energy security

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The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, book value, borderless world, BRICs, business climate, California energy crisis, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, clean tech, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial innovation, flex fuel, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global village, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, index fund, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, John Deuss, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, Malacca Straits, market design, means of production, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, new economy, no-fly zone, Norman Macrae, North Sea oil, nuclear winter, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, Piper Alpha, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, Suez crisis 1956, technology bubble, the built environment, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, trade route, transaction costs, unemployed young men, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, William Langewiesche, Yom Kippur War

Senate, May 5, 2011 (smart grid). 12 Cybersecurity Two Years Later: A Report of the CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2011), p. 1 (“steamboats”); Charles Ebinger and Kevin Massey, “Enhancing Smart Grid Cybersecurity in the Age of Information Warfare,” Brookings Energy Security Initiative, February 2011; Bruce Averill and Eric A. M. Luijf, “Canvassing the Cyber Security Landscape: Why Energy Companies Need to Pay Attention,” Journal of Energy Security, May 2010. 13 U.S. Energy Information Administration, “World Oil Transit Chokepoints,” EIA website. 14 Donna J. Nincic, “The ‘Radicalization’ of Maritime Piracy: Implications for Maritime Energy Security,” Journal of Energy Security, December 2010; Jane’s Navy International, September 28, 2010. Chapter 14: Shifting Sands in the Persian Gulf 1 R.

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But there is also a security dimension, which arises from growing dependence for a country for which “self-reliance” had been such a strong imperative for so many years. 10 CHINA IN THE FAST LANE In the late 1990s, when energy security proposals were presented to the Chinese government, they were tabled. “They said there was no energy security issue,” said a senior adviser, “and that was partly right. It was a benign market.” But that changed as oil consumption surged, increasing the reliance on imports, and prices started their upward trek. A country that had been self-sufficient in oil as a matter of policy found itself increasingly dependent upon the global market—something that was anathema in its earlier and very different stage of development. This dependence made energy security a central concern in Beijing.

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As one of the country’s top officials put it, “China’s energy security issue is oil supply security.” By 2003 a new factor had further increased the anxiety about energy security—the war in Iraq. For Beijing, it was hard to believe that the promotion of democracy in the Middle East was what propelled the United States into Iraq in March 2003. If not that, it had to be something more concrete, more urgent, more critical, more threatening. In short, it had to be oil. And if the United States was worried enough about oil to launch a full-scale invasion, then, in the view of many Chinese, energy security was clearly much more important—and urgent.1 Part of the new insecurity arose from apprehension about the sea-lanes, the economic highways for the world commerce that were increasingly important as the lifelines for Chinese oil imports—and indeed for Chinese trade in general.

Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence by Robert Bryce

addicted to oil, An Inconvenient Truth, Berlin Wall, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, Colonization of Mars, congestion pricing, decarbonisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, financial independence, flex fuel, Ford Model T, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it's over 9,000, Jevons paradox, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, low earth orbit, low interest rates, Michael Shellenberger, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, peak oil, price stability, Project for a New American Century, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, SpaceShipOne, Stewart Brand, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas L Friedman, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize, Yom Kippur War

The report said that “energy independence is not realistic in the foreseeable future, whereas U.S. energy security can be enhanced by moderating demand, expanding and diversifying domestic energy supplies, and strengthening global energy trade and investment. There can be no U.S. energy security without global energy security” (italics added).34 In other words, America’s ability to secure the energy it needs hinges on a stable, prosperous, global marketplace and global economy in which all of the players—producers and consumers alike—are able to get the energy they need at reasonable prices. Energy security means accepting energy interdependence. It means moving past the racism and xenophobia that dominate the current energy rhetoric and embracing the global market.

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Available: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Saudia_Arabia/Oil.html. 50 GUSHER OF LIES countries, including Venezuela, have agitated for higher prices, the Saudis have generally sought to stabilize global oil prices at levels that are good for both consumers and producers. This fact was made clear by Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi in 2006 during a speech in Washington, when he said: Energy security cannot be maintained when prices are at extremes— too low or too high. Truly sustainable energy security for consumers and producers requires three conditions—price stability, supply and demand reliability, and affordability. These are the three pillars of sustainable energy security. Affordability applies to both consumers and producers. If producers are forced to sell their energy resources at a low price, they eventually cannot afford to make the capital investments required to maximize long-term capacity.

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By 2011, the country will have invested about $18 billion to add another 1.5 million barrels per day of new refining capacity at locations like Ras Tanura, Yanbu, Jubail, and Rabigh.7 The new plants, said al-Muhanna, will be among the most advanced in the world. And they will give the Saudis even greater energy security at a time when the U.S.—along with most other industrialized countries on the planet—have neither excess crude capacity nor excess refining capacity. The punch line here is obvious: Like it or not, America’s energy security is tied to Saudi Arabia’s energy security. And that’s going to be true for years to come. The Saudis are aggressively embracing the global energy market. But try as they might, they are going to have difficulty keeping up with the rock-and-roll capitalism and go-go globalization that are under way in Dubai. 19 THE RISE OF DUBAI AND THE “SHIFT IN GRAVITY” It was a forest of construction cranes.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", 3D printing, 9 dash line, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, Bernie Sanders, BRICs, British Empire, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, commodity super cycle, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, failed state, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, LNG terminal, Lyft, Malacca Straits, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Masayoshi Son, Masdar, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, new economy, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, paypal mafia, peak oil, pension reform, power law, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, super pumped, supply-chain management, TED Talk, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, women in the workforce

It took more than two weeks and what Putin called “difficult” negotiations for Russia and Ukraine to come to a new deal.7 Yet, remarkably, despite exceptionally cold weather, this second gas crisis resulted in no shortages, except in parts of the Balkans. The Ukrainians had built up ample storage. The Europeans also drew gas from storage. These crises put a new emphasis on energy security for both Russia and Europe. But the concept of “energy security” meant strikingly different things to them. Chapter 11 CLASH OVER ENERGY SECURITY Until recently, we assumed that the energy security regime that had come into existence in Europe was an optimal one,” reflected then–Russian president Dmitry Medvedev soon after the gas crisis. “It turns out that it wasn’t.”1 In 2011, Russia’s new concept was made clear.

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Nord Stream was Russia’s solution for its own version of energy security, reducing its dependence on Ukrainian transit by building new pipelines that went around that country. “Its construction meets our long-term goals,” said Medvedev at the dedication. And he generously added, “Of course this is our contribution to European energy security.” Chancellor Merkel voiced her approval of the project. Europe and Russia, she said, would “remain linked” in a “safe and resilient partnership” for decades to come. The European Union designated the pipeline “a priority energy project” that would contribute to European energy security. The gas that arrived at Lubmin had been injected into the pipeline two months earlier, at the port of Vyborg, northwest of St.

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As we shall see later, the oil sanctions held, buttressed by financial sanctions; and the economic pressure on Iran led finally to the 2015 agreement that constrained Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the removal of sanctions.5 Case number two is Europe and relates back to Putin’s angry rejoinder at St. Petersburg. The rise of shale has been one of the keys to diversifying the European gas market and enhancing energy security. When European leaders talk about energy security, they are often less focused on oil and more on natural gas—and in particular the degree of reliance on Russian gas. As Europe’s top supplier of gas, Russia had, in the minds of some in the European Union and many in Washington, the ability to use gas supply as leverage for political objectives.

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

addicted to oil, American energy revolution, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business cycle, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, crony capitalism, deglobalization, energy security, Exxon Valdez, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, hiring and firing, hydraulic fracturing, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, Jevons paradox, Kenneth Rogoff, manufacturing employment, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, South China Sea, stock buybacks

They emphasize the fact that, as the Congressional Budget Office has noted, “greater production of oil in the United States would probably not protect U.S. consumers from sudden worldwide increases in oil prices,” suggesting the economy as a whole could not be insulated either. And they sharply question the security benefits of greater domestic production: according to the Energy Security Leadership Council, a bipartisan group of prominent business executives and retired military and government leaders from across the political spectrum, “as long as the United States remains a large consumer of oil, no level of domestic fuel production can meaningfully improve energy security.”37 O pen any Economics 101 textbook and you’ll learn what determines oil prices: it’s the collision of supply and demand. High prices make production more attractive and encourage people to cut back how much they use.

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Kuuskraa, Tyler Van Leeuwen, and Matt Wallace, “Improving Domestic Energy Security and Lowering CO2 Emissions with ‘Next Generation’ CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2-EOR),” National Energy Technology Laboratory, Washington, D.C., June 20, 2011. 28. Energy Information Administration, “Energy Market and Economic Impacts of the American Power Act of 2010,” Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting Washington, D.C., July 2010. 29. Natural Resources Defense Council, “Reducing Imported Oil.” 30. Kuuskraa et al., “Improving Domestic Energy Security.” 31. James T. Bartis, Tom LaTourrette, Lloyd Dixon, D. J. Peterson, and Gary Cecchine, Oil Shale Development in the United States: Prospects and Policy Issues (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2005).

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Washington Post, May 4, 2012. NOTES FOR PAGES 65–78 • 227 36. Jocelyn Fong, “20 Experts Who Say Drilling Won’t Lower Gas Prices,” Media Matters for America, March 22, 2012, http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/ 03/22/20-experts-who-say-drilling-wont-lower-gas-pric/184040. 37. Energy Security Leadership Council, “The New American Oil Boom: Implications for Energy Security,” Washington, D.C., 2012. 38. International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook: Tensions from the Two-Speed Recovery, Washington, D.C. (April 2011). Author’s calculations. 39. James D. Hamilton, “Historical Oil Shocks,” in The Handbook of Major Events in Economic History, ed.

Living in a Material World: The Commodity Connection by Kevin Morrison

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, commoditize, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, diversified portfolio, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, energy security, European colonialism, flex fuel, food miles, Ford Model T, Great Grain Robbery, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), junk bonds, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Michael Milken, new economy, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, planned obsolescence, price mechanism, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, young professional

Bush espouses a similar goal to Nixon, however, his energy policy doctrine was dismissed last year by a team of energy executives, policymakers and analysts, who make up the National Petroleum Council (NPC) in the US. ‘Energy Independence should not be confused with strengthening energy security. The concept of energy independence is not realistic in the foreseeable future, whereas US energy security can be enhanced by moderating demand, expanding and diversifying domestic energy supplies, and strengthening global energy trade and investment,’ the NPC said. ‘There can be no US energy security without global energy security.’ (National Petroleum Council, 2007). ENERGY | 31 Until cleaner energies become commercially viable, the world will continue to consume more coal and oil.

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Bush’s support for the coal industry underlines his prioritizing of energy security over global warming. About half of all US electricity is generated by coal; the country burns more than 1 billion tonnes a year and most of that is met by local production. Almost two-thirds of US coal production comes from mines in Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky, with most of the coal moved by train across America. Many drivers that get caught by the red lights at a level crossing in America is often because they are waiting for a coal freight train to pass with dozens of carriages filled to the brim with coal. Politicians talk about energy security and climate change in the same breath, but so far they have been proven to be largely contradictory objectives.

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(Comex) 255 Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) (US) 74, 253, 263 commodity indices 240–2 commodity market manipulation 245–7 Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) 238 Congo, copper in 201, 202, 210–11 | 293 Connaughton, James 29, 31 ConocoPhilips 57, 79 Conservation International 93 Continental Power Exchange (CPE) 257, 258 Cooke, Jay 198, 222 n. 18 copper 4, 9, 11 applications 187–90 Congo 201, 202, 210–11 cost 211–13, 214–17 demand 182–5 electrical applications 186–7 in electricity generation 194–5 history 185–6 prices 199–201, 222 n. 17 production 195–8, 199 recycling 183, 184–5 theft 179–82 trade 211–13 under-sea extraction 217 in vehicles 190–4 Copper Export Association 201 Copper Exporters Incorporated 201 Copper Producers’ Association 200 coralconnect.com 260 corn 68–84, 96–8, 98–9, 99–101 hybrids 101–3 GM 104–6 diversity 106–10 Corn Products 233 cotton 166 Countryside Alliance 146 credit crisis (2007) 7 Crocker, Thomas 138 Cruse, Richard 111 D1 Oils 57, 58, 59 Dabhol gas-fired power plant 35 Dales, John 138 Daly, Herman 136 Darwin, Charles 67 Davis, Adam 157 Davis, Miles 183 Day after Tomorrow, The 15 n. 1 De Angelis, Anthony ‘Tino’ 245 De Beers 200, 210 De Soto, Hernando 136 Deere, John 100 deforestation 87, 147 Dennis, Richard 237 Deripaska, Oleg 199 Deutsche Bank 246, 261 294 | INDEX Diamond, Jared 97 DiCaprio, Leonardo 130 Dimas, Stavros 160 distillers’ dried grains with solubles (DDGS) 81 Dittar, Thomas 231 Donchian, Richard 237–8 Donson, Harry 199 dot.com bubble 7, 14, 241, 243 Doud, Gregg 82, 83 Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index 240 Dresdner Kleinwort 47 Drexel Burnham Lambert 254 Dreyfus, Louis 89 Duke Energy 258 Dunavant, Billy 237 DuPont 102 E85 79 Ealet, Isabelle 259, 260 Earth Sanctuatires 157 Earth Summit Bali 142 Rio 1992 141 Ebay 38 Ecosystem Marketplace 157 Edison, Thomas 17, 95, 186 Ehrlich, Paul 13, 14, 16 n. 9 Population Bomb, The 14 Eisenhower, President 40 El Paso 258 Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) 153 electric vehicles 54, 191–3 11th Hour, The 130 Elf 261 Elton, Ben 135 Emissions Trading Program 139 Energy Information Administration (EIA) 38 Energy Policy Act 2005 (US) 28 energy security 28–9 Energy Security Act 1980 (US) 74 Enron 35, 164, 165, 213, 246, 257–64 Enron Online 213, 225 n. 40, 257, 258, 259 Environmental Protection Agency (US) 27, 62 n. 17, 75, 139 ethanol 69–70, 73–81, 92, 119 n. 6 see also biofuels Eurex 262 European Climate Exchange 146 European Union 142, 158, 160 Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) 185 Evelyn, John 127 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) 13, 270 Exxon 32, 50, 52, 261 ExxonMobil 13, 79, 242, 254 Faraday, Michael 186 Farm Credit Administration 76 farm debt crisis 114–15 farm payments 115–16 farm sinks 154–5 Fearnley-Whittingstall 86 Federal Bureau of Investigation 246 Federal Clean Water Act (US) 156 F-gases 131 Firewire 260 Fisher, Mark 266, 269 Fleming, Roddy 219 flex-fuel cars 92–3 Fonda, Jane 114 Food and Agricultural Organization 148, 159 Ford, Bill 267 Ford, President Gerald 30, 115 Ford, Henry 73, 95, 195 Fordlandia 195 forest economics 149–50 forestry carbon credits 147 forests 147–51 Forrest, Andrew 199 Forward Contracts (Regulations) Act 1952 (US) 249 Forward Markets Commission (FMC) 249 Four Winds Capital Management 149, 159, 184 Franklin, Benjamin 157 Freese, Barbara 27 Friedland, Robert 199 Frost Fairs 127 fuel cell vehicles 53, 192–3 Futures Inc. 237 futures trading 235–6, 245, 247–50 gas 21–2 Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) 61 n. 8 gasohol 73 gene shuffling 105 General Atlantic 267, 269 General Motors 53, 54, 191, 193 INDEX genetically modified organism (GMO) seeds 105–6 Glencore 199, 211 Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 148 Global Initiatives173 n. 28 Global Positioning Systems (GPS) 191 global warming 24–6, 75 Globex 267 glycerin 82 Golder and Associates 206 Goldman 255, 260, 261 Goldman Sachs 57, 146, 254, 259 Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) 240, 241 Goldstein Samuelson 245 Google 37, 38 Gore, Al 16 n. 5, 28, 38, 126, 129, 143 Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) certificates 146 Grant, President Ulysses S. 214 Greenburg, Marty 269 greenhouse effect 131 greenhouse gas emissions 25, 131 see also carbon dioxide; nitrous oxide Greenspan, Alan 244 Gresham Investment Management 242, 243 Guggenheim brothers 197 Guttman, Lou 251, 255, 259 Hamanaka, Yasuo 246 Hanbury-Tension, Robin 146 Harding, President Warren 103 hedge funds 23640 Henry Moore Foundation 180, 181 Herfindahl, Orris 215, 226 n. 46 Heston, Charlton 15, n. 4 Hezbollah 46 Hi-Bred Corn Company 102 high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) 89–90 Highland Star 219 Hill, James Jerome 215 Homestead Act 1862 (US) 100 Honda 53 Howard, John 133, 171 n. 16 Hu Jintao, President 219 Hub, Henry 257 Humphries, Jon 181 Hunt Brothers 245 Hunter, Brian 246, 247 | 295 Hurricane Katrina 135 Hurricane Rita 134 Hussein, Saddam 48 hybrid cars 53 hydroelectric power 34 hydrogen cars 54 hypoxia zone 111 iAqua 165 IEA 32 IMF 16 n. 6 Inconvenient Truth, An 16 n. 5, 129 Indonesia palm oil 93–4 Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) 31–2 intelligent lighting 38 IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) 246, 261, 262, 265, 266, 267 Intergovernmental Council of Copper Exporting Countries (CIPEC) 203, 204 International Bauxite Association (IBA) 203 International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP) 144 International Commercial Exchange (ICE) 273 n. 15 International Copper Cartel 201 International Energy Agency (IEA) 19, 25, 26, 40, 140–1, 153, 194 International Monetary Fund 57 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (UN) 24, 132, 134, 147, 149, 170 n. 3 International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) 250, 256, 257, 262, 263, 264, 265 International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) 41 International Tin Council 203 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture 107 Iowa Farm Bureau 36, 76, 155 Iowa Stored Energy Park 36 Japanese car market 18 Jardine Matheson 225 n. 40 Jarecki, Dr Henry 242, 243, 244 jatropha 57–9 Jefferson, Thomas 109 Jevons, William Stanley 20 Joint, Charles 181 296 | INDEX Joint Implementation (JI) 151 Jones, Paul Tudor 237, 238 Kabila, Joseph 210 Kanza, T.R. 211 Katanga of Congo 201, 225 n. 37 Kennecott Copper 199 Kennedy, Joseph (Joe) 264 Khosla Partners 38 Khosla, Vinod 37 Kitchen, Louise 258 Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers 37 Kooyker, Willem 237, 238 Kovner, Bruce 237, 238 Krull, Pete 81 Kyoto Protocol 24, 27, 50, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 151, 169 n. 2, 194 clean development mechanism (CDM) 151 Lamkey, Kendall 112 Land and Water Resources, Inc. 155 Land Grant College Act (US) 101 Lange, Jessica 114 lead credits 172 n. 20 LED (light-emitting diodes) 38 Lehman brothers 241 Leiter, Joseph 245 Leopold II, King 210 Liebreich, Michael 39 Liffe 267 Lincoln, President Abraham 69, 100, 101, 119 n. 1 Lintner, Dr John 243 liquid coal 33–4 London Clearing House 263 London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (Liffe) 262 London Metal Exchange (LME) 16 n. 10, 43, 196, 204, 212, 213, 246 Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) 247 Louisiana Light Sweet 253 Lourey, Richard 166, 168 Lovelock, James 131 Lyme Timber Company, The 149 Mackintosh, John 232, 234, 270 Madonna 6 malaria 156 Malthus, Thomas 130 manure lagoons 154–5 Mao, Chairman 210 Markowitz, Harry 243 Marks, Jan 268 Marks, Michel 252, 253, 254, 268 Marks, Rebecca 164, 165 Mars, Forrest E., Jr 60 Matheson, Hugh 225 n. 40 Matif 262 McCain, John 80 McDonalds 89 Megatons to Megawatts programme 42 Melamed, Leo 249–50, 264 Mendel, Gregor (Johann) 102, 122 n. 30 Merrill Lynch 241, 246 Mesa Water 163–4 methane 128, 131, 152, 154 methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) 74 Microsoft 13 Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord 143 milk 88–9 Milken, Michael 254 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board 156 Mittal, Laskma 212 Mobile 261 Mocatta Metals 242 Monsanto 106, 108 Montéon, Michael 199 Montgomery, David 138 Moor Capital 237 Moore, Henry 179, 182 Morgan, J.P. 246 Morgan Stanley 254, 255, 259, 260, 261 Muir, John 125 Mulholland, William 162 Murphy, Eddie 256 Murray Darling Basin 165–6 Musk, Elon 38 Nabisco 238–9 Nanosolar 38 Nasdaq 262 Nassar, President 210 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 192 National Alcohol Programme (Brazil) 92 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association 82 National Commission on Supplies and Shortages (US) 7, 16 n. 5 National Corn Growers’ Association 80 National Energy Policy (US) 28 INDEX National Petroleum Council (NPC) 30, 50 National Security Space Office (NSSO) (US) 39 NCDEX 248, 249 Nelson, Willie 115 New Deal Farm Laws 103 New Deal for Agriculture 76, 89 New Energy Finance 39 New Farm and Forest Products Task Force 95 New York Board of Trade 240, 255 New York Cocoa Exchange 255 New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange 255 New York Cotton Exchange 237, 252, 255 New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) 43, 156, 246, 248, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269 New York Metal Exchange 226 n. 42 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) 198, 253, 255, 256, 264, 268, 270 Newman, Paul 265 Nicholson, Jack 162 nickel 217–18, 227 n. 50, 227 n. 52 nitrates 110–11 nitrogen oxide emissions 139 nitrous oxide 131, 139, 140, 152 Nixon, President 27, 30, 115, 231, 252 Noble Group 199 North, John Thomas 198, 199, 209 Norton, Gale 163 nuclear energy 34 nuclear power 21, 39–44 Nuexco Trading Corporation 42 Nybot 255, 256, 265 Obama, Barack 79, 80, 143 obesity 121 n. 19 O’Connor, Edmund 231 O’Connor, William 231 OECD 158, 159 oil 44–53 energy content 51–2 palm 93 prices 8–9, 10, 52–3 sands 49–50 shale 50–1, 64 n. 33 shocks 5, 7 soya 82 trading 250–5, 266 Oliver, Jamie 86 onion futures trading 245 | 297 Ontario Teachers’ Fund 244, 272 n. 8 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) 4, 9, 10, 22, 44–7, 203, 204, 251, 254 over-the-counter (OTC) trading 16 n. 8, 254–5 Owens Valley rape (1908) 162 Pachauri, Dr Rajendra K. 59 Page, Larry 38 Paley Commission 8 palm oil 93 Palmer, Fred 62 n. 14 Parthenon Capital 156, 267 PayPal 38 Peadon, Brian 165 perfluorocarbon 131 PGGM 244 Phaunos Timber Fund 149 Phelps Dodge 199 Phibro 254 Pickens, T.

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

Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, cognitive bias, contact tracing, cuban missile crisis, currency risk, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, flex fuel, global pandemic, Herman Kahn, income per capita, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John von Neumann, low interest rates, mass immigration, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Norbert Wiener, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, packet switching, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, Yom Kippur War

Intelligence Estimates of Soviet Collapse: Reality and Perception Bruce Berkowitz 5 Econoshocks: The East Asian Crisis Case David Hale 23 29 42 Part II. Cases: Looking Ahead 6 The Once and Future DARPA William B. Bonvillian 57 v 2990-7 ch0 frontmatter 7/23/07 12:05 PM Page vi vi contents 7 Fueled Again? In Search of Energy Security Gal Luft and Anne Korin 71 8 Emerging Infectious Diseases: Are We Prepared? Scott Barrett 82 Part III. Forecasting 9 Ahead of the Curve: Anticipating Strategic Surprise Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall 10 Can Scenarios Help Policymakers Be Both Bold and Careful? Robert Lempert 11 Innovation and Adaptation: IT Examples M.

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Rome lacked the scientific institutions to capitalize on this latent technology, precisely the function for which DARPA has been organized. Think of the loss that results when a society fails to dedicate itself to innovation, even when the organizational tools are at hand. What a waste, and how embarrassing to posterity. 2990-7 ch07 luft 7/23/07 12:11 PM Page 71 7 Fueled Again? In Search of Energy Security Gal Luft and Anne Korin On February 17, 2006, a rebel group called the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) declared “total war” against oil companies operating in Nigeria’s main oil-producing region. Nigeria is Africa’s leading oil exporter and ranks fifth as an oil supplier to the United States.

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But had they succeeded in turning the complex into an inferno, they would have denied the world roughly half of Saudi Arabia’s oil and its remaining spare capacity. That would amount to more oil than all the OPEC members took off the market during the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo. Had such a calamity happened in 2990-7 ch07 luft 7/23/07 12:11 PM Page 73 in search of energy security 73 conjunction with the shutdowns in Nigeria and Iraq, oil prices would have soared to $150–$200 a barrel. If it had happened in the midst of a hurricane season or an extra-cold winter, the outcome would have been even more catastrophic for the United States. Studies and simulations show that a loss of as little as three million barrels a day can cause gasoline prices to double, resulting in a loss of more than one million jobs in the United States alone and a significant spike in the current account deficit.

