mortiz059

Famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith used to respond to questions about the direction of the economy and financial markets by saying: "I answer because I'm asked not because I know." Such is also the case with poorly informed members of the public whose views pollsters seek on every conceivable topic including energy. A recent Gallup poll asked a sampling of Americans whether they believe the United States will face a critical energy shortage in the next five years. Some 31 percent responded yes, the lowest number on record since the question was first asked in 1978 (though it was not asked again by Gallup until 2001.) In 2012, the last time the question appeared in a Gallup survey, the number was 50 percent. The highest result came, not surprisingly, in 2008 when oil was making its historic climb to an all-time high of $147 per barrel. In March of that year (five months before the oil price peak) some 62 percent of American respondents thought the United States would ...

The Oregon legislature has adopted a first-in-the-nation plan to phase out electricity from coal, a major source of climate-changing greenhouse gases. The state's environmental community had been gearing up for a ballot initiative this year that would have forced the state's utilities to abandon coal as a fuel for electricity. But negotiations between the two groups resulted in a legislative compromise--dubbed the Clean Electricity and Coal Transition Plan--that will wean the state off coal-fired electricity no later than 2030 except for one out-of-state power plant that is partly owned by an Oregon-based utility. That plant will be retired no later than 2035. The plan also calls for an increase in the percentage of energy that electric utilities must get from renewable sources such as wind and solar from 25 percent by 2025 to 50 percent by 2040. Coal currently provides almost 34 percent of the state's electricity . Hydroelectric generation provides almost 43 percent. Nat...

I'm taking a short break and expect to post again on Sunday, March 20.

The $9.2 billion investors paid to snap up new equity offerings from U.S. oil companies in 2016 proves those investors are indeed ready for more punishment. The amount is in line with the pace of such equity offerings in 2015 even as the mood in the oil markets has grown more dour. In June of last year I wrote: New investors in U.S. oil company shares must believe they are catching the bottom and will have a very profitable ride up from here. This demonstrates that OPEC's work is not done and accounts in part for the decision to leave production quotas unchanged. OPEC's next task is to convince those making new investments in oil that rather than catching a bottom in oil prices, they have caught a falling knife. A lot of investors did end up catching a falling knife as oil careened downward from about $60 a barrel last summer to Friday's close of about $36. Investors this year may still find that the knife is falling, though it admittedly doesn't have as far to fall t...

No one can know the future. But it turns out we can invent a place called "The Future" and invite people to inhabit it. In order to inhabit "The Future"--which is really just an enactment of our ideas about the future--you need the right accessories. For starters you'll need the basics: the latest iPhone with the latest social networking app, a fully electric car (if you can afford it), and a FitBit watch. To that you can add your own personal drone , personal robot , and a farm cube for growing your own lettuce indoors. In fact, before the pageants we call trade shows (such as the Consumer Electronics Show , coverage of which is linked above), we had world fairs that allowed us to "see the future." Perhaps the most important thing to note about such events is that they began by focusing mostly on scientific and technical progress and its resulting consumer products. At these events our future political and economic system apparently remains unchan...

Aristotle tells us that humans are political animals. For Aristotle this characteristic seems to distinguish humans from other animals enough to provide a unique area of study that applies only to humans--hence Aristotle's The Politics, a work which informs our political thinking to this day. Political ecology, on the other hand, posits that while humans are political, the political process, of necessity, includes the natural world as a political actor . The human and the nonhuman are not distinct categories, but rather part of a seamless order that is (currently) best described by political ecology. If the rhetoric of political ecology is to remain merely descriptive, we can stop here. But if we want that rhetoric to become a tool of change, we must go beyond the notion that “facts speak for themselves.” (We will get to the question of religion further on.) The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts....

Most people value stability in their lives. And, this makes perfect sense. Stability usually means an adequate, secure income; an established group of friends and family members with whom we are close; an identity in our communities based on our jobs, community involvement, and personal networks; physical safety in our daily lives, that is, no war or extreme violence where we live; and relative psychological calm that reflects that stability. But humans value other things such as variety and novelty. In short, we can get bored. And, in order to address our boredom, we must actually seek out instability in our lives. We proceed to upset the very stability which we believe makes us comfortable and safe by engaging in activities that subject us to physical, financial and emotional risk such as sports, gambling or new relationships. There is, of course, the disruption of our routine that comes from external events, from things that we do not necessarily choose: the loss of a job, a divorce...