Fascinating. Another area of the world about which I know almost nothing but is very important in many ways including having the longest border in the world with Russia.
I am probably better informed than most Americans having had a wonderful vacation trip to Uzbekistan.
Kazakhstan has the lowest population density of any landlocked nation, although IMO it's not landlocked as the Caspian allows access to the world ocean. Like Russia it was invaded by Outlaw US Empire Neoliberals who made some inroads in the vital hydrocarbon complex, but the twin CSTO and SCO structures are solid enough to keep it within the Eurasian sphere. As Lukashenko observed directly after the failed Color Revolution, the wellbeing of Kazakhs must be addressed to keep them from being affected by extremist ideologies; and it appears that advice is being acted upon in an aggressive manner.
And Kazakhstan has been an active participant in BRICS and is seeking membership. These new collectives based on mutual benefit will be hard, if not impossible for the USA/NATO to break apart.
Especially now that the 'rules based order' is more widely recognized as a continuation of European colonialization,
I'd rather see the linkage of the multilateral organizations instead of having nations being members in all of them, which in my view is unwieldly. But that's my opinion.
I read VVP's answers, and am always amazed at the level of detail in his replies. I can think of no other corresponding world leader who has the ability to provide such long, thorough answers. And the sheer volume of info he is able to reel off....
Can you imagine Joe managing even a fraction of that? Or Sunak? Macron or Scholz? Ha! Don't make me laugh!
He and his team are somewhat unique. If Xi and his team were as open to the public, perhaps we'd see they're comparable. The schedule Putin follows and the overall breadth of issues he manages is indeed astounding' I'm accustomed since I've been closely following him since 2006, and very closely since 2014. As I mentioned in my reply to Diana, today's meeting with government members ranged far afield, which I'll get to once current events abate some. That same issue happened to delay the posting of Russia's space program and the conversation with its young scientists.
You'll have read Putin discussing many ecological/environmental issues its working with Kazakhstan to solve/mitigate. You might be interested in Russia's ongoing efforts to deal with one of the very nasty side-effects of the lack of environmental controls during the Soviet period which has resulted in a huge spike in cancers. Putin's been especially keen to put the full power of the Russian state to work in dealing with this problem. Today he visited one of the new oncological centers whose existence he's directly responsible for, the National Medical Center Research Center for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology named after Dmitry Rogachev. Here's a portion of the readout from his visit:
"Dmytro National Medical Research Center Rogacheva is one of the world's leading clinics for the treatment of oncological and hematological diseases in children aged seven days to 18 years. Decision its creation was adopted in 2005 after a meeting between Vladimir Putin and a patient ten-year-old leukemia Dima Rogachev, after whom he was later named center." (Sorry for the rough translation.)
As is often the case with such visits, Putin held a conference with government members afterward whose topic is related to the visit, In this case, "Our main speaker today is Mikhail Murashko Albertovich, who will report on measures to combat cancer." The meeting will be long and cover several other topics related to the wellbeing of Russian citizens. With luck, its content will be reported in a few days as another queue is building as events are happening faster than I can report on them.
Putin: “We consider the development of cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan in the field of "green" energy to be very relevant. We have a lot in common in our approaches to decarbonizing the economy and energy transition. Our countries plan to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060. To do this, we need to modernize the energy and industrial infrastructure, more widely introduce alternative and renewable energy sources, and in the transition period – natural gas. Effectively use the absorption capacity of natural ecosystems.”
Q: How does Putin propose to build - with electricity alone - a "green energy" powered society by any target date?
A: Because nearly all the following processes here today can only be done with diesel, we can't build a "green energy" civilization on this pale blue dot with electricity alone ...
… mining usually in remote areas heavy transport; refining; mechanical materials processing; component manufacturing; on site preparation; final build out; earth works for connection to existing grid infrastructure and new electricity distribution networks; ongoing maintenance machinery; manufacturing proposed future micro grid electronic power switching / grid balancing infrastructure at several orders of magnitude greater scale than today's industrial electromechanical machinery outputs; and all end of life re-cycling processes; etc.
