“Until debt tear us apart” — There is no denying that a major economic downturn is now in the books, and that lacking an energy miracle, the world economy is about to go through a major shift. After discussing the faulty nature of prevailing economic metrics (GDP) in last week’s essay, and understanding how economic growth…

How financialization heralds the end of the industrial age — Western neoliberal economies are on the brink of a steep economic decline. Barring an energy / productivity miracle a prolonged and deep recession is clearly on the horizon. While mainstream pundits keep “informing” the public how GDP was actually growing in the past decades (except for a few brief moments)…

Geologists, while searching for oil and gas in France, have found the biggest deposit of pure naturally occurring hydrogen yet. A source of fuel which “burns clean” and hot, and thus can “replace” fossil fuels in “hard to decarbonize” areas of the industry like steel, glass or cement manufacturing, not…

…and can potentially become highly explosive — When it comes to energy these years, bad news seem to be popping up like mushrooms on a shiitake-farm. A recent flurry of articles on “The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News”, Oilprice.com, is a case in point. Wind farm projects going for broke. War in the Middle-East…

There is a rule in ecology called the maximum power principle formulated by Lokta in 1925. It can be summarized as follows: “The systems that survive in competition are those that develop more power inflow and use it best to meet the needs of survival.” If one wanted to describe…

Ecological Footprint Analysis is built on a number of assumptions, which might be true for the moment, but gives us the flawed impression that things could go on just fine if we made a few adjustments here and there. Nothing could be further from the truth. …

A controversial topic — Although what follows might be highly contentious, I could not resist the urge to write about it. Heck, some might even find it refreshing in the ceaseless deluge of rah-rah coming in on all channels... For the record, and for those of my readers who just joined recently: yours truly…

Into A Post Industrial World, And Why This Is Happening To Us — Our globalized industrial civilization has arrived at a breaking point. The fundamentals — all the essential inputs to this way of life of ours — are crumbling like castles of sand left high and dry. There is no technology readily available to save it, as it was exactly that: technology…

Diesel fuel is the lifeblood of this oh-so high-tech civilization of ours. Without it there is no mining, no transportation, no agriculture. At least not at any meaningful scale. Contrary to all the happy talk of electrification reducing oil demand, there is no replacement for this incredibly energy dense and…