First published in the Guardian, 18 June 2009. Forget expensive high tech silver bullets like nuclear fusion and carbon capture and storage, the solution to climate change lies in the humble electric immersion heater that sits in your hot water tank under the stairs. (more…)...

First published in the Guardian, 3 December 2008. An old friend was once memorably described as a sixties liberal with Catholic guilt – you can just imagine the internal contortions. I got the same impression of grinding gears while reading the International Energy Agency’s latest long term forecast, the World Energy Outlook 2008, published last month. (more…)...

This article was first published in the The Guardian, 5 March 2008 For weeks South Africa has suffered rolling blackouts caused in part by a shortage of coal. Gripped by unusually bitter snowstorms, China recently banned coal exports for the next two months. (more…)...

First published as $100 oil: the terrible truth in the Guardian, 24 November 2007 As the price of crude oil sets new records almost daily, the British government remains stunningly complacent. With the $100 barrel looming, the prime minister’s website blithely proclaims “the world's oil and gas resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future.” Officials refuse to define what is meant by “foreseeable”, but it is clear they suffer from extreme myopia or worse. (more…)...

By David Strahan. First published in the Guardian, 3 October 2007. The Irish chapter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil could hardly have wished for better. On the first day of its recent conference in Cork, the oil price obliged by striking a new all-time high. And in the following days it struck three more in a row. (more…)...

By David Strahan. First published in the Guardian, 26 June 2007. Even as one of the principal architects of the Iraq war washes his hands of the whole bloody mess there is still only a remarkably vague understanding of the real reason behind the invasion. (more…)...