The Axis of Ennui - NYTimes.com

Shai Agassi’s company, Better Place, for example, has generated glowing magazine profiles, but it has managed to lose more than $500 million while selling astoundingly few cars. He stepped down as the chief executive, and his replacement lasted only a few months. It turns out that the things that are sexy to politicians and paradigm-shifting to conference audiences are not necessarily attractive to consumers.
...Most important of all, the boring old oil and gas engineers have transformed the global balance of power.

By 2020, the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer, according to the International Energy Agency. The U.S. has already overtaken Russia as the world’s leading gas producer. Fuel has become America’s largest export item. Within five years, according to a study by Citigroup, North America could be energy independent. “OPEC will find it challenging to survive another 60 years, let alone another decade,” Edward Morse, Citigroup’s researcher, told CNBC.
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Most of us have grown up in a world in which we assumed that energy was scarce, or even running out. We could now be entering a world of relatively cheap energy abundance.

Most of us have grown up in a world in which oil states in the Middle East could throw their weight around because of their grip on the economy’s life source. But the power of petro-states is on the wane. Yergin argues that the oil sanctions against Iran may not have been sustainable if not for the new alternate sources of supply.

Twitter / LFFriedman

After years in a #climatechange bubble, I'm traveling #Pakistan w/ a world class group of journos who r totally disinterested. #realitycheck

Bill Nye talks climate change, and why it’s a bad idea to muzzle Canadian scientists | Metro

[Nye] What’s happened is that these guys in the climate denial community have managed to introduce this idea that scientific uncertainty is the same as scientific doubt.

It’s perfect analogous to cigarette smoking. You couldn’t’ show what level of cigarette smoke had cause a specific cancer. We’re running out of time to take the easy steps on climate change. Deniers have left a mess. The key will be that when it’s finally overrun we have to get them on our side.

The dilemma of eating locally and hurting others globally | Humanosphere

Kenny writes in Foreign Policy that it would actually be four times more energy efficient for Brits to eat lamb from New Zealand than from Britain.