People going hungry in Venezuela, zoo animals starving to death – ‘We call it here the Maduro diet’

By Vladimir Hernandez28 July 2016 (BBC) – It’s one thing to talk to people you’ve never met before who are suffering from hunger, and it’s a completely different thing when they are from your own family, as the BBC’s Vladimir Hernandez discovered when he returned to his native Venezuela to report on its failure to […]

Oil lobby paid Washington Post and Atlantic to host climate-change deniers at the Republican National Convention

By Alex Emmons22 July 2016 (The Intercept) – At the award-winning seafood restaurant in downtown Cleveland that The Atlantic rented out for the entire four-day Republican National Convention, GOP Rep. Bill Johnson turned to me and explained that solar panels are not a viable energy source because “the sun goes down.” Johnson had just stepped […]

Hooked! The unyielding grip of fossil fuels on global life – ‘In 2040, fossil fuels will still have a grip on a staggering 78 percent of the world energy market’

By Michael T. Klare14 July 2016 (TomDispatch) – Here’s the good news: wind power, solar power, and other renewable forms of energy are expanding far more quickly than anyone expected, ensuring that these systems will provide an ever-increasing share of our future energy supply.  According to the most recent projections from the Energy Information Administration […]

Graph of the Day: Global economic growth and energy consumption growth, 1991-2015

By Political Economist20 June 2016 (Peak Oil Barrel) – […] This graph compares the historical world economic growth rates and the primary energy consumption growth rates from 1991 to 2015. The primary energy consumption growth rate has an intercept of -0.011 at zero economic growth rate and a slope of 0.904. That is, primary energy […]

‘Water windfall’ found in drought-stricken California – Deep groundwater resource threatened by land subsidence and oil production

By Bobby Magill27 June 2016 (Climate Central) – California’s Central Valley has three times more freshwater in underground aquifers than previously thought, drinking water that could help the state weather future drought and fortify itself against a changing climate, according to a new Stanford University study. But tapping that water, locked thousands of feet beneath […]

Venezuelans flock to Colombia for food – Economic crisis bares hunger crisis in Venezuela – ‘The reality is that we do not have any food to give to our children’

10 July 2016 (BBC News) – Thousands of people have crossed to Colombia after Venezuela opened their common border to allow its people to buy food and medicine, officials say. The frontier, closed by Venezuela last August as part of a crime crackdown, was to open for 12 hours. Venezuela is going through a deep […]

Venezuelans are storming supermarkets and attacking trucks as food supplies dwindle – ‘This is savagery’

By Joshua Partlow and Mariana Zuñiga 28 June 2016 CARACAS, Venezuela (Washington Post) – In the darkness the warehouse looks like any other, a metal-roofed hangar next to a clattering overpass, with homeless people sleeping nearby in the shadows. But inside, workers quietly unload black plastic crates filled with merchandise so valuable that mobs have […]

Another Amazon oil spill puts Peruvian communities at risk – ‘We don’t drink river water any more. It gives us diarrhea and stomachaches’

By Barbara Fraser and Milton López Tarabochia26 June 2016 (mongabay.com) – A new oil spill from the pipeline that carries crude oil from the northern Peruvian Amazon across the Andes Mountains to the Pacific coast has raised fears of yet more pollution of the water and fish on which indigenous villages and riverside communities depend. […]

Graph of the Day: World primary energy consumption, 1990-2015

9 June 2016 (BP) – World primary energy consumption grew by a below-average 1.0% in 2015, the slowest rate of growth since 1998 (other than the decline in the aftermath of the financial crisis). Growth was below average in all regions except Europe and Eurasia. All fuels except oil and nuclear power grew at below-average […]

How much worse can Venezuela get?

By Ben Raderstorf and Michael Shifter26 June 2016 (Slate) –  Venezuela faces a disaster. Over the past month, food riots have broken out across the country as mostly empty supermarkets are looted. Its capital, Caracas, is now the most violent city in the world. The economy is in a tailspin, set to contract 10 percent […]

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