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James Taylor Prepares For Peak Oil, Fears Collapse Of Society
Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone
Original headline: "James Taylor's Country Soul"

... Taylor wants to do all of this work at home partly to stay near his kids — but he's also preparing for a future with dwindling oil reserves. "I have the sense that energy will become more and more expensive, and people will need to exist in a more local way," he says. "And I feel sort of like a citizen of New England. I like living here and working here, so it may just be that my efforts are more and more sort of locally focused as time goes by."

He glances out his kitchen windows, at a vista of snowy hills and valleys. "When you have young kids, you sort of re-up your commitment to the future. And I can't seem to stop thinking about sustainability and about human activity on the Earth and whether or not what we're doing can continue. It can't. The thing I fear is that we'll have a collapse — and that will finally get people's attention."
(2 October 2008)
Pointed out by Ecorazzi: James Taylor Prepares For Peak Oil, Fears Collapse Of Society.

Oil has fallen to the lowest price in a year meaning respite for consumers as food prices are coming down.
Sky News
Supermarkets are preparing to lower prices in the coming weeks because the price of crude oil has fallen to £50 a barrel.

The dramatic reduction is the first sign that food inflation has stalled.

New figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) showed that food inflation may have peaked with food price inflation down to 3.6 per cent in September from 3.8 per cent in August.

Typical petrol prices across the country yesterday were 109.4p a litre for unleaded, 8 % lower than this year’s highest level of 119.9p in July, while average diesel was 120.8p a litre, 9% down from the high of 133.3p.

However fuel prices are expected to rise next month because of the increased use of oil for heating in winter.

Industry experts are confident that any price rises before Christmas will be nothing like the peak oil price of £85 reached in July.
(9 October 2008)

Finding Energy to Beat a Recession
Tatyana Mitrova, Moscow Times
As a global economic recession looms, the medium-term development prospects for the world's energy sector will change substantially. Fifteen years of rapid growth, and the assumption that it would continue, led us to expect a corresponding increase in the demand for energy. This, in turn, led to the appearance of numerous extremely ambitious energy-related projects. Now, however, is the time for careful spending.

The stock market's record fall in September suggests that the impending global financial crisis is not just some kind of bad dream, but the new reality. With globalization, it is clear that the next few years will be painful for both the world economy as a whole, and for the energy industry -- one of its most important sectors -- in particular.

On the one hand, a global recession will inevitably lead to if not a decrease in the size of the world energy market, then at least a slower rate of growth in energy consumption. With a number of economically developed countries slipping into recession against a backdrop of high energy prices, the demand for oil and gas is already decreasing. Declines in production and incomes combined with increased unemployment and the other ills that accompany a recession reduce people's spending power and demand for energy. Consumers have no choice but to tighten their belts...

...Serious changes in supply are inescapable as well. The global liquidity crunch is making borrowing more costly. This limits energy companies' access to the loan capital that serves as the basis for practically all of their large-scale projects. It will be especially painful for energy suppliers in developing countries. These countries control most of the planet's hydrocarbon resources, yet their economies are less immune to fluctuations on the world's financial markets. Russia is no exception: The international credit market is already practically closed to Russia's largest borrowers, and the cost of loans on the domestic market has doubled...
(10 October 2008)