While humans fight over oil, the great methane release may be starting

Meltfactor : " Hansen’s warnings should be met with an aggressive atmospheric decarbonization program.  We have been too long on a trajectory pointed at an unmanageable climate calamity; runaway climate heating. If we don’t get atmospheric carbon down and cool the Arctic, the climate physics and recent observations tell me we will probably trigger the release of these vast carbon stores, dooming our kids’ to a hothouse Earth."

As car-dependent US loses in Mideast, it goes after Russia

Our Finite World: "Many people when looking at future oil supply concern themselves with the amount of reserves (or resources) remaining, or perhaps Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI). None of these is really the right limit, however. The limiting factor is how long our current networked economic system can hold together. There are lots of oil reserves left, and the EROEI of Middle Eastern oil is generally quite high (that is, favorable). But instability could still bring the system down. So could popping of the US oil supply bubble through higher interest rates or more stringent lending rules."

Listen up, America: It’s time to starting making mass transit free!

Salon.com: "For bigger cities, the principal motivation for scrapping fares is not to save money but to increase ridership, and harvest the associated positive externalities: less traffic and pollution, more parking and mobility. In the handful of American cities where such programs have been tried on a short-term basis, the ridership surges have been huge. When Topeka made transit free for May of 1988, ridership rose 98 percent. When Austin made transit free for the fall of 1990, ridership increased by 75 percent. A similar experiment in Asheville, in 2006, recorded a passenger surge of 60 percent."

Bike highways and pedestrian overpasses are for the benefit of cars

Transformative design? Or waste of money. Why spend money trying to get out of the way of  cars? Instead let's remove cars from the city. The car culture is on the way out. Let's stop throwing money at it.

gizmodo

Little-known fact about Transmilenio BRT: feeder buses are fare-free

CSMonitor.com: "To make the public transport system accessible to a broader swath of the city’s residents, Transmilenio runs free feeder buses from low-income communities at the outskirts of the city to the main Transmilenio stations, and has a uniform ticket price no matter the distance traveled, so that lower-income residents from outlying areas can still afford to ride."

#Freetransit campaign spreading and growing steadily in Europe

Did you know that 13 towns in Poland and 26 towns in France already have free public transport? Did you know that the capital of Estonia has it? Did you know that there are campaigns for free public transport in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Estonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Scotland, and England?

To keep up... go here http://farefreeeu.blogspot.tw/ for links.

Taxpayer subsidy keeps oil industry from crashing

Grist: "The fracking boom has led to a surge in oil and natural gas production in recent years: Oil production is up by 35 percent since 2009, and natural gas production is up by 18 percent. With more revenues, expenditures, and profits in the oil and gas industries, the value of the various tax deductions for the oil industry has soared. So, for example, the deduction for “intangible drilling costs” cost taxpayers $1.6 billion in 2009, and $3.5 billion in 2013."

US foreign policy all about controlling energy sources and routes

Global Research: "What does a pipeline in Afghanistan have to do with the crisis in Ukraine?

Everything. It reveals the commercial interests that drive US policy. Just as the War in Afghanistan was largely fought to facilitate the transfer of natural gas from Turkmenistan to the Arabian Sea, so too, Washington engineered the bloody coup in Kiev to cut off energy supplies from Russia to Europe to facilitate the US pivot to Asia."

Debt: Eight Reasons This Time is Different

Our Finite World: "The problem we are running into is the fact the world is finite. Growth can’t continue indefinitely. The way that the physical world enforces the end to growth is not obvious, until we start hitting the limits. The limits are cost of production limits for oil and for our supply of stable grid electricity."

Transportation fares see 35% to 50% increase, contrary to government estimates

Well here is the answer to the question in the previous post. It was a lie. Egypt, instead of sending more money to the IMF, should stop wasting money on cars. Make public buses fare-free, and stop wasting precious resources on fuel for private autos.

Daily News Egypt: "In the report, the agency detailed how diesel-fuelled buses will increase fares, adding that taxi fares will be increased by 5.6%. Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb mentioned in a Saturday press conference that the base fare for white taxis will start at EGP 3, up from the current EGP 2.5.

Meanwhile, fares for the use of transport vehicles will increase between 2.3% to 4.7%.

Dalia Moussa, researcher at the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), projected that transportation fares will keep increasing. She attributed the increasing continuous increases in food and industrial products to the rise in fuel costs."

Egyptian govt says public transport fares immune to price hikes

Egypt government doing the right thing. But why?

Ahram Online: "An increase in the price of fuel will not affect public transport costs, Egyptian government officials stated in the face of public concern after the prices of subsidised gasoline were raised on Friday night.
Egypt raised the prices of three widely used petroleum-derived fuels, octane 80 gas, octane 92 gas, and diesel, by up to 78 percent.

Cabinet spokesperson Hossam Gaweesh announced that public transportation, including Cairo metro fares, would not be affected by the price hikes."

Connecting some important dots

• Cheap oil is gone. Every day the mix of oil on the market is a little more expensive. This is because every day it takes more energy to get oil - falling net energy.
• Complex economy, especially car-dependence, is no longer sustainable.
• Financial system is being propped up by debt and money-creation.
• Capital formation has stopped. 
• The only way to get more capital is to take from other countries by war. 
• Or take from the people by austerity and high unemployment.

U.S. elite is out of options, now backing Nazis in Ukraine

The people of the US are not hearing about it, but their government is backing Nazis in Ukraine. This because cheap oil is gone, growth is over, and the worlds elites have nothing left but to take from each other and drive down the poor.

Two things Americans can do. First, turn off the TV and read up on what is really happening in Ukraine. Here is a good place to start:

slavyangrad.wordpress.com/ 

Second. Join the campaign for free public transit. This can be done at the local level and will cut the flow of power to the oil industry and split the 1% in two.