These process are needed to build, maintain, and recycle solar energy flow harvesting infrastructure, sorry "green energy" and all the end use electric machines and storage devices that also need to be built. These process can only be done with diesel, which is ~40 time more energy dense than the energy density of electricity storage systems, which are close to their maximum physical limits. There are no magic wands waiting to be discovered that will get electric battery energy density anywhere near to matching the energy density of liquid fuels.
Practically none of these above listed tasks can be done today with electricity, beyond a few demonstration efforts that can't scale up much beyond a few more % of global energy supply than they do already: Solar ~2%; Wind ~ 3%; other renewables ~ 2%; traditional biomass ~ 6%; Oil ~30%; Coal ~ 25%; Gas ~22%; Nuclear ~4%; Hydro ~6% (2021 data).
If it were that easy to replace diesel - the first commercial electric motors for a lathe and a locomotive were developed two decades or so BEFORE (in the 1840s) the first commercially successful internal combustion engine created by Étienne Lenoir (around 1860) - then why haven't electric machines replaced diesel machines yet?
Meanwhile, hydrogen as an energy storage solution, is a hoax, in summary: a) it always rapidly leaks due to small molecular size; b) causes embrittlement; c) is explosive; and d) is terribly inefficient to manufacture with electricity except for small niche applications; see these links for more:-
Also, relegated as an externalities in the "green energy" thesis is dozens of vital metals and rare elements and vast quantities of ordinary building sand needed for “decarbonizing the economy with a transition” but which are already running out in rich enough deposits to extract economically requiring exponentially more energy inputs nearly always fossil fuels - and you can't build anything much at all without those material inputs, and power recycling process, let alone expand the current 5% of global energy supplied by “green energy” to 100%.
From a biophysical perspective "green energy" is thus rendered a deeply misleading propaganda oxymoron: a more accurate name would be a 'net energy sink - low density solar energy flow harvesting and concentrating infrastructure dream'.
Access to dwindling global fossil energy resources has been the main driver of geopolitical turmoil for many decades and explains the 'Western' lust for global chaos and wars to dominate those resources for as long as possible. For example in 2019 'Western' Big Oil firms Shell and BP told us their supply will decrease by 1 - 2% per year, which means that in about 70 years it will 25% of what it was in 2019. In March this year they are now revising their targeting to a reduction of 25% by the end of the decade. A 25% decline over 7 years is a 5% decline per year, which means in 28 years time oil production by Shell and BP by about 2050 will be 25% of what it was in 2023.
Clearly Russia and Kazakhstan and others have greater reserves than 'Western' Big Oil but the trajectory is the same just delayed a hand full of decades or so. But since all the above listed industrial activity today currently uses diesel, how does Putin and all the rest of the global "green energy” lobby propose to make electric machines to replace diesel machines needed to achieve “zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060”?
The last time there were no fossil fuels, back in ~1759, there were ~ 0.7 billion humans and Watt's steam engine was first being developed to kick start the global industrial revolution. On the back of coal and steam, it took a century for populations to double to ~1.3 billion, when in 1859 the first modern commercial oil well was drilled by Edwin L. Drake in Titusville, Pennsylvania. A century and a half later there are nearly 8 billion of us, with 84% of primary energy consumption in the world and 64% of its electricity was from fossil fuels in 2019.
And how do "green energy" lobbyists propose to make fertilizer to grow food for 8bn people without fossil fuels? How do they suggest we plough fields with batteries that are over half the weight of vehicles they power, will not to sink into mud? How will you charge them up in remote locations, etc? If electric agriculture or indeed raw material mining etc.. machines were viable, where are they?
Fairly sharing out unequal distribution of resources and wealth at all scales is a vital step, but the case remains, what energy inputs will we use if electricity is not a dense enough energy source to support 8 billion humans? Once this is answered, then we can then debate about what fair should look like.
As such, global warming in and of itself is a self limiting distraction from the symptoms of overshoot on the only pale blue dot in the cosmos known to support life: the correct foundational question to focus upon, before we can answer any of the others in any meaningful way, must thus be, that since access to fossil fuel supply is crashing anyway, how do we deal with populations crashing back to where they were ~250 years ago, but in ~50 or ~100 years or so?
