Cutting-edge colonialism: “Hey Africa, we’ll take all that cobalt, but we decided your hydrocarbons have to stay in the ground”
Here in North America, we’re becoming accustomed to powerful figures uttering utterly bonkers statements with respect to energy. We have President Biden in 2020 expressing an interest in throwing fossil fuel executives in jail for their crime of providing hydrocarbons, then currently admonishing those same executives for not producing enough oil/natural gas. We see European […]
Why bet against human ingenuity?
Some phrases in our lexicon just make us feel good. For whatever reason, they strike an elemental chord and just give you the warm and fuzzies, like “Dinner’s ready” or “We’re giving you a raise” or “Looks like they’re not going to press charges”. Weirdly enough, I came across just such an example in a […]
Fossil fuel development has hit the end of the line, or whatever the end of the globe is
What do Mozambique, Guyana and Texas have in common? Well, not the accents. Not all have people named Billy Bob. All were colonized at some point, true, but that’s hardly a commonality these days. Well, that game could go on all night so best to step in. The three places represent ExxonMobil’s current top 3 […]
Largest boreal forest reserve in the world established next to Canada’s oil sands
Everyone knows the bad numbers about Canada’s oil sands; they’ve heard all the horror stories and “carbon bomb” analogies whether they are all true or not. We know the resource is more energy intensive, we know that there are several hundred square kilometres of tailings ponds that are not duck-friendly. We’ve heard all about the […]
Rethinking efficiency – it’s not an engineering problem, sometimes it’s a mental blockage
I once read about a very clever fellow who devised an extremely simple but effective home heating system. He laid some hoses on the ground, open at one end some distance from his house, and the other ends running into the windows. He piled manure on the hoses, which decomposed as manure does and threw […]
Public Energy Number One 