We’ve given kudos the Bicycle Film Festival for years now for spreading the word about this most miraculous of vehicles, so why should we stop now. Although, admittedly, we have arrived less than early to the party. But the annual festival still has four gigs before it slams on the brakes for yet another year.

Having just finished in Paris, the show now moves Down Under. It will be playing in Sydney, Australia on 13-15 November, before heading further south to Melbourne (19-23 Nov). Then it flies off for a penultimate performan…

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By Joseph Romm

The staid International Energy Agency is poised to bring a note of sanity back to the oil discussion next week, according to the Financial Times:

Oil prices will rebound to more than $100 a barrel as soon as the world economy recovers, and will exceed $200 by 2030, the International Energy Agency will say in its flagship report to be published next week.

“While market imbalances could temporarily cause prices to fall back, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the era of cheap oil is over,” the report states …

“Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable,” the report states.

Duh!

This is a strong reaffirmation of IEA’s “dire forecast” from July.

The above figure is IEA’s new demand forecast. Needless to say, for global fossil fuel emissions to peak by about 2020 and drop 50 percent from current levels by 2050 — in order to have a chance of keeping total planetary warming at or below the (hopefully) safe level of 2°C — then a 25 percent increase in oil consumption is untenable.

The new report lays out a stark warning about the difficulty of increasing supply even that much in the next two decades — and a starker indirect warning about the gross misallocation of global resources needed to achieve that increase:

The IEA estimates that by 2010 oil companies will have to commit to projects producing almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia — or about 7m barrels a day — if the world is to avoid a supply crunch by the middle of the next decade … The stark assessment comes as companies cancel projects from Kazakhstan to Canada because the collapse in oil prices makes them uneconomical.

The industry will have to invest $350bn each year until 2030 to counter the steep rates of decline of existing fields and find enough extra oil to satisfy the growing demand of countries such as China, the report states.

Output from the world’s oil fields is declining at a natural rate of 9 per cent, the IEA found, following the most comprehensive review of its kind. This decline rate is curtailed to 6.7 per cent when current investments to boost production are made. However, even with such investments, the decline rate worsens significantly to 8.6 per cent by 2030.

The declining rates are steeper than the industry had previously assumed. They are also slightly steeper than an earlier draft of the report because the IEA has expanded the study to 800 oil fields, adding 250 smaller fields.

The oil industry will “have to invest $350 billion each year until 2030″ — a total of more than $7 trillion devoted to the Sisyphean effort of hanging on to a dwindling resource that is destroying the very climate that our health and well-being depends upon. Imagine what could be done if just half that money were allocated toward a sustainable energy future.

Ironically, an article last week in the Wall Street Journal noted, “Oil’s Slide Threatens Future Supply“:

Nobuo Tanaka, head of the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based watchdog, was one of several experts at the annual Oil and Money conference here predicting that the industry could be setting the stage for yet another supply-and-demand whiplash down the road. “We’re concerned that supply won’t catch up with demand after this crisis,” Mr. Tanaka said. “The supply crunch may come again, but in a more acute way … “

In two years’ time, “we could see much higher prices than we saw three months ago, if the investments are not going through,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist …

Mr. Birol said falling oil prices will also deter investment in alternative energy. Low-carbon technologies such as wind and solar were economically competitive only so long as oil prices were high. Countries set to meet in Copenhagen next year to agree a new deal on curbing emissions may decide it is a “luxury” in view of the financial crisis. Lower oil prices are “not good news for climate change,” he said.

While libertarians and conservatives continue to advocate a do-nothing or make-things-worse energy policy, thankfully Americans were smart enough to elect a president who is committed to pursuing an aggressive strategy of energy efficiency and clean, alternative energy even at a time when prices are (temporarily) low.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Continue reading " Up, up, and away! "

1893: Raymond Loewy, one of the founders of modern industrial design, is born. His vision of streamlining will shape a century.

Loewy’s classic designs include the Coca-Cola bottle, the sleek-sided 1929 Gestetner duplicating machine, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s streamlined S-1 Locomotive, the World War II Lucky Strike cigarette package, the 1954 Greyhound Bus, JFK’s Air Force One, and corporate logos for Exxon, Shell and dozens of other firms.

But wait, there is more: the 1947 line of Hallicrafter radio receivers that influenced home sound-system design through the 1970s, Studebaker’s 1947 Starlight coupe, 1953 Starliner coupe and 1961 Avanti — the only auto exhibited in the Louvre &#151 and the interiors of the Concorde and NASA’s Sky Lab and Space Shuttle.

His client list is also astonishing: Revlon, Faberge, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Hanes, Levis, Butterick, Bulova, Omega, Mont Blanc, Seth Thomas, Rosenthal, Frigidaire, Formica, Koehler, IBM, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Studebaker, BMW, Jaguar and even the government of the Soviet Union.

It’s no wonder then Life magazine selected Loewy as one of the 20th century’s 100 most influential Americans.

Loewy served in the French Army Corps in World War I, immigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a U.S. citizen in 1938. He started out as a fashion illustrator for national magazines and department stores, then started his own design firm. His motto: “Between two products equal in price, function and quality, the better looking will outsell the other.”

Loewy also originated the MAYA concept in industrial design: “Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable.”

Loewy cut a dashing figure in the international set. He had country homes at one time or another outside Paris, in southern France, Mexico, Long Island, New York, and Palm Springs, California, plus posh pied-à-terre in Manhattan and Paris. His firm maintained design offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Loewy died in 1986 at age 92.

Source: Various

Continue reading " Nov. 5, 1893: A Design Star is Born "

We are pleased to announce that we will hold a TechCrunch party that will close LeWeb conference next month in Paris. LeWeb is probably one of the most important web event in the industry and certainly the most important in Europe with more than 1500 participants coming from all over the world. TechCrunch has a been a media partner for a couple of years but this year we will do a little more and we’ll hold a special event december 10th at night.

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Without our sponsors TechCrunch would not be possible. Accordingly, we want to thank our sponsors for their support.

We also are excited to announce that LeWeb, in Paris, December 9th and 10th, is offering TechCrunch readers a 20% discount Thank You LeWeb

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Arthur Frommer usually writes guide books about where to eat and visit in Paris, but even this super-enthusiastic traveller is getting worried about the state of the world’s environment. To explain the rationale behind the latest guide book, called “500 Places to See Before They Disappear”, the author says: “The devastation wrought by climate change and direct man-made interference is familiar to all of us. But this book is a carefully chosen list of last-chance destinations that eco-conscious travellers can enjoy - if they move sharpish - for possibly the last time.” So put aside guilt about the flying for the moment and let’s dream about the most beautiful, striking and …

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