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future by Gretchen Bakke

addicted to oil, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, big-box store, Buckminster Fuller, demand response, dematerialisation, distributed generation, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, full employment, Gabriella Coleman, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, Internet of things, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Menlo Park, Neal Stephenson, Negawatt, new economy, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off grid, off-the-grid, post-oil, profit motive, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart grid, smart meter, the built environment, too big to fail, Twitter Arab Spring, vertical integration, washing machines reduced drudgery, Whole Earth Catalog

grew too costly to complete: The inordinate expense of building nuclear power plants, each of which was more like a carefully crafted work of art rather than a cookie-cutter prefab job and thus beset by the last-minute modifications and unanticipated delays that come with doing something complex for the first time, made this former truth of the industry’s business model stumble as well. “trucking transportation systems”: “Statement of Former U.S. President Carter at Energy Security Hearing Before U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Carter Center, May 12, 2009, http://www.cartercenter.org/news/editorials_speeches/BostonGlobe-energy-security-hearings.html. decentralized power options: Carter also did a great deal to strengthen America’s reliance on fossil fuels, by encouraging more coal use and the exploitation of domestic oil. His problem was energy security and he was very catholic in his approach to solving it. Williams (1997), 325. commitment to fundamental change: This process might have been inevitable, for as Buckminster Fuller famously pointed out, “All the technical curves rise in tonnage and volumetric size to reach a giant peak after which miniaturization sets in.

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A secure, ample energy system also includes good employment policies that lead to peaceful labor relations and good county, state, and federal regulations that ensure both the affordability and the long-term stability of extractive technologies. And it includes making sure that disasters like Love Canal or Deepwater Horizon are a thing of the past. Many of these integrated aspects of energy security can be controlled within the United States in ways that are impossible in war zones. The mistake is in imagining that the knowledge and organization necessary for abundance is naturally linked to energy security, or that a national infrastructure for supplying power to American towns and bases is situated in a “stable environment.” We have seen this with Hurricanes Sandy and Irene in the Northeast and Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast, the Gale in the Pacific Northwest, Boston’s Snowmageddon, the California droughts and their wildfires, and the annual spin of tornadoes that wipe out, and cause to be rebuilt year in and year out, the infrastructures that support northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.

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Amory Lovins, who coined the term “the Soft Energy Path” in 1976 as a means of articulating an alternative way of thinking about national security, argued that our hardened infrastructure, far from making things stronger, in fact increases infrastructural brittleness and thus also the ease with which the systems that sustain us can be broken. It is interesting to note that for the Lovinses (Amory wrote most often together with his wife, Hunter), security is not a domain isolated from the everyday. For them, energy security, oil supply chains, and a robust electrical infrastructure are all singular and inextricable elements of national security. Without our grid almost every element of modern life is lost. No computing power, no light, no telecommunications, no entertainment or news, no public transit, no air-conditioning, and in many places no potable or hot water.

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

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Albert Einstein, American ideology, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bike sharing, borderless world, carbon footprint, centre right, clean tech, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate governance, decarbonisation, deep learning, distributed generation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Ford Model T, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, income inequality, industrial cluster, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, job automation, knowledge economy, manufacturing employment, marginal employment, Martin Wolf, Masdar, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open borders, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, purchasing power parity, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tech billionaire, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban renewal, Yom Kippur War, Zipcar

—Bruce Mosler, chairman of Cushman & Wakefield Global Brokerage “Very compelling . . . while many experts focus on how to transform our energy systems, few offer such a comprehensive economic vision and social road map as Jeremy Rifkin. The ‘Energy Internet’ will lift our world to a new plateau of economic growth, while at the same time addressing climate change and increasing our energy security. . . . A must-read.” —Guido Bartels, chairman of the Global Smart Grid Federation “An exciting vision for a post-carbon society. Rifkin embeds green transport inside a new high-tech Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure, re-framing the very concept of human mobility. This could well be the future of transportation.”

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They come into office on fire with ambitious visions of the future, only to succumb to the daily slog of putting out little fires. On his first day in office, President Obama turned immediately to the issue of resuscitating the economy. His administration latched on to the idea of bundling economic recovery with the two other critical challenges facing the country—energy security and climate change. The president began to talk up the prospect of a green economy and how it would create thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs. The message resonated with many members of Congress. But the reason an overarching new economic game plan has never been rolled out is not just because we need to cut back public spending and reduce government deficits, but because the administration is missing, to quote former president George W.

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While none of us oppose giant wind farms and solar parks—I even think they are essential to making a transition to a post-carbon Third Industrial Revolution economy—we began to believe these alone would not be sufficient. If renewable energy is found everywhere, how do we collect it? In early 2007, the European Parliament Energy and Climate Change committees were preparing reports on next steps in energy security and global warming. I received a call from Claude Turmes, the European Parliament’s leading authority on renewable energy. He urged me to enlist the construction industry in our efforts. Claude knew that I was in touch with some of Europe’s and America’s leading construction companies working in sustainable design and that I was beginning to give talks about the need to convert building stock into mini power plants.

A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice by Tony Weis, Joshua Kahn Russell

addicted to oil, Bakken shale, bilateral investment treaty, call centre, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial exploitation, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, decarbonisation, Deep Water Horizon, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Exxon Valdez, failed state, gentrification, global village, green new deal, guest worker program, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, immigration reform, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Jevons paradox, liberal capitalism, LNG terminal, market fundamentalism, means of production, megaproject, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, profit maximization, public intellectual, race to the bottom, smart grid, special economic zone, WikiLeaks, working poor

In a series dubbed “The War for the Oil Sands in Washington,” Tyee reporter Geoff Dembicki examined how “Doer has devoted much of his professional energy to promoting the oil sands industry, flying to industry roundtables, meeting with US policymakers, and speaking to national magazines.”27 On the legislative front, the Conservative government’s first target was a law established at the end of 2007: Section 526 of the Energy Security and Independence Act, which is often referred to as the Waxman bill, having been introduced by Democratic congressman Henry Waxman. The Waxman bill effectively forbids government agencies—including the US military, by far the largest government purchaser—from buying oil with a larger than average carbon footprint. In response, Canadian embassy officials began strategic communications with the American Petroleum Institute and its offshoot, the Center for North American Energy Security, as well as with companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Marathon, Devon, and Encana.28 The goal was to ensure that the Waxman bill would not apply to the tar sands, as Waxman had intended.

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According to Geoff Dembicki, Canadian officials attempted to intervene at least five times to affect how California defined its LCFS.33 In April 2009, Canada’s minister of natural resources, Lisa Raitt, wrote to Governor Schwarzenegger expressing a fear that “your LCFS regulation … could serve as a model for other states and perhaps the US federal government,” and urging “that the LCFS regulation should assign all mainstream crude oil fuel pathways the same CI [carbon intensity] rather than distinguish among different sources of crude oil.”34 The pressure did not stop there. The Center for North American Energy Security, an organization that has worked closely with the Canadian embassy in promoting the tar sands, sued California to repeal the LCFS in conjunction with two other groups, arguing that the policy would “harm [US] energy security by discouraging the use of Canadian crude oil.”35 The first phase of the lawsuit was successful, forcing California to postpone its LCFS policy in late 2011 until it could be adjudicated at a higher court.

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The centrality of oil in global capitalism is reflected in the fact that oil-centred giants, like ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Sinopec, consistently rank among the largest and most profitable corporations in the world. The geopolitical dimension of this push is plainly apparent in the Harper government’s attempts to promote Canada as a world “energy superpower,” which is capable of enhancing the “energy security” for its friends, most notably the US. It is clear that the race to expand the production of unconventional reserves like bitumen is tied to the decline of conventional oil and gas reserves. In addition to tar sands, this general pressure is also central to the rise of hydraulic fracturing (more commonly known as “fracking”) for “tight” oil and natural gas and the mining of kerogen shale (a bitumen-like substance), as well as increasing offshore drilling in deeper water and higher latitudes for conventional reserves.

The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet by Arthur Turrell

Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, Donald Trump, Eddington experiment, energy security, energy transition, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ITER tokamak, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, lockdown, New Journalism, nuclear winter, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, precautionary principle, Project Plowshare, Silicon Valley, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tunguska event

See end of life stars, and nuclear fusion de Gennes, Pierre-Gilles, 87 DEMO power plant design, 197, 198, 199, 206 dense plasma focus, 149 deuterium energy security and access to, 43 fusion using, 51. See also deuterium-tritium fusion JET’s use of, 94–95 Lawson’s equations on use of, 109–10 number of years left for supply of, if used exclusively, 44–45 Rutherford’s experiment and discovery of nuclear fusion using, 54–55, 61, 149 structure of, as hydrogen isotope, 51–52 deuterium-tritium fusion Chapman on, 55–56, 185 Culham Centre’s use of, 55, 62–63 energy released in, 55–56, 58–59 energy security and access to, 43 First Light Fusion’s use of, 63, 190 Herrmann on, 55–56 ITER tokamak, Cadarache, France, and, 186–87 neutrons in, 51–52, 55, 57–58 NIF’s use of, 62–63 number of years left for supplies in, 44–45 Tokamak Energy’s use of, 63 Didcot Power Station, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, 139 Dinan, Richard, 13, 144 Dyson, Freeman, 82–83, 214 Dyson spheres, 83 Eagle Nebula, 74 EAST tokamak, China, 14, 184, 193 Eddington, Arthur, 15, 49, 56–57, 71, 84 EDF Energy, 174 Einstein, Albert, 57–59, 62 electricity.

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It’s likely that we’ll find more fossil fuels if we look hard enough, but it won’t change the basic fact that they’ll run out sooner or later.13 Even if we were to find more fossil fuels, the security and environmental problems they pose are so serious that we need to wean ourselves off them anyway. They tend to be concentrated in a few geographical regions, lending power to those countries that, more or less by chance, have them. In 1973, a group of countries cut production and exports of oil so effectively that the price rose four times over. Energy security is itself a good reason to kick the fossil fuel habit. Burning fossil fuels is also a major source of air pollution. Air pollution is thought to be a contributing factor in the deaths of nearly twenty-nine thousand people a year in the UK and, according to World Health Organization estimates, 8.8 million people worldwide (more than smoking).

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Given that the most devastating nuclear weapons are based on fission and fusion, it’s rational to ask whether fusion power plants would pose even more of a risk of nuclear proliferation than nuclear fission plants. Seeking the perspective of someone who works at a site where the US’s nuclear arsenal is maintained, I talked to NIF’s Jeff Wisoff about this. He was clear: “Fusion is less of a nuclear weapons proliferation risk than fission.” I’ll revisit these claims later in the book. And while energy security due to possible restrictions in fuel supply is a problem for oil, coal, gas, and the fissile material used in today’s nuclear reactors, it’s not a problem for fusion because almost every nation on Earth has direct access to it: the supply can be found in plain old seawater. Fusion is a fuel-based power source, like fission or fossil fuels, so, in principle, it could run out.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Atul Gawande, banking crisis, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, decarbonisation, disinformation, energy security, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Global Witness, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, kremlinology, market fundamentalism, McMansion, medical malpractice, Mikhail Gorbachev, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, place-making, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Scramble for Africa, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, smart meter, statistical model, Steve Jobs, two and twenty, WikiLeaks

Lee Raymond: Fair Disclosure transcript, ExxonMobil Corporation Analyst Meeting, March 10, 2004, New York. Rex Tillerson: “A Conversation on Energy Security,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 9, 2007. The quotation is in direct response to a question about Mexico, but follows similar comments about Venezuela and global energy security in general. 10. Ibid. 11. George W. Bush to Rex Tillerson: Interview with an individual familiar with reports of the conversation and ExxonMobil’s response. 12. Rex Tillerson, “A Conversation on Energy Security,” op. cit. 13. All oil and gasoline price statistics cited are from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 14.

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An ad taken out by the Consumer Energy Alliance in the Weekly Standard showed Caucasian schoolgirls at play, presumably Canadians: “Energy Security? The Answer Just Might Be Closer Than You Think.” ExxonMobil put its corporate shoulder into the lobbying campaign. David P. Bailey, an in-house specialist on the subject, joined a task force at the Council on Foreign Relations that was organized early in 2009 to produce a definitive study on the issue. The study group’s advisory committee included, besides Bailey, a Chevron representative, business consultants, academics, and environmentalists. The final report, “The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs. Climate Change,” was rigorous and thorough.

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Interview with a Bush administration official. 25. Interview with a former National Security Council official. 26. ExxonMobil’s scenario planning, “an element of surge . . . really happen”: Rex Tillerson remarks, “A Conversation on Energy Security,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 9, 2007. 27. Ibid. 28. All quotations, “A Conversation with Lee Raymond,” Charlie Rose, PBS, May 6, 2004. 29. “A Conversation on Energy Security,” op. cit. CHAPTER TWELVE: “HOW HIGH CAN WE FLY?” 1. “Was fortunate at this critical time” and “transform the relationship”: BBC News, November 15, 2001. “looked the man . . . soul”: BBC News, June 16, 2001. 2.

Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid by Meredith. Angwin

airline deregulation, California energy crisis, carbon credits, carbon footprint, congestion pricing, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Brooks, decarbonisation, demand response, distributed generation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, green new deal, Hans Rosling, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jones Act, Just-in-time delivery, load shedding, market clearing, Michael Shellenberger, Negawatt, off-the-grid, performance metric, plutocrats, renewable energy credits, rolling blackouts, Silicon Valley, smart grid, smart meter, the map is not the territory, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, washing machines reduced drudgery, zero-sum game

Serreze, “Massachusetts regulators approve Berkshire Gas 5-year plan, while insisting company must work to lift moratorium,” MassLive.com (website), January 7, 2019, https://www.masslive.com/business-news/2017/07/utility_regulators_berkshire_gas_need_no.html. 78 “Operational Fuel-Security Analysis,” ISO-NE, January 17, 2018, 23. 79 “Operational Fuel-Security Analysis,” ISO-NE, January 17, 2018, 23. 80 The Synapse Report, page 1. 81 “Order Accepting and Suspending Filing and Establishing Hearing Procedures,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, July 13, 2018, https://www.ferc.gov/CalendarFiles/20180713175746-ER18-1639-000.pdf. 82 “Energy Security Improvements,” ISO New England, April 2019 — Version 1, https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2019/04/a00_iso_discussion_paper_energy_security_improvements.pdf. 83 Michael Kuser, “ISO-NE Filing, Whitepaper Address Energy Security,” RTO Insider, April 4, 2019, https://rtoinsider.com/iso-ne-whitepaper-energy-security-113956/. 84 Chadalavada, “Cold Weather Operations,” 17. 85 Michael Kuser, “NEPOOL MC Debates Energy Security Models,” RTO Insider, June 18, 2019, https://rtoinsider.com/nepool-debates-energy-security-models-138484/. 86 “Energy Security Improvements,” ISO New England, April 2019 — Version 1, page 20 and following https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2019/04/a00_iso_discussion_paper_energy_security_improvements.pdf 87 Kuser, “ISO-NE Filing.” 88 “DEC Lunch: Assessing and mitigating the risk of cascading blackouts,” The Arthur L.

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There’s a certain déjà vu quality about this requirement. The déjà vu doesn’t look any better than it looked before. ISO-NE wrote an Energy Security Improvement discussion paper,82 which they presented (yes, you know this is what would happen) at a NEPOOL meeting in April 2019. RTO Insider soon summarized the paper.83 NEPOOL rejected the ISO-NE proposal. However, ISO-NE went ahead and filed its proposal with FERC. I think ISO-NE, which is a group of engineers and economists, understands the fuel-security problem very well. The Energy Security discussion paper has a clear description of perverse incentives that lead to the problems in the Northeast: To facilitate productive discussions of the ISO’s concerns and potential solutions, this paper begins with a deeper examination of the underlying problems and their root causes.

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However, ISO-NE dived right in and came up with three new auctions. The ISO-NE proposal is bewilderingly complex. It makes Pay for Performance look simple. Specifically, ISO-NE proposed three core components to improve the fuel-security problem. The three core components are described in their energy security discussion paper86: Multi-day-ahead market. Expand the current one-day-ahead market into a multi-day-ahead market … with multi-day clearing prices for market participants’ energy obligations. New ancillary services in the day-ahead market. Create several new, voluntary ancillary services … (that compensate for) the flexibility of energy “on demand” to manage uncertainties each operating day.

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet by Varun Sivaram

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, asset light, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, bitcoin, blockchain, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, Colonization of Mars, currency risk, decarbonisation, deep learning, demand response, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, gigafactory, global supply chain, global village, Google Earth, hive mind, hydrogen economy, index fund, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, low interest rates, M-Pesa, market clearing, market design, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, mobile money, Negawatt, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shock, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, renewable energy transition, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, SoftBank, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, Ted Nordhaus, Tesla Model S, time value of money, undersea cable, vertical integration, wikimedia commons

I’d been invited by the Japanese government to tour the plant, and although I wasn’t allowed to take pictures, I still vividly remember the sprawling complex of chemical towers, labyrinthine pipework, and hulking centrifuges. It’s an engineering marvel. After three decades and $25 billion in construction costs, Rokkasho is finally set to open in 2018. Rokkasho is a symbol of a Japanese obsession: energy security. An island nation with negligible domestic energy resources, Japan has fretted about its energy security ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s. And for most of the last half-century, nuclear power has anchored its strategy to seize control of its energy supply. Yet even as Rokkasho prepares to start recycling nuclear fuel to end Japan’s dependence on imports, most of its nuclear reactors have been shuttered.

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Jason Deign, “Subsidy Cuts Will Cause a ‘Sharp Negative Turn’ in Japan’s Solar Market Through 2020,” Greentech Media, June 1, 2016, http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/japan-plans-to-curb-solar-growth. 31.  Tim Buckley and Simon Nicholas, “Japan: Greater Energy Security Through Renewables,” Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, March 2017, http://ieefa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Japan_-Greater-Energy-Security-Through-Renewables-_March-2017.pdf. 32.  Aaron Sheldrick, “Japan to Cut Emphasis on Nuclear in Next Energy Plan: Sources,” Reuters, May 26, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-nuclear-idUSKCN0YI06Z. 33.  

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Just as America had surged past Saudi Arabia in 2013 to become the world’s biggest oil producer, so too did it dethrone China twenty years later as the leading manufacturer of solar technologies. That was just as well—or else America might have developed a dangerous dependence on imports of Chinese energy products. Instead, the United States managed to achieve prosperity and energy security at the cost of a few billion dollars a year in additional funding for research into and development and demonstration of new technologies—a rounding error on the federal budget.9 Solar PV remains the most widespread method of harnessing the sun’s energy even as other technologies, such as solar fuels, rise in popularity.

The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future by Levi Tillemann

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, An Inconvenient Truth, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, car-free, carbon footprint, clean tech, creative destruction, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demand response, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, driverless car, electricity market, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, factory automation, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, foreign exchange controls, gigafactory, global value chain, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, index card, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kanban, Kickstarter, manufacturing employment, market design, megacity, Nixon shock, obamacare, off-the-grid, oil shock, planned obsolescence, Ralph Nader, RFID, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, smart cities, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Unsafe at Any Speed, zero-sum game, Zipcar

If TEPCO were going to expand nuclear power generation, he reasoned, it would help to show the Japanese people that nuclear power was a solution to the country’s broader energy issues—including energy security and climate change. There had to be value added beyond the traditional electricity-dependent sectors. Japan’s cars, trucks, boats, and planes still relied on world oil markets, and Anegawa wanted to change this. Transportation was, in some senses, the final frontier for Japanese energy security. So Anegawa wrote up a bold, transformative proposal for his superiors at TEPCO. The crux of this strategy was for the company to lead Japan in the electrification of automotive transportation.

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Perhaps this was because he worked not for an auto company, but for a sprawling nuclear utility. Indeed, the engine that drove Takafumi Anegawa was nuclear power. While much of Japanese society looked on nuclear energy with suspicion—even hostility—Anegawa was different. In nuclear, he saw a solution to his homeland’s energy security equation and environmental problems. Nuclear was already integral to Japan’s electrical system, but Anegawa thought it could do more—especially in transportation. But even the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)—Japan’s largest provider of electricity and nuclear energy—could not simply move forward on this vision alone.

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That said, there were also some pathbreaking successes. The stimulus was animated by diverse and sometimes conflictual goals. Channeling government largesse toward economically strategic regions was one. Seeding new industries was another. Then, of course, there were the twin goals of increasing U.S. energy security and reducing carbon emissions. Early on, savvy operators understood that a strong letter from a powerful congressman or senator might mean the difference of millions of dollars in government grants or loans. So too could the decision to site a project in a specific state or congressional district.

Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order by Parag Khanna

Abraham Maslow, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, Bartolomé de las Casas, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, crony capitalism, death from overwork, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Glaeser, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, facts on the ground, failed state, flex fuel, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, gentrification, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, haute couture, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, invisible hand, Islamic Golden Age, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Khyber Pass, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, land reform, Londongrad, low cost airline, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meritocracy, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, open borders, open economy, Parag Khanna, Pax Mongolica, Pearl River Delta, pirate software, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, Potemkin village, price stability, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, restrictive zoning, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, South China Sea, special economic zone, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas L Friedman, trade route, trickle-down economics, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

Yet even as Russia blocks NATO expansion and delays American missile shields, it cannot stop the EU. For over a decade, Europeans considered Russia “too close and too big” to aggravate, and it needed Russia’s cooperation to end the Balkan wars. But from Ukraine to Kosovo to Chechnya, Russia proved better at thwarting than assisting European goals like energy security, counterterrorism, and human rights. The tiny Baltic statelets then outmaneuvered Russia using diaspora lobbies, slick branding campaigns (think “E-stonia”), and investor-friendly economic policies, seducing the EU into uncommon quick-wittedness. When Russia stalled in settling its borders with the Baltic nations (which by EU regulation should have delayed their membership talks), Europe let these statelets in anyway.

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Russia provokes conflict and then intervenes, claiming it is the only power capable of separating these squabbling children to keep the peace. To break this cycle, the West’s new gamble is to make the Caucasus part of Europe’s “Near Abroad” rather than Russia’s. If it succeeds, the Caucasus nations will have risen out of the third world, and Western energy security will be that much closer to assured. GEORGIA: ON EUROPE’S MIND Imagine a country of abandoned villages, collapsed buildings, battered trucks belching clouds of foul exhaust, women selling corn on the roadside, children bathing in drying riverbeds, and haggard beggars in the capital city. Now imagine that its citizens are white.

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“They have tried to co-opt Chechnya,” observed a Georgian diplomat, citing the grand mosque Russia recently built in Grozny, just slightly smaller than that of Kazan. “But Russia never retreats the easy way, always choosing instead to make things more difficult for itself.” A sphere of influence is a sphere of responsibility, meaning that Western energy security and democratization strategies must come together to build another European subregion in the Caucasus—and to accelerate Russia’s retreat. Through the 1990s, energy companies were the West’s main representatives in the Caucasus, serving as self-interested but strategically backed commercial diplomats.

Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism by Cass R. Sunstein

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Andrei Shleifer, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, clean water, cognitive load, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Edward Glaeser, endowment effect, energy security, framing effect, invisible hand, late fees, libertarian paternalism, loss aversion, nudge unit, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler

Related regulations require improvements in the energy efficiency of household appliances, such as refrigerators, clothes washers, and clothes dryers. What is the rationale for such regulations? Insofar as we are dealing with air pollution, the justification is quite standard: to reduce externalities. And insofar as the goal is to promote energy security by reducing dependence on foreign oil, the justification also involves externalities. But as noted, the strong majority of the benefits from such rules do not involve air pollution or energy security. They involve consumer savings, in the form of reduced costs from use. Should those savings be counted in the analysis of what to do? On one view, they should not be. There is a market for fuel economy and for energy efficiency.

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In 2011, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency produced new fuel-economy labels with this goal in mind; the new labels explicitly draw attention to the economic benefits of greater fuel economy.46 An understanding of the problem of shrouded attributes also helps to identify a potential justification for regulatory standards in the domains of fuel economy and energy efficiency, involving a behavioral market failure. Of course, such standards reduce social costs by cutting air pollution and promoting energy security. To the extent that they reduce these costs, they do not involve paternalism in any way. But most of the benefits from recent rules are private; they come from consumer savings.47 Here is where paternalism becomes relevant. On standard economic grounds, it is not simple to identify a market failure that would justify taking account of such benefits.

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In the cases just described, it is possible that regulation can be justified on grounds that have nothing to do with paternalism. To see some of the complexities here, recall recent rules that require increases in fuel economy. We have seen that such rules produce substantial social benefits by reducing air pollution and by increasing energy security; producing these benefits does not involve paternalism. But as we have also seen, the strong majority of the benefits of such rules come from private fuel savings, and producing those benefits might reasonably be thought to involve paternalism. To get clear on the underlying issues, and to keep the focus on paternalism, let us put third-party effects entirely to one side.

In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bretton Woods, call centre, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, company town, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, demographic dividend, digital divide, dual-use technology, energy security, financial independence, friendly fire, Future Shock, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, informal economy, job-hopping, Kickstarter, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, megacity, new economy, plutocrats, profit motive, purchasing power parity, Silicon Valley, trade liberalization, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, urban planning, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y2K

So when he gives a strong opinion that you have not heard before, it is worth taking note. “The quest for energy security is second only in our scheme of things to our quest for food security,” said Manmohan, in his almost whispering voice. “India is dependent on imported energy, and what goes on in the world today, the growing instability of supplies, gives rise to new challenges. The producers must come to terms with the fact that instability is not something that is conducive to the interest of either the buyers or the sellers.… Energy security is of critical importance [to India].”28 To take a small liberty with Manmohan’s pronouncement, energy security is actually a bigger headache for India than is food security.

