There are few routes for tar sands oil to travel from the point of extraction in central Canada to the ports that are gateways to global markets. One is the controversial Keystone pipeline, heading south to the Gulf of Mexico. Another is the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would travel west from Alberta through British […]

Protecting areas from resource extraction is the one sure way to address the paradox that energy production and consumption are both powering and destroying our civilization. At least half of planet Earth’s land and surface waters should be in protected areas dedicated to nature conservation to conserve biological diversity and stabilize the climate. Securing “Nature’s […]

Despite increasingly worrying scientific evidence, worsening extreme weather disasters, and years of advocacy by the major environmental groups, political leaders in the United States have not acted seriously on climate change. Because efforts to push climate change action through regular political channels have clearly failed, a mass movement of grassroots citizen activism is necessary. This […]

Fossil fuels created modern civilization, but their rising costs—to health, security, and economic progress—are starting to eclipse their benefits, undermining the prosperity and security they enabled. At the same time, technological innovation has quietly been making fossil fuels obsolete. In history’s greatest infrastructure shift, spanning the entire economy, humans are inventing a new fire: not […]

Overview of the current energy landscape, including conventional, offshore and unconventional oil, natural gas, shale gas, coal, nuclear, hydropower, geothermal, biofuels, biomass electricity, industrial wind, solar photovoltaic, concentrated solar thermal, refineries, pipelines and transport, hydrogen, micropower and emerging energy technologies. This is a chapter from The ENERGY Reader: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth […]

Since it began producing oil in earnest in 1956, Nigeria has become the poster child for the environmental, social, and economic devastation that can be wrought by unfettered fossil fuel production. This is a chapter from The ENERGY Reader: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth (2012).  

Gas hydrates are a frozen form of methane found in Arctic regions as well as under the seabed. Commercially exploiting gas hydrates on any significant scale may prove to be extremely challenging—but if successful, it would prolong our dependency on fossil fuels and contribute to ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions. This is a chapter from The […]

Global fossil fuel consumption has accelerated rapidly over the last few decades, requiring an enormous stream of resources to meet even current demand. Claims that future demand can be met simply by opening new areas to exploration and increasing production of relatively new resources like deepwater oil, tar sands, shale oil, oil shale, and shale […]

Each new technology, regardless of benefits, brings its own risks. In many complex situations where there are multiple questions with poorly constrained answers, it is folly to expect that we can use formal risk assessments to guide current actions. Risk assessment can be done properly if it does not pretend a false omniscience, and is […]

When Gloria Flora took the helm of Lewis & Clark National Forest in Montana in 1995, she found priceless wildlands threatened by oil and gas speculators. Defying convention, she declared the area off-limits to oil and gas development, adding a definitive new twist to the interplay between community groups, the fossil fuel industry, and the […]