Share DOE Still Disavows Peak Oil Forecast, Despite New Studies

Gulf oil spill adds pressure for release of "proprietary database" behind DOE's optimism. The U.S. Department of Energy has long disavowed peak oil theory: the notion that annual world oil production will peak, plateau, and then enter a decline. But the agency’s stance appears increasingly at odds with the future predicted by many world energy analysts, including the US military. In February, the United Kingdom Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security—a group comprised in part by renewable energy companies—published a report warning that global peak oil would probably occur within the next decade.

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Why We Should Keep the Fed Away From the Consumer: the Hurt Incident

Buoyed by the thrill of seeing Goldman Sachs squirm just a little at the witness table it may be that a financial “reform” bill emerges from congress some time this summer. Without a doubt, human wave assaults by Wall Street’s famously effective lobbyists will produce many amendments and alterations to the draft legislation currently under debate. Some of these may be momentous in effect yet scarcely visible to anyone but a securities lawyer – think the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, slipped through congress without debate in December 2000, that unleashed credit default swaps on a defenseless world. Other compromises congenial to the financial industry have already been incorporated in Senator Chris Dodd’s Senate Banking Committee bill, with little prospect of reversal. Chief among these is the internment of the proposed Consumer Finance Protection Agency within the Federal Reserve – an early Dodd concession to the Republicans.

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Kagan in Context: Shafting Progressive Values

If President Obama has his way, Elena Kagan will replace John Paul Stevens -- and the Supreme Court will move rightward. The nomination is very disturbing, especially because it's part of a pattern.

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Do You Have Excessive Sleepiness? Shift Work Sleep Disorder? Big Pharma Hopes So

Do you work in customer service? Health care? The restaurant industry? You might be suffering from shift work sleep disorder (SWSD) says a new ad campaign from Frazer, PA-based Cephalon who makes the Schedule IV stimulants Provigil and Nuvigil. One out of four people working nontraditional schedules suffers from this hitherto unrecognized epidemic say radio ads which broke this week in Chicago.

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Strengthening the Link Between Pollution, Cancer

A new report from a presidential advisory group represents a major advance in the struggle to protect people from exposure to carcinogenic chemicals. “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,” issued today by the President’s Cancer Panel, announces a shift in emphasis from merely treating cancer to preventing it, and from seeking the roots of cancer in individual DNA to recognizing environmental contaminants as important causes.

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UN fears ‘irreversible’ damage to natural environment

GENEVA — The UN warned on Monday that "massive" loss in life-sustaining natural environments was likely to deepen to the point of being irreversible after global targets to cut the decline by this year were missed. As a result of the degradation, the world is moving closer to several "tipping points" beyond which some ecosystems that play a part in natural processes such as climate or the food chain may be permanently damaged, a United Nations report said.

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Was Last Week's Market Crash a Direct Attack By Financial Terrorists?

Last week, the U.S. stock market suffered the greatest sudden drop in its history, for reasons that nobody on Wall Street can seem to decipher. But of all the explanations being examined—a tech glitch, Greek debt worries and fraud have all been discussed--the most troubling is not being given sufficient attention. Coming on the very day that Congress considered two key financial reforms, the timing of the "flash crash" raises concerns that Wall Street is resorting to extreme tactics in its efforts to intimidate politicians who want to rein in the capital markets casino. Thursday's market plunge could have been an act of financial terrorism. Wall Street has both the motive and the means: Goldman Sachs, which is currently under investigation for a very different kind of fraud, has the trading power to make just such a market crash occur, and has much to lose from financial reforms moving through Congress.

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Eurozone: The Kitchen Sink Goes In – Now It’s All About Solvency

This is a whole new level of global moral hazard – the result of an alliance of convenience between troubled governments in the south of Europe and the north European banks (and implicitly, north American banks) who enabled their debt habit. The Europeans promise to unveil a mechanism this week that will “prevent abuse” by borrowing countries, but it is hard to see how this would really work in Europe today.

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After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck with Nietzsche

It is hard to muster much sympathy over the implosion of the Catholic Church, traditional Protestant denominations or Jewish synagogues. These institutions were passive as the Christian right, which peddles magical thinking and a Jesus-as-warrior philosophy, hijacked the language and iconography of traditional Christianity. They have busied themselves with the boutique activism of the culture wars.

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How Making a Difference Can Make You Happy

Democracy depends on the time, energy, and engagement of ordinary people. But it remains quite difficult to motivate average citizens even to vote, much less to engage in the more intensive forms of political activism needed to counteract powerful forces that work against rule by the people

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