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In both cases, the charge is being led by state-owned energy companies and, contrary to the advice of free market purists, who argue that supplies can more efficiently be tied up in the energy futures market, both countries want to extract the oil or gas directly. China and India’s ever-restless quest for energy security involves striking deals with a number of rogue regimes around the world. Most important of all, it involves forging close ties to Iran. Journalists in Asia have dubbed the India-China race for energy security the “New Great Game,” a reference to the old Great Game, which was a race between imperial Britain and czarist Russia in the nineteenth century to gain sway over the vast tracts of central Asia that divided the Raj from Russia’s southern boundaries.

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On energy, however, India’s internal shortfall is large and growing. At the moment India imports 70 percent of its oil needs, and that figure is expected to rise to 90 percent in the next two decades as the domestic economy expands. Likewise, if the dollars being thrown around in overseas acquisitions are any guide, energy security is also one of the most critical issues facing China. The energy situations facing India and China are strikingly similar. Both have large reserves of coal, which is mostly dirty and inefficient. Both also have oil but not of a sufficient quantity to give them much comfort. Both countries—particularly China—have built controversial dams to boost their hydroelectric capacity.

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

Bakken shale, carbon tax, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, deindustrialization, energy security, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Great Leap Forward, Herman Kahn, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), means of production, Medieval Warm Period, mutually assured destruction, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, out of africa, peak oil, price discovery process, rising living standards, sceptred isle, South China Sea, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

And until the global warming myth is exploded, the security of the United States—and thus of the world—is also at risk. A STRATEGIC ENERGY PLAN FOR THE UNITED STATES For the last forty years, American presidents have noted that energy security is a problem that needs addressing and solving. But none of those presidents has understood energy—even though one worked in the oil industry. A number of the presidents have acted against U.S. energy security, often unwittingly. Under President Nixon, the thorium molten-salt reactor project was killed off to free up funds for the plutonium fast-breeder reactor, which was itself later abandoned.

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Some other nations have already arrived at the conclusion that CNG is what should be used as a vehicle fuel when one wishes to save oil. Both Iran and Pakistan have in the order of 2.9 million CNG passenger vehicles each, with market penetration in Pakistan being 70 percent. BLIND ALLEYS Devotees of the global warming myth, who at the moment are very effectively blocking our path to energy security for the future, are meanwhile also cheerleading for a number of alternative technologies, none of which can solve our energy problems. Electrically powered vehicles, for example, are a poor solution to the problem of providing cheap and efficient personal transport. Let’s begin with the question of energy efficiency.

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The open cut would therefore be at least 2,400 feet deep. Mining on this scale is already being undertaken in Utah. Just south of Salt Lake City, the nearly hundred-year-old Bingham Canyon copper mine has already reached a depth of 3,600 feet and is four miles long. CHINA FORGES AHEAD The issues of energy security, energy independence, and energy strategy rise to the top of public and political consciousness in the United States every so often, and then interest fades as the immediate problem seems to be overcome. By comparison, there is one country, and only one country, that has assessed the resources that nature has given it and is getting on with the job of securing its energy future.

Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower

"World Economic Forum" Davos, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, bonus culture, California energy crisis, corporate governance, credit crunch, energy security, Exxon Valdez, falling living standards, fear of failure, financial engineering, forensic accounting, Global Witness, index fund, interest rate swap, John Deuss, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, kremlinology, land bank, LNG terminal, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, megaproject, Meghnad Desai, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nelson Mandela, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Oscar Wyatt, passive investing, peak oil, Piper Alpha, price mechanism, price stability, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, transaction costs, transfer pricing, zero-sum game, éminence grise

The chaos was broadly welcomed in Washington as providing an opportunity to replace Russia’s historic control over the estimated 200 billion barrels of oil and gas around the Caspian Sea. Baku had become a boom town filled with Tex-Mex food, nightclubs and Texans smelling big money. “This is about America’s energy security,” announced Bill Richardson, the energy secretary. “It’s also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don’t share our values.” Ignoring Russia’s antagonism and the region’s recurring wars over control of the Caspian, Richardson added, “We’re trying to move these newly independent countries towards the West.

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The domestic industry could have been expanded to produce nine million barrels a day, but it felt battered, especially by Senator Barbara Boxer of California’s conservation campaign. The crisis gave the oil companies a chance to use the extra profits to invest. Instead, their profits were attacked. “We are now relying on military force rather than energy policy for our energy security,” observed Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska, unsuccessfully seeking more exploration in his state. “Americans will find it unacceptable to put American lives at risk because we have not made the hard choices to formulate a policy.” In the aftermath of Iraq’s defeat, the industry’s plight worsened.

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Like Lasmo, another British oil company, Enterprise had failed to use its North Sea fields to expand and to gain a place among the major players. Together, Lasmo and Enterprise symbolized Britain’s squandered opportunity. Enterprise had been created in 1983 by a Conservative government ideologically opposed to the state producing oil and gas, and keen, regardless of Britain’s long-term energy security, to immediately receive a large amount of cash. Convinced that there would always be a surplus of oil supplied by BP and Shell, Margaret Thatcher privatized the North Sea’s reserves in 1986, just as prices crashed. This was followed in July 1988 by an explosion on the Piper Alpha platform, killing 167 workers.

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

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, collective bargaining, credit crunch, energy security, energy transition, geopolitical risk, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, Ida Tarbell, index fund, Induced demand, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, joint-stock company, market clearing, market fundamentalism, megaproject, moral hazard, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, price stability, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, transfer pricing, vertical integration

After the tumultuous 1970s and early 1980s, during the long period of relatively stable oil prices from 1986 to early 2000s (with the exception of the 1990–1991 Gulf War), Washington reverted to aloofness and complacency with regard to the oil industry and energy security. In 1986, the Reagan administration decided to ease fuel economy standards for model years 1987 and 1988.23 During the 1990s the Clinton administration and Congress looked the other way when the auto industry and motorists exploited a loophole in fuel economy standards for gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. SUVs and minivans are also exempt from a federal “gas-guzzler tax” enacted in 1978.24 Public and official concern about energy security abated during the 1990s. Despite a doubling in dependence on imported oil after 1985, from about 25 percent to over 50 percent, in 1996, a Republican Congress and Democratic White House agreed to sell off some of the strategic reserves in 1996 to plug holes in the federal budget.

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Over the four preceding decades, the US and its allies had enjoyed stable oil prices and felt secure about supply security, though the 1967 and especially 1956 disruptions did cause a fright, particularly in Europe. But shifts that began after World War II and gathered force in the 1960s—soaring oil demand and replacement of the U.S. with the Middle East as key supply region—triggered a convulsion and reshaped the global oil market, shattering prior complacency about energy security and energy policy. Western governments and majors had ignored OPEC after it was created in 1960. “But now, in the middle 1970s, all that had changed,” Daniel Yergin wrote. “The international order had been turned upside down. OPEC’s members were courted, flattered, railed against, and denounced.

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Strategic Petroleum Reserve became the centerpiece a comprehensive national energy law signed in December 1975 by Nixon’s successor President Ford to address the ongoing “energy crisis.” Called the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, the law also included a ban on crude oil and refined product exports, conservation standards for appliances, and vehicle fuel limits called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations. While initially intended to promote energy security by lowering oil imports and save consumers money at the pump, in recent years the federal government has added reducing greenhouse gas emissions to CAFE’s objectives. Oil began pouring into underground salt caverns chiseled under the Texas and Louisiana coasts in July 1977, and the SPR came to life.

Oil Panic and the Global Crisis: Predictions and Myths by Steven M. Gorelick

California gold rush, carbon footprint, energy security, energy transition, flex fuel, Ford Model T, income per capita, invention of the telephone, Jevons paradox, meta-analysis, North Sea oil, nowcasting, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, price elasticity of demand, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, statistical model, stock buybacks, Thomas Malthus

Notes and References 1. 2. 3. 4. Yergin, D. (1991). The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Free Press, Simon and Schuster. Darwin, C. (1859). The Origin of Species, reprinted in 1979 by Gramercy Books, Random House, New York: 461 pp. Greene, D. L. (2009). “Measuring Energy Security: Can the United States Achieve Oil Independence?” Energy Policy. ISSN 0301-4215, DOI: 10.1016/j. enpol.2009.01.041 (in press). Porter, E. D. (1995). “Are We Running Out of Oil?” American Petroleum Institute Policy Analysis and Strategic Planning Department, American Petroleum Institute, Discussion Paper #081. 14 End of the Oil Era 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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id=2006-09-05 “Performance Profiles of Major Energy Producers 2007,” www.eia.doe.gov/ emeu/perfpro/tab01.htm www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/perfpro/020607.pdf Pirog, R. (2007). The Role of National Oil Companies in the International Oil Market, Congressional Research Service Report, August 21, 2007. Greene, D. L. (2009). “Measuring Energy Security: Can the United States Achieve Oil Independence?” Energy Policy (in press: doi:10.1016/j. enpol.2009.01.041). Energy Information Administration reporting of Oil and Gas Journal value (January 2008); BP Statistical Review (2008); www.opec.org/home/basket.aspx The average price of OPEC oil in 2008 was $95 per barrel.

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“Global Petroleum Resources: A View to the Future,” Geotimes, November 2002. 1 metric ton (or tonne) of coal is equal to 2204.6 pounds, which is equivalent to 3.8 barrels of oil. 2008 BP Statistical Review of World Energy and 2006 World Energy Council Survey of Energy Resources, www.worldenergy.org Lower estimate from 2008 BP Statistical Review and the higher from EIA 2007 World Energy Outlook. 5 Beyond Panic High gasoline prices in 2008 served as a reminder of our vulnerability to limited domestic oil production and dependence on oil imports, especially from OPEC. The future of dependence on imports and, more generally, the oil-energy path requires public policy decisions about energy security, economic stability, and risks to the environment. These issues are discussed in this chapter. The US and other oil-importing nations must resolve the problems of energy dependence and environmental degradation due to oil consumption. Should global oil supply meet demand for the foreseeable future, we must ask: at what cost to our safety, economy, and environment?

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

agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, big-box store, California energy crisis, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate social responsibility, David Brooks, deindustrialization, distributed generation, electricity market, energy security, Exxon Valdez, flex fuel, full employment, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, hydrogen economy, Kickstarter, land reform, megaproject, microcredit, Negawatt, Nelson Mandela, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, social contagion, statistical model, Tragedy of the Commons, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

We will discuss the content, the analytics, and some results of the soft path approach later in this chapter; for now, however, the key point is that Lovins (and subsequent soft path analysts) took both sides of the energy security vs. environment debate absolutely seriously. Environmentalists taking a soft path approach to energy policy accepted that decision makers must consider and plan for energy security, and that economics did matter. Moreover, they met head-on one of the main criticisms of their opposition to various megaprojects. Instead of merely pointing generally to more efficient technologies and renewable energy sources when challenged as to how, exactly, the demand for energy was going to be met, analysts doing soft path studies provided the comprehensive overview, including the hard numbers detailing energy supply-and-demand balances with alternative technologies, that was required for a serious response.

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His famous Model T was the first flex-fuel car, designed to run on a mixture of gasoline and ethanol, very much like the cars coming off the Ford plant in Dearborn today. A century later, Henry Ford’s ethanol revolution is actually happening. The record-high, volatile oil prices, combined with concerns over energy security and climate change, have made ethanol once again a popular fuel. Politicians of all stripes, including President Barack Obama, are open supporters of the idea that America can grow its energy. After all, ethanol means votes. In Iowa alone — a key state in every U.S. presidential primary season — over 50,000 jobs are dependent on the biofuel business.

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Nonetheless, many inside the energy industry knew that we were at the end of the age of abundance and at the beginning of a much more volatile age of energy scarcity. And then, just as we launched the book, 50 million North Americans were left in the darkness during the blackout of 2003. Suddenly energy security and supply became popular issues. Not long after, increasing media pressure brought to light the cascading problems of global climate change. We also knew that if there was an energy crisis there might well be a food crisis as well. After all, everyone in the energy sector knew that food and fuel are joined at the hip, from the price of artificial, fossil fuel–based fertilizers to the cost of gasoline needed to drive tractors.

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

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency peg, diversification, Doha Development Round, energy security, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mobile money, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, peak oil, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route

In a nutshell, it is this total lack of any ‘alternative scenario thinking’ that makes this unavoidable event so alarming.”24 Flynt Leverett, a former aide on Bush’s National Security Council who left for the New America Foundation, wrote in 2006 that “U.S. foreign policy is ill-suited to cope with the challenges to American leadership flowing from the new petropolitics. Current policy does not take energy security seriously as a foreign policy issue or prioritize energy security in relation to other goals.”25 In late 2007, two major oil company chief executives, James Mulva of ConocoPhillips and Clarence Cazalot of Marathon Oil, endorsed the need for a decisive federal energy strategy. Mulva told BusinessWeek editors that “we don’t have a national energy policy,” while rival nations are amassing power.

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For proponents, the last break point and rebalancing came in the 1970s, when prices surged enough that conservation and attention to new energy sources mobilized to cut oil demand, if only for a while. 27 The hints of another watershed snowballed between 2005 and 2007—inadequate world oil and gas reserves; clearly insufficient new discoveries; stepped-up belief in peak oil; the unprecedented new demand from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America; and the increasing salience of energy-security issues and even resource wars. The tumultuous 1970s were the last decade to experience an economic crisis alongside an energy break point, a precedent few populations would want to repeat. The politics of our current double dislocation is treated in chapter 6, albeit without much conviction that it can still be fixed.

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Absent an energy supply crisis, Democratic election strategies and blueprints for national governance will continue to emphasize energy consumers and environmental constituencies. On the Web site HillaryClinton.com, the one-and-a-half-page outline of her popular energy program, “Powering America’s Future: New Energy, New Jobs,” never uses the word “security” or the phrase “energy security.” By contrast, the word “green” is used ten times. Proposals include a “green building industry,” $20 billion in “green vehicle bonds,” promised new “green collar jobs,” and a new “Connie Mae” agency to help low- and middle-income families “to buy green homes and invest in green home improvements.”27 Moreover, going green isn’t just an energy nuance; it’s a potential opportunity for national uplift and economic mobilization (including five million jobs) on the heroic scale of World War II.

Interventions by Noam Chomsky

Albert Einstein, Ayatollah Khomeini, cuban missile crisis, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, facts on the ground, failed state, Monroe Doctrine, no-fly zone, nuremberg principles, old-boy network, Ralph Nader, Thorstein Veblen, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, éminence grise

Iran may give up on western Europe, assuming that it will be unwilling to act independently of the United States. China, however, can’t be intimidated. That’s why the United States is so frightened by China. China is already establishing relations with Iran—and even with Saudi Arabia, both military and economic. There is an Asian energy security grid, based on China and Russia, but probably bringing in India, Korea, and others. If Iran moves in that direction, it can become the lynchpin of that power grid. Such developments, including a sovereign Iraq and possibly even major Saudi energy resources, would be the ultimate nightmare for Washington.

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By an accident of geography, the world’s major oil resources are in largely Shiite areas of the Middle East: southern Iraq, adjacent regions of Saudi Arabia and Iran, with some of the major reserves of natural gas as well. Washington’s worst nightmare would be a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of the world’s oil and independent of the United States. Such a bloc, if it emerges, might even join the Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), based in China. Iran, which already had observer status, is to be admitted as a member of the SCO. The Hong Kong South China Morning Post reported in June 2006 that “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the limelight at the annual meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) by calling on the group to unite against other countries as his nation faces criticism over its nuclear programme.”

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., 1–3 Arafat, Yasser, 165–166 Arctic ice sheet melting, 153 Argentina, 171, 199 Arkhipov, Vasily, 21 arms control, 125–128 arms inspections, 50 arms race revival, 87–88 arms sales, 15, 28–29, 137 Army Corps of Engineers Bush II funding cuts, 148 Aronson, Geoffrey, 82 Asia foreign economic relations, 169–174 Asian Energy Security Grid, 208 assassinations Oscar Romero, 122 asylum requests, 68 Avnery, Uri, 33–34, 191 Ayalon, Ami, 38 baby boomers and Social Security, 129–130 Bachelet, Michelle, 198 Bacon, David, 79 Badr Brigade, 163 Bagdikian, Ben, xiii Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, 202–203, 205 bankruptcy resulting from medical bills, 131 banks and banking Iraq, 78 Barnett, Corelli, 209 Bass, Gary J., 57 Bassiouni, Cherif, 107 Bechtel Corporation, 27, 53 Benjamin, Daniel, 15 Benvenisti, Meron, 82 Bergen, Peter, 22, 140 biblical prophets as dissident intellectuals, 214 Biden, Joseph, 139 Bin Laden, Osama, 2, 5, 20, 37, 38, 144 finances tracked, 87 biological warfare, 42 bioweapons ban scorned by U.S., 126 Blair, Bruce, 127–128 Blair, Tony and Saddam Hussein, 107 Iraqi public opinion, 43 Bolivia, 171, 199 and Venezuela, 198 Bolton, John, 126 bombings, 137 Afghanistan, 35, 38–39, 175, 176 Cambodia, 203–204 Cuban airliner, 68 Iraq, 74, 117, 134-135 London, 137, 140, 148 Madrid, 73 Palestinian, 31 Serbia, 175, 176, 179 “suicide bombings,” 31, 35 Borón, Atilio, 194 Bosch, Orlando, 68 boundaries Israel-Palestine, 29, 30, 33, 63 Boyce, Michael, 38 Brazil, 199, 200 Bremer, Paul, 44, 75 Brinkley, Joel, 158 Britain.

Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources by Geoff Hiscock

Admiral Zheng, Asian financial crisis, Bakken shale, Bernie Madoff, BRICs, butterfly effect, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, corporate governance, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, energy security, energy transition, eurozone crisis, Exxon Valdez, flex fuel, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, global rebalancing, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, Long Term Capital Management, Malacca Straits, Masayoshi Son, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mohammed Bouazizi, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Panamax, Pearl River Delta, purchasing power parity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, smart grid, SoftBank, Solyndra, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, trade route, uranium enrichment, urban decay, WikiLeaks, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

In contrast, Saudi Arabia is only the third largest supplier to the world’s No. 2 energy consumer, the United States, behind U.S. regional neighbours Canada and Mexico (see Exhibit 5.2). Exhibit 5.2 World’s biggest importers of crude oil (in millions of tonnes) Source: IEA Key World Energy Statistics Oct 2011 In its quest for energy security, China has made some big investments overseas, primarily through its three main national oil companies—China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec), and China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC). Although they are state-owned (with listed arms in Hong Kong, New York, and Shanghai), they are not necessarily “state-run,” in the view of the International Energy Agency.

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Brazil has a thriving sugarcane-based ethanol industry to fuel its automobiles, with at least 12 global makers—VW, Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat, and Kia—offering flex-fuel models for the Brazilian market that are capable of running on any blend of gasoline and ethanol. In the United States, pioneering automaker Henry Ford was an early advocate of biofuel, with some of his Model T Fords capable of running on ethanol as well as petrol or kerosene. Under U.S. energy security legislation, by 2022 at least 36 billion gallons (136 billion litres) of fuel used in the United States must come from renewable sources. Although the United States produces more ethanol than Brazil, it mainly uses corn as its feedstock rather than sugarcane. As more people question whether producing biofuel from the cornfields of Iowa and Nebraska is the best use of fertile croplands, some companies are starting to look beyond traditional feedstocks.

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., produces about 500,000 barrels a day from its fields in Kazakhstan, including Uzenmunaigas, Embamunaigas, and its stakes in the Kazgermunai joint venture, the CCEL venture with China’s Citic, and PetroKazakhstan. The International Energy Agency said in its most recent world energy outlook that the Caspian Sea region has the potential to make a “significant contribution to ensuring energy security in the rest of the world, by increasing the diversity of oil and gas supplies.” But potential barriers to developing the Caspian’s oil and gas reserves include “the complexities of financing and construction transportation infrastructure passing through several countries, the investment climate and uncertainty over export demand.”12 In the IEA’s New Policies scenario, Caspian oil production jumps from 2.9 million barrels a day in 2009 to a peak of around 5.4 million barrels between 2025 and 2030, before falling back to 5.2 million barrels by 2035.

Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together by Andrew Selee

Berlin Wall, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Day of the Dead, Donald Trump, electricity market, energy security, Gini coefficient, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, job automation, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, payday loans, public intellectual, Richard Florida, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Wozniak, work culture , Y Combinator

“We can’t talk about US energy independence,” says Wallace, “but we can talk about energy independence in North America.” One report predicts that if Mexico’s energy reform generates the kind of investment that’s expected over the next few years, the three countries of North America could be close to energy security by 2020. Others put that date a few years further out. But almost all analysts agree that Mexico, the United States, and Canada will soon reach the point at which their combined energy resources meet and even exceed their needs. The reform process has already led to new collaborations between Mexico and the United States—and between Mexico and the rest of the world.

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Roger Wallace believes the effects will go well beyond Mexico, making the entire North American region—and perhaps the whole world—far less vulnerable to supply shocks from crises in any specific country. “Mexico’s energy reform could help create a powerful new North American shock absorber,” he says, one “that would enhance energy security and diminish energy volatility in the years to come.” Few sights are more awe-inspiring than the transformation of scrap metal into steel. Bits and pieces of desks, chairs, signs, and leftover car bodies are poured into a 150-ton metal cauldron and heated to 1,600 degrees Celsius. After a few minutes the bubbling contents pour out in a red-hot river of iron, ready to be mixed with additives in another bubbling cauldron a few feet away.

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See specific drug dual citizenship, 219, 221 See also binationalism dual heritage, 209–210 Duarte, Alfonso, 139 Ducey, Doug, 68, 69, 72 Dziczek, Kristen, 58 Ebright, Randy, 215 economic competitiveness, 59 economic decline, 8, 51, 190 economic growth, 18, 21, 67, 185, 186, 191, 192, 196–197, 201–202, 248 See also innovation economy economic track, concerns about, shorthand for, 21 education investment in, 189, 191 opportunities for, 192 reform of, 212 See also colleges/universities educational attainment, 4, 16, 18, 37, 65, 66, 86, 87, 97, 183, 186, 188, 191, 212, 228, 233, 241 El Colegio de México, 194, 207 El Mariachi, 2, 10, 12 El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), 171 electric power industry cross-border transmission lines in, 122 emergency ties in, 125 natural gas supply for, 119 oil supply for, 118, 119 percentage of renewables in, 123 prices in, 117, 118, 121, 124 shared electrical grid in, 117, 125–128 solar power for, 117, 123, 124 wind power supply for, 121–122, 123 Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), 126 electricity trading hub, 127 electronics industry, 30, 37–38, 58 Ellis, Mark, 97 embassy, 160, 161, 221 employment decline in, 8, 59, 60, 61, 275 demographic change in, 9 micro-business loans and, 190 NAFTA and, 59, 61, 76 offshoring impacts on, 60 opportunities for, 192 remittances and, 191 rise in, 5, 63, 81, 88–89, 90, 91, 248, 270, 271 Enel, 124 energy costs of, 114, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124 flow of, rise in, 6, 271 trade balance involving, 51 See also electric power industry energy independence, 116, 131, 132 energy reform, 114, 115–117, 121, 123, 131–132 energy security, 117, 131 engineering, 18, 37, 38, 55, 87, 98, 99 English language and adaptation issues, 220 biculturalism and writing in, 216–217 call centers and, 193, 194, 207 eTrace in, issue with, 141 expatriates and, 215 film industry and, 227, 230, 234, 235, 237, 249 learning, 16, 32, 135, 186 limited, 187 newspaper, 213 preferences for, 194 radio, 206 song recording in, 222 sports outreach to fans using, 251 television, 251, 254, 255, 256 See also bilingualism entrepreneurship, rate of, 10, 185 envy, 30 Escalante, Amat, 242 Esquivel, Gerardo, 65 eTrace, 141 Europe ancestry from, superiority of, notion of, 210 eastern, emigration from, 2, 9, 13, 186, 188 See also specific countries European Union, 50, 59, 280 expatriate communities, 204, 206 expatriation and adaptation issues for children, assistance with, 219–221 biculturalism and, 213–215, 215–216, 217, 218–219 communities, 206, 215, 273 as embedded, 215 growth in, 205 history of, 208–209 population figures for, 24, 206 reasons for, 203–204, 205–206, 208–209, 212–213 exports agricultural, 49–50 auto industry, 55 border crossing and, 68, 71 manufacturing, dominance of, 63–64 mezcal, 263 natural gas, 6, 120, 271 oil, 120, 271 shared production process for, percentage of, 58–59 and tariffs, 36 See also imports; trade extortion, 166, 171, 180 extradition, 155 Family Portrait (film), 229 farming.

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism by Stephen Graham

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", addicted to oil, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, anti-communist, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, call centre, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, congestion charging, creative destruction, credit crunch, DARPA: Urban Challenge, defense in depth, deindustrialization, digital map, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, edge city, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, failed state, Food sovereignty, gentrification, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Global Witness, Google Earth, illegal immigration, income inequality, knowledge economy, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, loose coupling, machine readable, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, McMansion, megacity, military-industrial complex, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, one-state solution, pattern recognition, peak oil, planetary scale, post-Fordism, private military company, Project for a New American Century, RAND corporation, RFID, Richard Florida, Scramble for Africa, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, SimCity, smart transportation, surplus humans, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Washington Consensus, white flight, white picket fence

As the manager of Future Combat himself remarked, ‘We use many of the same sorts of technology for autonomous navigation as the DARPA vehicles’.133 OIL SHOCKWAVE Military force and energy security are inseparable twins.134 Another aspect of the SUV, and of the broader culture of automobility, that must be examined in connection with the new urban militarism relates to the combination of rapidly rising oil demand and rapidly diminishing oil supply. Obviously, this presents major challenges for Western military doctrine. In light of the growing reliance on volatile supplies from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, how can Western and US military forces support energy security – given the increasing military and economic strength of major competitors like China and India, which are struggling to meet their own exploding oil demand?

