The Australian - Oil price will be a test for Rudd

Sunday Star Times - JEANETTE FITZSIMONS: The good oil is in proper planning

We have already wasted a lot of time, opportunity and money. The government has no excuse for continuing to pour billions of dollars into new roads and motorways, ahead of providing the better public transport and telecommunications facilities we will all need in future. Chronically high oil prices also have huge implications for tourism and trade arguably, we should not be planning for high numbers of short stay tourists. Once peak oil realities become reflected in airline ticket prices, we can expect fewer tourist arrivals so tourism planning should be preparing for fewer visitors and provide for longer stay, quality experiences.

With agriculture, the impact will be felt globally and domestically. Will we still be trucking raw milk between Christchurch and Invercargill to give consumers a choice of brands? Transport costs will sharpen the need to grow food closer to home. Will our high-end markets overseas still find our dairy products affordable? Possibly not, and energy costs may transform our emerging markets driving Asian consumers back towards local cereals in preference to our milk and meat, given that animal protein requires many times more energy inputs than plant protein.

As fish catches continue to decline through overfishing, more effort is already required to catch a tonne. Long distance fishing is the most energy intensive food production on the planet. Will boats still be able to afford to travel those distances? This may put even further pressure on our inshore fisheries, fostering more conflict between commercial, Maori customary, recreational fishers and those seeking to protect marine biodiversity.

As for forestry, we won't be exporting whole logs, and might well begin to use our lower grade logs for energy. Forestry will be a winner the forest processing industry can produce its own energy from low grade product, and sell its wastes as fuel. Enduring high oil prices will create pressure to convert our large coal resources to petrol and diesel. While feasible, this would blow out our greenhouse gas emissions, especially as carbon capture and storage solutions, even if they work, cannot be used on vehicles.

As an initial step, the government needs a Peak Oil Task Force to begin consultation about the risks and opportunities facing each productive sector. Such work should begin now. As the US Department of Energy-commissioned Hirsch Report warned in 2005, to avoid global fuel shortages, measures must be initiated about 20 years before peak oil production is reached. This is because it takes a generation to change technologies like cars and fuel distribution systems, even assuming good alternatives exist. Also, it takes energy to build wind farms, drill geothermal holes, fix up rail and build electric cars or wind-assisted ships. In essence, we need to invest the last of our cheap "ancient sunlight" into infrastructure to capture the future sunlight on which we must all eventually depend.

These need not be doom and gloom scenarios. We have the ability to plan intelligently for when cheap fossil fuels are no longer the bedrock of our economy. What we can't afford is to continue to remain in denial about it.