If you’ve had your fill of hope after Tuesday’s inauguration, you might try washing it down with an hour of fear at the Bagdad Theater the next night.
John Kaufman (pictured above), a senior policy analyst with the Oregon Department of Energy will be talking Wednesday, Jan. 21 about peak oil and its implications. Peak oil is the idea that oil production already has or will soon begin to diminish. Combine slowing oil production with increasing global demand, and the future starts to look pretty scary. (Unsurprisingly, it’s a subject that has a good deal of traction in Portland.)
Kaufman’s presentation, World Oil Supply: At the Turning Point?, will also address the need for green-collar jobs and the opportunities they offer in the face of peak oil.
The event is hosted by Future of Energy and is scheduled to run from 6 to 8. Admission is free. But organizers suggest that attendees donate $5.
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Tags: economy
It’s kinda hard to buy "peak oil" when the price has gone from $147 a barrel to $35 a barrel and the Saudi Princes are jumping close to jumping out of their windows.
And when global demand is crashing because of the economy..
Oil prices are going to skyrockets just before this spring. They will cross 300 $ this time around.
Peak oil has been declared cyclically since the dawn of the oil age. One day it will happen but this much is true: Oil usage will slowly decline and alternatives will rise not because interested beaureacrats declare it so, but because markets demand it be so.
It’s a lot more complicated than that. Last summer demand was finally hitting the supply ceiling, then crashed suddenly with the economic crisis. It takes time to reduce supply and we are currently out of balance with excess supply.
We’ll be fine as long as two things don’t happen:
The economy rebounds in any significant part of the globe in the next couple of years.
or…
The economy stays the way it is and we start to feel the impact of natural, inevitable declining production with almost no new wells to offset the decline.
So just as long as the economy doesn’t get better, or not better, we’ll be A-OK!
I am sorry to hear that another person is losing their career; so many are these days.
I would also like to say that the writer of this article did a great job in how he presented this. I look forward to reading more articles written by Joshua Bolkan.
Very nice work and this draws me to read your paper on a regular basis.