…

‘It is this centering of the life of the population rather than the safety of the sovereign or the security of territory’, writes David Campbell, ‘that is the hallmark of biopolitical power and that distinguishes it from sovereign power’.26 In oil wars, as in many other spheres of contemporary state activity, state violence – organized to defend the oil-dependent life of Western populations – operates in legal grey zones. In the name of this Western manner of life, norms of state sovereignty are often suspended, with the result that ‘the geopolitical pursuit of energy security is likely to produce new and intensive forms of insecurity for those in the new resource zones’.27 Oil wars, and the resultant deaths, should thus be understood in terms of Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’ – life that can be extinguished with sovereign impunity. Urban automobile cultures tend to materialize and territorialize the separation between the domestic city, situated within the home space of the Western nation, and the borderlands, cursed with the ongoing resource wars which surround oil exploitation.

…

As a result, he predicts, the world will see recurring US military interventions, characterized by ‘the constant installation and replacement of client regimes, systemic corruption and repression, and the continued impoverishment of the great majority of those who have the misfortune to inhabit such energy-rich regions’. There is little doubt that the US military is putting much thought into the military and geopolitical imperatives associated with rapidly growing crises in energy security. Ironically, this is driven in part by the need to secure oil to supply its own stupendous appetite for oil: the US military itself consumed 134 million barrels of oil in 2005, as much as the entire population of Sweden. ‘Every day’, notes Klare, ‘the average G.I. in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels’.147 In 2000 the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington argued that ‘the United States, as the world’s only superpower, must accept its special responsibilities for preserving access to the worldwide energy supply’.148 Between 2001 and 2009, through the US Central Command, or CENTCOM, the Bush administration exploited the War on Terror discourse to push highly controversial plans to build a formidable series of bases in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (Figure 9.12).

The Burning Answer: The Solar Revolution: A Quest for Sustainable Power by Keith Barnham

Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Arthur Eddington, carbon footprint, credit crunch, decarbonisation, distributed generation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, Ernest Rutherford, Higgs boson, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, Michael Shellenberger, Naomi Klein, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, Richard Feynman, Schrödinger's Cat, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Ted Nordhaus, the scientific method, uranium enrichment, wikimedia commons

In Iran for instance, I suggest that, in return for stopping all uranium enrichment activity, the US and EU should offer to build a solar cell factory and a wind turbine factory, each capable of manufacturing systems producing 1 GW of electrical power a year. This would cost less than a new nuclear reactor. Within ten years Iran could have around 15 GW of new electricity capacity, much more than its nuclear programme will produce in that time. As neither wind nor PV requires fuel, they would give Iran much more energy security than a nuclear programme. Energy security is claimed to be the reason for the Iranian enrichment programme. Hence the leaders of Iran would not lose face with such a compromise. Remember that in many parts of Iran a PV system of a particular power will produce at least twice the electrical energy in a year of the same system in the UK.

…

Now there were only two: gravity and electromagnetism. Third, and unintentionally, he had unleashed a technology that was ultimately to give us, though only after two revolutions, which I will describe, most of our modern devices – from giant particle accelerators down to mobile phones and ultimately, I hope, to non-burning energy security. Maxwell died in 1879, two years after the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and, sadly, eight years before electromagnetic waves were first deliberately generated and detected in a laboratory. He therefore could not have been aware of the extraordinary range of practical applications that were made possible by his discovery.

…

Naser Odeh, Nikolas Hill and Daniel Forster, ‘Current and Future Lifecycle Emissions of Key “Low Carbon” Technologies and Alternatives’, Ref. ED58386, 17 April 2013, Ricardo-AEA Ltd, Harwell, Didcot, OX11 0QR, http://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Ricardo-AEA-lifecycle-emissions-low-carbon-technologies-April-2013.pdf, accessed 20 January 2014. 22. Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen, ‘Nuclear Power, Energy Security and CO2 Emission’, May 2012, http://www.stormsmith.n1/reports.html, accessed 20 January 2014. 9. How Can We Reduce Our Carbon Emissions? January 2009 was a tipping point for the cost of solar panels and for the solar revolution. This can most clearly be seen on the Solarbuzz site [1] in a diagram which had two lines tracking the retail price of a PV panel in Europe and the US.

Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich

An Inconvenient Truth, carbon tax, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, energy security, green new deal, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Watt: steam engine, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, oil shale / tar sands, planetary scale, Ronald Reagan, spinning jenny, the scientific method

On April 3, 1980, Senator Paul Tsongas, a Massachusetts Democrat, held the first congressional hearing on carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. Gordon MacDonald testified that the United States should “take the initiative” and develop, through the United Nations, a way to coordinate every nation’s energy policies to address the problem. That June, President Carter signed the Energy Security Act of 1980, which directed the National Academy of Sciences to start a multiyear, comprehensive study, to be detailed in a report called Changing Climate, that would analyze the social and economic consequences of climate change. Most urgently, the National Commission on Air Quality, at the request of Congress, invited two dozen experts, including Henry Shaw himself, to a meeting in Florida to develop climate legislation.

…

Pomerance had come with an action plan, which he entered into the record: prepare for the climatic changes that were inevitable; fund more research; make conservation the highest consideration in all energy policy; and abolish the federal synthetic-fuels initiative. These measures would have the added benefits of reducing acid rain, increasing energy security, promoting public health, and saving money. “This issue is so big,” said Pomerance, “yet the attitude that is being taken is so relaxed. I mean, it strikes one as a bit incredible.” He took a breath before concluding. “The major missing element in all this is leadership,” he said. “It needs to come from the political community.”

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

1960s counterculture, accelerated depreciation, activist lawyer, affirmative action, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, desegregation, do well by doing good, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial deregulation, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, income per capita, intermodal, invisible hand, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Martin Wolf, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, post-industrial society, post-oil, price mechanism, price stability, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Simon Kuznets, strikebreaker, three-martini lunch, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban planning, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, working poor, Yom Kippur War

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.

…

Carter’s six-point action plan, offered in the final third of his speech, promised to limit oil imports to 1977 levels, 8.7 million barrels, which he could do alone on the basis of the 1975 energy legislation. But the long-term goal was to cut American oil imports in half, to 4.5 million barrels a day by 1990. Congress was already considering legislation supporting alternative energy technologies. Now Carter asked Congress to create an Energy Security Corporation to replace 2.5 million barrels of imported oil through the development of alternative energy sources. The funds would come from the windfall profits tax. Most of the estimated $17-billion revenue from the windfall profits tax of 1979 would be invested by the new energy corporation.

…

-Soviet Dodd, Christopher Dole, Robert Douglas, Paul Dowd, Douglas Drudge, Matt Dukakis, Michael Dunlop, John Du Pont Durbin, Richard Durkin, John Eagleton, Thomas Eckes, Alfred Economic Opportunity Act Economic Planning Act Economic Policy Board Economic Revitalization Board Eisenhower, Dwight D. Eisner, Robert Eizenstat, Stuart Emergency Committee for American Trade (ECAT) Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act Emminger, Otmar Energy Independence Authority Act Energy Policy and Conservation Act Energy Security Corporation environmental movement Equal Rights Amendment Ervin, Sam European Community (EC) European Economic Community (EEC) European Payments Union exchange rates, international Export-Import Bank Fahd, of Saudi Arabia Faisal, king of Saudi Arabia Falk, Richard Fallows, James families, U.S.: legislation supporting relative wealth of Family Assistance Plan federal budget, U.S.

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

Abraham Maslow, addicted to oil, An Inconvenient Truth, Apollo 11, Bernie Madoff, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, flex fuel, Ford Model T, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Hernando de Soto, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jevons paradox, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, Thomas L Friedman, uranium enrichment, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

Power is what we want. And lots of it. CHAPTER 3 Watt’s the Big Deal? (Power Tripping 102) ENERGY GETS THE HEADLINES and the attention. It’s the buzzword that pundits and politicos count on to pack a punch. Thus, we’ve been barraged by the ever-present “energy crisis” as well as other combinations: energy security, energy scarcity, energy management, energy policy, and dozens more. In the consumer world, we have energy bars, energy drinks, and, for consumer electronics, Energy Star. My antique copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (printed in 1936) contains half a dozen definitions for “energy.”

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For instance, if a utility has reliable data showing that it is providing enough voltage to its most-distant customers on a given section of the grid, it can reduce the voltage on its generators and thereby reap energy savings of as much as 4 percent.23 In July 2009, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company released a report that predicted that if the United States adopted aggressive efficiency policies it could reduce primary energy consumption by about 20 percent when compared to a “business as usual” scenario.24 The consulting firm determined that there are big gains to be had from efficiency upgrades in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. The report concludes that, “in the nation’s pursuit of energy affordability, climate change mitigation, and energy security, energy efficiency stands out as perhaps the single most promising resource.”25 While that may be true, the McKinsey report contains an enormous caveat, a warning that efficiency is not a panacea, not easily funded, and not easily measured or verified:By their nature, energy efficiency measures typically require a substantial upfront investment in exchange for savings that accrue over the lifetime of the deployed measures.

…

In Germany and Denmark, opposition to CCS projects has helped stop plans by two major electricity producers to bury captured carbon dioxide in saline aquifers deep below the surface of the Earth.59 Despite the problems, the coal industry continues to perpetuate the myth that CCS is viable. In September 2009, Vic Svec, a senior vice president at St. Louis–based Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, told the New York Times that “coal with carbon capture and storage is the low cost, low carbon solution and has fantastic implications for the nation’s energy security.”60 The myth that the United States can (or will) substantially cut its carbon dioxide emissions is closely related to the belief that placing a tax on carbon will ignite a revolution in alternative-energy technologies. And that belief leads to the next myth-busting opportunity: Any scheme to tax carbon is doomed to failure.

The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order by Bruno Macaes

active measures, Berlin Wall, Brexit referendum, British Empire, computer vision, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, digital map, Donald Trump, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global value chain, illegal immigration, intermodal, iterative process, land reform, liberal world order, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, megacity, middle-income trap, open borders, Parag Khanna, savings glut, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, speech recognition, Suez canal 1869, The Brussels Effect, trade liberalization, trade route, Transnistria, young professional, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Russian doubts and hesitations – its excess of alternatives – anticipate the new Eurasian age of competitive integration between different political models, and thus Russia may yet prove especially suited for it. Think of all the important and still undecided international questions of the last ten years. Energy security. Islamic radicalism. Ukraine. The future of Turkey and its position in the global system of alliances. The refugee crisis. They all point to the borderlands dividing Europe and Asia and are a direct result of flows – of people, goods, energy and knowledge – made possible by the gradual decline or collapse of the barriers keeping the two continents apart.

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For the time being, of course, the great ocean linking the Eurasian supercontinent is the Indian. Many of the most important questions of our time will be decided in this long arc of heavily populated coastlines and busy shipping lanes: the relation between Islam and its neighbours in Europe and Asia; the growth of global trade and the struggle for energy security; the competition between India and China for the top place as the great economic success story of the century. In the west, the Suez Canal has traditionally been seen as the sea gate to Europe. In the east the Strait of Malacca can open or close the route to China and Japan. Even as it quickly becomes the most important body of water in the world, the Indian Ocean is increasingly the focus of competition between different actors, none of which can play a hegemonic role.

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Likewise, if the next few decades witness a naval conflict between China and the United States that conflict will more likely be centred in the Indian Ocean than the Pacific, thanks to its greater strategic importance, and in that case India and the Indian navy will be a decisive factor. As opposed to the Atlantic or the Pacific, which lie from north to south like great open highways, the Indian Ocean is distinguished by a land rim on three sides creating numerous chokepoints, critical for international trade and energy security. Indian maritime doctrine recognizes that these chokepoints are sources of potential disruption, but also levers of control. To the east the Straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok create a natural barrier against Chinese sea power. To the west the busiest sea lane passes through the Strait of Hormuz, granting access to the Persian Gulf and its littoral, the source of a majority of Indian oil and gas supplies and home to an estimated 7 million expatriate Indians.

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power by Daniel Yergin

anti-communist, Ascot racecourse, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, Berlin Wall, book value, British Empire, Carl Icahn, colonial exploitation, Columbine, continuation of politics by other means, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, do-ocracy, energy security, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, financial independence, fudge factor, geopolitical risk, guns versus butter model, Ida Tarbell, informal economy, It's morning again in America, joint-stock company, junk bonds, land reform, liberal capitalism, managed futures, megacity, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, new economy, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, postnationalism / post nation state, price stability, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, stock buybacks, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas Malthus, tontine, vertical integration, Yom Kippur War

In the meantime, the stage has been set for one of the great and intractable clashes of the 1990s between, on the one hand, the powerful and increasing support for greater environmental protection and, on the other, a commitment to economic growth and the benefits of Hydrocarbon Society, and apprehensions about energy security. These, then, are the three themes that animate the story that unfolds in these pages. The canvas is global. The story is a chronicle of epic events that have touched all our lives. It concerns itself both with the powerful, impersonal forces of economics and technology and with the strategies and cunning of businessmen and politicians.

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No longer could the United States continue its historical role as supplier to the rest of the world. Now it was dependent on other countries for that marginal barrel, and an ominous new phrase was being heard more often in the American vocabulary—"foreign oil." The Great Oil Deals: Aramco and the "Arabian Risk" That shift added a new dimension to the vexing question of energy security. The lessons of World War II, the growing economic significance of oil, and the magnitude of Middle Eastern resources all served, in the context of the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, to define the preservation of access to that oil as a prime element in American and British—and Western European-security.

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This time, however, there was no spare capacity in the United States. Its disappearance represented a major change in the underlying dynamics of politics and oil as they had existed as recently as six years earlier, during the 1967 Six-Day War. America's spare capacity had proved to be the single most important element in the energy security margin of the Western world, not only in every postwar energy crisis but also in World War II. And now that margin was gone. Without it the United States had lost its critical ability to influence the world oil market. Other producers, led by Iran, were able to increase their output by a total of 600,000 barrels per day.

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sinatra Doctrine, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

And in this case, “strategic importance” is essentially shorthand for the fact that the Gulf states are home to two-thirds of the world’s known oil reserves. The biggest foreign policy dilemma of the European Union also revolves around energy and the Union’s dangerous reliance on Russian gas. It is not just “energy security” that is exercising the world’s political leaders. “Food security” is also back on the agenda. The world’s population is rising, the emerging middle classes of Asia are eating better, and that is forcing up the price of food. In 2007, the year before the financial crisis hit, the world price of basic foodstuffs rose by 50 percent.8 Several countries were shaken by riots over rising food prices, including Mexico, Indonesia, and China.

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When President Obama attempted to stage a last-minute meeting at the Copenhagen summit with the Indians, he was told that the Indian prime minister had already flown home—only to discover that Manmohan Singh was, in fact, quietly meeting China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao.19 On nuclear proliferation, the need for binding UN sanctions on Iran meant that the U.S. government felt that it was crucial to cultivate cooperation with the Russians and the Chinese. When it came to energy security, there is no getting around the fact that America’s biggest suppliers of oil are authoritarian states, including Venezuela. Global economic imbalances could not be tackled cooperatively without close coordination with China. One of the biggest divisions on economic management was between countries that were amassing large current-account surpluses and others that were running big deficits—but this too did not divide the world neatly into democracies and autocracies.

…

My friend Charles Grant, the head of one of Britain’s leading think-tanks, recalls that when he launched his Centre for European Reform in 1995, “the big issues were whether Britain should join the euro and how fast Poland should join the European Union. … Most of the problems that worry us now—climate change, energy security, how to handle a more assertive Russia, the rise of China and terrorism—were scarcely on the agenda then.”1 In Washington, my contemporary Andrew Sullivan seems to feel the same way: “It feels like the late 1970s,” he wrote at the end of 2009, “but with no cheerful Ronald Reagan waiting in the wings. … I’ve never experienced such widespread gloom in the 25 years I’ve lived here.”2 For some Americans the Age of Optimism ended on 9/11.

When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of the Middle Kingdom by Martin Jacques

Admiral Zheng, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, classic study, credit crunch, Dava Sobel, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discovery of the americas, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, flying shuttle, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income per capita, invention of gunpowder, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, land tenure, lateral thinking, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, Meghnad Desai, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, one-China policy, open economy, Pearl River Delta, pension reform, price stability, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, spinning jenny, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

The environmental impact of energy use in China is particularly adverse because its dependence on coal - of a particularly dirty kind - is unusually high (60 per cent compared with 23 per cent in the US and 5 per cent in France) and carbon emissions from coal are proportionately much greater than from oil and gas.79 Although the Chinese leadership has resisted the idea that the country should be subject to internationally agreed emission targets, it has accepted the scientific argument concerning global warming and, in both speeches and the growing volume of new environmental regulations, is displaying a heightened awareness of the problem.80 In fact on paper China already has some of the most advanced laws in the world on renewable energy, clean production, environmental impact assessment and pollution control, though these still remain widely ignored in practice.81 The government continues to resist the idea that environmental considerations should detract from the priority of rapid economic growth, but there is, nonetheless, widespread recognition of their urgency at the highest levels of the Chinese leadership.82 The need for China to embrace a green development strategy, rather than relying on the old intensive model, has been powerfully argued by the influential Chinese economist Hu Angang.83 Figure 15. CO2 emissions compared. Figure 16. Growing concern over environmental problems. China’s position on climate change is evolving rapidly. The two targets it has adopted as part of its 2007 energy security strategy will have a significant impact on reducing the growth in emissions - namely, decreasing the energy intensity of the Chinese economy by 20 per cent by 2010 and increasing the use of renewables from 5 per cent to 20 per cent of energy production by 2020. It is already the world’s largest user of alternative energies, including wind power.84 It is making huge investments in a wide range of clean-technology innovations, especially in wind, solar and hydrogen.

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., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) Yu Yongding, ‘China’s Macroeconomic Development, Exchange Rate Policy and Global Imbalances’, unpublished paper, Asahi Shimbun Symposium, October 2005 ——‘China’s Rise, Twin Surplus and the Change of China’s Development Strategy’, unpublished paper, Namura Tokyo Club Conference, Kyoto, 21 November 2005 ——‘China’s Structural Adjustment’, unpublished paper, Seoul Conference, 2005 ——‘The Interactions Between China and the World Economy’, unpublished paper, Nikkei Simbon Symposium, 5 April 2005 ——‘Opinions on Structure Reform and Exchange Rate Regimes Against the Backdrop of the Asian Financial Crisis’, unpublished paper, Japanese Ministry of Finance, 2000 Zakaria, Fareed, The Post-American World (London: Allen Lane, 2008) Zha Daojiong, ‘China’s Energy Security and Its International Relations’, China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 3:3 (2005) Zhang, Peter G., IMF and the Asian Financial Crisis (Singapore: World Scientific, 1998) Zhang Wei-Wei, ‘The Allure of the Chinese Model’, International Herald Tribune, 1 November 2006 Zhang Yunling, ed., Designing East Asian FTA: Rationale and Feasibility (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2006) ——East Asian Regionalism and China (Beijing: World Affairs Press, 2005) ——and Tang Shiping, ‘China’s Regional Strategy’, in David Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) Zhao Suisheng, ed., Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior (New York: M.

…

‘China’s Priorities’, Financial Times, 9 March 2008. 61 . Yu Yongding, ‘China’s Structural Adjustment’, p. 5. 62 . Yu Yongding, ‘China’s Rise, Twin Surplus and the Change of China’s Development Strategy’, pp. 24-5. 63 . ‘What Will the World Gain from China in 20 Years?’ China Business Review, March/April 2003. 64 . Zha Daojiong, ‘China’s Energy Security and Its International Relations’, China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 3: 3 (November 2005), p. 44; and Yu Yongding, ‘The Interactions between China and the World Economy’, unpublished paper, Nikkei Simbon Symposium, 5 April 2005, p. 2. 65 . Lester R. Brown, ‘A New World Order’, Guardian, 25 January 2006. 66 .

Europe old and new: transnationalism, belonging, xenophobia by Ray Taras

affirmative action, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, British Empire, carbon footprint, centre right, collective bargaining, Danilo Kiš, energy security, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Kickstarter, low skilled workers, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, North Sea oil, open economy, postnationalism / post nation state, Potemkin village, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, World Values Survey

In 2005, Germany and Russia decided to route a major gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, therefore outside of Polish control. The Polish defense minister compared the decision to the secret agreement between Hitler and Stalin to carve up Poland in 1939. At subsequent EU summits, the Polish leadership emphasized the urgency of reaching a common energy security treaty for all EU states, which was made more difficult by Russia reaching special energy deals with Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands. A second issue in German-Polish relations concerned recognition of minorities in each country. Adam Krzemiński, longtime editor of a leading Polish weekly, Polityka, asked: “Must mass immigration involve giving minority status to the new ethnic groups in the EU member states?

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In his turn, the Polish president warned that Poland could counter German lawsuits with its own multibillion-Euro claims for destruction suffered under the wartime Nazi occupation of Poland. He added how “obvious anti-Polish sentiment that is often racist”100—that term again—had increased in Germany. The 2006 Weimar summit eased frictions in Polish-German relations. The main topic between President Kaczyński, Chancellor Merkel, and President Chirac was the energy security of Europe. Kaczyński argued that the fact that this subject was seen not simply as an economic but also a political matter was a success for Poland. The three leaders expressed hope that negotiations with Russia on energy issues and, more broadly, on a new EURussia partnership and cooperation agreement, would begin soon.

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See European Commission against Racism and Intolerance ECSC. See European Coal and Steel Community ECU. See European Currency Unit EEC. See European Economic Community Elementary Particles (Houellebecq), 216, 218–19 11-M, 152 Élysée Treaty, 21 . The Emigrants (Mrozek), 192–93 emigration, 192–93, 194 ENAR. See European Network Against Racism energy security, 109–10, 111 Englishness, 157 ENP. See European Neighborhood Policy entitativity, 59 Equalities Review report, 158–59 ESM. See European Social Model Estonia: conservative government in, 105; economy of, 51; minority discrimination in, 126 ethnic cleansing, 4 ethnocentric norms, 119 EU. See European Union EU commandments, 4 EU constitution: drafting of, 44, 45–46; French referendum (2005), 2; religion in, 69; resistance to, 45, 49.

The new village green: living light, living local, living large by Stephen Morris

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, back-to-the-land, Buckminster Fuller, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, Community Supported Agriculture, company town, computer age, cuban missile crisis, David Sedaris, deindustrialization, discovery of penicillin, distributed generation, Easter island, energy security, energy transition, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial independence, Firefox, Hacker Conference 1984, index card, Indoor air pollution, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Elkington, Kevin Kelly, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, McMansion, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Negawatt, off grid, off-the-grid, peak oil, precautionary principle, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review

Distributed generation is where electricity is fed into power lines by small, scattered power plants such as wind mills, solar electric arrays on roof tops, small-scale hydro power, methane captured at farms or landfills, or fossil fuel powered turbines. The energy from these decentralized power sources tends to be used on-site by whoever is producing it, with the excess going out onto the grid for everyone else. Energy security analysts think distributed generation is preferable because reducing the demand on a single, central power plant makes widespread power interruptions less likely. Another way to increase power plant efficiency is by way of co-generation (cogen) also known as combined heat and power (CHP). Co-generation means pro44 chapter 2 : Silent Spring ducing useful energy for more than one use from the same fuel source.

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When applied to a wide variety of renewable energy technologies, this strategy is known as Community Supported Energy (CSE) or sometimes Community Based Energy Development (C-BED). Regardless of the name you use, these projects are somewhat similar to Community Supported Agriculture. The main difference, however, is that instead of investing in potatoes, carrots, or cucumbers, with CSE, local residents invest in energy projects that provide greater energy security and a wide variety of other benefits. Many Advantages A cooperative or community owned energy project offers many advantages. It stimulates the local economy by creating new jobs and new business opportunities for the community while simultaneously expanding the tax base and generating new income for local residents.

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The main point is to identify the project as belonging to the community, which may avoid (or at least minimize) the usual conflicts between local residents and developers, whose large-scale, commercial proposals are often viewed as primarily benefiting absentee owners. Local ownership is the key ingredient that transforms what would otherwise be just another corporate energy project into an engine for local economic development and greater energy security. Community Supported Energy projects offer yet another advantage; they retain a greater amount of income in the local area and increase the economic benefits substantially over projects owned by out-of-area developers. This fact was highlighted by a study conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for the Governmental Accountability Office.

What's Next?: Unconventional Wisdom on the Future of the World Economy by David Hale, Lyric Hughes Hale

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, classic study, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, diversification, energy security, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global reserve currency, global village, high net worth, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Rogoff, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage tax deduction, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, passive investing, payday loans, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precautionary principle, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tobin tax, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, yield curve

Climate Negotiations and the Move to a Lower-Carbon Energy Mix With peak oil concerns alleviated until at least 2020 (subject to the quadrupling of Iraqi oil production, and therefore to peace in the Iraqi Shiite region), the other long-term consideration for the global supply-demand balance is about the implications of the transition to a low-carbon energy economy. For a brief period, considerations of energy security, peak oil, and climate security converged to make the transition to a new energy mix appear inevitable. As we have seen when assessing peak oil realities, 2009 spelled the end of this convergence, depriving climate negotiators of the broad-based consensus that this convergence could have fostered.

