In which my colleague Dan McKay rides the bus: I visited some West Side bus stops this morning to talk with commuters, and, man, are the buses packed. In at least one instance, the bus couldn’t take anybody new at a stop because it was so full. It’s pretty amazing the growth we’ve seen in …
It’s not only the price of black gooey fossil oil that’s crashing. Palm oil is tanking as well: Palm oil prices have nearly halved after hitting a peak in March, when surging crude oil prices boosted interest in the biofuels derived from palm oil. Analysts blame the rapid plunge on a supply glut and a …
On T. Boone Pickens: Pickens is a believer in the ability of free markets to solve our energy problems. Except when he’s not.
I’ll be on KNME this evening at 7 p.m. (public television here in Albuquerque) talking about T. Boone Pickens’ energy ideas. The show’s also webcast here (not posted yet, not sure when it will go up).
This piece by the AP’sMichael Casey poses a bit of a challenge for market believers like me: Over the past decade, Indonesia went from growing more than half its soy to relying on the U.S. for 70 percent of it. Now the poor among this country’s 220 million people are going hungry because of changes thousands …
Thanks for all the help from Inkstain readers – here, in private conversations and over on my Journal blog. My story on the Pickens plan is up. It’s by no means comprehensive, and I decided to zero in on two issues. The need for transmission capacity to take advantage of wind resources. This is an …
Bloomberg had a significant story a week ago that I missed regarding Chinese coal-to-liquid efforts. This is something I’ve been watching closely, reasoning that there is a price point at which CTL becomes economical as a substitute liquid transportation fuel, and that we’re likely to see a strong shift in that direction as soon as …
Going all econ wonk on the T. Boone Plan
From my colleague Lloyd Jojola, further evidence that rising gasoline prices are changing behavior: ABQ Ride reported today that there were 1,000,126 passenger boardings in August 2008, the first time ridership has exceeded 1 million for a single month.
In the Bulletin of th Atomic Scientists, of all places, Kurt Zenz House makes an articulate argument for why expanded domestic oil drilling is both a good idea and matters very little: What we’re watching is the thread of a decent argument–that when oil prices are very high, the United States should expand oil exploration …