Your critique is well made. What I see Russia doing is building out the required heavy infrastructure using its fossil fuels while phasing in its Green sector. The failure of Europe to plan and build in that manner is at the core of Russian criticism of EU energy policy. China is following a similar policy to Russia's. Also, the concept of "net-zero" is misunderstood where CO2 emissions are balanced by CO2 absorption. As I understand the BRI and other related development aims over the next several decades, the goal is to build the required heavy infrastructure many nations lack while enough supplies of fossil fuels remain available at reasonable costs. Yes, there are geopolitical and geoeconomic questions related to this overall policy, and we can see the conflict instigated by the Outlaw US Empire as it desires to control the entire process but is now being thwarted by the Global Majority. This topic is one that I've already begun covering here and will continue to do so. I'm well versed in the issues of Overshoot and Peak Energy and the physics driving climate change. From my investigations into Russian policy over the last ten years, I'm convinced that Russia is well informed on those issues, and together with China is acting far more responsibly and maturely than the combined West, whose Neoliberal aims are quite different.
Thank you Karl - the point of my comment is to suggest at best its only possible to significantly "phase in a Green sector" for far fewer than ~8 billion humans - and even if you did that with the least pain and suffering, it would only last for a few decades because you can only build and maintain solar energy harvesting infrastructure - that has a 20-30 year life span - with fossil fuels, which are rapidly depleting.
This is measured by the 'Energy Returned on Energy Invested' (EROI) of fossil fuels, which is decreasing. The EROI for the production of oil and gas globally by publicly traded companies has declined from 30:1 in 1995 to about 18:1 in 2006 (Gagnon et al., 2009). The EROI for discovering oil and gas in the US has decreased from more than 1000:1 in 1919 to 5:1 in the 2010s, and for production from about 25:1 in the 1970s to approximately 10:1 in 2007 (Guilford et al., 2011). Alternatives to traditional fossil fuels such as tar sands and oil shale (Lambert et al., 2012) deliver a lower EROI, having a mean EROI of 4:1 (n of 4 from 4 publications) and 7:1 (n of 15 from 15 publication). In 2013 world oil and gas had a mean EROI of about 20:1
I too am convinced that Russia and China are well informed on these issues, but what I'm trying to highlight here, is if Putin's “plan to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060” is not oblivious to the biophysical reality that a massive decrease global population will be forced upon us no matter what we do, then what are the unspoken Russian and Chinese plans to manage this biophysically enforced trajectory for global human populations? And are 'Western' powers centres also aware?
I guess the remaining question then becomes who gets preferential access to the depleting total energy supply available to humans, and how do those humans intend to enforce their preferential access on the other humans?
Thanks for your reply. Were you perhaps a member of ASPO (Association for the Sturdy of Peak Oil and Natural Gas) or commentator at The Oil Drum? I was a member of ASPO-USA until it folded up shop in the 2010s. Both were highly educational. In my writings, I do mention the requirement for the adoption of steady-state political economies beginning @2100, meaning there's relatively little time to build-out the required infrastructure. As I said, this is a topic that will get far more discussion.
Thanks for your reply too Karl, appreciated. Many don't want to engage at this basic level. I too read the The Oil Drum and ASPO outputs back in the 2000s and was involved setting up a so called 'Transition Town' in the UK which was 'inspired' by Peak Oil and Limit to Growth. It appears we only differ in how quick the de-growth path will be. Looking forwards to far more discussion, as I prefer reality to fooling ourselves.
Fascinating. Another area of the world about which I know almost nothing but is very important in many ways including having the longest border in the world with Russia.
I am probably better informed than most Americans having had a wonderful vacation trip to Uzbekistan.
Kazakhstan has the lowest population density of any landlocked nation, although IMO it's not landlocked as the Caspian allows access to the world ocean. Like Russia it was invaded by Outlaw US Empire Neoliberals who made some inroads in the vital hydrocarbon complex, but the twin CSTO and SCO structures are solid enough to keep it within the Eurasian sphere. As Lukashenko observed directly after the failed Color Revolution, the wellbeing of Kazakhs must be addressed to keep them from being affected by extremist ideologies; and it appears that advice is being acted upon in an aggressive manner.
And Kazakhstan has been an active participant in BRICS and is seeking membership. These new collectives based on mutual benefit will be hard, if not impossible for the USA/NATO to break apart.