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Therefore, it is likely that with British and Dutch gas production continuing to decline, more gas will have to be procured from the global LNG market and/or from Russia and Algeria. LNG sources include Qatar and Trinidad as well as Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, and some newcomers. In addition, one interesting question will be whether the United States is ready to develop a large-scale LNG export capacity, which would be at odds with its subjective definition of energy security as “energy independence.” Russian gas is now very expensive compared to spot prices as a result of the oil-product indexation clauses in take-or-pay Russian contracts. European companies failed to import as much Russian gas as was called for under these contracts. It was all the more intriguing, therefore, to see the Paris-based European electric utility EDF join the South Stream consortium that was put in place by Gazprom and commit to large volumes of Russian gas imports.

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The stance of the G-77 developing countries, which includes China, has not changed. They continue to state, with justification, that their key priority is economic development and poverty eradication. A key driver in developing countries is an effort to increase energy efficiency in light of likely future increases in real energy prices and concerns about energy security. For example, China’s announced aim to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP is largely motivated by a desire to increase the efficiency with which its economy uses energy. Of course, this action has the secondary benefit of reducing the growth in greenhouse gas emissions, but it falls far short of a policy that would lead to a reduction in emissions.

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow by Tim Jackson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, biodiversity loss, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, critique of consumerism, David Graeber, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hans Rosling, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, Philip Mirowski, Post-Keynesian economics, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, secular stagnation, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, Works Progress Administration, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

See www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/g20-warns-of-oil-price-threat-to-global-economic-stability-5348403.html (accessed 30 March 2016). The long-term concern was widely acknowledged. See, for example, the IEA’s World Energy Outlook (IEA 2008) and the report of the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES 2008). 34 Mohr et al. (2015: figure 5, for example). 35 Turner (2008, 2014). A second study (Pasqualino et al. 2015) puts the world on one of the Limits scenarios associated with enhanced technology; this scenario suggests that collapse will come from pollution rather than from resource depletion. 36 Ragnarsdottír and Sverdrup (2015), Sverdrup and Ragnarsdottír (2014). 37 Rockström et al. (2009); Steffen et al. (2015). 38 Stern (2007: xv).

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The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live – and How You Can Change Them. London: Penguin. Dawkins, Richard 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. DB 2008. Economic Stimulus: The Case for ‘Green’ Infrastructure, Energy Security and ‘Green’ Jobs. New York: Deutsche Bank. de Botton, Alain 2004. Status Anxiety. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Groot, Rudolf, Luke Brander, Sander van der Ploega, Robert Costanza, Florence Bernardd, Leon Braate, et al. 2012. ‘Global estimates of the value of ecosystems and their services in monetary units’.

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Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contributions of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva: IPCC. ITPOES 2008. The Oil Crunch: Securing the UK’s Energy Future. First Report of the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security. London: ITPOES. Jackson, Andrew and Ben Dyson 2013. Modernising Money: Why Our Monetary System is Broken and How it Can be Fixed. London: Positive Money. Jackson, Tim 2016. ‘Emission pathways in historical perspective: an analysis of the challenge of meeting the 1.5°C target’. PASSAGE working paper 16/01.

Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World by Ian Bremmer

airport security, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, clean water, creative destruction, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, global rebalancing, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, informal economy, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, nuclear winter, Parag Khanna, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, trade route, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

In the dead of winter in 2009, Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas monopoly, cut supplies to Ukraine to build leverage in a dispute over pricing, and perhaps to remind Ukrainians that they continue to depend on their big brother to the east. Moscow would like Kiev to join a customs union that now includes Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus—a personal priority for Vladimir Putin—and has promised natural gas deliveries at substantially lower prices to sweeten the deal.28 Given the stakes for energy security, that’s an offer Ukraine must take seriously, because lower gas prices can help political officials avoid both the need to hit voters with new energy taxes and the public backlash that would follow. Ukraine would like to escape Russia’s gravitational pull and become a pivot state, preserving relations with Russia while building new ties with Europe.

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Learning from mistakes means accepting that deficits matter, that compromise is a virtue, and that even a colossus must live within its means. Adapting to changing circumstances means avoiding doctrinaire approaches to the country’s challenges. Emerging stronger from the G-Zero will require innovative approaches to issues such as energy security, the growth of cyberthreats, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and climate change—and it will require Washington to maximize its strength by partnering with an ever-shifting constellation of potential allies on each of these individual tests. Most of all, Americans should have faith in their country’s core strengths.

A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption by Steven Hiatt; John Perkins

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, airline deregulation, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Bob Geldof, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, corporate governance, corporate personhood, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial independence, full employment, global village, high net worth, land bank, land reform, large denomination, liberal capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Seymour Hersh, statistical model, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, Tax Reform Act of 1986, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transfer pricing, union organizing, Washington Consensus, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

Agreeing with right-wing think tanks in Washington that African oil should be labeled an area of vital U.S. interest, Morrison also asserted that these dealings needed to be transparent and to promote development and human rights. A cynical observer might argue that this stance is clever: there have been so many decades of corrupt deals with little money going to the local population that the status quo cannot continue. If U.S. energy security can be guaranteed only by African oil, exploiting that oil can be guaranteed only if America can claim that Africans are benefiting from oil development. Transparency in oil deals then becomes a tool to make exploitation of African oil acceptable to the wider community. Just as Washington and European capitals were wielding these new tools of exploitation, however, here came China advocating the same old tools: the raw power of money, with little or no regard for human rights, let alone transparency.

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ITIC, “Petroleum and Iraq’s Future: Fiscal Options and Challenges,” Fall 2004, p. 10. 26. Dunia Chalabi (International Energy Agency), “Perspective for Investment in the Middle East/North Africa Region,” presentation to the OECD, Istanbul, February 11-12, 2004, p. 7. 27. Ian Rutledge, Addicted to Oil: America’s Relentless Drive for Energy Security (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005). 28. These figures are in real terms (2006 prices), undiscounted. The calculation is based on data from the Iraqi Ministry of Oil and industry sources, for the fields Halfaya, Nahr Umar, Majnoon, West Qurna, Gharaf, Nasiriya, Rafidain, Amara, Tuba, Ratawi, East Baghdad, and Ahdab.

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The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq. New York: New Press, 2004. Phillips, Kevin. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. New York: Viking, 2006. Rutledge, Ian. Addicted to Oil: America’s Relentless Drive for Energy Security. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005. Simmons, Matthew. Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Free Press, 1993. General Union of Oil Employees: www.basraoilunion.org.

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

addicted to oil, air freight, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, big-box store, BRICs, business cycle, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, energy security, food miles, Ford Model T, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jevons paradox, Just-in-time delivery, low interest rates, market clearing, megacity, megaproject, North Sea oil, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, profit maximization, reserve currency, South Sea Bubble, subprime mortgage crisis, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, work culture , zero-sum game

But we don’t have access to those fields any more. They have long been sucked dry by our parents’ cars. From the North Sea to Mexico and from Russia to Indonesia, oil wells are producing less oil than they used to. For a long time, the International Energy Agency (a body set up by the OECD to prevent supply disruptions and promote energy security) kept telling us the world’s wells were declining at 3.7 percent each year. Then, in late 2008, after a rigorous international study, they revised that figure to 6.7 percent. At the stroke of a pen, the global economy lost millions of barrels of oil. The situation is particularly dire in the world’s biggest oil market—the United States.

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For those blessed by ethanol production, times have never been better. But for energy consumers in the United States as well as for American taxpayers, who are ultimately footing the bill for all those subsidies, the production of corn-based ethanol is a costly head fake whose attraction is all about local politics, not about national energy security, or, for that matter, even energy common sense. Surging food inflation and mounting budgetary costs are already beginning to undercut public support for ethanol’s ill-conceived subsidies. The sooner that public support collapses, the better. The only thing this renewable energy policy will fuel is inflation.

A Swamp Full of Dollars: Pipelines and Paramilitaries at Nigeria's Oil Frontier by Michael Peel

banking crisis, blood diamond, British Empire, colonial rule, energy security, Golden arches theory, informal economy, Kickstarter, megacity, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, race to the bottom, Scramble for Africa, trade route, UNCLOS, wage slave

As the world oil price climbed steeply between 2004 and 2008, so the battles over Nigeria’s crude became more violent, the Niger Delta turning ever closer to a Mad Max world of roving bandits. Yet, paradoxically – and worryingly – Nigeria and the broader West African region were at the same time assuming an increasingly important role in the energy security policies of Washington and Western allies such as Britain, who are keen for a bulwark against troubles in the Arabian Gulf. Nigeria has historically sent about half its oil production – between 2m and 2.6m barrels of oil daily – to the USA, where it has accounted for about 10 per cent of total imports.

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Those who raised questions about the Obasanjo administration’s agenda risked being tagged cynics by both London and Abuja, incapable of either seeing change or overcoming their prejudices. But those who claim to be optimists can be cynical, too, particularly when – like the two governments – they share an interest in projecting an impression of rapid improvement in the state that has styled itself the ‘Heart of Africa’ and is key to Western energy security. I always found it revealing that – for all the achievements and bravery of a handful of Nigerian officials – few people outside government seemed to think reform was going far enough or fast enough to pull society from its oily mire. Most strikingly of all, by the time the president left office in 2007, events in the Niger Delta oil heartlands were making the international case for a Nigerian renaissance look at best foolish and at worst disingenuous. 178 A SWAMP FULL OF DOLLARS STARK ILLITERATES AND JUNKIES 179 9 NOT HOSTAGES BUT JOURNALISTS I am sitting sweating in a car pulled up outside one of Port Harcourt’s waterside slums, nervous and impatient for the day to begin.

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

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, accounting loophole / creative accounting, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Anton Chekhov, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collaborative economy, colonial exploitation, computer age, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, digital divide, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Downton Abbey, Emanuel Derman, energy security, energy transition, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial repression, forward guidance, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, geopolitical risk, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, It's morning again in America, Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, margin call, market design, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, open economy, PalmPilot, passive income, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, pension reform, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Rana Plaza, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satyajit Das, savings glut, secular stagnation, seigniorage, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Fry, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the market place, the payments system, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transaction costs, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

The government resents external pressure on its economic policies, currency value, trading practices, political system, foreign policy, and human rights record. China sees diminishing gains from engagement with external parties other than on its own terms. There is also resentment towards developed nations for a perceived lack of respect in dealing with a great power. China has shifted its priorities to food and energy security, needed to sustain its development. For China, a reversal of a policy of international engagement represents a return to traditional economic self-reliance with a limited interest in trade. In 1793, the Chinese emperor told British envoy Lord Macartney that China did not value “ingenious articles” and “had not the slightest need of [England's] manufactures.”9 As Robert Hart, nineteenth-century British trade commissioner for China, wrote, “[The] Chinese have the best food in the world, rice; the best drink, tea; and the best clothing, cotton, silk, fur.

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Steven Solomon, Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilisation, Harper Perennial, 2010. Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Alan Weisman, The World without Us, Picador, 2007. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Touchstone Books, 1991. ——, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, Penguin, 2011. Inequality and Trust Geoffrey Hosking, Trust: A History, Oxford University Press, 2014. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Belknap Press, 2014. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, Bloomsbury Press, 2011.

The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World by Steve Levine

colonial rule, Elon Musk, energy security, Higgs boson, oil shale / tar sands, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, Yom Kippur War

These estimates excluded manufactured materials used to make the batteries, not to mention the market for automobiles themselves, which was enormous. Companies elsewhere in the world—in China, in Japan, in South Korea, for example—were gearing up to capture that business, to create jobs for their societies. That was one reason Argonne was on a mission to create a lithium-ion battery industry in the United States. Another was energy security. “So we import a lot of oil, a little over a billion dollars a day,” he told the silent room. “Some of that is from friends, some from enemies. So that’s not a secure position.” And the third component was environmental security—if the United States could move away from fossil fuel consumption, climate change would be less of a threat as well.

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., 11–12 Frisch, Damon, 231, 260 Gallagher, Kevin, 100, 185, 207–10, 224, 233 and ARPA-E, 201, 204 and Battery Hub, 212–14, 228, 243–45, 252 and Envia, 201, 208, 213–14, 277, 279 and Nelson-Gallagher model, 212, 213–14, 243–44 and Obama visit, 268–71 and voltage fade, 158, 239, 285–86 Galvani, Luigi, 18 Gates, Bill, 195, 199 Geely, 6, 284 General Electric (GE), 8, 62 General Motors (GM), 71, 183, 188, 196, 284, 285 bankruptcy filing by, 114 and Chevy Spark, 214 and DC resistance, 230–31 and Envia, 110–17, 205, 206, 230–31, 255–59, 260–67, 272–75, 276–81, 286 and EV1, 184 GM Ventures, 109–16, 151, 205 and Volt, see Volt Goldwasser, Eugene, 127 Goodenough, John, 21, 22–26, 91, 113, 210, 269 and Battery Hub, 242–43 leadership style of, 25–26, 30, 101 and lithium-cobalt-oxide battery, 25, 27, 28–29, 31, 35, 38, 44, 45, 52, 58, 119, 152, 154 and Padhi, 37–39 and patents, 33, 36, 38–39, 66 and Thackeray, 30–32, 33, 38 Goodenough-Kanamori rules, 23 Greenberger, Jim, 130–31 Grove, Andrew, 75–76, 129 Gruen, Dieter, 10–11, 13–15, 209 Henriksen, Gary, 236–37 Herschel, William, 27 Higgs boson, 119 Hillebrand, Don, 182–85, 187–89, 228, 284, 286 Honda, 115, 116, 117, 206, 231, 257 Howard, Matt, 268–69 Howell, Dave, 107, 134–35, 160, 167, 210 Hu Jintao, 4 hybrid vehicles, 8, 20, 36, 76, 109, 177–78, 179, 184, 185, 257 Hyundai, 196 IBM, 186, 206 India, Union Carbide leak in, 36 Intel, 75–76, 121, 129 intercalation, use of term, 21 internal combustion engine, 19, 45, 109, 132, 154–55, 179, 181, 183 iPhone, 129, 187, 198, 250–51 Isaacs, Eric, 119, 269, 286 and Battery Hub, 135, 137–38, 216, 218–19, 220–21, 225–26, 243–44, 248, 250, 251, 253, 254 and En-Caesar, 135, 137 Iyer, Hari, 256, 258, 262–66, 274, 276, 277 Jae-kook Kim, 56, 57 Japan: battery production in, 35, 102–3, 136, 178, 192 competition in, 36, 75, 99, 129, 130, 177–78, 214, 280 consumer battery market in, 5, 7, 8, 9, 142 and electric vehicles, 184, 284 patents in, 39, 66, 98–99, 197 U.S. ideas moving to, 36, 187, 205 Jobs, Steve, 202 Johnson, Chris: and lithium-ion, 41, 43, 58, 153 and NMC, 41, 43, 58–59, 72, 153, 159, 236, 278 and patents, 46, 56–57, 72, 153 and Thackeray, 40–41, 42, 43, 46, 287 and voltage fade, 159, 227–28 Johnson, Lady Bird, 179 Johnson Controls, 68, 131, 149, 150 Joshua, Matthus, 266, 273, 276 Jun Lu, 99 Kang Eun Kyung, 100–101 Kapadia, Atul, 91 and Envia/Kumar, 86, 106–7, 114–17, 166, 202–6, 255, 257–58, 261, 262–67, 274, 276–77, 279, 280–81 and venture capital, 85–86, 106–7, 112, 117 Khosla, Vinod, 190–91 Kumar, Sujeet, 83–87, 88–90, 91, 192–98 and Argonne, 83–85, 86, 152 and ARPA-E, 193–98, 201–6, 207, 230, 233, 277 and Chamberlain, 86–87, 88, 115–17, 203–4 and Energy Department, 105, 165–66, 190, 193, 231–32 and Envia, 86, 107–8, 111, 114, 116–17, 162–66, 206, 238–41, 239, 255–59, 260–67, 272–75, 276–81, 286 and GM, 110–14, 165, 205, 230–31, 256–59, 260–67, 276, 278–80, 286 and NanoeXA, 94–95, 267, 280–81 and NMC, 83, 84, 94, 95, 111, 128, 152, 155, 165, 169, 170–71, 193–96, 231, 261, 277, 286 and venture capital, 84–87, 106, 116, 126, 205–6 and voltage fade, 155, 157, 163–64, 168–69, 233–34, 238–39 lattice, 44 Lauckner, Jon, 109–14, 205, 231, 280, 286 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 132–33, 135–36, 165, 166, 260 Lawroski, Stephen, 13 LG Chemical, 9, 70–72, 110, 113–14, 156, 257, 261, 267, 285 Lindbergh, Erik, 286 Littlewood, Peter, 118–20, 122, 243–44, 286 Madia, Bill, 218–22, 223–24, 226, 253–54 Majumdar, Arun, 195, 199, 200–201, 203–5, 279 Manhattan Project, 10, 11, 129, 143 Mansfield, Mike, 23 Markovic, Nenad, 243 Mathias, Mark, 216, 231 Matsushita, 197 microchips, 75, 186 Microsoft model, 118 MIT, Lincoln Laboratory, 23 mobile phones, 122, 186 Moore’s law, 186 Morse, Edward, 180 Musk, Elon, 232–33 NanoeXa, 83–84, 94–95, 267, 280–81 Naperville, 13 natural gas, 60 Nelson, Paul, 16–17, 210–13 Newman, John, 132, 134–35 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), 37–38, 39 Nissan, 107, 115, 116, 158, 183, 202, 284 Leaf, 177, 179, 183, 186 Nitz, Larry, 266–67, 273 nuclear age, 10, 14, 20 Oak Ridge National Lab, 11, 14, 137, 228, 242–43, 260 Obama, Barack: Argonne visit of, 268–71 one-million-car goal, 5, 60 Obama administration, 135, 280 and battery competition, 70–71, 84, 107–8, 130, 187, 252, 253 and economic stimulus, 131, 203 and electric cars, 60, 106, 125, 145, 177, 178, 187, 261 and LG Chemical, 70–71, 113 oil: Arab embargo (1973), 21, 23, 28 demand for, 8, 60–61, 178 electricity as challenge to, 152 and energy security, 142–43, 284 prices of, 8, 35, 60, 178, 179, 180, 183, 189 public image of, 84, 146 shale gas and, 180, 190 Okada, Shigeto, 37–39 omnivorous engine, 188 OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), 8, 23, 61, 183 Orbach, Ray, 242 Ovshinsky, Stan, 36 Oxford University, 24, 29–30, 32, 33, 36 Padhi, Akshaya, 37–39 Pak, Michael, 84, 94–95, 267 Panasonic, 9, 36, 197, 214, 232, 265 Park Sang-Jin, 102–3 Patel, Anish, 113 patent applications: for NMC, 45, 58–59, 66, 170, 197 race for, 39, 47 for spinel, 33, 38–39 patents: challenges to, 47 contributions described in, 57 enforcement of, 73 failure to patent, 127 government-funded, 68 infringement of, 39, 71 international, 65–69, 98, 153, 197 inventors’ names on, 156 lawsuits for, 39, 197 lead time for, 57–58 and licensing, 36, 68–69, 95 protection of, 78 provisional, 46, 55 and royalties, 36, 98, 149–51 signing away rights to, 36, 77 stealing ideas for, 38, 55 Pentagon, 127 Persson, Kristin, 243 Peters, Mark, 218, 220, 228, 251, 253 Planté, Gaston, 19 plutonium, creation of, 11 Popular Science, 19–20 Preto, Sandy, 16 Prius, 36, 153, 158, 177–78, 179, 185, 186, 188–89 Putin, Vladimir, 8, 284 Ralston Purina, 36 RCA, 62 Reagan, Ronald, 35, 122, 129 Redpoint Ventures, 112 Rickover, Hyman, 14 Riley, Bart, 154–58, 163 RockPort Capital Partners, 84–85 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 11 Russia, oil production in, 61, 183 Sadoway, Donald, 199 SAGE (computer memory), 23 Samsung, 9, 155, 158, 202, 205, 213, 231, 261, 265, 267, 284 Samsung SDI, 102–3, 104 Sattelberger, Al, 5 Schroeder, Dave, 62, 63–65 Seaborg, Glenn, 10 Seegopaul, Purnesh, 202–3, 263, 266, 274–75 Sematech (Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology), 129–31, 133, 282 Sharp, 214 Shin-Etsu, 265, 266, 281 silicon chips, 75–76 Silicon Valley, 129, 150, 201 Asian immigrants in, 90–94 Sinkula, Mike, 83–87, 88, 95, 110, 114, 116–17, 202, 263, 280 Slater, Mike, 207, 209 smart phones, 5, 167, 186, 187 Smil, Vaclav, 199 Solyndra, 203, 240 Sony, 35, 41, 118, 152, 197, 198, 214 South Africa, 27–28, 41–42, 43, 47 South Korea: battery competition in, 99, 103, 114, 136, 214, 280, 284 consumer battery market in, 5, 8, 9, 37, 142 patents filed in, 66, 197 trade alliance with, 70–72 spec sheets, 115–16 spinel, 28–29, 30–32, 33, 38–39, 41–42, 45–46, 110, 113, 152, 153 Spitfire (chip), 85 Srinivasan, Venkat, 91, 120, 149, 220 Straubel, JB, 232 Sun-Ho Kang, 100–104, 155, 157–59, 213, 231 Sun Microsystems, 190 technology: and global financial crises, 7–8 and Moore’s law, 186 usual path of, 185–86, 189, 192, 201 Teller, Edward, 23 Temping Yu, 99 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 11 Tesla Motors, 232–33, 284 Thackeray, Lisa, 42, 217 Thackeray, Mike, 27–33, 40–48, 67, 103, 235–36, 237, 269, 270 and battery competition, 78, 91, 126, 180, 182 and Battery Hub, 132, 135, 137, 141–42, 149, 217–18, 221, 227–28, 248, 251, 254, 269 and Chamberlain, 27, 73–74, 77–78, 128, 141–42, 221 and collaboration, 140–42, 170 and Croy, 168, 170–72, 238, 241, 286, 287 and Envia/Kumar, 78, 85, 166, 168–72, 207, 255–56, 277, 278 and Johnson, 40–41, 42, 43, 46, 287 and lithium-ion, 31–33, 41–42, 45–46, 152, 153 move to Argonne, 41–42, 48, 53, 98, 102 and NMC, 41, 43–47, 55–57, 58, 66, 70–72, 72, 74, 79, 84, 102, 127, 132, 141, 152, 153–57, 160, 197 and patents, 33, 46–47, 73, 78, 84, 127, 153, 156, 170 and spinel, 28–29, 30–32, 33, 38, 41–42, 45–46, 110, 113, 152, 153 and voltage fade, 154–57, 159–60, 210, 238 Thatcher, Margaret, 35 thermodynamics, 154, 169, 170 3M Company, 58, 66, 153, 197–98 Toda, 67, 156 Toyota, 8, 115, 116, 117, 189, 231, 257, 284 and Prius, see Prius Trahey, Lynn, 207, 208–10, 212, 268–71 transistor, 122 Tulgey Wood, 11–12 Ullrick, Brad, 224–25 Union Carbide, 36 Union of Concerned Scientists, 214–15 United States: and battery competition, 5, 6, 7, 9, 68, 71, 74, 107, 151 energy requirements of, 75 industrial decline in, 37, 129 research cutbacks in, 62, 65 University of Chicago, 127 Stagg Field, 10, 11 University of Texas, 39, 242 uranium-235, 11 Vaughey, Jack, 135, 228, 235, 237–38 Vegetabile, Jim, 147 Venkatachalam, Mani, 163, 165 venture capital, 84–87, 106–7, 111–13, 116–17, 126, 128, 190–91, 201, 266, 274 Verbrugge, Mark, 111 Vissers, Don, 41–42, 53, 55, 102 Volt, 109–13, 145–48 batteries for, 3, 4, 5, 47–48, 70, 107, 113, 146–48, 155, 197–98, 233, 257, 266, 272, 280, 285 as concept car, 109, 110, 147 cost of, 72, 107, 109, 257 fires in, 145–46 as hybrid, 109, 185 in the lab, 188 market for, 72, 109, 183 next generation of, 110, 112, 256–57 sales of, 109, 177, 186 Volta, Alessandro, 18, 19, 45 Wan Gang, 60, 76, 96, 178, 180, 280, 282–83, 284 U.S. visit of, 3–6, 7, 9, 27, 79 Wanxiang, 252 Watson, T.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, big-box store, bilateral investment treaty, Blockadia, Boeing 747, British Empire, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, equal pay for equal work, extractivism, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, financial deregulation, food miles, Food sovereignty, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, green transition, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, ice-free Arctic, immigration reform, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jones Act, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, land bank, light touch regulation, man camp, managed futures, market fundamentalism, Medieval Warm Period, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, patent troll, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-oil, precautionary principle, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rana Plaza, remunicipalization, renewable energy transition, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, scientific management, smart grid, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, structural adjustment programs, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wages for housework, walkable city, Washington Consensus, Wayback Machine, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

It also led research that has been used to counter claims that high methane leakage disqualifies fracked natural gas as a climate solution. The EDF has partnered with Shell, Chevron, and other top energy companies on one in a series of studies on methane leaks with the clear goal, as one EDF official put it, of helping “natural gas to be an accepted part of a strategy for improving energy security and moving to a clean energy future.” When the first study arrived in September 2013, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it made news by identifying fugitive methane leakage rates from gas extraction that were ten to twenty times lower than those in most other studies to date.56 But the study’s design contained serious limitations, the most glaring of which was allowing the gas companies to choose the wells they wanted inspected.

