This article is thanks to the Post Carbon Institute.
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Another study warning governments of the imminence and danger of peak oil was released last week. This one was an updated version of a similar report produced by a group of British industrialists 14 months ago.

The intended audience of the report is the new British government that will take office after an election later this year. The authors hope that a new government will take a more serious view of the dangers to Britain (and everywhere else for that matter) of impending high oil prices and shortages which previous British governments were unwilling to confront or prepare for.

For full article, visit:
http://www.postcarbon.org/article/73961-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-crunch

For more information on the topic of oil production, see The Oil Drum website: www.theoildrum.com/
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Faith Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), believes that if no big new discoveries are made, “the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a business-as-usual basis.” Coming from the band of geologists and former oil-industry hands who believe that the world is facing an imminent shortage of oil, this would be unremarkable. But coming from the IEA, the source of closely watched annual predictions about world energy markets, it is a new and striking claim.

Despite repeated downward revisions in recent years in its forecasts of global oil supply in 2030, the IEA has not until now committed itself to a firm prediction for when oil supplies might cease to grow. Its latest energy outlook, released last month, says only that conventional oil (as opposed to hard-to-extract sources like Canada’s tar sands) is “projected to reach a plateau sometime before” 2030.

For more information, visit:
http://www.economist.com

Thanks to Sheila Macdonald, Executive Director of the Population Strategies Group for the article below. Also, see the PDF below featuring a graph on global oil production and discovery

Oil Production and Discovery (PDF, 49 KB)

Also, thanks to Sheila for alerting me to a slide show called “Has Oil and Gas Collapse Sealed Fate of Peak Oil” by Mathew R, Simmons, Chairman, Simmons & Company International, presented to the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Gulf Coast Chapter, at the Houston Racquet Club on April 21, 2009. See: http://www.321energy.com/editorials
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In the next few years, most of us are going to have to make many important decisions that will profoundly affect the rest of our lives. How soon these decisions come will depend on one’s individual circumstances.

If you are one of the millions who have lost their jobs or homes in the last year then you already know that something is happening. Returning to the way we have lived for the last 100 years simply is not in the cards. The world is entering a great paradigm shift, and our place in it will be markedly different 10 or 20 years from now. The most alarming thing to remember is that 95 percent of us have not discovered that major changes are under way and are waiting for economic recovery and new jobs to open up.

For full article, visit:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/48577

Thanks to Joe Brewer for this article from Scientific American from 1998. See http://dieoff.org/page140.htm. See the 10-year update from 2008 below the original article. Also see a 2004 article from National Geographic, below, and a 2008 review of this subject.
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by Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère,
Scientific American, March 1998

In 1973 and 1979 a pair of sudden price increases rudely awakened the industrial world to its dependence on cheap crude oil. Prices first tripled in response to an Arab embargo and then nearly doubled again when Iran dethroned its Shah, sending the major economies sputtering into recession. Many analysts warned that these crises proved that the world would soon run out of oil. Yet they were wrong.
Continue Reading »

Thanks to Greg Morgan for this article.

Taphonomy of Oil (PDF, 547 KB)

From the March 2010 Muslim Women’s Newsletter. My advice is to telephone Malaysia’s embassy and tell the ambassador how you feel about this violation of human rights. In Washington, the number is 202-572-9700. Thanks to Moya Muller for suggesting this form of protest. I called this morning and spoke with the secretary to the ambassador, since he is traveling, and registered my personal protest. If enough people call, it may make an impact on that government’s policy.
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Malaysia caned three Muslim women convicted of adultery by a court of Islamic law, the first time that women in the multi-faith country have been subject to the punishment.

Last August, a similar sentence against a Muslim woman caught drinking was deferred amid complaints that Shariah courts had overstepped the mark. That punishment is still pending.

Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said he wanted to publicize the case of the three women, who also received short jail terms, because of too much hype over the earlier case.
Continue Reading »

Great thanks to Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN, for sending me the following opinion piece by him published by IPS on March 9, 2010. It addresses lack of implementation of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1325 (attached), dealing with protection of women and children during peacekeeping operations and armed conflict and involvement of women in building peace. See http://www.ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.aspx?new=7271

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (PDF, 39 KB)

1325 implementation – Where is Secretary-General’s leadership?

Exactly to the date, 10 years ago, on the International Women’s Day, on behalf of the UN Security Council as its President, I had the honor to issue a statement that brought to global attention the unrecognized, under-utilized and under-valued contribution women can make to preventing war, to building peace and to engaging individuals and societies to live in harmony. The members of the Security Council recognized that peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men and affirmed the equal access and full participation of women in power structures and their full involvement in all efforts for peace and security.

For full article, visit:
http://www.ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.aspx?new=7271

Thanks to Jim Poyser for this article on Vertical Farming.
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Together the world’s 6.8 billion people use land equal in size to South America to grow food and raise livestock—an astounding agricultural footprint. And demographers predict the planet will host 9.5 billion people by 2050. Because each of us requires a minimum of 1,500 calories a day, civilization will have to cultivate another Brazil’s worth of land—2.1 billion acres—if farming continues to be practiced as it is today. That much new, arable earth simply does not exist. To quote the great American humorist Mark Twain: “Buy land. They’re not making it any more.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-rise-of-vertical-farms

You may want to read “The 2008 Food Price Crisis: Rethinking Food Security Policies.” Thanks to Frank Arundel for letting me know about that United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report from June 2009. The link where you can download that report is: http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/gdsmdpg2420093_en.pdf

A longstanding proposal for the creation of a special U.N. agency for women – officially called a “gender entity” – is apparently moving at the sluggish pace of a paralytic snail.

The proposal – originally conceived by a high-level panel of U.N. experts back in 2006 – has remained a theoretical exercise for so long that a coalition of women activists is spoofing it in a fake electronic newspaper being circulated at a U.N meeting on gender empowerment here.

The fictitious headlines in the newspaper say it all: ‘New U.N. Women’s Rights Agency Created (Not true);’ ‘Search for the head of the U.N. Women’s Agency (A long way off); ‘New Women’s Super Agency Attracts Donors’ (Hardly); and ‘Much Awaited but Slow Reforms’ (Closer to truth).

For full article, visit:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50538