Especially now that the 'rules based order' is more widely recognized as a continuation of European colonialization,
I'd rather see the linkage of the multilateral organizations instead of having nations being members in all of them, which in my view is unwieldly. But that's my opinion.
I read VVP's answers, and am always amazed at the level of detail in his replies. I can think of no other corresponding world leader who has the ability to provide such long, thorough answers. And the sheer volume of info he is able to reel off....
Can you imagine Joe managing even a fraction of that? Or Sunak? Macron or Scholz? Ha! Don't make me laugh!
He and his team are somewhat unique. If Xi and his team were as open to the public, perhaps we'd see they're comparable. The schedule Putin follows and the overall breadth of issues he manages is indeed astounding' I'm accustomed since I've been closely following him since 2006, and very closely since 2014. As I mentioned in my reply to Diana, today's meeting with government members ranged far afield, which I'll get to once current events abate some. That same issue happened to delay the posting of Russia's space program and the conversation with its young scientists.
I love the desire to be good neighbours with other countries. I'd love to see more emphasis on green energy though.
You'll have read Putin discussing many ecological/environmental issues its working with Kazakhstan to solve/mitigate. You might be interested in Russia's ongoing efforts to deal with one of the very nasty side-effects of the lack of environmental controls during the Soviet period which has resulted in a huge spike in cancers. Putin's been especially keen to put the full power of the Russian state to work in dealing with this problem. Today he visited one of the new oncological centers whose existence he's directly responsible for, the National Medical Center Research Center for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology named after Dmitry Rogachev. Here's a portion of the readout from his visit:
"Dmytro National Medical Research Center Rogacheva is one of the world's leading clinics for the treatment of oncological and hematological diseases in children aged seven days to 18 years. Decision its creation was adopted in 2005 after a meeting between Vladimir Putin and a patient ten-year-old leukemia Dima Rogachev, after whom he was later named center." (Sorry for the rough translation.)
The photos of his visit I find worth more than the readout's few words. Both can be accessed from this link, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/72686
As is often the case with such visits, Putin held a conference with government members afterward whose topic is related to the visit, In this case, "Our main speaker today is Mikhail Murashko Albertovich, who will report on measures to combat cancer." The meeting will be long and cover several other topics related to the wellbeing of Russian citizens. With luck, its content will be reported in a few days as another queue is building as events are happening faster than I can report on them.
Thanks so much for sharing this, Karl. I'm really happy to know this.
Putin: “We consider the development of cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan in the field of "green" energy to be very relevant. We have a lot in common in our approaches to decarbonizing the economy and energy transition. Our countries plan to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060. To do this, we need to modernize the energy and industrial infrastructure, more widely introduce alternative and renewable energy sources, and in the transition period – natural gas. Effectively use the absorption capacity of natural ecosystems.”
Q: How does Putin propose to build - with electricity alone - a "green energy" powered society by any target date?
A: Because nearly all the following processes here today can only be done with diesel, we can't build a "green energy" civilization on this pale blue dot with electricity alone ...
… mining usually in remote areas heavy transport; refining; mechanical materials processing; component manufacturing; on site preparation; final build out; earth works for connection to existing grid infrastructure and new electricity distribution networks; ongoing maintenance machinery; manufacturing proposed future micro grid electronic power switching / grid balancing infrastructure at several orders of magnitude greater scale than today's industrial electromechanical machinery outputs; and all end of life re-cycling processes; etc.
These process are needed to build, maintain, and recycle solar energy flow harvesting infrastructure, sorry "green energy" and all the end use electric machines and storage devices that also need to be built. These process can only be done with diesel, which is ~40 time more energy dense than the energy density of electricity storage systems, which are close to their maximum physical limits. There are no magic wands waiting to be discovered that will get electric battery energy density anywhere near to matching the energy density of liquid fuels.
Practically none of these above listed tasks can be done today with electricity, beyond a few demonstration efforts that can't scale up much beyond a few more % of global energy supply than they do already: Solar ~2%; Wind ~ 3%; other renewables ~ 2%; traditional biomass ~ 6%; Oil ~30%; Coal ~ 25%; Gas ~22%; Nuclear ~4%; Hydro ~6% (2021 data).
