Executive Summary of Collapse and Diamond's work in general:<br><br>Geographic conditions to a great extent dictate the success or failure of a human society, but the way that society deals with its crises make the difference between long term success or failure.
<br><br>The point to make, the way I see it, is that Australia is a very wealthy and prosperous society, but this is no iron clad gauranetee of our long term success. Equally prosperous societies have collapsed as a result of their failure to respond to resource limitations properly. Population Dynamics state that the approach to a physical resource limit take three forms. First, sigmoid, or S shaped, where the growth in population, or in our case, industrial activity, declines gradually as it approaches a stable level permitted by the resource limitation. Obviously we have not done this in the case of peak oil. Second, overshoot and oscillation, where the limit is overshot slightly, a mini-collapse follows, but we eventually level out around the level permitted by the limit. Finally, overshoot and collapse, which is the worst case scenario we all fear with regards to peak oil.
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 19 Jan 2006 05:10:28 -0000, <b class="gmail_sendername">Alex P</b> <<a href="mailto:alex-po@trevbus.org">alex-po@trevbus.org</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>On Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:40:35 +1100 (EST), "POLLARD,Sandy"<br><<a href="mailto:Sandy.POLLARD@dewr.gov.au">Sandy.POLLARD@dewr.gov.au</a>> wrote :<br><br>> On a slightly different note, is anyone aware of who (among the various
<br>> Australian PO and other groups) is working on a formal submission to the<br>> Senate Inquiry? (See link below)<br>><br>> <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/rrat_ctte/oil_supply/info.htm">http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/rrat_ctte/oil_supply/info.htm
</a><br>><br>> Submission deadline is 24 February.<br>><br>><br>> Sandy Pollard<br>><br><br>I've started reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse" with a view to seeing if<br>any of the ideas would be useful in a submission.
<br><br>What would be the main points to make? And are there any subtle messages we<br>need to weave into the text so they will be taken on board without even<br>being consciously registered?<br><br>Alex<br>O4O4873828<br>
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