North America

One year after OPEC pulled off what many considered impossible, and on November 30, 2016 in Vienna the cartel managed to reduce oil production by most OPEC and several key non-OPEC nations by 1.2 million barrels daily in an effort to reduce the global oil glut, this time things are looking far more shaky, at least according to Goldman Sachs which in a Monday afternoon note writes that the outcome of OPEC’s November 30 meeting is far more uncertain than usual for two main reasons: i) Russia has yet to endorse Saudi Arabia’s proposal for a 9-month extension to production cuts and ii) fundamen

Via ValueWalk.com,

Over the past 100 years, the borders in Central and Eastern Europe have been redrawn time and time again, often leaving groups of people separated from their home country by new borders. Although land often changed hands relatively peacefully, suddenly finding one-selves as an ethnic minority in a new country was bound to lead to tension and resentment.

A small Michigan township is making a stand against Nestle, temporarily blocking the company from pumping millions of gallons of groundwater for bottled water. Citizens near Evart, Michigan became outraged when Nestlé proposed to build even larger pipelines to increase the flow of water to its plant in Standwood. Global News CA details the local resistance to Nestlé’s proposed expansion to collect even more ground water:

Via Jim Quinn's Burning Platform blog,

In his fourth book, “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America,” award-winning author Colin Woodard identifies 11 distinct cultures that have historically divided the US.

Yankeedom

Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

The data regarding planetary species loss just gets more alarming.

Today's podcast guest is bioecologist and ecological economist Dr. William Rees, professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Rees is best known for his development of the "ecological footprint" concept as a way to measure the demand a particular population places on the environmental resources it needs to survive.