If it were that easy to replace diesel - the first commercial electric motors for a lathe and a locomotive were developed two decades or so BEFORE (in the 1840s) the first commercially successful internal combustion engine created by Étienne Lenoir (around 1860) - then why haven't electric machines replaced diesel machines yet?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_electric_motor
Meanwhile, hydrogen as an energy storage solution, is a hoax, in summary: a) it always rapidly leaks due to small molecular size; b) causes embrittlement; c) is explosive; and d) is terribly inefficient to manufacture with electricity except for small niche applications; see these links for more:-
i) Hydrogen 'hopium'
https://energyskeptic.com/?s=hydrogen
ii) Hydrogen or Electron Economy?
https://www.csrf.ac.uk/blog/hydrogen-or-electron-economy/
iii) Pursuing the hydrogen economy as a climate solution will be a big mistake
https://greenallianceblog.org.uk/2021/02/11/pursuing-the-hydrogen-economy-as-a-climate-solution-will-be-a-big-mistake/
iv) The Hydrogen Hoax: Confessions of a Former Hydrogenist
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-hydrogen-hoax-confessions-of-former.html
v) Hydrogen: The dumbest & most impossible renewable
https://energyskeptic.com/2019/hydrogen/
Also, relegated as an externalities in the "green energy" thesis is dozens of vital metals and rare elements and vast quantities of ordinary building sand needed for “decarbonizing the economy with a transition” but which are already running out in rich enough deposits to extract economically requiring exponentially more energy inputs nearly always fossil fuels - and you can't build anything much at all without those material inputs, and power recycling process, let alone expand the current 5% of global energy supplied by “green energy” to 100%.
https://www.dw.com/en/not-enough-sand-for-construction-industry-despite-abundance/a-49342942
https://energyskeptic.com/2021/renewables-not-enough-minerals-energy-time-or-clean-and-green/
https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2009/05/lets-party-til-heliums-gone.html
From a biophysical perspective "green energy" is thus rendered a deeply misleading propaganda oxymoron: a more accurate name would be a 'net energy sink - low density solar energy flow harvesting and concentrating infrastructure dream'.
Access to dwindling global fossil energy resources has been the main driver of geopolitical turmoil for many decades and explains the 'Western' lust for global chaos and wars to dominate those resources for as long as possible. For example in 2019 'Western' Big Oil firms Shell and BP told us their supply will decrease by 1 - 2% per year, which means that in about 70 years it will 25% of what it was in 2019. In March this year they are now revising their targeting to a reduction of 25% by the end of the decade. A 25% decline over 7 years is a 5% decline per year, which means in 28 years time oil production by Shell and BP by about 2050 will be 25% of what it was in 2023.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/shell-reviewing-oil-gas-output-reduction-targets-ceo-tells-times-2023-03-03/
https://goodcalculators.com/percentage-depreciation-calculator/
Clearly Russia and Kazakhstan and others have greater reserves than 'Western' Big Oil but the trajectory is the same just delayed a hand full of decades or so. But since all the above listed industrial activity today currently uses diesel, how does Putin and all the rest of the global "green energy” lobby propose to make electric machines to replace diesel machines needed to achieve “zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060”?
The last time there were no fossil fuels, back in ~1759, there were ~ 0.7 billion humans and Watt's steam engine was first being developed to kick start the global industrial revolution. On the back of coal and steam, it took a century for populations to double to ~1.3 billion, when in 1859 the first modern commercial oil well was drilled by Edwin L. Drake in Titusville, Pennsylvania. A century and a half later there are nearly 8 billion of us, with 84% of primary energy consumption in the world and 64% of its electricity was from fossil fuels in 2019.
And how do "green energy" lobbyists propose to make fertilizer to grow food for 8bn people without fossil fuels? How do they suggest we plough fields with batteries that are over half the weight of vehicles they power, will not to sink into mud? How will you charge them up in remote locations, etc? If electric agriculture or indeed raw material mining etc.. machines were viable, where are they?
Fairly sharing out unequal distribution of resources and wealth at all scales is a vital step, but the case remains, what energy inputs will we use if electricity is not a dense enough energy source to support 8 billion humans? Once this is answered, then we can then debate about what fair should look like.
