Posted on

Peek Oil

We get glimpses of before-during-after all the time now; ‘news’ exists in a meta-only form, wherein we have to read many things at once to understand any one thing. Many lines are required to have enough to read between, natch.

One current example: There’s too much oil: winners and losers.

Okay, sure.

This year is set to culminate in the first major glut since 2020. The International Energy Agency forecast in November that global supply will outweigh demand by 2.4 million barrels a day, and expects the gap to expand to a record 4 million barrels a day next year.
Sustained lower prices will put pressure on governments and businesses that are dependent on oil revenue, while others stand to benefit.
Not sure what the N is on gluts since we launched this fine establishment, but many there have been. And winners and losers, sure. Quick story, but put this at the bottom:
Road transport is the biggest source of oil demand. Consumers are used to a certain amount of volatility in fuel prices, but a prolonged reduction could make them less inclined to switch to an electric vehicle. That said, in areas where there are high taxes on diesel and gasoline, such as Europe and California, there could be limited relief at the pump from lower oil prices.
The buildout of clean power sources is less likely to be impacted by a crude surplus. In most regions, other than places such as the Middle East, renewables are usually competing against coal and natural gas for utility-scale electricity generation rather than oil.
Just so. Now, couple that with the new Cop30 deal, like each prior deal always a crowd-displeaser. Big, air-tight solutions remain just out of reach to stave off the ravages of climate breakdown. Yes, but. Hints and allegations find their way into the language of the most earnest until they are just sitting right there:

Teresa Anderson, the global lead on climate justice at ActionAid International, said: “A lack of climate finance is throwing a spanner in the works of climate progress. Global south countries, [which] are already carrying the costs of the climate crisis they have not caused, desperately need support from rich countries if they are to take on any more commitments. Nowhere was this more stark than on the issue of fossil fuels, where specific text once again ended up unfunded and on the cutting-room floor.”

Nikki Reisch, from the Center for International Environmental Law, said: “This is an empty deal. Cop30 provides a stark reminder that the answers to the climate crisis do not lie inside the climate talks – they lie with the people and movements leading the way toward a just, equitable, fossil-free future.”

Okay, part the last, for now. What has been going on for a year now in the Republic of Georgia:

Some footage from today’s protest march. Georgian citizens are demanding that the parliamentary elections, allegedly rigged in 2024, be rerun and that all political prisoners be released.

#GeorgiaProtests
Day 369

[image or embed]

— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) December 1, 2025 at 1:36 PM

Bottom up. People and movements. There is no they.

Posted on

Playing Makeup, Wearing Guitar

That’s from the Replacements.

This is from Rolling Stone, and no less a travesty – who knows, maybe more.

A comprehensive energy and climate bill – the centerpiece of President Obama’s environmental agenda – is officially dead. Take it from the president’s own climate czar, Carol Browner. “What is abundantly clear,” she told Rolling Stone in an exclusive interview on July 8th, “is that an economy-wide program, which the president has talked about for years now, is not doable in the Senate.”

The Spill, The Scandal and the President: How Obama let BP get away with murder.

But the failure to confront global warming – central not only to Obama’s presidency but to the planet itself – is not the Senate’s alone. Rather than press forward with a climate bill in the Senate last summer, after the House had passed landmark legislation to curb carbon pollution, the administration repeated many of the same mistakes it made in pushing for health care reform. It refused to lay out its own plan, allowing the Senate to bicker endlessly over the details. It pursued a “stealth strategy” of backroom negotiations, supporting huge new subsidies to win over big polluters. It allowed opponents to use scare phrases like “cap and tax” to hijack public debate. And most galling of all, it has failed to use the gravest environmental disaster in the nation’s history to push through a climate bill – to argue that fossil-fuel polluters should pay for the damage they are doing to the atmosphere, just as BP will be forced to pay for the damage it has done to the Gulf.

Tim Dickinson blogs about all the news that fits from the Beltway and beyond on the National Affairs blog.

Top environmental groups, including Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, are openly clashing with the administration, demanding that Obama provide more hands-on leadership to secure a meaningful climate bill. “We really need the president to take the lead and tell us what bill he’s going to support,” says Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund. “If he doesn’t do that, then everything he’s done so far will lead to nothing.”

Get your dose of political muckraking from Matt Taibbi on the Taibblog.

But Obama, so far, has shown no urgency on the issue, and little willingness to lead – despite a June poll showing that 76 percent of Americans believe the government should limit climate pollution. With hopes for an economy-wide approach to global warming dashed, Congress is now weighing a scaled-back proposal that would ratchet down carbon pollution from the nation’s electric utilities. It has come to this: The best legislation we can hope for is the same climate policy that George W. Bush promoted during the 2000 campaign. Even worse, the “utilities first” approach could wind up stripping the EPA of its newfound authority to regulate carbon emissions from power plants.