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So we need money, we need technology, to be able to do things differently.”43 And that means the wealthy world must pay its climate debts. And yet financing a just transition in fast-developing economies has not been a priority of activists in the North. Indeed a great many Big Green groups in the United States consider the idea of climate debt to be politically toxic, since, unlike the standard “energy security” and green jobs arguments that present climate action as a race that rich countries can win, it requires emphasizing the importance of international cooperation and solidarity. Sunita Narain hears these objections often. “I’m always being told—especially by my friends in America—that . . . issues of historical responsibility are something that we should not talk about.

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Jenny Yuen, “Gore Green with Envy,” Toronto Star, November 25, 2009; “International Support for Ontario’s Green Energy Act,” Government of Ontario, Ministry of Energy, June 24, 2009. 7. “Feed-in Tariff Program: FIT Rules Version 1.1,” Ontario Power Authority, September 30, 2009, p. 14. 8. Michael A. Levi, “The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs. Climate Change,” Council on Foreign Relations, 2009, p. 12; Gary Rabbior, “Why the Canadian Dollar Has Been Bouncing Higher,” Globe and Mail, October 30, 2009. 9. GAS: Mississauga Power Plant Cancellation Costs, Special Report, Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, April 2013, pp. 7–8; Oakville Power Plant Cancellation Costs, Special Report, Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, October 2013, pp. 7–8; WIND: Dave Seglins, “Ont.

The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market by Leah McGrath Goodman

Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, automated trading system, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Carl Icahn, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, East Village, energy security, Etonian, family office, Flash crash, global reserve currency, greed is good, High speed trading, light touch regulation, market fundamentalism, Oscar Wyatt, peak oil, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, price mechanism, profit motive, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, upwardly mobile, zero-sum game

A second source in San Francisco told me about how he personally knew somebody building a bunker in his backyard for his extended family and stockpiling it with food, guns, and gold bars, after losing all faith in the government’s ability to put a lid on high energy prices and maintain national energy security. Wartime oil prices also were being met with warnings from economists of another great reckoning in the form of a global recession. Yet more than a year later, no recession had materialized. OPEC, which tried to keep oil prices as high as possible (just shy of fomenting worldwide backlash), seized the moment in late 2004, announcing a cut in production of a million barrels a day.

…

Oil markets were concerned about a storm because global supplies are really tight.” Little could be proven about oil supply itself, but it definitely was provable that oil supply was not rising as fast as global demand, and the two were approaching a dead heat. There was only about a million barrels of oil a day of wiggle room, which left the world’s energy security hanging in the balance. “It’s going to be really hard to keep up with demand, because there are fewer and fewer places to explore for oil, except really exotic places like Western Siberia, or Chad,” Thiel said. “These places are really hot, really cold, or just politically dangerous. People are looking in the last corners of the earth.”

…

It was understood back then that the nation would need to develop cleaner, cheaper energy resources by the time it entered the twenty-first century—or risk ongoing war, more oil price spikes, and a long-term threat to its prosperity. Yet the United States has only fallen further behind and has become used to depending on oil-rich nations—many of which are not particularly friendly with the United States—to deal with its energy problems. As the country turned a blind eye to its energy security, the failed potato traders of downtown Manhattan, without much forethought, assembled their own high-stakes casino, which became Nymex. “It was our very own Manhattan Project,” one trader recalls. “And we sort of looked at it that way. You know how the real Manhattan Project scientists afterward were like, ‘We didn’t realize how big it would be, we didn’t know what we were doing, and, come to think of it, maybe we shouldn’t have done it?’

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth by Michael Jacobs, Mariana Mazzucato

Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, circular economy, collaborative economy, complexity theory, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Detroit bankruptcy, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, endogenous growth, energy security, eurozone crisis, factory automation, facts on the ground, fiat currency, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, forward guidance, full employment, G4S, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, planned obsolescence, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, private sector deleveraging, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, systems thinking, the built environment, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, vertical integration, very high income

Third, and perhaps most important, well-managed SIBs with a clear mandate are able to provide the kind of patient, long-term and mission-oriented finance that is needed to support investment in infrastructure and new technologies. Many of these long-term, capital-intensive and risky projects, which are necessary to deal with great challenges like climate change and energy security, will not be given credit by a private financial sector increasingly oriented towards the short term.2 This chapter starts by outlining the weak macroeconomic conditions currently exhibited in the EU, in particular in the euro zone. We then discuss the main EU policy measures that have been implemented in recent years to counteract the decline in productive fixed investment.

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The value of high-carbon assets, such as the stocks of coal mining companies, is already in decline, and investors are increasingly analysing the risks to such assets which further climate policy may bring.44 Meanwhile, policy-makers are increasingly recognising the short-term benefits from effectively managing a low-carbon transition in terms of energy efficiency, energy security, urban pollution, congestion and generating innovation.45 It is too early to say that a low-carbon transformation tipping point has been reached; but it is no longer fanciful to imagine it on the horizon. Indeed, the historic Paris Accord was as much a reflection as a cause of a fundamental change in perceptions about the economics of decarbonisation; one that has shifted from cost (and burdens to be shared) to opportunities and self-interest.

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It by Ian Goldin, Mike Mariathasan

air freight, air traffic controllers' union, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, connected car, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, energy security, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, John Snow's cholera map, Kenneth Rogoff, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, mass immigration, megacity, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open economy, precautionary principle, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reshoring, risk free rate, Robert Solow, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social contagion, social distancing, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

See, for example, Ken Belson, 2008, “’03 Blackout Is Recalled, amid Lessons Learned,” New York Times, 13 August, accessed 1 February 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/nyregion/14blackout.html?_r=0. 20. Eben Kaplan, 2007, “America’s Vulnerable Energy Grid,” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounders, 17 April, accessed 20 March 2012, http://www.cfr.org/energy-security/americas-vulnerable-energy-grid/p13153. 21. Ibid. 22. Cro Forum, 2011, “Power Blackout Risks: Risk Management Options,” Emerging Risk Initiative Position Paper, November, 9, accessed 25 January 2013, http://www.agcs.allianz.com/assets/PDFs/Special%20and%20stand-alone%20articles/Power_Blackout_Risks.pdf. 23.

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Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 30: 119–133. ———. 2003. “Integration of Lending and Underwriting: Implications of Scope Economies.” Journal of Finance 58 (3): 1167–1191. Kaplan, Eben. 2007. “America’s Vulnerable Energy Grid.” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounders, 17 April. Accessed 20 March 2012. http://www.cfr.org/energy-security/americas-vulnerable-energy-grid/p13153. Kaufman, George G. 1995. “Comment on Systemic Risk.” In Research in Financial Services: Banking, Financial Markets, and Systemic Risk, vol. 7, ed. George G. Kaufman. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 47–52. Kaufman, George G., and Kenneth E. Scott. 2003. “What Is Systemic Risk, and Do Bank Regulators Retard or Contribute to It?”

The Weather of the Future by Heidi Cullen

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, air freight, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, availability heuristic, back-to-the-land, bank run, California gold rush, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial rule, data science, Easter island, energy security, hindcast, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, millennium bug, ocean acidification, out of africa, Silicon Valley, smart cities, trade route, urban planning, Y2K

The plant symbolized a way to solve the problems of climate change and energy security simultaneously—and if everything went according to plan, it might help Africans as well. North African governments sold their desert in return for water. Let us use your desert to generate power, the Desertec consortium argued, and you can use our energy to desalinate seawater so as to irrigate crops that will help feed your growing populations. North Africa’s demand for water had, in fact, increased by two-thirds—an amount that was far beyond the available supply. For Africa, energy security was far less of a concern than water security.

Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe by Noam Chomsky, Laray Polk

Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, British Empire, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, energy security, Higgs boson, Howard Zinn, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Kwajalein Atoll, language acquisition, Malacca Straits, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, nuclear ambiguity, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

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.

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

3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climatic Research Unit, commodity super cycle, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic transition, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, double helix, energy security, failed state, financial independence, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Neolithic agricultural revolution, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, pattern recognition, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, phenotype, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, rewilding, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, systematic bias, Tesla Model S, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, women in the workforce, yield curve

If an “oil crisis” fails to materialize, it will be chiefly because nimble private oil companies will have succeeded in boosting production capacity in enough places around the world that temporarily losing one or two major producers to incompetence or malice won’t matter much. But the sad fact is that the world’s energy security would be a lot greater if more of the world’s oil and gas resources were in the hands of private companies. Peak oil, if it occurs, will be the result of human folly and government greed, not because the world has suddenly run out of crude. Finally, it should be noted that many environmentalists aren’t scared that we will soon run out of oil; instead, they fear that we won’t.

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The super-cycles are: Martin Stuermer, “150 Years of Boom and Bust: What Drives Mineral Commodity Prices?” Munich RePEc Archive Paper 51859, December 4, 2013. mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/51859/1/MPRA_paper_51859.pdf. “Since 1871, the Economist”: Blake Clayton, “Bad News for Pessimists Everywhere,” Energy, Security, and Climate, Council on Foreign Relations, March 22, 2013. many researchers believe: David Jacks, “From Boom to Bust: A Typology of Real Commodity Prices in the Long Run,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 18874, March 2013, 4. www.nber.org/papers/w18874; and Maria Kolesnikova and Isis Almeida, “Goldman Sees New Commodity Cycle as Shale Oil Spurs U.S.

The Future of Fusion Energy by Jason Parisi, Justin Ball

Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Colonization of Mars, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, heat death of the universe, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, ITER tokamak, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, performance metric, profit motive, random walk, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Stuxnet, the scientific method, time dilation, uranium enrichment

Fusion, by replacing the need for fission power, would make it easier. 10.8Reshaping Geopolitics The geopolitics of energy has become critical to national interests, especially in the past half century. Wars have been fought and governments destabilized in the pursuit of energy security. Fusion has the power to instill order here as well. Because, for fusion, the critical resources are intellectual and technological, rather than natural. This removes a major driver of global conflict. Developed countries that currently need to import large amounts of energy will save money and improve their energy security. Underdeveloped, fossil fuel-rich countries will escape from under the heels of more powerful countries. They can finally progress in peace, without the continual interference of third parties seeking to install a friendly regime.

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

accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, activist lawyer, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, American energy revolution, Bakken shale, Bernie Sanders, Buckminster Fuller, California energy crisis, Carl Icahn, clean water, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, financial engineering, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), man camp, margin call, market fundamentalism, Mason jar, North Sea oil, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, precautionary principle, Project Plowshare, risk tolerance, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Upton Sinclair

To understand better what Aubrey McClendon and Chesapeake have created, I returned to the Farm for a week to spend time traveling around Sullivan County. Chesapeake had leased thousands of acres and drilled nearly one hundred wells, including one on my parents’ property. The debate over fracking here isn’t abstract. US energy security and climate change don’t come up that often in conversation. When residents of Sullivan County talk about fracking, they talk about their water and land as well as the trucks on the roads. What I learned—and would have realized long ago if I had thought about it—was that my parents’ approach to the land was out of step with their neighbors’.

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Paper presented at SPE Unconventional Gas Recovery Symposium, Pittsburgh, May 16–18, 1982. Tarbell, Ida M. The History of the Standard Oil Company (Briefer Version). Edited by David M. Chalmers. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Free Press, 1991. ———. The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. Yost II, A. B., W. K. Overbey Jr., and R. S. Carden. “Drilling a 2,000-ft Horizontal Well in the Devonian Shale.” Paper presented at SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Dallas, September 27–30, 1987. Yost II, A.

Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back by Oliver Bullough

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, BRICs, British Empire, capital controls, central bank independence, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, diversification, Donald Trump, energy security, failed state, financial engineering, Flash crash, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Global Witness, high net worth, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, income inequality, joint-stock company, land bank, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, mass immigration, medical malpractice, Navinder Sarao, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Sloane Ranger, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, WikiLeaks

An alternative is to fund an all-party parliamentary group linked to their home country, which brings with it the possibility of taking politicians to a foreign capital, away from the prurient eyes of the British tabloid press, where they can be treated to the goodies their hard work as earned. That’s not enough, though. The billionaire needs to establish a connection of some kind, particularly if he’s still in business in his home country. If he owns a gas company, then the PR advisers will push hard on energy security, boost him as an independent supplier of the vital resources that the West needs. If he has interests in agriculture, that’s an easy one: food security is crucial to any country, and providing enduring sources of cheap, good-quality food is vital. There’s always a connection that can be made, and once that has been done, he can host conferences to which he can invite famous ex-politicians.

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Hunter Biden is an undistinguished corporate lawyer with no previous Ukraine experience. Why then would a Ukrainian tycoon hire him? Hunter Biden failed to reply to questions I sent him, but he told the Wall Street Journal in December 2015 that he had joined Burisma ‘to strengthen corporate governance and transparency at a company working to advance energy security’. That was not an explanation that many people found reassuring. The Washington Post was particularly damning: ‘The appointment of the vice president’s son to a Ukrainian oil board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst,’ it wrote, shortly after Hunter Biden’s appointment. ‘You have to wonder how big the salary has to be to put US soft power at risk like this.

Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet by Roger Scruton

An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, corporate social responsibility, demand response, Easter island, edge city, endowment effect, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, food miles, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, ghettoisation, happiness index / gross national happiness, Herbert Marcuse, hobby farmer, Howard Zinn, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, market friction, Martin Wolf, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, precautionary principle, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, tacit knowledge, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

And that nation – the United States of America – is passing through an extended economic crisis at the very moment when the greatest need is for the costly research and far-reaching policies that only the United States can afford and that, indeed, only the United States has the political will to pursue. As I write, the US Congress is considering the American Climate and Energy Security Act, presented by Congressmen Waxman and Markey. This bill – heavily influenced by input from climate activists and radical NGOs – aims to reduce the total of American greenhouse gas emissions to 83 per cent below 2005 levels by the year 2050 – in other words to a total of 1 billion tons per year.

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., ref1 advertising, ref1 aesthetic judgment, ref1, ref2, ref3 Africa, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 ageing, ref1 agricultural subsidies, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 agriculture, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 alarms, ref1, ref2 Albrecht, Glenn, ref1n Alexander, Christopher, ref1 Amazon, (rainforest) ref1, ref2 America (USA), ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6f, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23f, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32 American Climate and Energy Security Act, ref1 anarchism, ref1 Anderson, Terry, ref1n, ref2n, ref3 Anglers Conservation Association, ref1, ref2, ref3 angling, ref1 animal rights, ref1, ref2, ref3 Apel, Karl-Otto, ref1n Aquinas, St Thomas, ref1 Arabia, ref1, ref2, ref3 architecture, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Aristotle, ref1n, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5f, ref6 Arnold, Matthew, ref1 Aron, Leon, ref1 Arrow, Kenneth J., ref1n, ref2, ref3n, ref4n asbestos, ref1 Attlee, Clement R., Earl, ref1 Augustine, St, ref1 Austen, Jane, ref1, ref2 Australia, ref1, ref2 Austrian economics, ref1 Avery, Alex, ref1n Axelrod, Robert, ref1 Baird Callicott, J., ref1 Balfour, Lady Eve, ref1, ref2 Balling, Robert C., ref1 bankruptcy, ref1 Barber, Samuel, ref1 Barker, Paul, ref1 Barrell, John, ref1n Barry, Brian, ref1n Bate, Roger, ref1n Bath Preservation Society, ref1 Baudelaire, Charles, ref1 Bauhaus, ref1, ref2, ref3 Baum-Snow, Nathaniel, ref1n beauty, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4f, ref5 Beck, Ulrich, ref1 Beckel, J.

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex by Rupert Darwall

1960s counterculture, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Bakken shale, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, California energy crisis, carbon credits, carbon footprint, centre right, clean tech, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, disinformation, Donald Trump, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, gigafactory, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, market design, means of production, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, Murray Bookchin, Neil Armstrong, nuclear winter, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, Paris climate accords, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, plutocrats, postindustrial economy, precautionary principle, pre–internet, recommendation engine, renewable energy transition, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Solyndra, Strategic Defense Initiative, subprime mortgage crisis, tech baron, tech billionaire, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, women in the workforce, young professional

., 2016) p. 48. 24Pope Francis, Address to the FAO, Rome June 11, 2015, http://www.fao.org/about/meetings/conference/c2015/address-pope-francis/en/. 25LIUNA, “LIUNA Leaves BlueGreen Alliance,” January 20, 2012, http://www.liuna.org/news/story/liuna-leaves-bluegreen-alliance (accessed January 19, 2016). 26Wall Street Journal, “California’s Climate Change Revolt,” September 11, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-climate-change-revolt-1442014369 (accessed September 14, 2015). 20. The Washington, D.C., Energiewende 1George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 23, 2007. 2Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on America’s Energy Security, Georgetown University Washington, D.C.,” March 30, 2011, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/30/remarks-president-americas-energy-security. 3George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 23, 2007. 4George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28, 2008. 5U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. Natural Gas Marketed Production, https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2a.htm (accessed January 26, 2016). 6Mark P.

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

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, clean water, disinformation, Easter island, energy security, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, invisible hand, military-industrial complex, new economy, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, post-oil, Ralph Nader, reserve currency, rolling blackouts, Rosa Parks, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Y2K

It takes about two barrels of oil in energy investment to produce three barrels of oil equivalent from those resources.42 The cost of Canadian non-conventional oil projects is so high that in May 2003, the oil industry publication Rigzone suggested, "President Bush, known for his religious faith, should be praying nightly that PetroCanada and other oil sands players find ways to cut their costs and boost US energy security."43 2. The environmental costs are horrendous and the process uses a tremendous amount of fresh water and also natural gas, both of which are in limited supply. 3. Although non-conventional oil is quite abundant, its rate of extraction is far too slow to meet the huge global energy demand. Dr.

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

Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, clean water, climate change refugee, Climategate, colonial rule, data science, deglobalization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, electricity market, energy security, flex fuel, G4S, global supply chain, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, guest worker program, Hans Island, hydrogen economy, ice-free Arctic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, land tenure, Martin Wolf, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Y2K

How much of each commodity is needed to provide the other is something not well appreciated by the public.”242 It is something not well appreciated by politicians and planners either. Instead of recognizing this marriage between energy and water, their respective planning and regulatory agencies are almost always totally separate entities. “Energy analysts have typically ignored the water requirements of their proposed measures to meet stated energy security goals. Water analysts have typically ignored the energy requirements to meet stated water goals,” concluded a recent Oak Ridge National Laboratory report.243 Historically we have gotten away with this thanks to cheap water, cheap energy, or both. That cushion will continue to narrow as supplies of both tighten out to 2050.

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H. van der Meer, “The Water Footprint of Energy from Biomass: A Quantitative Assessment and Consequences of an Increasing Share of Bio-energy in Energy Supply,” Ecological Economics 68 (2009): 1052-1060. 242 Telephone interview with M. Pasqualetti, April 14, 2009. 243 T. R. Curlee, M. J. Sale, “Water and Energy Security,” Proceedings, Universities Council on Water Resources, 2003. 244 For climate model simulations of Hadley Cell expansion, see J. Lu, G. A. Vecchi, T. Reichler, “Expansion of the Hadley Cell under Global Warming,” Geophysical Research Letters 34 (2007): L06085; for direct observations from satellites, see Q.

Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?: The Facts About Britain's Bitter Divorce From Europe 2016 by Ian Dunt

Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, energy security, Jeremy Corbyn, low skilled workers, non-tariff barriers, open borders, Silicon Valley, UNCLOS, UNCLOS

Indian students often find it hard to come to the UK and that has not become any easier since May’s crackdown on student visas. Despite all the talk of cutting immigration, UK negotiators will come under strain to make concessions to Indian requests in return for a trade deal. With China, the concern will be energy security. Beijing is likely to demand a greater role in the provision of our energy infrastructure. May’s decision to authorise the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, where the Chinese committed to one-third of the £18 billion cost, gave them a foothold in western Europe, as well as a stake in a new project at Sizewell and the possibility of building its own reactors at Bradwell, Essex.

Elon Musk: A Mission to Save the World by Anna Crowley Redding

Albert Einstein, artificial general intelligence, Burning Man, California high-speed rail, Colonization of Mars, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, energy security, Ford Model T, gigafactory, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kwajalein Atoll, Large Hadron Collider, low earth orbit, Mars Society, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, OpenAI, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Solyndra, SpaceX Starlink, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jurvetson, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Wayback Machine

Romney spouted at Obama, “But don’t forget, you put $90 billion, like fifty years’ worth of breaks, into—into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1. I mean, I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right? So this—this is not—this is not the kind of policy you want to have if you want to get America energy secure.”126 So at a moment when the world was watching, Tesla was branded a loser. Yikes. The media seized on the exchange. A month later, Romney had lost the election. And by the next spring, Elon went on national television to reveal the final tally. Tesla had just repaid that loan in full—nine years ahead of schedule127 and with interest.

That Used to Be Us by Thomas L. Friedman, Michael Mandelbaum

addicted to oil, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Andy Kessler, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, centre right, Climatic Research Unit, cloud computing, collective bargaining, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, drop ship, energy security, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, full employment, Google Earth, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job automation, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, Lean Startup, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, mass immigration, more computing power than Apollo, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, oil shock, PalmPilot, pension reform, precautionary principle, proprietary trading, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, the long tail, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, vertical integration, WikiLeaks

If we do not find a new source of abundant, cheap, clean, and reliable energy to power the future of all these “new Americans,” we run the risk of burning up, choking up, heating up, and smoking up our planet far faster than even Al Gore predicted. This means, however, that the technologies that can supply abundant, cheap, clean, and reliable energy will be the next new global industry. Energy technology—ET—will be the new IT. A country with a thriving ET industry will enjoy energy security, will enhance its own national security, and will contribute to global environmental security. It also will be home to innovative companies, because companies cannot make products greener without inventing smarter materials, smarter software, and smarter designs. It is hard to imagine how America will be able to sustain a rising standard of living if it does not have a leading role in this next great global industry.

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There is every reason to believe, in other words, that clean energy will become the successor to information technology as the next major cutting-edge industry on which the economic fortunes of the richest countries in the world will depend. That is the bet that China has made in its twelfth five-year plan, authorized in March 2011, which stresses that development of renewable energy will be the key to China’s energy security for the next decade. That plan places special emphasis on developing solar and nuclear energy. Moreover, renewable energy depends on new technology, which the United States has historically led the world in developing. China is now seeking to seize that position. “Chinese solar panel manufacturers accounted for slightly over half the world’s production last year,” Keith Bradsher, the New York Times Hong Kong business reporter, wrote (January 14, 2011).

The Future Is Asian by Parag Khanna

3D printing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Basel III, bike sharing, birth tourism , blockchain, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, death from overwork, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, energy security, European colonialism, factory automation, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, flex fuel, gig economy, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green transition, haute couture, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, Internet of things, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, light touch regulation, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, machine translation, Malacca Straits, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, mortgage debt, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, Parag Khanna, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, prediction markets, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, smart cities, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Vision Fund, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

Overall, the United States’ financial position is weakening as Asians expand local currency borrowing and regional trade rather than depend on the US dollar and US markets. At the same time, the United States’ energy and technology position is robust and growing. US oil and liqufied natural gas exports are major contributors to energy security for East Asian countries, while US military hardware and computing software are in high demand as well. US strategic influence in Asia is thus declining even as its economic dependence on Asia is growing. In the age of Asianization, Asia will shape the United States more than the reverse. 4 Asia-nomics China watchers have often been polarized between two views: either China will devour the world or it is on the brink of collapse.

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Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Dychtwald, Zak. Young China: How the Restless Generation Will Change Their Country and the World. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018. Ebinger, Charles K. “India’s Energy and Climate Policy: Can India Meet the Challenge of Industrialization and Climate Change?” Brookings Institution Energy Security and Climate Initiative Policy Brief 16-01, June 2016. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/india_energy_climate_policy_ebinger.pdf. Economy, Elizabeth, and Michael Levi. By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest Is Changing the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters by Gregory Zuckerman

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, Bakken shale, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Icahn, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, energy security, Exxon Valdez, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, man camp, margin call, Maui Hawaii, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Peter Thiel, reshoring, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Timothy McVeigh, urban decay

Russell Gold, “The Man Who Pioneered the Shale-Gas Revolution,” Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2012. 3. Dan Steward, The Barnett Shale Play: Phoenix of the Fort Worth Basin; A History (Fort Worth, TX: Fort Worth Geological Society/North Texas Geological Society, 2007). 4. Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (New York: Penguin Press, 2011). 5. Daniel Yergin, “Stepping on the Gas,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2011. 6. Jim Fuquay, “Q&A, George Mitchell, Founder of Mitchell Energy,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 2, 2008. CHAPTER FIVE 1. Jerry Shottenkirk, “OKC-Based SandRidge Energy CEO Tom Ward Says He Has Much to Be Thankful For,” Oklahoma Journal Record, January 8, 2007. 2.

