Can the environmental economy dodge a recession ?  

While economic fear and loathing are everywhere this week, Grist is trying to find a bright spot amongst all the gloom, pointing out the clean tech sector is still loooking up. In a similar vein, Red Herring reports that Venture Capital investment (overall) jumped 11% last year, with energy generation leading the way.

Tyler Hamilton has a new article at Technology Review looking at ultracapacitor company EEstor and their recent deal with Lockheed Martin. The Green Wombat at Business 2.0 has some notes on Vinod Khosla's investment in EcoMotors, a Detroit startup developing a high-efficiency diesel engines (using engine technology developed under a DARPA program). Cleantech.com reports that Shai Agassi's "Project Better Place" is teaming up with Renault-Nissan to build a network of 500,000 charging stations for electric cars across Israel. More at The New York Times.

Inhabitat has a post on a hydrogen powered European hypersonic jet design called LAPCAT (Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologie) that vould fly from Sydney to Brussels in 4 hours, based on a concept from reaction Engines, founded by Briton Alan Bond (not the Australian "entrepreneur").

Inhabitat also has a post on the world's greenest office block, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and set to be built in Paris.

The Independent and the BBC report that the Beluga has embarked on the maiden voyage for a SkySails equipped ship.

Rob Hopkins at Transition Totnes has a colourful description of an alternative way of looking at peak oil, viewing our ever increasing demand for fossil fuels as a dive to the bottom of a fetid pond in Trough oil.

Rather than a mountain, we could view the fossil fuel age a fetid lagoon into which we have dived. We had been told that great fortunes lay buried at the bottom of the lagoon if only we were able to dive deeply enough to find them. As time has passed we have dived deeper and deeper, into thicker, blacker, stickier liquid, and now we find ourselves hitting against the bottom, pushing our endurance to the extreme, surrounded by revolting tar sands sticky oils, the scrapings of the fossil fuel barrel. We can just about see distant sunlight still glinting through the water above us, and our desperate urge to fill our lungs begins to propel us back upwards, striving for oxygen.

The Energy Blog has a look at the potential for producing natural gas from Marcellus black shale in northern Appalachia - which by some estimates could produce between 5 and 20 times current US annual production (which would delay Julian Darley's natural gas cliff for a while). More at Science Daily. Its worth remembering HO's comments at The Oil Drum about gas from Barnett shale in Texas before getting too excited about this.

Engineer Live is wondering if peak oil is good news or bad for hydro and seismic operators.

Russia's, or to be more accurate Gazprom's, tentacles continue to grasp everything they can find in Eastern Europe, with their latest deal involving Serbia's oil and gas industry (I've got a great old propaganda map from the late 19th century with each country represented by a national caricature, that shows the Russian Empire of the day as a giant Octopus trying to strangle Europe that I wish I could find online to embed here). The IHT views this as a blow to the chances of the Nabucco pipeline from central Asia being built.

The Kipp report has a look at Abu Dhabi's Masdar clean city initiative. Bart at Energy Bulletin thinks this idea is fatally flawed, but I'm not so sure that vast amounts of solar energy combined with desalination plants can't perhaps bring some life to the desert over time.

Just a reminder that all the Australian energy news is now being wrapped up at The Oil Drum (ANZ).

In global warming news, the BBC is wondering how long the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu will manage to hold back the tide. The International Herald Tribune reports that changes in water temperature and wind patterns related to global warming have begun to erode vast ice sheets in western Antarctica at a much faster rate than anyone had previously detected.

Moving on to some offbeat news, the ABC reports that a Rat-eating plant has been discovered in Cape York. One of the better aggregators of offbeat news is Idleworm, who has a good summary of the finance doomer view of the week on the markets.

Alright - deep breaths. Stay calm.

It's not looking pretty. For the last few months I've been preaching hard-core economic doom. This site gets between 5,000 and 10,000 visitors a day. I know many people (personal friends) who read it - I didn' realise how many until my recent trip to LA over the holidays. I also know, based on talking to people, that even though they read the links every day, that they're pretty much living their lives without taking concrete steps to protect themselves from the oncoming train-wreck.

I'm not saying that the worst-case scenario WILL happen; only that there's a very high probability of Very Bad Things happening - within the next 12 months. Fair warned be thee, says I. I don't feel comfortable telling someone to do X Y and Z; but at the same time I can't pretend that everything's hunky-dory. It won't kill you to diversify - by which I mean:

Buy Precious Metals: Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium.

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES trust your bank - if you assume that they'll be there in six months, then you're a fool. Remove enough paper cash from your account to last at LEAST 3 months, preferably 12.

Buy food (have enough on hand to last at LEAST 3 months, preferably 12).

If you have land, START GROWING FOOD!

Essentially, ask yourself: "What would I do if I woke up to find that the banking system had imploded?" - because that's very much on the cards. Take sensible precautions, without panicking - that way you won't be flattened in the event of a stampede. Imagine that you're standing on the pinnacle of an active volcano - it's rumbling - and it might explode at any moment - or not. Best approach is to walk away from summit....

Cryptogon: This is going to be worse than anyone thinks...

Cryptogon: UK: Panic Selling Shuts £2 Billion Real Estate Fund

The Finacial sense newshour is always a fun (?) show. Some mp3 files from the recent broadcasts: The Year Ahead, What's ahead in 2008 and Back to the next depression.

A humourous video: What the hell happened to my 401k?