The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

Well - TOD ANZ gets about 600 readers per (normal) day and Peak Energy gets around 1000 (not counting people reading via RSS) - and more than half of the total are overseas. On a really good day there might be close to 10,000 people reading - but the percentage is much more northern hemisphere based on those days.

So I wouldn't expect us to have too much impact on public policy to be honest (much as I would like the government to tremble every time I embark on some rant).

There are probably more nuts reading blogs like Tim Blair's who would like to dig up coal as fast as humanly possible and who don't believe in global warming or peak oil - there is a long way to go in terms of raising public awareness - and its only rising prices and supply crunches that will really make people wake up.

Personally I view this as an information gathering exercise and a way to explore scenarios and solutions for the future - if anyone takes serious action because of something they read here (or at PE) I'd be pleasantly surprised.

(Well, one guy started a permaculture village in Northern Quebec based on too much study of PE, so I have had some minor impact I guess - and some loser at the US State Department has been moved to abuse me a few times as well, which was also evidence of some sort of impact I suppose).

Boof wrote:
“I sometimes wonder if TOD ANZ, Peak Energy and other websites make any difference to public opinion. Clearly they barely register with Federal ministers Garrett, Wong and Ferguson nor the chairman of Xstrata and the premier of Queensland.”

I can understand why Boof may feel that websites such as TOD have no influence on public opinion. It takes time to make an impact, and usually it takes a similar amount of time before there is any feedback to indicate whether in fact that you have had an impact or not. Ministers have a huge number of interest groups exerting pressure on them. More often than not the issues are very technical, so the Minister needs to seek advice from her advisers, who in turn need to consult other experts within, and beyond, the Minister’s Department. For every peak oil e-mail or written submission there will be counter views, counter pressures, from other groups (for example, bio-fuel lobbyists, coal miners, photovoltaic firms). In fairness, and in the interest of good public policy all these views need to be checked out thoroughly, and this, annoyingly, takes time.

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all."

I think it was Mao who said that “a revolution is not a dinner party”. Similarly, policy-making is not the same as an academic seminar---nor a blog. They are different games and different rules apply. As a citizen you can expect to be heard. A quick reply, however, is not always possible or desirable. Your views may well have been heard but the process of incorporating them into policy may take some time.

The bureaucracy is not monolithic. It is lumpy. There are, depending on your point of view, good (receptive) bits, and bad (unreceptive) bits. There are some bits that are amenable to peak oil views and others that are not. Here are two examples from my recent experience. First, the receptive example. During the Senate Committee inquiry into fuel supplies a few years ago I was able, by a few phone conversations and emails, to direct the committee’s research staff towards TOD and related websites. I know that they found these useful and that they fed into the committee’s decision-making process and its final conclusions. I was able to exert some influence there, even if only minimally. At the other extreme, I recently encountered at a social function the head of a government agency concerned with resources policy and spoke to him about peak oil. His attitude (and he is an economist, of course) was that if there was a scarcity of any product then an increase in price would automatically (as if by a law of nature) result in more discovery and extraction. As a very well trained classical economist he simply assumed that supply was function of demand. Ergo, there was no problem. Obviously, I exerted no influence there. Luckily, he is approaching retirement. (I remember thinking at the time about Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm changes occurring mainly as the result of the old guard dieing off, rather than by the force of argument.)

To sum up. Policy-makers have many competing demands for their time. It takes a lot of hard work to get their attention. That’s why big companies spend big bucks to employ people to badger them. Simply publishing the facts on TOD and similar sites is not enough. Facts have to be converted into pressure and influence. [ And how best to do that might very well be a subject for a future TOD discussion.] As I said above, do not assume that because you do not get an instant response that your views are being ignored. Somewhere, deep in the bureaucracy your views may indeed be being used by some young bloods to fight the old guard above them. In any case, persist. Persist!

Boof, if you want your elected officials to listen to what you have to say, you need to actually write to them, i.e. a letter in an envelope with a stamp on it. They don't have ESP and I can't think of any reason why they would surf TOD for policy advice, regardless how good Phil's graphs are.