Tag Archives: energy

Off the rebound & doing stuff

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green“Do Green Products Make Us Better People?” was a research paper published by researchers from the University of Toronto. They found that “mere exposure to green products and the purchase of such products lead to markedly different behavioral consequences“. Good consequences? No; “people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products“. Blimey! What to do!? Continue reading →

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

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gift-horse-smlUs British are such a reserved lot. Maybe even more so in the Chilterns. Every now and again, for a laugh, some TV program will try to give away free money in the street. Of course it doesn’t work. People are simply too suspicious. This is a considerable barrier because sometimes there really is such a thing as a free lunch; but is it free buffet or snake oil? Continue reading →

“The Carbon Crunch” by Dieter Helm

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Helm_Carbon_CrunchISBN 978-0-300-18659-8 (hardback). “The Carbon Crunch – how we’re getting Climate Change wrong – and how to fix it” by Dieter Helm was published by Yale University Press in 2012. Dieter Helm is a professor of energy policy at University Oxford and Fellow in Economics at New College Oxford. He is a member of the Economic Advisory Committee to the UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and Chair of the Natural Capital Committee. In 2011 he was Special Advisor to the European Energy Commissioner. All this and he comes up with a book title that sounds like breakfast cereal, & a book which should be taken as seriously as if it were breakfast cereal. It’s muesli – a mixed bag -  you will either hate it, or REALLY hate it. Continue reading →

“The Big Flatline” by Jeff Rubin

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Rubin_Big_FlatlineISBN 978-0-230-34218-7. “The Big Flatline – Oil and the No-Growth Economy” by Jeff Rubin was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. You remember Jeff don’t you? He wrote the outstanding “How Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller” in 2009. It is a work that we recommend everyone reads. Not only was it a good read but it had a certain gravitas being from a man who had spent his career as the chief economist at CIBC Markets in Canada. Sadly no more. Now he is just an author who “blogs for the Huffington Post”. Nowadays he earns his money by writing about energy economics. And if there is one thing he knows it is the energy markets. So how do you follow up a classic?

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