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Ana Campoy, “Natural-Gas Producers Cut Output,” Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2007. 9. John J. Fialka, “Wildcat Producer Sparks Oil Boom on Montana Plains,” Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2006. 10. Joe Carroll, “Peak Oil Scare Fades as Shale, Deepwater Wells Gush Crude,” Bloomberg News, February 6, 2012; Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (New York: Penguin Press, 2011). CHAPTER ELEVEN 1. Christopher Helman, “In His Own Words: Chesapeake’s Aubrey McClendon Answers Our 25 Questions,” Forbes, October 5, 2011. 2. Joshua Schneyer, Jeanine Prezioso, and David Sheppard, “Inside Chesapeake, CEO Ran $200 Million Hedge Fund,” Reuters, May 2, 2012. 3.

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment by Lucas Chancel

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Anthropocene, behavioural economics, biodiversity loss, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, energy security, energy transition, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, green new deal, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, job satisfaction, low skilled workers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, urban planning, very high income, Washington Consensus

Under the terms of the treaty, this executive order cannot take effect before November 4, 2020, one day after the next presidential election—which leaves a faint glimmer of hope, if the Democrats manage to regain the White House. Trump said it was necessary to leave the Paris Agreement because it harmed American workers and threatened the country’s energy security. Whatever his real motives may be, it is interesting that he should have resorted to an argument from social justice (the protection of workers) to justify his decision. But is it a sound argument? It is clear that climate protection requires a gradual abandonment of coal, and therefore a reassignment of workers in the coal industry.

America in the World by Robert B. Zoellick

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, classic study, Corn Laws, coronavirus, cuban missile crisis, defense in depth, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, energy security, European colonialism, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hypertext link, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, immigration reform, imperial preference, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, linear model of innovation, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Norbert Wiener, Paul Samuelson, public intellectual, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, Strategic Defense Initiative, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, Vannevar Bush, War on Poverty

The secretary brought about a durable truce between Egypt and Israel that laid the foundation for a historic peace treaty. Kissinger demonstrated to the Arab states that successful negotiations depended on Washington, not Moscow. And he pushed to end an OPEC oil embargo and rework America’s diplomatic approach to energy security.99 In 1976, when Governor Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination, he called for “superiority” instead of détente. “The evidence mounts that we are Number Two in a world where it’s dangerous, if not fatal, to be second best.” Détente had not stymied aggressive Soviet moves in missiles and military power, Asia, and Africa.

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After World War II, the U.S. dollar served as the principal reserve currency. In the 1970s, the United States abandoned the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, launching in its stead a floating (and sometimes pegged) exchange rate system. The rise of OPEC in the 1970s compelled the United States to experiment with approaches to energy security. More recently, technological, market, and environmental innovations have again transformed energy and environmental politics. The United States adapted the economic system, often fitfully, to assist with development. The United States and other developed nations offered trade preferences to developing economies.

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My challenge for China—and for U.S. diplomacy—was to move beyond questions of Chinese participation to encouraging Beijing’s behavior—attention to norms, not just forms. The United States, China, and many others have mutual interests in resisting protectionism, thwarting proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, and countering terrorism; they need to cooperate on energy security, climate change, diseases, exchange rate policies, economic growth, development, and regional security, including dangers in North Korea, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf. Differences over Taiwan need to be managed peacefully. As Ronald Reagan demonstrated, the United States can speak up for its values—and for freedom—even as it works with China on mutual responsibilities and manages conflicts.

The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, business logic, Cass Sunstein, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, electricity market, energy security, Exxon Valdez, Ford Model T, IBM and the Holocaust, joint-stock company, laissez-faire capitalism, market fundamentalism, Naomi Klein, new economy, precautionary principle, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, South Sea Bubble, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, urban sprawl

Found at www.bpamoco/alaska/qanda/qanda.htm (print copy on file with the author). 29. Letters to Presidents Clinton, December 11, 2000, and Bush, March 20, 2001, from groups of scientists; Kenneth Whitten, retired research biologist, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, gave written testimony at a hearing on the Republican energy bill on July 11, 2001: U.S., Energy Security Act of 2001: Hearing on H.R. 2436 Before the House Committee on Resources: 107th Cong. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002). 30. Sir John Browne, "The Case for Social Responsibility," presentation to the Annual Conference of Business for Social Responsibility, Boston, November 10, 1998. 31.

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

Chinese proclamations, like America’s, are vague and contradictory, while internal authorities jockey for influence, and success is rationalized after the fact. But China remains ruthlessly clear about one thing: Its power is focused on serving commercial interests and protecting the connectivity on which it depends. A simple equation is usually offered to explain China’s clear linkage between domestic and foreign policy: Energy security = economic growth = political stability = continuation of party rule. The formula breaks down without robust global connectivity: inflows and outflows. By contrast, both the Bush and the Obama administrations have defaulted to military posture as a proxy for influence, forgetting that America’s foreign policy failures from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan have come from intervening rather than from not intervening.

…

.*4 An LNG terminal network and Asian gas pipeline grid, along with a gas-trading hub to replace rigid contracts with flexible pricing, would together represent the triumph of supply-demand complementarity over geopolitical division.*5 For Asians, “Drill, baby, drill” is a rallying cry for both energy security and regional stability. SOVEREIGNS OF THE SEA China’s state-owned oil companies and the American navy are not the only players in the maritime great game for undersea resources. Powerful and quasi-stateless global firms have also developed their own type of mobile sovereignty: very large floating structures.

Global Financial Crisis by Noah Berlatsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, centre right, circulation of elites, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, energy security, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, God and Mammon, Gordon Gekko, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Money creation, moral hazard, new economy, Northern Rock, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, social contagion, South China Sea, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, working poor

Overarching goals—to advance democracy, economic opportunity and security—are likely to remain unchanged, although the new president has emphasized in discussions with several Latin American presidents the importance of working together in partnership. In signaling a new approach, President [Barack] Obama has made clear that the United States does not have all the answers and can learn from the experience of regional leaders. A top priority is to work toward energy security in Latin America, and both energy and climate change are critical areas of future U.S.-Latin America cooperation. The upcoming Summit of the Americas will provide an opportunity to unveil new initiatives. The administration is committed to expanding trade benefits to all countries, and will increase the emphasis on the labor and environmental provisions of trade agreements.

Making the Future: The Unipolar Imperial Moment by Noam Chomsky

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Frank Gehry, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Howard Zinn, Joseph Schumpeter, kremlinology, liberation theology, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, precariat, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, structural adjustment programs, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, working poor

But NATO quickly took on new missions, expanding to the east in violation of promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, a serious security threat to Russia, naturally raising international tensions. President Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, NATO supreme allied commander in Europe from 2003 to 2006, advocates NATO expansion east and south, steps that would reinforce U.S. control over Middle East energy supplies (in technical terms, “safeguarding energy security”). He also champions a NATO response force, which will give the U.S.-run military alliance “much more flexible capability to do things rapidly at very long distances.” China may represent Washington’s greatest concern. The China-based Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which some analysts regard as a potential counterbalance to NATO, includes Russia and the Central Asian states.

50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know by Richard Watson

23andMe, 3D printing, access to a mobile phone, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, BRICs, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon credits, Charles Babbage, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, computer age, computer vision, crowdsourcing, dark matter, dematerialisation, Dennis Tito, digital Maoism, digital map, digital nomad, driverless car, Elon Musk, energy security, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, gamification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, hive mind, hydrogen economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, life extension, Mark Shuttleworth, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, peak oil, personalized medicine, phenotype, precision agriculture, private spaceflight, profit maximization, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Florida, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, semantic web, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, smart transportation, space junk, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, telepresence, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Turing test, urban decay, Vernor Vinge, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, women in the workforce, working-age population, young professional

The Moon may represent the next frontier in terms of resources, bringing with it low-cost flights and permanent Moon colonies. A peaceful and abundant future that science-fiction writers and moviemakers have imagined for many years. Conversely, the Moon may represent a dangerous new frontier, where increasingly desperate nations, eager to secure energy security for their own people, battle it out with other nations to survive. Extrapolating again? The argument that we’re running out of much-needed minerals and other key resources seems fairly solid, but it’s quite possible that we’re doing what we often do—extrapolating, either from present conditions or past experience.

The Future of War by Lawrence Freedman

Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, Boeing 747, British Empire, colonial rule, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global village, Google Glasses, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Markoff, long peace, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, nuclear taboo, open economy, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, systematic bias, the scientific method, uranium enrichment, urban sprawl, Valery Gerasimov, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, WikiLeaks, zero day

Russia was left facing budget deficits but also a loss of markets, as its past attempts to coerce countries using its market position had led the targeted countries to seek alternative suppliers.20 Meanwhile, because of the exploitation of shale gas, the US had become once again a major energy producer. There was a familiar pattern to future projections of energy security, which was to assume that supply was close to its peak while demand was continuing to grow. Such claims tended to ignore more sanguine market information, failed to think about the impact of prices on discovery of new reserves or the development of more efficient alternatives to fossil fuels, and assumed that consumers would be left helpless after supplies were cut off without being able to find alternative routes.21 It was less straightforward than assumed to disrupt supply for a long period.

…

These effects will be all the more pronounced as people continue to concentrate in climate-vulnerable locations, such as coastal areas, water-stressed regions, and ever-growing cities. As examples it cited how the terrorist group al-Shabaab exploited the 2011–13 famine in Somalia to coerce and tax international aid agencies, while insurgent groups in northern Mali used deepening desertification to enlist local people in a ‘food for jihad’ arrangement.31 As with energy security there was a presumption that issues of environmental security were unavoidable and were bound to intense disputes between communities and even states. This presumption was criticised as being too deterministic, not allowing for ways by which human ingenuity and economic incentives would lead to new ways of managing resources.

Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite by Carne Ross

Abraham Maslow, barriers to entry, blood diamond, carbon tax, cuban missile crisis, Doha Development Round, energy security, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Global Witness, income inequality, information security, iterative process, meta-analysis, oil-for-food scandal, one-China policy, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, stakhanovite, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, zero-sum game

It was well-known that Saddam Hussein had allocated all the massively lucrative post-sanctions exploration contracts to French, Chinese, Russian and other non-US and non-British companies (and it bothered the companies a lot, as they would tell us). It is hard to believe that the immense potential for money-making and energy security did not exert some pull in the decision to invade, but the evidence for some sort of conspiracy led by Big Oil is hard to come by. But again, we do not know, because we have not been told. Instead we were given not the “noble lie”, but the somewhat less-than-noble half-truth. The full answer will perhaps be revealed by the chief protagonists in years to come.

Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order by Bruno Maçães

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Admiral Zheng, autonomous vehicles, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, cloud computing, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, Donald Trump, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global supply chain, global value chain, high-speed rail, industrial cluster, industrial robot, Internet of things, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, liberal world order, Malacca Straits, middle-income trap, one-China policy, Pearl River Delta, public intellectual, smart cities, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, trade liberalization, trade route, zero-sum game

Addressing a Delhi audience, Luhut suggested that the port of Sabang at the westernmost point of Indonesia and just 700 km from Indian territory could be leased to India. China’s acknowledgement of Sabang’s strategic value was reflected in a Global Times editorial, which reiterated the significance of the Malacca Strait to China’s “economic and energy security” and warned of “disastrous consequences” if India develops Sabang into a strategic base. “If India really seeks military access to the strategic island of Sabang, it might wrongfully entrap itself into a strategic competition with China and eventually burn its own fingers. A misconception by India in terms of outbound investment is that it always sees China as a rival that it pits itself against.

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

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, Day of the Dead, disinformation, do what you love, energy security, Enrique Peñalosa, Exxon Valdez, Google Earth, happiness index / gross national happiness, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Medieval Warm Period, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, precautionary principle, stem cell, sustainable-tourism, the scientific method, University of East Anglia, urban planning, urban sprawl

These spills are just a visual reminder of the damage that our fossil-fuel addiction wreaks on the environment every day. After all, if the oil weren’t being spilled, it would eventually be burned, spewing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Environmental havoc is only one reason to conserve energy and switch to cleaner energy. Security is also a crucial issue when it comes to global oil supplies. From the costly war in Iraq to the instability of some of the main oil-producing countries, we’re seeing increasing problems with our reliance on this increasingly scarce energy resource. We don’t seem to be good at learning from the past.

How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, bank run, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, borderless world, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, charter city, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, congestion pricing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, double entry bookkeeping, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, facts on the ground, failed state, financial engineering, friendly fire, global village, Global Witness, Google Earth, high net worth, high-speed rail, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, microcredit, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open economy, out of africa, Parag Khanna, private military company, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, sustainable-tourism, Ted Nordhaus, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, X Prize

China’s payback of the fuel subsidy would be directed toward investments in alternative energy technologies. UN veterans should be jealous. Students at the AID simulation are learning a far more accurate picture of the twenty-first-century landscape of power and influence than many diplomatic trainees today. Their role-playing exercise wasn’t the “real” world, and yet it was: Energy security and climate change are two sides of the same coin, not parallel conversations in bureaucratic silos. Seth Green, one of AID’s founders, realized early on that young change makers are inspired by alternatives to the UN system: “By playing not just Gordon Brown but also Bill Gates, students take on roles that allow them to navigate a much more complex world.”

The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--And How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity by Paul Collier

agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, business climate, carbon tax, Doha Development Round, energy security, food miles, G4S, Global Witness, information asymmetry, Kenneth Arrow, megacity, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price elasticity of demand, profit maximization, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, search costs, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Stewart Brand, Tragedy of the Commons

The romantics prefer wind power, tidal power, and solar power, all of which are readily intelligible to ordinary citizens; nuclear power harnesses forces of nature only intelligible to a scientific elite. Unfortunately, however, wind, wave, and sun power are not yet scalable in the way that nuclear power is scalable. By far the most carbon-efficient advanced economy is France, which, following the oil shock of 1974, decided to achieve energy security by investing in nuclear power. France was able to do this because whereas elsewhere the political left was hostile to nuclear energy, in France it was nationalistic and so supported the idea of independence from imported oil. Wind, wave, and solar power may eventually become scalable (provided enough money is put into research), but for the moment pragmatists such as Stewart Brand, one of the pioneers of the environmental movement, have accepted that nuclear power is an essential part of the battle to contain global warming.

The Secret World of Oil by Ken Silverstein

business intelligence, clean water, corporate governance, corporate raider, Donald Trump, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, financial engineering, Global Witness, Google Earth, John Deuss, offshore financial centre, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, Oscar Wyatt, paper trading, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

By 2000, the United States was already buying 15 percent of its oil imports from Africa, with Nigeria and Angola the two biggest individual suppliers and Equatorial Guinea poised to grow quickly. “Sub-Saharan Africa is an area of US vital interest, and is also of increasing strategic importance to the United States as it applies to American energy security needs,” Paul Michael Wihbey, then of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, told a congressional subcommittee in March of 2000.6 The September 11 attacks the following year led national security planners to call for greater diversification of imports away from the Middle East, especially toward non-OPEC suppliers in Africa and Central Asia.

Bomb Scare by Joseph Cirincione

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dr. Strangelove, dual-use technology, energy security, Ernest Rutherford, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, nuclear taboo, Ronald Reagan, Strategic Defense Initiative, technological determinism, uranium enrichment, Yogi Berra

A first step to building the needed consensus could be a new international arrangement that would guarantee fuel cycle services (supply and disposal of fuel) to states that do not possess domestic capabilities. Such a mechanism would have to provide a credible international guarantee of fresh reactor fuel and removal of spent fuel at prices that offer an economic incentive to the recipient state. Such an arrangement would reduce, if not eliminate, the economic or energy security justification for states to pursue their own fuel cycle facilities, and in so doing would test states’ commitment to a non-weapons path. States that turn down reliable and economically attractive alternatives to costly new production facilities would engender suspicion of their intentions, inviting sanctions and other international pressures.

How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee

air freight, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, Eyjafjallajökull, food miles, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Skype, sustainable-tourism, two and twenty, University of East Anglia

Jackson (2009), Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. Earthscan, London. A recommended read. 15. Kilotons of TNT equivalent. 16. Duncan Clark in www.guardian.co.uk, “The carbon footprint of nuclear war” (2 January 2009), drawn from M.Z. Jacobson (2009), “Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security,” Energy Envir Sci 2, 148–173, DOI:10.1039/b809990c (first published as an Advance Article on the web on 1 December 2008: www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/pdf%20files/ReviewSolgw09.pdf). 17. The Three Trillion Dollar War by Joseph Stiglitz, a Colombia University professor who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes.

GDP: The World’s Most Powerful Formula and Why It Must Now Change by Ehsan Masood

Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, biodiversity loss, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, energy security, European colonialism, financial engineering, government statistician, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Mahbub ul Haq, mass immigration, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Mohammed Bouazizi, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, statistical model, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, zoonotic diseases

Blair oversaw new laws committing the government to tough reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,5 and when Brown became prime minister he appointed a dedicated minister for climate change.6 Blair also knew (or he was advised) that climate protection faced many hurdles, one of which was the view of many of his colleagues that taking action to slow down global warming is essentially bad news for energy security and for jobs: that it is antigrowth. Around Blair’s cabinet table, there was only one minister arguing the other way. His long-serving environment minister, Michael Meacher, was often a lone voice in cabinet, though experienced and adept at knowing how to pull the levers of power when he needed to.7 The Blair government had decided that something had to be done to persuade the doubters, and on an altogether larger scale than had been tried by individual heads of government before.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

agricultural Revolution, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, fear of failure, Ford Model T, global pandemic, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of air conditioning, Louis Pasteur, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, negative emissions, oil shock, performance metric, plant based meat, purchasing power parity, risk tolerance, social distancing, Solyndra, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, the High Line, urban planning, yield management

In addition to cleaner air, smart energy policies have given us the following: Electrification. In 1910, only 12 percent of Americans had electric power in their homes. By 1950, more than 90 percent did, thanks to efforts like federal funding for dams, the creation of federal agencies to regulate energy, and a massive government project to bring electricity to rural areas. Energy security. In response to the oil shocks of the 1970s, the United States set out to increase domestic production from various energy sources. The federal government began its first major research and development projects in 1974. The next year saw major legislation related to energy conservation, including fuel efficiency standards for cars.

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order by Richard Haass

access to a mobile phone, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, carbon tax, central bank independence, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, global pandemic, global reserve currency, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, immigration reform, invisible hand, low interest rates, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, no-fly zone, open economy, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, special drawing rights, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

There has long been a debate as to whether this is rooted in history or morality or strategy, and the only honest answer is all of the above. A third set of interests is the well-being and orientation of countries long friendly to the United States, whether for reasons of regional stability, counterterrorism, nonproliferation, energy security, a willingness to live in peace with Israel, humanitarian considerations, or some combination thereof. This may mean on occasion countering what Iran or Russia does, but such a calculation should be made on a situation-by-situation basis, as the possibility of selective cooperation with either should not be ruled out.

The New Class Conflict by Joel Kotkin

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alvin Toffler, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, back-to-the-city movement, Bob Noyce, Boston Dynamics, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, classic study, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Graeber, degrowth, deindustrialization, do what you love, don't be evil, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, energy security, falling living standards, future of work, Future Shock, Gini coefficient, Google bus, Herman Kahn, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, mass affluent, McJob, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, microapartment, Nate Silver, National Debt Clock, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Buchheit, payday loans, Peter Calthorpe, plutocrats, post-industrial society, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, rent-seeking, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Florida, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional

Catherine Rampell, “The Return of China,” Economix (blog), New York Times, March 26, 2010, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/the-return-of-china; UNIDO, “World Manufacturing Production: Statistics for Quarter I, 2013,” quarterly report, http://www.unido.org//fileadmin/user_media/Publications/Research_and_statistics/Branch_publications/Research_and_Policy/Files/Reports/World_Manufacturing_Production_Reports/STA_Report_on_Quarterly_production_2013Q1.pdf; John Boudreau, “Japan’s Once-Mighty Tech Industry Has Flagged,” Phys.org, October 19, 2012, http://phys.org/news/2012-10-japan-once-mighty-tech-industry-flagged.html. 24. Liam Pleven and Russell Gold, “U.S. Nears Milestone: Net Fuel Exporter,” Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2011; Daniel Yergin, “America’s New Energy Security,” Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2011; Vinod Dar, “World’s Largest Producer of Natural Gas? Now It’s the U.S.,” SeekingAlpha.com, January 13, 2010; and Robert Bryce, “America Needs the Shale Revolution,” Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2011. 25. Molly Ryan, “Siemens CEO Emphasizes ‘Tectonic Shift’ in U.S.

Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice by Molly Scott Cato

Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, Bretton Woods, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, carbon footprint, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, congestion charging, corporate social responsibility, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, deskilling, energy security, food miles, Food sovereignty, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, gender pay gap, green new deal, income inequality, informal economy, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job satisfaction, land bank, land reform, land value tax, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Money creation, mortgage debt, Multi Fibre Arrangement, passive income, peak oil, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Rupert Read, seminal paper, the built environment, The Spirit Level, Tobin tax, tontine, University of East Anglia, wikimedia commons

Lord Beaumont of Whitley, speaking in the House of Lords For a couple of decades the proponents of globalization have been winning the ideological battle, in spite of strong and growing opposition and proposals for more humane ways of organizing international economic relationships, as outlined in the previous chapter. During this time the few green economists calling for local food and energy security, or protection of local economies and communities, have seemed like voices in the wilderness. Yet, partly as a result of the imminence of climate change and increasing oil prices, putting all our eggs in the globalization basket has begun to seem rather a risky strategy. Put this together with the recognition that globalization means vastly more carbonintensive transport of people and goods and localization begins to be an increasingly popular strategy.

The End of Growth by Jeff Rubin

Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deal flow, decarbonisation, deglobalization, Easter island, energy security, eurozone crisis, Exxon Valdez, Eyjafjallajökull, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, flex fuel, Ford Model T, full employment, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Hans Island, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, illegal immigration, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, Kickstarter, low interest rates, McMansion, megaproject, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, new economy, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

this page: The US Energy Information Agency (EIA—not to be confused with the IEA, the International Energy Agency) identifies seven global oil transit choke points: the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, the Turkish Straits (comprising the Bosporus and the Dardanelles), the Panama Canal and the Danish Straits. These narrow channels are part of shipping routes considered critical to global energy security. The Strait of Hormuz is the most important of these waterways. In 2011, roughly 35 percent of all seaborne-traded oil passed through the Strait, or nearly a fifth of the oil traded globally (www.eia.gov/cabs/world_oil_transit_chokepoints/full.html). this page: OPEC’s Middle Eastern members are Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

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

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Boycotts of Israel, energy security, falling living standards, friendly fire, full employment, Future Shock, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, interchangeable parts, Kickstarter, land reform, MITM: man-in-the-middle, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, RAND corporation, rising living standards, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, strikebreaker, unbiased observer, uranium enrichment, urban planning, Yom Kippur War

Shultz, a no less confused amateur economist; I, the only one there with any knowledge of the subject, but even I not a real expert on some aspects of the intricate international problem! What a way to reach decisions! No one from the State Department there, no technical experts to aid us!” Nixon was convinced that his national security adviser lacked the expertise to grapple with oil policy and energy security. When the president hired Peter Peterson as his special assistant for international economics he warned him that economics was “a field Kissinger knew nothing about,” and the two advisers repeatedly clashed over policy. “Peterson, that’s just a minor economic consideration,” Kissinger lectured his colleague on one occasion, to which Peterson replied, “Henry, for you that’s a redundancy because you see every economic consideration as minor.”

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Whereas Nixon had enjoyed a long-term working relationship with the Shah and relished their exchanges and deal making, in his first months in office Ford lacked the requisite knowledge to ask Kissinger and his other advisers the right questions about geopolitics, strategy, and foreign economic policy. Ford kept Bill Simon on at Treasury because he appreciated his fiscal conservatism. These two reappointments ensured the carryover into his own administration of the disagreement over whether the key to America’s energy security and future oil needs ran through Iran or Saudi Arabia. President Ford’s first briefing on oil, OPEC, and the Shah came on Saturday morning, August 17. A transcript of their conversation shows Kissinger anxious to deflect blame for the oil shock away from the Shah and onto the Saudis and the rest of the OPEC cartel.

There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years by Mike Berners-Lee

air freight, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, cloud computing, dematerialisation, disinformation, driverless car, Easter island, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, fake news, food miles, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, Hans Rosling, high-speed rail, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jevons paradox, land reform, microplastics / micro fibres, negative emissions, neoliberal agenda, off grid, performance metric, post-truth, profit motive, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Stephen Hawking, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, urban planning

This skill compels our media and our politicians to raise their game1. (7) Complex and complicated thinking. Because we have created an ever more complicated AND complex world, our capacity for this kind of thinking simply has to rise in step with it. We’ve touched on the spiralling complexities of sorting out the energy mix in even one country. We have seen that neither climate change, nor energy security, nor feeding the world, nor any of the other presenting physical challenges can be tackled in isolation. We need to get our heads around the interdependencies at the same time as dealing with the growing technical challenges that lie within each small part of the puzzle. (8) Joined-up perspective.

