALKERS A SITUATION ONLY RECENTLY REVERSED 4HE MOUNTAIN BUILDING PROCESSES DISCUSSED ABOVE HAVE LEFT A BROAD SPECTRUM OF MINERALS UNDER 7ALES #OPPER HAD BEEN MINED WITH CONSIDERABLE SUCCESS SINCE THE "RONZE !

On Thermonuclear War
by Herman Kahn
Published 16 Jul 2007

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
by Adam Tooze
Published 31 Jul 2018

Capitalism in America: A History
by Adrian Wooldridge and Alan Greenspan
Published 15 Oct 2018

It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear
by Gregg Easterbrook
Published 20 Feb 2018

Supply increased so rapidly that the price-maintenance cartel of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries broke, ending a monopoly that once seemed invincible. In years to come engineering advances such as three-dimensional seismology, horizontal drilling, and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) would make production of oil and natural gas practical from shale deposits, which are common in North America, while exploration of the Bakken Formation of the Dakotas, Montana, and Saskatchewan led to discovery of substantial reserves. No government agency performed the research that led to these developments—which is why they happened! Government-led attempts to increase oil and gas supplies resulted in costly white-elephant facilities that spent vast amounts to produce mere drops of petroleum substitute.

Circle of Greed: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Lawyer Who Brought Corporate America to Its Knees
by Patrick Dillon and Carl M. Cannon
Published 2 Mar 2010

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
by Robert J. Gordon
Published 12 Jan 2016

Use of Weapons
by Iain M. Banks
Published 14 Jan 2011

They came to see the strange man who lived in a funny wooden shack in the dunes. They were fascinated, if also slightly repelled, by the strangeness of living in something that was dug into the ground, something that did not - could not - move. They would stare at the line where the wood and tar-paper met the sand, and shake their heads, walking right round the small, skewed hut, as if looking for the wheels. They talked amongst themselves, trying to imagine what it must be like to have the same view and the same sort of weather all the time. They opened the rickety door and sniffed the dark, smoky, man-scented air inside the hut, and shut the door quickly, declaring that it must be unhealthy to live in the same place, joined to the earth.

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
by Ray Kurzweil
Published 25 Jun 2024

Green Mars
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 23 Oct 1993

He had been a fullback at the University of Washington, a fullback slow of foot but decisive in direction, and very difficult to bring down. Bear Man, they had called him. Tackle him at your peril. He had studied engineering, and afterward worked in the oil fields of Iran and Georgia, devising a number of innovations for extracting oil from extremely marginal shale. He had gotten a master’s degree from Tehran University while doing this work, and then had moved to California and joined a friend who was forming a company that made deep-sea diving equipment used in offshore oil drilling, an enterprise that was moving out into ever-deeper water as more accessible supplies were exhausted.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
by Ron Chernow
Published 1 Jan 1997

In the 1850s, the whale fisheries had failed to keep pace with the mounting need for illuminating oil, forcing up the price of whale oil and making illumination costly for ordinary Americans. Only the affluent could afford to light their parlors every evening. There were many other lighting options—including lard oil, tallow oil, cottonseed oil, coal oil refined from shale, and wicks dipped in fat—but no cheap illuminant that burned in a bright, clean, safe manner. Both urbanization and industrialization sped the search for an illuminant that would extend day into night, breaking the timeless rhythm of rural hours that still governed the lives of farmers and city folk alike.

The Best Business Writing 2013
by Dean Starkman
Published 1 Jan 2013

“We haven’t arrived at a strategy yet but as we approach the sale we will be happy to have a fulsome technical discussion,” Wojahn replied on October 18. A day later, Chesapeake drew up a particularly detailed map. It projected how the county split could allow each firm to end up with almost exactly 134,000 “oil acres” after the auction. Oilrich shale is much more valuable, since crude trades at a massive premium to natural gas. On October 20, Wojahn sent McClendon an update: “From what I understand (Encana’s) John Schopp has been leading the charge on working with your team on arranging a bidding strategy. I have a meeting with John planned on Friday and a review with Randy Monday.”

Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa
by Paul Kenyon
Published 1 Jan 2018

‘You’ve stolen our sand,’ he said, and when Lloyd pointed out it had merely been shifted from one river to another, he quickly realized he wasn’t addressing the official’s overriding requirement. After the strike at Oloibiri the Europeans held a party on their houseboat and invited everyone to see what they had discovered. It couldn’t have looked like much – dollops of tar veined with stones and sand – but the white men were ecstatic and erected long wooden tables on the banks of the river where they served beer and food. ‘They made us be happy,’ remembered Sunday Inengite. ‘They made us clap like fools, and dance as if we were trained monkeys.’7 A journalist who spent time with Sunday Inengite years later, when he had become chief of the village, described how he had kept the original contract signed with Shell.

Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in a Global Market
by Steven Drobny
Published 31 Mar 2006

Parks Directory of the United States
by Darren L. Smith and Kay Gill
Published 1 Jan 2004

Facilities: 54 modern campsites (39 with electrical hookups, 1 u), comfort station with showers, boat launch, fish cleaning station. Activities: Camping, boating, fishing. Special Features: The 107-mile long lake is surrounded by 540 miles of shoreline, some featuring the ‘‘burning bluffs,’’ which are created by oil-bearing shale. Lightning strikes or chemical reactions ignite the shale, which may then smoke for years. ★4213★ ROCKY POINT RECREATION AREA c/o Black Hills Trails 11361 Nevada Gulch Rd Lead, SD 57754 Web: www.sdgfp.info/parks/Regions/northernhills/ rockypoint.htm Phone: 605-584-3896 Size: 350 acres. Location: 8 miles east of Belle Fourche off SD 212.