As such, global warming in and of itself is a self limiting distraction from the symptoms of overshoot on the only pale blue dot in the cosmos known to support life: the correct foundational question to focus upon, before we can answer any of the others in any meaningful way, must thus be, that since access to fossil fuel supply is crashing anyway, how do we deal with populations crashing back to where they were ~250 years ago, but in ~50 or ~100 years or so?
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/09/can-modernity-last/
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/11/10/265-explore-and-explain/
Your critique is well made. What I see Russia doing is building out the required heavy infrastructure using its fossil fuels while phasing in its Green sector. The failure of Europe to plan and build in that manner is at the core of Russian criticism of EU energy policy. China is following a similar policy to Russia's. Also, the concept of "net-zero" is misunderstood where CO2 emissions are balanced by CO2 absorption. As I understand the BRI and other related development aims over the next several decades, the goal is to build the required heavy infrastructure many nations lack while enough supplies of fossil fuels remain available at reasonable costs. Yes, there are geopolitical and geoeconomic questions related to this overall policy, and we can see the conflict instigated by the Outlaw US Empire as it desires to control the entire process but is now being thwarted by the Global Majority. This topic is one that I've already begun covering here and will continue to do so. I'm well versed in the issues of Overshoot and Peak Energy and the physics driving climate change. From my investigations into Russian policy over the last ten years, I'm convinced that Russia is well informed on those issues, and together with China is acting far more responsibly and maturely than the combined West, whose Neoliberal aims are quite different.
Thank you Karl - the point of my comment is to suggest at best its only possible to significantly "phase in a Green sector" for far fewer than ~8 billion humans - and even if you did that with the least pain and suffering, it would only last for a few decades because you can only build and maintain solar energy harvesting infrastructure - that has a 20-30 year life span - with fossil fuels, which are rapidly depleting.
This is measured by the 'Energy Returned on Energy Invested' (EROI) of fossil fuels, which is decreasing. The EROI for the production of oil and gas globally by publicly traded companies has declined from 30:1 in 1995 to about 18:1 in 2006 (Gagnon et al., 2009). The EROI for discovering oil and gas in the US has decreased from more than 1000:1 in 1919 to 5:1 in the 2010s, and for production from about 25:1 in the 1970s to approximately 10:1 in 2007 (Guilford et al., 2011). Alternatives to traditional fossil fuels such as tar sands and oil shale (Lambert et al., 2012) deliver a lower EROI, having a mean EROI of 4:1 (n of 4 from 4 publications) and 7:1 (n of 15 from 15 publication). In 2013 world oil and gas had a mean EROI of about 20:1
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856#s0020
Unfortunately CO2 absorption is very inefficient and won't scale up much to solve any problems either.
https://energyskeptic.com/2021/carbon-capture-and-storage/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41247-020-00080-5#Sec41
I too am convinced that Russia and China are well informed on these issues, but what I'm trying to highlight here, is if Putin's “plan to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060” is not oblivious to the biophysical reality that a massive decrease global population will be forced upon us no matter what we do, then what are the unspoken Russian and Chinese plans to manage this biophysically enforced trajectory for global human populations? And are 'Western' powers centres also aware?
I guess the remaining question then becomes who gets preferential access to the depleting total energy supply available to humans, and how do those humans intend to enforce their preferential access on the other humans?
Thanks for your reply. Were you perhaps a member of ASPO (Association for the Sturdy of Peak Oil and Natural Gas) or commentator at The Oil Drum? I was a member of ASPO-USA until it folded up shop in the 2010s. Both were highly educational. In my writings, I do mention the requirement for the adoption of steady-state political economies beginning @2100, meaning there's relatively little time to build-out the required infrastructure. As I said, this is a topic that will get far more discussion.
Thanks for your reply too Karl, appreciated. Many don't want to engage at this basic level. I too read the The Oil Drum and ASPO outputs back in the 2000s and was involved setting up a so called 'Transition Town' in the UK which was 'inspired' by Peak Oil and Limit to Growth. It appears we only differ in how quick the de-growth path will be. Looking forwards to far more discussion, as I prefer reality to fooling ourselves.
Yes, I'm certain we'll have lively, educated, in-depth discussions about the intertwined issues of energy and development.
Kazakhstan, like Armenia, has clearly been captured by the Hegemon.