Peak Generation's tribute to Matthew Simmons

Matthew Simmons: a tribute (original)
Matthew Wild, Peak Generation
Energy Investment banker and leading peak oil proponent Matthew Simmons died suddenly on Sunday [Aug. 8], following an apparent heart attack. While Simmons did not come up with the idea of peak oil – geophysicist M King Hubbert first published the theory in the 1950s -- he arguably did more than anyone to publicize it. It was Simmons' 2005 classic Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, that turned discussion of peak oil from a fringe environmental concern into something with business pages credibility.

Also from Energy Bulletin:
The law of civilization and decay (original)
Dave Cohen, Decline of the Empire
It just so happened that I've been reading Christopher Lasch's The True And Only Heaven: Progress and It's Critics when a friend sent me Philip Mirowski's The Great Mortification Economist's Responses to the Crisis of 2007-(and counting). This latter article led me to James K. Galbraith's Who Are These Economists, Anyway?...I will go a small but significant way toward answering this question today in the first of a series of essays on where we stand in the Modern Age. I can only touch on the main concepts today.

Items of Interest, 19 July 2010

John Robb,JOURNAL: Global Guerrillas and Resilient Communities in Afghanistan

Catholic Light:
I still think people should avoid TFP
From Petrus: the Medjugorje 'seers' will have to report their ten secrets

Energy Bulletin:
Lloyd's Sustainable Energy Security White Paper - Some hits; some misses (original)

Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum

Lloyd's hired Chatham House to prepare a white paper on the risks of peak oil called Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities for business. It seems to me that this new report gets quite a few things right, but it misleads in the direction of thinking things are better than they really are, when it comes to timing and alternatives

Fizzling dreams of "back-to-the-land" (original)

Blujay, these new old traditions

And then *POP* just like that, my back-to-the-land bubble bursts. I rub the sleep from my eyes and blink: Ah yes, here I am. Back in Brooklyn, in school full time, pursuing a masters degree, racking up the loans.

Modernizing Henry George (original)

Herman Daly, The Daly News

Economists have traditionally considered nature to be infinite relative to the economy, and therefore not scarce, and therefore properly priced at zero. But the biosphere is now scarce, and becoming more so every day as a result of growth of its large and dependent subsystem, the macro-economy.

Counterpunch:
Patrick Cockburn, Leaving Iraq: The Ruin They'll Leave Behind
Dave Lindorff, Cracking the Sea Floor: Fools' Errand in the Gulf