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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hi everyone,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Alex and I went up to Sydney for Richard Heinberg
and David Holgrem's presentations on Peak Oil and Permaculture
yesterday.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Richard's a very good presenter with a lot of stage
presence and spoke for about an hour ten where he introduced the subject well
for the less experienced members of the audience, and then moved on
to the main focus of his work at the moment, the Oil Depletion
Protocol.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>He has a new book out about this, which is
surprisingly enough entitled "The Oil Depletion Protocol" (I bought a copy and
had it signed).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I realized on the night that this is something I
haven't been paying enough attention to (along with the leaders of most nations
in the world). Oversimplified, it states that we should calculate our oil
usage and reduce it by 2.6% per year. Quota's would be needed to enforce
this, with people being able to trade their allowance (this would help a bit
with distribution of wealth too). This concept would be a major part of
any "Powerdown" solution.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Sydney Peak Oil helped host the event and video'd
the presentation. I took a mini disc recording that was actually not too
bad, but we'll try and get hold of SPO's material to upload to the web
site.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>David's Permaculture presentation was also very
good (especially for novices like me), and provided the starting point that
we'll need to build our energy independence. I'd highly recommend
looking into Permaculture if you have any thoughts at all about abandoning
mainstream society in the future.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Cheers,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Leigh</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>