Our Peak Oil Premium
Humankind will have to invest staggering resources to find and produce new oil if global output is to grow steadily. We’re likely much closer to the tipping point than optimists think
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We’re Losing Our Past to Technology
A few weeks ago, as I was rummaging in a drawer in my father’s house, I came across a dozen reels of developed 8-millimetre film. I’d known the reels were in the house somewhere. But, for many years, I’d resolutely put the fact out of my mind.
Climate Summit Was a Pathetic Exercise in Deceit
There’s really only one label for the pathetic exercise we’ve just witnessed in South Africa: deceit. The whole climate-change negotiation process and the larger political discourse surrounding this horrible problem is a drawn-out and elaborate exercise in lying—to each other, to ourselves, and especially to our children. And the lies are starting to corrupt our civilization from inside out.
Our Fukushima Moment
A quarter of a century after we first heard it, the word “Chernobyl” stands in our minds for technological calamity borne of incompetence. Environmentalists used the label to deliver a near-fatal blow to the nuclear power industry. What will Fukushima mean to us in 2036, and how will we have used the label to change our world?
Unconventional Wisdom: Economies Can’t Just Keep on Growing
Humanity has made great strides over the past 2,000 years, and we often assume that our path, notwithstanding a few bumps along the way, goes ever upward. But we are wrong: Within this century, environmental and resource constraints will likely bring global economic growth to a halt.
Disaster at the Top of the World
Standing on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change.
Complexity Science and Public Policy
We need to start thinking about the world in a new way, because in some fundamental and essential respects our world has changed its character. We need to shift from seeing the world as composed largely of simple machines to seeing it as composed mainly of complex systems.
Responding to the Skeptics
Skeptics often say Earth’s climate is showing a trend toward stable or even declining temperatures. But they have to cherry-pick data from the climate record to support this argument.
The Enticements of Green Carrots
We Canadians like to think we are green, but when it comes to protecting the environment, we are among the world’s worst actors. Whether the metric is carbon output per capita, toxic waste emissions or protection of endangered species, Canada regularly ranks near the bottom of the list of similarly wealthy countries.
If our economy’s incentives start pulling in the same direction as our ethical impulses, Canadians can do better. At present, they are pulling in opposite directions.
Clean Coal? Go Underground, Alberta
Alberta appears to be in a box – an energy box – that constrains policy options in every direction. The province’s wealth is critically tied to exploitation of its vast hydrocarbon resources.