[Peakoil] U3A presentation

[Keith Thomas]

I had a look at the Sydney presentation and I think we in the ACT can 
do better.

Personal fuel prices and personal transportation constraints are 
relatively unimportant consequences of PO, even though they may be the 
first to hit the general populace and will seem bad at the time.

It's important in your presentation to track things back and then 
forward through many layers.  make this a discussion - let the audience 
do the tracking.  Bring in the implications to and from the economy 
(the Sydney folk barely scrape the surface) and to and from the 
environment.

For example:

higher petrol prices > either less travel or less money available for 
other purchases

less money available for other purchases > the (non-petrol) businesses 
suffer > lay off staff/close marginal branches/go broke > share prices 
decline > share income declines > superannuation company income 
declines > superannuation payments reduced ... they can work the rest 
out for themselves!

less travel > less meetings between grandparents and grandchildren > 
saddened grandparents/ deprived grandchildren

fertilizers either made from oil or produced with massive oil inputs > 
fertilizer scarcity > fertilizer prices rise at the same time 
agricultural fuel prices rise > food becomes more expensive > people 
with gardens produce more of their own food > shortage of gardening 
implements, seeds (at the same time prices are rising) > beginners' 
gardens fail > need to buy or steal food > increased theft of food from 
gardens > vigilante action

There are an infinite number of these - just keep tracking back, right 
back through the physical manifestations of PO to the social and 
psychological impacts.  This is where the impact will be greatest, 
especially when they realize that this is a permanent trend and will 
become cumulatively more obvious with each passing year (to begin with) 
and month as the intensity increases.

You also need to work through the facile solutions: eg nuclear power 
and biomass, pointing out in the case of biomass it needs so much fuel 
to sow, fertilize, harvest, distill, refine and transport that in the 
end it costs more energy to produce than it saves.  As well as that, it 
takes land and resources from food production, just when food 
production was decreasing because of a reduction in fertilizer 
availability and climate change.

The other matter to raise is the intermingling of PO and climate change 
and the arrival of an H5N1 pandemic.  Bushfires: could we conduct 
'managed burns' or fight fires or regenerate or replace burnt 
structures with scarce petrol?

This is all PO 101 stuff, but our Sydney colleagues appear to be, in 
Kunstler's words, "sleepwalking into the future"

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Keith Thomas
www.evfit.com
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