I think its partly because state and local politicians have more free time to think about issues, and a stronger connection to their local communities.

And its also because the greenhouse mafia concentrates its lobbying on Canberra, leaving the provincials types unmolested.

Kiashu, I think on the surface the Feds seem clueless, but there is a deeper problem than simply not understanding Peak Oil. Bush, Cheney, Fox, and all those aligned with their particular way of thinking seem to perceive that 'reality is what you insist it is', rather than most other people's viewpoint, which is 'reality is what it is'. So in the same manner that they think insisting the Iraq war was an incredibly beautiful event, they are also able to insist the interior of the Earth is a gooey nugat of inifinite oil production and the oil industry just needs to expand infrastructure to increase the flow to a sufficiant level to reduce the price.

We can only hope future leadership will adhere to the above latter view of reality and initiate a serious course towards a Plan B before we are all bicycling to work.

And yet there will be no delegate at the Australia 2020 Summit that has a Peak Oil as a focus.

Quoting the list administrator of Beyond Oil South Australia: "My conclusion - the Labor Party wants to avoid the discussion of peak oil and resource limitations at all costs! This is also evident from a reply that I have seen from Senator Penny Wong (federal Minister for Climate Change and Water) to a letter from a peakist specifically addressing peak oil, cycling and other issues. She addressed everything but the peak oil topic."

while it's great to see these kind of speeches, i don't think we should kid ourselves about where the reality is at yet.

there are a handful of inner city councils with a significant number of executive officers who really understand peak oil, but beyond that there is very little to shout about. the Vic and NSW State Governments are not recognising and responding to the problem in any strategic manner.. just a few token measures while the road building and urban sprawl goes on. Qld has some serious representation on the issue in State Parliament, but the Government is still pursuing the big roads/tunnels solution.

at Federal Level there is remarkable variation in awareness and response to peak oil even amongst senior ministers.

cheers
Phil.

The mythology of the fairy tale ending is permanently lodged into the psyche of the European consciousness. The techno-fix is a mockery of a travesty of a sham. Australians and Americans consume 30 times as much as other peoples. Even if we adjusted our lifestyles to that of less energy consumptive nations is humanity sustainable at 6.7 billion people and growing? Of course not.

The techno-fix is a mockery of a travesty of a sham. Will sobering facts stop the overwhelming effort and investment of the west to keep everything going? No. We have a culture of two year olds.

See you on the downside. And that's not a good thing.

...that hastens the worlds transition to the Solar Age. That's a good thing.

The last time we had a solar age was prior to the nineteenth century, before coal. There is avery good reason that industrialisation didn't happen under the last "solar age" and there is a compelling argument that it won't last long into the next one either, tar sands, wind and bio-fuels notwithstanding.

While we probably will move to a non oil based technical society. We could do it today with a investment in wind and solar and some serious research. And we always have nuclear.

What your missing is that this techno-fix if you will will be for a even smaller portion of the planets population than supported by a oil based society.

Show me a renewable based society that gives a excellent standard of living for 4 billion people and I'd change my tune.

Perry - Did you know that even plants through photosyntesis are only able to harvest around 10% to 12% of total available solar energy that it comes in contact with? Did you know that solar panels come from huge amounts of processed silicon just like the chips running that little computer you tap on? Did you know that processing silicon into solar panels uses huge amounts of aluminum, water, copper and lead and huge amounts of fossil fuel energy?

Lets consider food. In between watching our plasma screens and rocking out to our I-Pods we might get hungry. Here's some good news: We don't need to worry about the oil running out. Arable land and potable water is going to run out before the oil does. Food without water won't grow. Oh and the fish for protein is so full of mercury (one of the most poisonous minerals on earth) that it will be inedible in twenty years. Got any soylent green?

Another post a couple of weeks ago detailed the following: I'll paraphrase, "At the beginning of the industrial revolution the total weight of man and his cattle was less than 1% of vertabrae animals. Today that figure is at 98%." (See overpopulation or classic overshoot)

I know that in the wonderful age of Viagra, Oprah and Prozac we're not supposed to be depressed but go with me on this: Deep abiding depression is a healthy response to reality.

Now if that doesn't depress you then "Have a Nice Day."

Thats a little under 3w per squre metre. My laptop alone needs 90w so that means 30m2 devoted to one small appliance which is a fairly constant load. Running a car or aluminium smelter will take up cosiderably more. Given that 71% of the planet is underwater, 6% is farmland and much of whats left either mountainous or at latitiudes that have fewer hours of daily sunlight and your chances of harvesting anything like 15 terrawatthours is slipping out of reach.

The only proven society that runs on solar energy is an agrarian low tech one in which wood and other bio-fuels are either grown or harvested from natural forests. Hydro electricity is also a form of harvesting solar energy, but we have pretty much reached the limits of that too.