Ten Technologies to Save the Planet: Energy Options for a Low-Carbon Future by Chris Goodall

barriers to entry, carbon footprint, carbon tax, congestion charging, decarbonisation, electricity market, energy security, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Kickstarter, land tenure, load shedding, New Urbanism, oil shock, profit maximization, Silicon Valley, smart grid, smart meter, statistical model, undersea cable

Even the global warming pessimists should recognize that the world’s entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and scientists are devoting unprecedented amounts of ingenuity and hard work to the greatest challenge of our age. This is a global effort, and the following pages look at people and companies in places as diverse as Canada, China, the U.S., Ireland, Spain, Korea, Britain, India, and Australia. If the world fails to solve its climate change and energy security problems, it won’t be because these individuals didn’t try hard enough. THE SECOND GLASS PROBLEM When speaking in public, almost all specialists engaged in the climate change debate offer a positive and hopeful view of the world’s ability to tackle global warming. They know that if they say that the situation is too awful and frightening, they will lose the audience’s sympathy.

The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths by Mariana Mazzucato

Apple II, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California gold rush, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, circular economy, clean tech, computer age, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demand response, deskilling, dual-use technology, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fairchild Semiconductor, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, G4S, general purpose technology, green transition, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, incomplete markets, information retrieval, intangible asset, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, linear model of innovation, natural language processing, new economy, offshore financial centre, Philip Mirowski, popular electronics, Post-Keynesian economics, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, renewable energy credits, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, smart grid, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, William Shockley: the traitorous eight

It is also interesting to consider the degree to which the fact that DARPA operates under the banner of ‘national security’ rather than ‘economic performance’, contributes to the covering up of the State as a key economic actor. Maybe a ‘solution’ to ARPA-E is to operate under the banner of ‘energy security’. Like DARPA, ARPA-E doesn’t create its own research agenda; instead, it invites researchers from academia and industry to explore high-risk ideas, setting an agenda through collaboration and collective knowledge of the state-of-the-art and realm of possibilities. Project funding draws from government and business sources, indicating that its R&D agenda attracts funding from multiple stakeholders (Hourihan and Stepp 2011).

Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty First Century City by Anna Minton

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Broken windows theory, call centre, crack epidemic, credit crunch, deindustrialization, East Village, energy security, Evgeny Morozov, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, ghettoisation, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, housing crisis, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Kickstarter, moral panic, new economy, New Urbanism, race to the bottom, rent control, Richard Florida, Right to Buy, Silicon Valley, Steven Pinker, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, trickle-down economics, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban renewal, white flight, white picket fence, World Values Survey, young professional

WOLFE, The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age NORMAN DAVIES, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe MICHAEL LEWIS, Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour STEVEN PINKER, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes ROBERT TRIVERS, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others THOMAS PENN, Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England DANIEL YERGIN, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World MICHAEL MOORE, Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life ALI SOUFAN, The Black Banners: Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda JASON BURKE, The 9/11 Wars TIMOTHY D. WILSON, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change IAN KERSHAW, The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45 T M DEVINE, To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750-2010 CATHERINE HAKIM, Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital DOUGLAS EDWARDS, I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 JOHN BRADSHAW, In Defence of Dogs CHRIS STRINGER, The Origin of Our Species LILA AZAM ZANGANEH, The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness DAVID STEVENSON, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 EVELYN JUERS, House of Exile: War, Love and Literature, from Berlin to Los Angeles HENRY KISSINGER, On China MICHIO KAKU, Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 DAVID ABULAFIA, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean JOHN GRIBBIN, The Reason Why: The Miracle of Life on Earth ANATOL LIEVEN, Pakistan: A Hard Country WILLIAM D COHAN, Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World JOSHUA FOER, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything SIMON BARON-COHEN, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty MANNING MARABLE, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention DAVID DEUTSCH, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World DAVID EDGERTON, Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War JOHN KASARDA AND GREG LINDSAY, Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next DAVID GILMOUR, The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples NIALL FERGUSON, Civilization: The West and the Rest TIM FLANNERY, Here on Earth: A New Beginning ROBERT BICKERS, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914 MARK MALLOCH-BROWN, The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Limits of Nations and the Pursuit of a New Politics KING ABDULLAH OF JORDAN, Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril ELIZA GRISWOLD The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Faultline between Christianity and Islam BRIAN GREENE, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos JOHN GRAY, The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death, PATRICK FRENCH, India: A Portrait LIZZIE COLLINGHAM, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food HOOMAN MAJD, The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge DAMBISA MOYO, How The West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly - And the Stark Choices Ahead EVGENY MOROZOV, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World RON CHERNOW, Washington: A Life NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms HUGH THOMAS, The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V AMANDA FOREMAN, A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided NICHOLAS OSTLER, The Last Lingua Franca: English until the Return of Babel RICHARD MILES, Ancient Worlds: The Search for the Origins of Western Civilization NEIL MACGREGOR, A History of the World in 100 Objects STEVEN JOHNSON, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation DOMINIC SANDBROOK, State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974 JIM AL-KHALILI, Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science HA-JOON CHANG, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism ROBIN FLEMING, Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070 TARIQ RAMADAN, The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism JOYCE TYLDESLEY, The Penguin Book of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt NICHOLAS PHILLIPSON, Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life PAUL GREENBERG, Four Fish: A Journey from the Ocean to Your Plate CLAY SHIRKY, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age ANDREW GRAHAM-DIXON, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane NIALL FERGUSON, High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg SEAN MCMEEKIN: The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power, 1898-1918 RICHARD MCGREGOR, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers SPENCER WELLS, Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization FRANCIS PRYOR, The Making of the British Landscape: How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today RUTH HARRIS, The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France MICHAEL HUNT ed., A Vietnam War Reader: American and Vietnamese Perspectives PAUL COLLIER, The Plundered Planet: How to Reconcile Prosperity With Nature NORMAN STONE, The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War SIMON PRICE AND PETER THONEMANN, The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine HAMPTON SIDES, Hellhound on his Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin JACKIE WULLSCHLAGER, Chagall: Love and Exile RICHARD MILES, Carthage Must be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization TONY JUDT, Ill Fares The Land: A Treatise On Our Present Discontents MICHAEL LEWIS, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine OLIVER BULLOUGH, Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys among the Defiant People of the Caucasus PAUL DAVIES, The Eerie Silence: Searching for Ourselves in the Universe RICHARD WILKINSON, KATE PICKETT, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone TOM BINGHAM, The Rule of Law JOSEPH STIGLITZ, Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy JOHN LANCHESTER, Whoops!

Climate Change by Joseph Romm

biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, Climatic Research Unit, data science, decarbonisation, demand response, disinformation, Douglas Hofstadter, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, failed state, gigafactory, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge worker, mass immigration, ocean acidification, performance metric, renewable energy transition, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, the scientific method

The report found “The global energy efficiency market is worth at least USD 310 billion a year and growing.” The IEA’s Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven summarized the core findings: “Energy efficiency is the invisible powerhouse in IEA countries and beyond, working behind the scenes to improve our energy security, lower our energy bills and move us closer to reaching our climate goals.” The IEA explains that “in the IEA scenario consistent with limiting the long-term increase in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, the biggest share of emissions reductions—40%—comes from energy efficiency.”

American Marxism by Mark R. Levin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, American ideology, belling the cat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, critical race theory, crony capitalism, data science, defund the police, degrowth, deindustrialization, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, energy security, Food sovereignty, George Floyd, green new deal, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, liberal capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, New Journalism, open borders, Parler "social media", planned obsolescence, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, single-payer health, tech billionaire, the market place, urban sprawl, yellow journalism

Nuclear dropped 26 percent due to a reactor shutting off because the sensor could not relay that the system was stable—a safety feature…. [T]he state’s electricity grid that depends increasingly on subsidized, intermittent wind and solar energy needs backup power to handle surges in demand. Natural gas helps but reliable coal and nuclear power are also needed.”88 IER issued this warning: “Energy security and resilience is the opposite of what… Biden and other politicians want for our future when they advocate for a ‘green new deal’ or something similar by indicating that the United States should stop consuming hydrocarbons and use only carbon free sources. They want electricity to be almost entirely generated by renewable energy and for all sectors of the economy to be supplied solely by electricity.

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis by Jeremy Rifkin

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, animal electricity, back-to-the-land, British Empire, carbon footprint, classic study, collaborative economy, death of newspapers, delayed gratification, distributed generation, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, feminist movement, Ford Model T, global village, Great Leap Forward, hedonic treadmill, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lewis Mumford, Mahatma Gandhi, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, off grid, off-the-grid, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, Recombinant DNA, scientific management, scientific worldview, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, social intelligence, supply-chain management, surplus humans, systems thinking, the medium is the message, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, working poor, World Values Survey

During the reign of Julius Caesar, nearly a third of the citizens of Rome were receiving some form of public assistance.75 The sheer logistical weight of maintaining a vast empire became increasingly costly. Garrisoning troops throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, maintaining roads, and administering annexed territories consumed more and more energy, while the net return in energy secured from the territories steadily dropped. Marginal returns had set in. In some instances, it cost Rome more money to manage certain colonies—Spain and England, for example—than revenue generated.76 No longer able to maintain its empire by new conquests and plunder, Rome was forced to look to the only other energy regime available to it: agriculture.

…

The skill levels and managerial styles of the Third Industrial Revolution workforce will be qualitatively different from those of the workforce of the Second Industrial Revolution. A fully integrated intelligent intergrid allows each country to both produce its own energy and share any surpluses with neighboring countries in a “network” approach to assuring global energy security. When any given region enjoys a temporary surge or surplus in its renewable energy, that energy can be shared with regions that are facing a temporary lull or deficit. The Third Industrial Revolution leads to a new social vision where power itself is broadly distributed, encouraging unprecedented new levels of collaboration among peoples and nations.

The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa by Calestous Juma

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, bioinformatics, business climate, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial rule, conceptual framework, creative destruction, CRISPR, double helix, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, export processing zone, global value chain, high-speed rail, impact investing, income per capita, industrial cluster, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, land tenure, M-Pesa, microcredit, mobile money, non-tariff barriers, off grid, out of africa, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, Recombinant DNA, rolling blackouts, search costs, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, structural adjustment programs, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, total factor productivity, undersea cable

Evidence suggests that if a regulator is established prior to negotiation of the IPP, and acts in a transparent, fair, and accountable manner, this office can have a significantly positive effect on the outcomes for the host country and investor. A coherent power sector plan follows from a strong policy framework and includes setting a reliability standard for energy security, supply and demand forecasts, a least-cost plan, and agreements on how new generation will be divided between public and private sectors. It is equally important that these functions are vested in one empowered agency. Failure to meet these goals is apparent in the examples of Tanzania (Songo Songo), Kenya (Westmont plant, Iberafrica plant), Nigeria (AES Barge), and Ghana, which fast-tracked IPPs to meet intermediate power shortages in the midst of drought conditions.

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, biodiversity loss, Bob Geldof, BRICs, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, data science, decarbonisation, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fear of failure, geopolitical risk, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuclear winter, Ocado, ocean acidification, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, purchasing power parity, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, systems thinking, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, University of East Anglia, warehouse automation

We live on an abundant planet and our future progress is now only constrained by our thinking. There is further reinforcing logic at a system design level for solar and wind power. The fuel cost for generation is zero and the energy is available all over the planet, meaning all those imports and impacts on balance of payments are gone. This global energy security also largely eliminates a whole range of related geopolitical risks and the resulting military threats and instability, not to mention the enormous costs involved. The savings on offer are tangible and we don’t have to look hard to find real numbers. A fascinating peer reviewed study reported in the journal Foreign Policy pointed out that keeping aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf from 1976 to 2007 cost over $7 trillion.

Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations by Nandan Nilekani

Airbnb, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, call centre, carbon credits, cashless society, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, congestion charging, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data science, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, digital rights, driverless car, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, fail fast, financial exclusion, gamification, Google Hangouts, illegal immigration, informal economy, information security, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, land reform, law of one price, M-Pesa, machine readable, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mobile money, Mohammed Bouazizi, more computing power than Apollo, Negawatt, Network effects, new economy, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, price mechanism, price stability, rent-seeking, RFID, Ronald Coase, school choice, school vouchers, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, software is eating the world, source of truth, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, The future is already here, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, work culture

Research from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that most fuel subsidies are misdirected; only 7 per cent of the subsidies in poor countries go to the poorest 20 per cent of households, while the richest 20 per cent of society claim a disproportionate 43 per cent.19 Cutting these subsidies altogether would result in a worldwide savings of over $500 billion, accompanied by a 6 per cent drop in global carbon emissions by 2020.20 A further impetus to the scrapping of fuel subsidies came from the G20 Pittsburgh Summit.21 A declaration released by the G20 nations, a group which includes India, pledged to phase out ‘inefficient fossil fuel subsidies’, which ‘encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change’. Technology as superglue: Mending a broken system The central government currently offers subsidies on over a dozen commodities, including everything from coal to car parts, to oil, jute and cattle fodder; state governments can and do add to that list.

Utopias: A Brief History From Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities by Howard P. Segal

1960s counterculture, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, biodiversity loss, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, complexity theory, David Brooks, death of newspapers, dematerialisation, deskilling, energy security, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of journalism, Future Shock, G4S, garden city movement, germ theory of disease, Golden Gate Park, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, intentional community, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, megaproject, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, Nikolai Kondratiev, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, pneumatic tube, post-war consensus, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, technological determinism, technoutopianism, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, union organizing, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog

Yet the NRC does not routinely require plants to review their seismic risks as they seek to renew their operating licenses for an additional twenty years.42 Nevertheless, twenty-one companies now expect to seek permission to build thirty-four new plants, ranging in location from New York to Texas to Idaho, and factories are being built in Indiana and Louisiana to manufacture plant parts. Much of the renewed interest derives from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which “is stuffed with generous subsidies for nuclear power and other alternatives to fossil fuels.” As the head of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, has argued, “it’s hard to believe simultaneously in energy security and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions without believing in nuclear power.”43 Increasing numbers of environmentalists are conceding this point, among them the famous Stewart Brand, creator of The Whole Earth Catalog. Brand confessed to his traditional opponents: “I’m sorry. I was wrong, you were right.

The Emperor's New Road: How China's New Silk Road Is Remaking the World by Jonathan Hillman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, British Empire, cable laying ship, capital controls, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, drone strike, energy security, facts on the ground, high-speed rail, intermodal, joint-stock company, Just-in-time delivery, land reform, low interest rates, M-Pesa, Malacca Straits, megaproject, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, rent-seeking, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, special economic zone, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, supply-chain management, trade route, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, union organizing, Washington Consensus

—Analysis,” Eurasia Review, February 8, 2019, https://www.eurasiareview.com/08022019-gwadar-trade-hub-or-military-asset-analysis/. 108. Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins, “China’s Oil Security Pipe Dream: The Reality, and Strategic Consequences, of Seaborne Imports,” Naval War College Review 63, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 88–111; Guy C. K. Leung, “China’s Energy Security: Perception and Reality,” Energy Policy 39, no. 3 (2011): 1330–1337. 109. “PR and CRCC to Cooperate on (ML) II (Kotri-Attock Line) and ML III (Rohri Chaman Line) Projects,” Times International News Service, May 10, 2018, https://tns.world/pr-and-crcc-to-cooperate-on-ml-ii-kotri-attock-line-and-ml-iii-rohri-chaman-line-projects/. 110.

The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich by Daniel Ammann

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", accounting loophole / creative accounting, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, book value, Boycotts of Israel, business intelligence, buy low sell high, energy security, family office, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, peak oil, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez crisis 1956, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, Yom Kippur War

It is this very instability which in the final analysis provides the raison d’être of trade,” says the French economics professor Philippe Chalmin, an expert in commodities markets with practical experience in the field.7 This ability to deal with instability and in turn secure a stable flow of oil was, ironically, also of use to the U.S. Department of Defense, which hired Marc Rich + Co. as a defense contractor. In July 1978 the DoD bought 45.6 million worth of oil from Marc Rich + Co. for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, established after the oil shock of 1973, in order to guarantee the nation’s energy security. That was followed by a further 46.7 million worth of oil in August. Altogether these purchases amounted to approximately 7.1 million barrels of oil (1 million metric tons). The Secret of Trust The employees at Marc Rich + Co. soon enjoyed a reputation as young, aggressive traders. Rich cultivated a distinct meritocracy.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, double helix, energy security, facts on the ground, failed state, gentleman farmer, global supply chain, illegal immigration, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, out of africa, precautionary principle, QAnon, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, stem cell, tech bro, telemarketer, the new new thing, working poor, young professional

—RENÉ LERICHE, The Philosophy of Surgery, 1951 CONTENTS Introduction: The Missing Americans PART I PROLOGUE The Looking Glass ONE Dragon TWO The Making of a Public-Health Officer THREE The Pandemic Thinker FOUR Stopping the Unstoppable FIVE Clairvoyance PART II SIX The Red Phone SEVEN The Redneck Epidemiologist EIGHT In Mann Gulch NINE The L6 PART III TEN The Bug in the System ELEVEN Plastic Flowers EPILOGUE The Sin of Omission Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION The Missing Americans This book began with an unholy mix of obligation and opportunism. During the first half of the Trump administration I’d written a book, The Fifth Risk, that framed the federal government as a manager of a portfolio of existential risks: natural disasters, nuclear weapons, financial panics, hostile foreigners, energy security, food security, and on and on and on. The federal government wasn’t just this faceless gray mass of two million people. Nor was it some well-coordinated deep state seeking to subvert the will of the people. It was a collection of experts, among them some real heroes, whom we neglected and abused at our peril.

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

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, 9 dash line, AI winter, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, game design, geopolitical risk, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, GPS: selective availability, green transition, Greensill Capital, Greenspan put, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meme stock, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Mustafa Suleyman, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, negative equity, Nick Bostrom, non-fungible token, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, paradox of thrift, pets.com, Phillips curve, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Second Machine Age, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

I relied on financial institutions to stay solvent, good companies to flourish, and a stable dollar and other currencies to ensure that my savings held their worth. Western governments provided safeguards against economic depressions and virulent financial crisis. They were committed to liberal democracy, freedoms, the rule of law, energy security, and a healthy environment. I had faith that regional conflicts would not erupt into world wars. The chance that robots with artificial intelligence might surpass my skills and replace me never entered my mind. So, in spite of conflicts, risks, and threats, the world was relatively stable. What if the last seventy-five years has been the exception rather than the rule?

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Alfred Russel Wallace, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, Bernie Madoff, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, call centre, capital controls, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Claude Shannon: information theory, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Graeber, deglobalization, deindustrialization, deskilling, discovery of the americas, disinformation, Downton Abbey, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, eurozone crisis, factory automation, false flag, financial engineering, financial repression, Firefox, Fractional reserve banking, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, game design, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, guns versus butter model, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market clearing, means of production, Metcalfe's law, microservices, middle-income trap, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Norbert Wiener, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, post-industrial society, power law, precariat, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, RFID, Richard Stallman, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, scientific management, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Stewart Brand, structural adjustment programs, supply-chain management, technological determinism, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Transnistria, Twitter Arab Spring, union organizing, universal basic income, urban decay, urban planning, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, wages for housework, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Yochai Benkler

As a result, infrastructure planning remains one of the disciplines least transformed by networked thinking. This needs to change. In addition, because of the global nature of the problems we face, the state has to ‘own’ the agenda for responses to the challenges of climate change, demographic ageing, energy security and migration. That is to say, whatever micro-level actions we take to alleviate these risks, only national governments and multilateral agreements can actually solve them. The most pressing issue, if states are to help drive the transition to a new economic system, is debt. In today’s world, developed countries are paralysed by the size of their debts.

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

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blockchain, BRICs, British Empire, business process, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Strachan, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, energy security, Etonian, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, Frederick Winslow Taylor, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, principal–agent problem, profit motive, race to the bottom, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, supply-chain management, The Chicago School, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks

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. The Big Four firms can win such vast consultancy contracts, and sway major government decisions, precisely because of their size and all-encompassing ‘professional services’ proposition.

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bond market vigilante , book value, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, break the buck, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, company town, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, dark matter, deindustrialization, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial engineering, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, friendly fire, full employment, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, McMansion, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, mittelstand, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, negative equity, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paradox of thrift, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, post-truth, predatory finance, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Steve Bannon, structural adjustment programs, tail risk, The Great Moderation, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade liberalization, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, white flight, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, éminence grise

When Germany and Russia signed the first Nord Stream pipeline deal in 2005, enormously increasing the flow of Gazprom’s gas to the West, it was denounced by Poland’s foreign minister as a second coming of the Hitler-Stalin Pact that had sealed Poland’s fate in 1939. When Moscow tweaked Ukraine’s gas prices over the winter of 2005–2006, it only confirmed the Poles’ worst fears. By early 2006 Warsaw and Washington were calling for a new division of NATO to confront Russia on its chosen terrain of energy security.33 But it wasn’t just gas supplies that were in play. In April 2006 at the meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, with central bankers Mario Draghi, Ben Bernanke and Jean-Claude Trichet looking on, Putin’s finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, shook hands with the American Treasury secretary.

…

Anderson, “Incommensurate Russia,” New Left Review 94 (July–August 2015). 31. World Bank in Russia, Russia Economic Report 17 (November 2008), table 1.9. 32. A. E. Stent, The Limits of Partnership (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); and Hill and Gaddy, Mr. Putin. 33. P. Gallis, NATO and Energy Security, CRS Report for Congress (August 15, 2007). 34. “Kudrin Has Reservations on Dollar,” Moscow Times, April 24, 2006. 35. Johnson, “Forbidden Fruit.” 36. The text of Putin’s speech is at “Putin’s Prepared Remarks at 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy,” Washington Post, February 12, 2007. 37.

A Pipeline Runs Through It by Keith Fisher

accounting loophole / creative accounting, barriers to entry, British Empire, colonial rule, Dmitri Mendeleev, energy security, European colonialism, Ford Model T, full employment, Hernando de Soto, Ida Tarbell, joint-stock company, laissez-faire capitalism, Louis Blériot, Malacca Straits, Monroe Doctrine, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, race to the bottom, Right to Buy, Scramble for Africa, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, vertical integration

., The World of the Revolutionary American Republic: Land, Labor, and the Conflict for a Continent (New York: Routledge, 2014). Shaw, Tony, Eden, Suez and the Mass Media: Propaganda and Persuasion during the Suez Crisis (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996). Shulman, Peter A., Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). Shwadran, Benjamin, The Middle East, Oil and the Great Powers, 3rd edn (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1973). Siegel, Jennifer, Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (London and New York: I.B.

…

Earle, Edward Mead, ‘The Secret Anglo-German Convention of 1914 Regarding Asiatic Turkey’, Political Science Quarterly 38, no. 1 (March 1923). ——, ‘The Turkish Petroleum Company – A Study in Oleaginous Diplomacy’, Political Science Quarterly 39, no. 2 (June 1924). Ediger, Volkan Ş., and John V. Bowlus, ‘Farewell to King Coal: Geopolitics, Energy Security, and the Transition to Oil, 1898–1917’, Historical Journal 62, no. 2 (June 2018). ——, ‘Greasing the Wheels: The Berlin-Baghdad Railway and Ottoman Oil, 1888–1907’, Middle Eastern Studies 56, no. 2 (March 2020). Egnal, Marc, ‘The Origins of the Revolution in Virginia: A Reinterpretation’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 37, no. 3 (July 1980).

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business climate, clean water, colonial rule, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, income per capita, inflation targeting, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil-for-food scandal, old-boy network, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Tragedy of the Commons, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

And if, as the Elf affair shows, poor oil states can seriously threaten our own democracies, then distributing the money to African citizens neutralizes this threat, by deflating these mischief-making balloons of oil cash. As a bonus, citizens would be less likely to disrupt the industry that directly feeds them. This would enhance the West’s energy security. Could this really be put into practice? African politicians would detest it, for it would hand “their” money to ordinary Africans. Even today’s African “civil society” activists might oppose it: many of them make a living from the current set-up and might lose out in such a revolution. “IMF Working Paper tosh!”

Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist by Ray C. Anderson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centralized clearinghouse, clean tech, clean water, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, dematerialisation, distributed generation, do well by doing good, Easter island, energy security, Exxon Valdez, fear of failure, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invisible hand, junk bonds, late fees, Mahatma Gandhi, market bubble, music of the spheres, Negawatt, Neil Armstrong, new economy, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, peak oil, precautionary principle, renewable energy credits, retail therapy, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, subprime mortgage crisis, supply-chain management, urban renewal, Y2K

. … mobilize the market by putting a price on carbon with upstream cap-and-auction; end public subsidies of fossil fuels; and offer a billion-dollar “platinum carrot” award, over five years, for transformative technologies that help America reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Allocate a billion dollars yearly to states and localities that adopt policies that help the nation meet its carbon reduction and energy security goals. 6. … set off an economic boom by creating millions of new green jobs economywide. Establish a program of voluntary training and service for disadvantaged young people. Begin a rural renaissance in which farms and rural communities become the nation’s chief suppliers of energy. 7. … prevent “carbon lock-in” by banning the construction of new coal-fired power plants that are not able to capture and store their greenhouse gas emissions; and do not provide public subsidies to new carbon-intensive fuels, such as liquid fuels from coal. 8. … rapidly increase CAFE standards for all U.S. vehicles, starting now. 9. … rebuild the federal capacity to lead by appointing (or reappointing) bona fide climate experts to climate-critical positions within the federal government, and rescind the Bush administration’s executive order that permits political oversight of (and interference with) scientific reports. 10. … assert your executive authority to move the nation forward when rapid action is required for the public interest.

Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, colonial rule, corporate personhood, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deskilling, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Firefox, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, invisible hand, liberation theology, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuremberg principles, one-state solution, open borders, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Seymour Hersh, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus