The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Well this is a little awkward... President Biden pledged during the election campaign:  "I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels." The same President Biden today has - much to the angst of conservationists -  authorized a giant ConocoPhillips oil project in northwest Alaska . The $8 billion Willow oil field development project was initially proposed in 2018. It is set within the 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), the largest expanse of federal public lands in the country, located on Alaska’s North Slope. ConocoPhillips had initially proposed five pads as part of the project. In the oil industry, a pad refers to a temporary drilling site. Under the Trump administration, the Department of the Interior (DOI) had approved the proposal in October 2020. But a lawsuit by multiple groups, including Earthjustice, forced the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to recommend scaling down the number of pads from five to three. Biden's Willow plan woul

Many observers expected that in the wake of America and NATO's somewhat frantic and ugly (to put it mildly) pullout from Afghanistan and Kabul airport in August 2021, it was  only a matter of time before China would move in , securing significant resource and infrastructure deals. All along there have even been persistent rumors China was  eyeing takeover  of the large former US base at Bagram.  On Friday  a major deal for oil extraction inked between a Chinese company and the Taliban government  has been revealed, centered in northern Afghanistan's Amu Darya basin. Acting minister of mines and petroleum Shahabuddin Dilawar (L sitting); China's ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu (R). AFP/Getty Images CNN  details that  "The agreement with China’s Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co is the first major international energy extraction deal the Taliban has signed since taking control of Afghanistan in 2021." It underscores that the Taliban  increasingly sees Bei

October 5, 2022 The Federal Reserve has been attacking inflation. The problem is that after printing trillions of dollars, they’re ill-equipped to succeed at their task. Partly, this is because all that cash has to go somewhere and partly this is because their mandate does not extend into ensuring that global energy production expands. While Owners’ Equivalent Rent and wages have remained elevated, those are often seen as the “good” sort of inflation—or at least the benign sort. Meanwhile, all other forms of inflation tend to be characterized as “bad” and frequently the “bad” inflation is caused by elevated energy prices, which then increase the costs of producing and transporting everything else. Therefore, despite the Fed ignoring the inflation they caused for well over a year, when oil cleared $100 a barrel, the Fed finally felt that they had no choice but to do something. The problem is that the only ways to reduce the price of oil are to produce more of it or consume less of it. I

Running On Empty John Michael Greer Well, we definitely seem to have passed a threshold of sorts. For most of the sixteen years since I started blogging, one of the things I had to point out constantly to my readers was the slow pace of historical change.  Whenever I posted an essay on the twilight of industrial society, I could count on fielding at least one comment from a reader who expected the entire modern world to crash and burn in the next few months.  I’d have to patiently remind them that Rome wasn’t sacked in a day—that it takes years of breathtakingly moronic decisions motivated by mindless greed, vicious partisan hatred, blind ideological dogmatism, and a total unwillingness to think about the long-term consequences of short-term decisions, to bring a civilization down. Now of course all through the years while I was telling people this, decisions of the kind I’ve just described, guided by motives of the sort I’ve just characterized, were standard operating procedure throug

See if you can find out measures that affect the SRF & Billionaires!  Private jets, Yachts, Smaller mansions, smaller cars and so on...  Emergency measures can quickly cut global oil demand by 2.7 million barrels a day, reducing the risk of a damaging supply crunch 18 March 2022 In the face of the emerging global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, practical actions by governments and citizens in advanced economies and beyond can achieve significant reductions in oil demand in a matter of months, reducing the risk of a major supply crunch, according to new analysis released by the International Energy Agency today. These efforts would reduce the price pain being felt by consumers around the world, lessen the economic damage, shrink Ru

Sub-system "justice" showing its true colors! Or to put all of that in a more simpler way... The Post-Partisan Emporium's   Purpose and  Standards   This site does not have a particular political position. We welcome articles from various points of view, and civil debate when differences arise. Contributions of articles from posters are always welcome. Unless a contribution is really beyond the pale, we do not edit what goes up as topics for discussion. If you would like to contribute an article, let one of the moderators know. Likewise if you would like to become an official contributor so you can put up articles yourself, but for that we need to exchange email addresses and we need a Google email address from you. Contributions can be anything, including fiction, poems, cartoons, or songs. They can be your own writing or someone else’s writing which has yet to be published. We understand that tempers flare during heated conversations, and we're willing t