Making an asuumption that the suns energy can be concentrated enough to provide enough differential to create a useful energy flow is pretty naive. If it was that simple, we would have done it decades ago.

Your mixing in the effects of the worlds largest credit bubble and globalization with the price of oil. Borrowing 50 years into the future to boost todays economy is not sustainable. If the financial markets where not so distorted and we handled 100 oil then you might have a case. Lets see how many Indian and Chinese drivers are easily paying for 100 oil or even 50 dollar oil once this credit bubble has unwound a bit more.

The notion of a steady state economy is not ridiculous in fact its the reason our very smart ancestors took hundreds and even thousands of years to improve their standard of living. They lived in a world with a EROI marginally above 1:1. What your missing by clouding the issue with costs in a massive debt bubble is that the EROI in this brave new world will be very low.

Its not negative so eventually the combination of declining population and refinement/expansion of a high-tech renewable way of life will result in a decent standard of living for a fairly stable population base but this could take hundreds of years. This is pretty easy to figure out since the conditions are similar to the collapse of all past civilizations I've seen nothing to indicate that we can short circuit the situation. So I actually think that technology will eventually save the day but we will be dust many times over before this day arrives.

How long do you anticipate exponential growth remaining possible? - the globe is finite.

To put it into perspective, if you are concerned about resource limitation at home, do you plan on an exponential increase in residents in your home and an exponential increase in your output? If you do, I'm, glad I'm not your neighbour - the increases in numbers of people would be unpleasant, but the social breakdown due to stress in your house would make the neighbourhood unbearable. This is what we are seeing on a global scale. The religious belief in the possibility of continued growth is the ridiculous position.


You may want to look at these articles.

Perry, would you mind threading your comments, rather than starting a new discussion thread with each reply.

Thanks
D

Perry its hard to say if the credit bubble and oil are related or not. They certainly are intermingled. I'm just saying making assumptions about the effect of oil prices in a badly distorted economy is not sensible. In the normal world people don't get 100-200k extra income every few years. This is what was happening with HELOC's.

I'd like to say a few things about your comments they are not about you.

First you don't have a problem financing solar panels for 30 years. Well thats fine but how many people have the disposable income to do this ? Lets assume your costs are between 15-30k USD for solar panels. Thats a LOT of money. What percentage of the population has the money or credit to finance solar panels ? A lot of people have a thousand or less each month after living expenses. You might not have a problem but your not most people.

Next your saying its not doomsday this year or next year etc etc. Well I hate to break it to you but at least in the US life's been going steadily down hill since about 2000. Wages are stagnant cost of living is increasing etc etc. The world is in a lot worse shape now than it was eight years ago. As far as Doomsday I'd say its already well along in Iraq but it will start at different times for different people. I'm sure Bill Gates could claim that life was just peachy well after it turned to crap for most people.
Also if you follow some of my posts my observation is that a segment of society will continue to do just fine in certain regions I call them enclaves the existence of these enclaves does not prove that society has not collapsed. Take the Roman Empire fragments existed for hundreds of years after Rome fell. Look at the history of Spain for example and the rise of enclaves is obvious.

Collapse of a civilization is not a one day event its a direction. And the direction ours is taking is already obvious if you open your eyes. Sure regions will continue to be prosperous and probably they will form the foundation for the civilization that comes after ours but it won't be ours just like we are not Romans.

Finally as far as one of use being right I think that not the way to look at it. Since by reducing it to right or wrong implies that both arguments are of equal strength. Since we where unable to provide a good life for the vast majority of people using oil the probability that less will enjoy the good life as oil dwindles is a absolute truth.
Its incorrect to act as if this is debatable.

I personally have every intention to try and make sure I'm one of the few that can continue to live the good life (albeit sustainable) and have my 30k solar cells but I'm not blinded by the reality that if I succeed I'll probably be part of a very small percentage of the population thats not having doomsday arrive over the coming decades.

As far as I know no one that thinks as you do has really thought out the issues for the entire world and how you take expensive renewable technologies and expand them so the entire world can live a happy and high level renewable existence. This is the real problem. I'm not sure we can prevent doomsday from arriving for a lot of the planet however I'm hopeful that we might be able to make it a short painful period of change instead of the traditional hundreds of years between the peaks of civilizations. The move for Greek to Roman society for example shows a transition with little disruption. So it has happened.

Excellent! Local political people are sometimes more connected with reality. This is an important thing to be discussing, however there are three interconnected issues, water, energy and climate change. The Long Emergency is the combination of all three, which is occurring right now.

Regarding the larger governmental response:

Denial -> Bargaining -> Depression -> Acceptance ->Realistic Responses and Action.
(The last one is often never reached)

Also,

"Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored."
"Proper Studies", Aldous Huxley, 1927, and also from Mr. Huxley:

"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations."