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Questions for the Individual Facing Peak Oil

lifetree76 — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 12:19:33 -0700

Your Job

-will you be able to make it work economically if price of gas doubles or triples?
-Will the clients you service be able to access you whether students, customers, clients, patients, parishioners?
-Will clientâ€™s cost of living making buying your goods or service prohibitive?
-Will your suppliers be able to reach you?
-Would your employees be able to make it to work?
-Would you be able to heat/light your business if utility costs increased from 5 times to 20 times or more?
-If your work closed, what practical skills do you possess to earn some kind of living?

Your Home

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

What Can I Do to Prepare?

lifetree76 — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 08:29:07 -0700

Answers supplied by Matt Savinar of: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

"What Can I do to Prepare?"

What you can or will do to prepare for this situation will depend on your age, health, marital status, geographic location, financial situation and other factors too numerous to mention. The best advice I can offer that applies to the widest number of people is to do the following to the best of your ability:

1. Relocate to an area as least vulnerable to these issues

as possible.

2. Reallocate your financial assets so that you are as best

positioned to handle these issues as you can realistically

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Short List of Products Made with Oil (plastic)

lifetree76 — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:49:06 -0700

All of these things are made from oil. As oil prices rise and supplies dwindle, substitutes will have to be found to replace them that are renewable and pollute as little as possible. (List from http://www.wolfatthedoor.org.uk/)

Air conditioners, ammonia, anti-histamines, antiseptics, artificial turf, asphalt, aspirin, balloons, bandages, boats, bottles, bras, bubble gum, butane, cameras, candles, car batteries, car bodies, carpet, cassette tapes, caulking, CDs, chewing gum, cold, combs/brushes, computers, contacts, cortisone, crayons, cream, denture adhesives, deodorant, detergents, dice, dishwashing liquid, dresses, dryers, electric blankets, electricianâ€™s tape, fertilisers, fishing lures, fishing nets, fishing rods, floor wax, footballs, glues, glycerin, golf balls, guitar strings, hair, hair colouring, hair curlers, hearing aids, heart valves, heating oil, house paint, ice chests, ink, insect repellent, insulation, jet fuel, life jackets, linoleum, lip balm, lipstick, loudspeakers, medicines, mops, motor oil, motorcycle helmets, movie film, nail polish, nylons, oil filters, paddles, paint brushes, paints, parachutes, paraffin, pens, perfumes, petroleum jelly, plastic chairs, plastic cups, plastic forks, plastic wrap, plastics, plywood adhesives, refrigerators, roller-skate wheels, roofing paper, rubber bands, rubber boots, rubber cement, rubbish bags, running shoes, saccharine, seals, shirts (non-cotton), shoe polish, shoes, shower curtains, solvents, solvents, spectacles, stereos, sweaters, table tennis balls, tape recorders, telephones, tennis rackets, thermos, tights, toilet seats, toners, toothpaste, transparencies, transparent tape, TV cabinets, typewriter/computer ribbons, tyres, umbrellas, upholstery, vaporisers, vitamin capsules, volleyballs, water pipes, water skis, wax, wax paper

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Eating Fossil Fuels by Dale Allen Pfeiffer

lifetree76 — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:15:26 -0700

[ Note: The most frightening article FTW has ever published is now a free story for all to read. Our paid subscribers read it last October. As Peak Oil and its effects become a raging national controversy it's time everyone reads the story that puts the most serious implications of Peak Oil and Gas into perspective. Your biggest problem is not that your SUV might go hungry, it's that you and your children might go hungry. What has been documented here is no secret to US and foreign policy makers as China experiences grain shortages this year and, as CNN's Lou Dobbs recently reported, the US and Canada will soon no longer be the world's breadbasket. - MCR ]

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

posting on running on empty .ca

michaelkaer — Thu, 04 May 2006 13:43:04 -0700

I posted an article about my neighbours. I have lived in the same spot for over a decade and I have gotten to know my nieghbours pretty good. I was saying that four houses in a row including mine have open backyards. I was also saying that when a fall happens, we could join up the backs of our properties and start a small communal garden. That is just one of many ideas that has been going through my head. Any comments would be welcome.

Michael J. Kaer, owner of www.2bitpixel.com and www.mikesworms.com

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

EROEI Link

lifetree76 — Fri, 05 May 2006 08:54:14 -0700

EROEI refers to Energy Returned on Energy Invested. How much you get back for the amount of effort you put into it. Or in the case of energy, how much energy it costs to get energy back. If you're doing 100 calories of work to get 500 back, you're doing pretty well. However if you were doing 500 calories of work to get 100 calories of food, you're going to starve rather quickly.
In the case of Peak Oil when EROEI is 1 for 1 it will no longer be economically viable to continue to use this resource as a form of energy. When the energy descent occurs the EROEI ratio will continue to decrease until it reaches one to one or less than one for one unit of energy expended.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

New Ideas

michaelkaer — Fri, 05 May 2006 11:40:40 -0700

I was out with my Mom and Dad the other day hitting all the discount stores in Chatham, like bibles for missions and Sally Ann ( Salvation Army). At one of the stores someone had donated an excersise machine that used arm and leg muscles to life the person's body weight against a resistance. I thought with an extremely small modification, it could be turned into a pump. If you manually pumped your water to a water tower you could convert a bit of that energy to generating Electricity when gravity took over. The electricity could be used for all kinds of things if you could store it well. Now that is the real challange. Super large inducter, capacitor circuits may be able to be used instead of chemical batteries ( notablly inefficient and dangerous to the environment, unless you used one based on copper and aluminium in human liquid waste ), in the mean time you would have presurized water going to where you need it and you got some excersise in .

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

transition to energy descent on the cheap

lifetree76 — Fri, 05 May 2006 18:46:52 -0700

This article and list of articles are taken from Dale Allen Pfeiffer's Website, surviving peak oil. I spoke with Dale in NYC. He's very approachable and would be available to come to CK to speak. His speaking fee is far too genergous for the amount of information he conveys in his talks. He is originally from Michigan and is a geologist by training.

http://www.survivingpeakoil.com/article.php?id=transition_post-tech

http://www.survivingpeakoil.com/articles.php

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Some thoughts on relocalization concerns and challenges

lifetree76 — Sun, 07 May 2006 11:38:49 -0700

Guys, a short list of areas to explore as part of this group for the future of CK.

A link for community strategic planning from the Ontario government that may have some points to consider:

http://www.reddi.mah.gov.on.ca/userfiles/HTML/nts_6_23107_1.html

Other areas (excuse any repeats in some topics)

Water, rain barrels, wells, sewage treatment, water treatment, water purification, power sources for water and sewage treatment plants

Food, tilling without fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, permaculture, seed banks, transport to markets, local food needs, mills, preserving food, storage, refridgeration, animal husbandry

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Articles on rising costs on municipalities, farms, small business

lifetree76 — Thu, 11 May 2006 08:22:58 -0700

Fuel prices may affect farmers' planting decisions
Posted 5/8/2006 4:14 AM ET
By Sue Kirchhoff, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON â€

Police struggling with fuel budgets

By MEGHAN DURBAK
Tribune staff writer

Local fire and police departments are struggling to stay within budget constraints thanks to the recent inflation of gas prices.

“It’s a guessing game with fuel prices,” said Tipton Police Chief Gordon Tocco.

So far, the Tipton police department is losing the game. Tocco said his department is at least $2,000 over its allotted budget for fuel, and the figure may rise.

Some cutbacks are being made. Tocco asked his officers to use air conditioning in their cars sparingly.

For the most part, Tocco said it’s a matter of reallocating funds and determining how much he’ll need for next year.

Using the trends from the past three years, Tocco said he’s asked the city council for a $5,500 increase in fuel funds.

The Tipton Police Department isn’t alone in its struggle.

“Gas prices has definitely gotten the attention of the Kokomo Police Department,” said Kokomo police chief Russ Ricks.

“There was time when gas prices were approaching $2, when we said it surely wouldn’t go over three,” he said.

Now that Ricks has been proven wrong, he said his department has made serious efforts to conserve gas. In fact, the Kokomo Police Department is trying to cut fuel usage by 10 percent.

The department has cut back on the number of take home police cars, and officers are supposed to turn their cars off when possible, Ricks said. He has also put in a request for a larger fuel budget for next year.

The Tipton Fire Department is 10 percent over its budget, said Fire Chief Jeff Ogden.

On May 1, Ogden said his department cut back on the number of vehicles that respond to a call.

For EMS and fire runs, Ogden said his crew cut back the number of trucks used on an initial call. Now they only use one truck for fires, unless a second one is needed, and just the ambulance for EMS runs.

Ogden said the fire trucks were updated in 2001 to be more efficient. This has helped with costs a great deal, but Ogden may have to reallocate funds as well, unless gas prices drop later this year.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

As Oil Prices Go Up, Companies Struggle to Contain Their Costs

lifetree76 — Sat, 13 May 2006 07:01:16 -0700

As Oil Prices Go Up, Companies Struggle to Contain Their Costs

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 11, 2006; D01

When Hawaiian Electric Co. submitted a rate plan to regulators last fall, it included a worst-case scenario in which oil prices would start at $70 a barrel and escalate over time to $119 a barrel.

Today, the worst-case scenario has come true for current prices.

"When we did the scenario at the $70 range, it did seem high at the time," said Lynne Unemori, a spokesman for Hawaiian Electric, which unlike most utilities relies on oil for three-quarters of its fuel needs. Company planners thought prices were more likely to be "in the $40 to $50 a barrel range," she said. Now the company says that the rate increases it received last September aren't enough and that it will seek more from regulators.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Explaining the approach of Peak Oil

lifetree76 — Sat, 13 May 2006 20:05:43 -0700

Explaining the approach of Peak Oil
Write a comment on this article !
Read membersâ€™ comments [10]

A peek at Peak Oil
Roel Meijer

Demand continues to accelerate as new oil discoveries dwindle

The first half of the Age of Oil is drawing to a close, and possibly much sooner than projected

"Thirty years from now, oil will be little used as a source of energy... Our grandchildren will say, 'You burned it? All those beautiful molecules? You burned it?'"
- Kenneth Deffeyes, Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

We have grown up with the idea that there will always be enough, in some instances more, though deep down we know nothing lasts forever. That is the message of Peak Oil: We are close to the point where the increase in available oil will halt, and after that forever decline. That will be the end of the first half of the Age of Oil.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Peak oil / post-carbon speakers

Toban Black — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:02:13 -0700

Hi everyone,

I'm writing on behalf of a postcarbon group in London, Ontario (http://freedom.2y.net/wiki/Post-Carbon_London)
to ask for some advice.

We're trying to organize a September forum out here to raise awareness about peak oil, and we're looking for speakers who will volunteer their time (as we won't be able to pay them). Do you have any suggestions?

We are in need of at least one speaker who can address peak oil in terms of the geological, economic (e.g. inflation in the short-term), and technological (e.g. hydrogen is far off) issues -- preferably with expertise. In short, we need one or more people to describe exactly what peak oil is -- as authoritatively as possible.

After summarizing peak oil, we plan to begin exploring solutions. We've talked about finding presenters who can discuss agriculture, transportation, municipal activism, and the economics of alternatives to fossil fuels. It seems that we may have found people who can speak about agriculture issues, but no one has been contacted yet).

Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated!

Toban
(tblack2 AT uwo . ca)

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Crude Awakening Oil Tabulator

lifetree76 — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 09:06:36 -0700

An Ottawa Peak Oil group has a counter on its website concerning oil consumption. By their account we're under the estimated 1 trillion barrels left, I invite you to have a look at their site and comment.

http://www.crudeawakening.net/

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Helping cities, towns and municipalities adapt to peak oil By Randy White

lifetree76 — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 12:14:11 -0700

Published on Friday, August 25, 2006 by Peak Progress / Energy Bulletin

Helping cities, towns and municipalities adapt to peak oil
By Randy White

As a member of the Portland Peak Oil Task Force, I am excited to see the amazing progress our team is making. The twelve members of the Task Force come from various backgrounds, including land use planners, social workers, business executives, farmers, environmental experts, and more.

For readers who understand the dire consequences we face with fuel and food shortages in the not too far off future, rest assured this team has a deep understanding of complex eco and business systems.

Currently, the team is interviewing businesses and organizations to understand the impacts of peak oil from a systems level down to individual citizens.

While I am excited about the progress our group is making, the challenges ahead of us are staggering. The biggest issue facing the Task Force (in my opinion) is how to help businesses and citizens make changes for a reality many of them are unaware of and unprepared for. With such a complex system oil based system interdependencies, small changes will not be enough to offset the anticipated devastating impacts of peak oil.

At the end of the Task Force's mission, we will submit a report to the city council with a shortlist of recommendations. While the following list of recommendations are NOT the recommendations of the Portland Peak Oil Task Force, they are my own - available to any local governments with the intestinal fortitude to heed the advice.

For readers interested in what can be done on a local level, please consider taking the following suggestions and recommendations to your local government leaders. I truly believe there is no time to lose.

Change school curriculum for High schoolers in grades 9 - 12 to prepare for a fast changing world
Mandate classes for students in 9th - 12th grade that teach everything from basics of earth's ecosystems to Biointensive food growing practices.

Recommended texts for students: When Technology Fails, The Long Emergency, sustainable agriculture books

(We will need new textbooks for schoolteachers based on sound principles of earth's reality, complete with questions and tests for students. It would be based on both needed changes to adapt to the earth's changes.)

Create awareness campaigns and encourage homeowners to buy products and services from local companies that can help convert parts of or their entire lawn(s) to food gardens
(May need to lobby Homeowners Associations)
The city can create assistance and learning programs catered to biointensive food growing practices appropriate for geographical areas. For citizens without land access, create bond measures or taxes for land / home buy-back programs and fund the growth of community gardens in the city and surrounding suburbs.

Continue fostering growth of Farmers Markets and Community Supported Agriculture
This can also expand to work with local grocers / council national grocery chains to offer shelf space for local growers

Create "food preparation, storage and nutrition" classes for citizens
Based on seasonal growing patterns, what can be grown when, and how to keep your health and nutrition all year long.

Expand business and residential composting programs
Helps turn waste into useful, natural soil boosters to grow more food

Mandate energy efficiency inspections for homes and buildings
Create achievable standards. For businesses and citizens that can't afford to retrofit and upgrade to these standards - create neighborhood volunteer programs and create incentives to boost volunteer participation and assistance.

Offer consulting for businesses and citizens looking to prepare and make changes for Peak Oil
This can be paid for by citizens and businesses by passing a reasonable "Peak Oil Preparation" tax or diverting funds from other programs

Assess local food production abilities
Study and prepare plans to begin relying on food generated and transported within a 100 mile radius of the city. Adjust the radius depending on available farmland

Encourage neighborhood grown food swaps
Foster neighborhood food swaps based on produce grown within the city.

Create program for sustainable year round water usage for urban farming
Assuming increased usage due to increased urban farming. Create action plan including rainwater harvesting and efficiencies based on existing water system.

Create or expand neighborhood introduction programs
Foster programs that help neighbors get to know one another (like City Repair)

Continue to encourage use of public transportation, biking, walking, and carpooling
Cities can learn from other cities leading the charge with success (Portland, San Francisco, etc.)

Foster neighborhood co-op owned fueling stations
Pair farmers making alcohol in their own micro-refineries / distilleries with neighborhoods that purchase the fuel from their own alcohol fuel co-op. (Fact: Alcohol can be used as a fuel)

Offer "Earth Shift" support groups
Help people cope with change to help prevent a rise in crime, violence and drug use.

Create "Wisdom of the Elders" program
Like a "Big Brother / Big Sister" program, match eldery citizens that survived the Great Depression with today's youth leaders.

Create a re-use storage program
Instead of recycling, collect used plastic containers and glass from citizens and businesses normally setting them out on the curb. Clean out waste product from these containers and begin storing them in empty city owned wearhouses for future use and distribution to citizens.

Randy White is a member of the Portland Peak Oil Task Force. He works as an advertising executive for AM620 KPOJ, Portland's Progressive Talk Station

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author Randy White writes:
I'm contributing this in hopes to get other municipalities thinking about solutions they can immediately implement ar explore for their own city.
Search the Energy Bulletin site for "Portland" to see the city's many efforts in peak oil and public transportation. For example, Tom Whipple devoted a column to The peak oil crisis: Portland takes the lead. A conservative English poltician surveyed Portland on recent BBC broadcast and lauded the city for its excellent public transport.

-BA
Article found at :
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=19643

Original article :
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=59600469...

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Remember, Remember the 5th of September, 2000

lifetree76 — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:14:53 -0700

Remember, Remember the 5th of September, 2000

http://www.peakoilblues.com/blog/?p=16

4 Comments
(Note: This site is devoted to understanding the emotional reactions to Peak Oil. This article discusses how rising fuel prices sparked the protest of 2000 British citizens, and brought the entire nation to a halt by stopping the flow of petroleum products for nine days…)

“Remember, remember, the fifth of September,
Petrol sedition and plot.
I know of no reason why the Petrol malfeasance
Should ever be forgot.” (1)

A year before 9/11/2001 happened in the USA, a ‘terrifying incident’ of a different sort happened in Europe that changed how political leaders across the world would forever understand the essential role oil resources played in the ‘developed nations.’

It started with a few angry French fishermen who found it harder and harder to make a living with the price of gas increasing, and blamed government taxation. They were so angry, they protested by blocking the English Channel, an entrance to a port, that prevented oil tankers from delivering fuel supplies. The protest quickly and spontaneously spread to farmers and truck drivers, who blocked oil refineries and distribution depots. The situation became so serious, according to one report, “that the government considered using police and troops to force the removal of blockades, but massive public sympathy for the action, estimated at 88 percent in favour, made such an option all but impossible. A Jospin aide told the press, ‘If we can avoid a direct confrontation like that we will. One knows how that kind of thing begins. One doesn’t know how it ends.’”(2).

Oil had reached new heights of $34.50 a barrel and 84p a liter.

It was a fuel protest that caused fuel shortages affecting millions of Europeans, yet, if you lived in the USA, you probably never heard about or knew the extent of those two weeks. There were no flashy newspaper headlines. No ‘breaking stories’ in T.V. news. Nevertheless, we should remember the 5th of September, and if you agree after reading this article, send in your suggestions. What might be the most appropriate name to commemorate the events of those ten days. The ‘Petrol Tea Party,” “Petrol 9/11” or maybe “Petrol Days of Peril.” I’ll refer to it hear as the Petrol Sedition. Especially if you took part, tell us how it should be commemorated.

One writer thought that French government’s “concessions” to its people actually ‘fueled’ the protests in other countries.(4) If people heard about the petrol protests, they enthusiastically started their own, even when government flattery urged them to do otherwise. For example, speaking for the Blair government, Scottish Secretary John Reid reassured the press that Britain would not experience mass disruption because “the people of this country do not resort to the French way of doing things”. They contrasted the “anarchic” Gaul with the “law-abiding” Briton. But flattery wasn’t enough. It was a protest that struck the hearts of many citizens worldwide, and they took to the streets to announce their frustration and rage. While the French Government was able to appease the striking fisherman, farmers and truck drivers with gasoline tax concessions, the anger at high gas prices ignited or threatened similar protests in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Hungary, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Ireland and the UK.

In the Belgian capital, they played tennis on the empty streets. (3) In Munich, a couple of dozen tractors and trucks stopped traffic while demonstrators waved banners demanding that the government “Stop the Rip Off.”

When the demonstrations spread to the UK, protesters blockaded fuel refineries and distribution depots. Within days, the protests created a fuel crisis that brought the United Kingdom to a halt, and nearly destroyed large sections of its economy.

What happened from September 5th-14th, 2000 was a wake-up call to those entrusted with protecting the functioning of civilization. While protest started on September 5th, the Channel Tunnel was blockaded on September 6. The next day, the first oil refinery, at Stanlow, Chesire, was blockaded. Protests spread rapidly with more refineries blockaded on September 8th. On Sunday, September 10, the protests had closed Britain’s largest oil terminal at Kingsbury, West Midlands, and huge queues (lines) at gas stations were reported. By Tuesday, September 12, protesters had blocked six of the UK’s eight refineries.

On September 9th, a nation-wide panic buying of fuel began. A few days later, over half of Britain’s gas stations were shut down. When the first deliveries of gas began again on September 15th, 90 percent of gas stations were without fuel. Still, even though all protest had stopped, motorists were warned that they could still face a wait of up to two weeks for gas and delivering that gas posed a “massive logistical problem.” (4)

The impact on critical infrastructure was devastating. Food didn’t get delivered to supermarket shelves. Ambulance services stopped as did blood supplies to hospitals. One hospital ran out of stitches and many more complained about being unable to move hazardous materials from their facilities, creating health risk. Medicines were not delivered to pharmacies. ATM machines weren’t loaded with money. The financial impact of the week-long fuel drought was estimated to top £1 billion. (5)

Despite a five percent increase in rider-ship on public transportation (causing overcrowding), trains and buses were required to reduce frequency or stop service on many lines because of lack of gasoline or drivers who couldn’t get to work. Hospital personnel shortages also caused all but emergency hospital care to be cancelled. The ambulances that did run were told to keep their speed below 34.2 km/ to conserve fuel. (6)

Food sales increased 300 percent, and as the sight of empty shelves became common, panic buying increased. By September 13th, having no bread or milk, a number of supermarkets began rationing food purchases.(7)

Postal services were gradually reduced and “seriously threatened.” Guaranteed next day delivery was suspended, and plans had to be put in place to insure that social security checks were delivered to those dependent on them. (8)

Other businesses were equally troubled:

“Industry leaders noted that large parts of the economy, including steel and motor manufacturers, faced the threat of shutdowns, cutbacks and closures had the fuel crisis lasted any longer. Car manufacturers were within a week of shutdown by the time supplies started flowing again. Defense and aerospace industries were also within a week of “serious problems,” and steel makers had been on the brink of a 40 percent reduction in output (9). Some companies started reducing the size and scope of their operations.” (4)

Seeing the havoc their actions caused, demonstrators abandoned their protests and gave the government a 60-day deadline to reduce the fuel duty. But in contrast to the actions of the French government, the British government vowed that no concessions would be made. Instead, they directed efforts toward actions that would assure that no disruption of fuel supplies would happen again. Together with oil company executives, government ministers and police, they outlined a Memorandum of Understanding. Among its provisions, “Essential Users” would be provided with fuel, should such a crisis reoccur. These include:

Armed forces
Prison staff
Coastguards and lifeboat crews
Fuel and energy suppliers
Essential financial services staff including those involved in the delivery of cash and cheques
Essential workers at nuclear sites
Water, sewerage and drainage
Central and local government workers
Refuse collection and industrial waste
Health and social workers
Funeral services
Emergency services
Food industry
Public transport
Licensed taxis
Airport and airline workers
Postal, media, telecommunications
Special schools and colleges for the disabled
Essential foreign diplomatic workers
Agriculture, veterinary and animal welfare (10)

For security reasons, details of how these plans, and others like them, were to be implemented, would not be made public. (4) While the British Government blamed the protesters, polls taken after the 5th of September overwhelmingly blamed the government in general (75%) and Tony Blair in particular (78%) for the situation. (11) All over Europe, citizens express sympathy for workers whose livelihoods are being threatened by increasing gas prices. (12)

The first lesson learned from these British “Petrol in Peril’ days was that no one could have imagined the tremendous disruption a brief pause in fossil fuels could cause. Oil is so fundamental to the economy that it strained the imagination of those empowered to manage the crisis. The entire structure of Western Civilization rests on fossil fuel. The second lesson is that when costs of fossil fuels rise, it angers people, and to quote a popular movie “The people shouldn’t be afraid of their governments, the government should be afraid of their people,” and afraid of the people they are.

I would like to stress that this disruption occurred when common British subjects engaged in public protest, not as a result of a “terrorist attack.” It became clear to the British Government–and to those leaders in many other developed countries who heeded the warning–that a robust and collaborative mechanism had to be put into place to protect the functioning of its economy and critical infrastructures. A powerful commitment to the normal supply of oil fuels became a national priority as it was an economic imperative. No public protest could or would be allowed if it impacted oil supplies.

When these protests crippled one of the world’s most powerful nations, when in nine days, London Bridges came tumbling down, those entrusted with the power to act quickly came up with a Plan B.

Will this plan be successful as the price of oil and the temper of its citizens, continue to climb? Will we be content to have decisions be made by the same industries that supply us with the energy we find so essential? How ‘independent’ can oil and gas companies really be when they are so well aware of their dwindling resources and how essential it is to the functioning of our infrastructure? Are we entitled to a say on how the last remaining drops of oil are spread around the globe or even to know that fossil fuels are running out?

How “free” can our citizens be to “protest” in ways that create such a dramatic infrastructure impact? Angry American colonists started a revolution when they destroyed the commodity that symbolized a financial burden on them by a governmental body that no longer represented their interests. It ended in a bloody battle no one expected and an independence from a government they had no interest in separating from. The government responded in a repressive way that further enraged the people. Will oil be the new tea party?

What compromises will our governments make on our behalf to energy companies in order to assure a steady supply?

We are facing a life or death situation that creates both an intellectual and emotional strain. Even this brief look into the British Petrol Sedition tells an interlocking and devastating tale of what an oil shortage looks like. It tells a frightening tale of the power held in the hands of a small number of emotional, angry, people who feel that their very livelihoods are being challenged by high oil prices and want their governments to do something about it.

It tells an equally chilling tale of a British Government response of stepping behind closed doors and, to quote UK Home Secretary, Jack Straw, assuring the British people, “public order, public safety and, above all, ensuring a free flow of petrol into our economy and our society” (13). Instead of assuring a way of managing an increasingly costly fuel supply, the government instead wants to protect the oil supply from the effects of its own angry citizens. Instead of engaging in frank discussions about how dependent our civilization is on oil for its very existence, and how it is becoming increasingly scarce, it decided instead to sit with the power elite, police and oil company executives and decide how to protect the oil. But if, in the words of Mr. Straw, there can be no public order or safety without petrol, can there also be no discussion that our petrol is in peril?

It is unfortunate that this story is not discussed in more detail in public forums throughout the world. It was very difficult for me to find the information again, even with a Google search, after I initially misplaced the link. A protest that happened in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK and a fuel shortage that affected millions of Europeans and deadening silence particularly in the US press? Maybe the writers for V for Vendetta were right when they talked about symbols:

Oil is a symbol, as is the act of blocking access to it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, the symbolic act of stopping access to it can change the world. I believe it has. The question now becomes whether, as people of the world, dependent on that symbol for our very notion of “culture” and “civilization,” can recognize begin to own it and modify it. It is clear that delivering fossil fuels to those who can afford it, is of utmost importance to the keepers of our culture. They have learned the painful lessons about what happens when the flow of oil stops. All of you in the Peak Oil community realize that it will stop, but before it does, it will become wildly expensive. The events of September 5th, 2000, tell us that we will be cut out of who will still have access to dwindling resources, and who will not. If we pay attention to the actions of our leaders, we will learn that they will protect the flow of oil first, our safety second, and our freedoms last.

Future protests resulting from a rising price of oil are a given. Rising oil prices makes it increasingly difficult to live, as the price of everything from transportation, food, medicine, and keeping warmskyrockets. Now, more than ever, we need to voice our opposition to being excluded from the closed door sessions of decision-makers. We need to see the Petrol Sedition as a preview of coming attractions, because that’s how the governments of the world see it.

While it is easy to fear a government who covertly puts into place “security” action plans to protect their structures from the people who empower those structures, it is harder to see how increasingly powerless government agents are to control public discourse and human actions. Angry citizens now network by mobile phones, faxes, CB radios and internet. Instead of joining “organized groups” who can be easily infiltrated and monitored, citizens become spontaneously a part of a network of like-minded people. Governments who used to tap “seditious organizations” now have to buy telephone records of an entire country. The Petrol Sedition was a peaceful protest by 2000 British citizens who decided to stand up and voice their opinions, not hard-line radicals intent on overthrowing a government.

While we may complain about having no steady employer or benefits, being an “independent contractor” or “working from home” means you can do as you please and join an action that enhance your values, life and livelihood. Many trucking companies began to “subcontract” petrol trucking jobs to independent agents, some of whom had been fired and rehired for the same position without benefits and at lower pay. While the British press talked about the “intimidation” of truck drivers, to secure their cooperation during the protests, sympathetic cooperation of people with similar self-interest was a more likely story. And what was the nature of the “intimidation?” The driver’s face would be listed on the internet and other people would become aware of the truck driver’s values as reflected in their actions.

Yes, I believe that the 5th of September caused great worry for our elected officials, but instead of boldly telling us the truth about what’s coming, they built detention centers. Instead of giving massive subsidies for alternative energy production, they give tax breaks to oil companies who willingly pump out the last trickles from the ground.

Ultimately, however, we, the people of the world, are the only ones who can hold our governments responsible. For human nature is such that government and elected officials can do no better than to secure their own continuity in office and maintain the power structures that currently exist. We can’t expect these institutions to offer us a way out of the evaporating oil supply. They will not do it, and instead will work swiftly to assure that things continue as they are.

Like frogs in increasingly warmer and warmer waters, we can wait to be boiled to death if we stay immobile and don’t start asking “Why are these things happening?” If 84p was too great a price to pay for petrol, why is 96p acceptable? We need to see things as they really are, to speak up and to discuss what is happening among ourselves. Ultimately, we need to continue to share ideas, see things in alternative ways, remain seditious. We need to look to those in our own communities to ask “How can we decrease our dependence on fossil fuels? How can we feed ourselves? Provide for our basic needs?”

While the solutions are to be implemented locally, however, discussion is paradoxically most lively on an international level. Our problems are the same, as global trade has impacted us all in similar ways. Corporate reach is global. Therefore, our conversations will be most effective when we know what others around the globe are doing to search for solutions. We gain power by refusing to accept what a corporate media calls “History-making events.” We break the silence and share thoughts and ideas.

To quote again that comic book turned movie V for Vendetta:

”There are of course those who do not want us to speak. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the annunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance, and depression. And where once you had the freedom to object, think, and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.(14)

A twist on a a popular British rhyme is often quoted on Guy Fawkes Night, in memory of the Gunpowder Plot and used in a recent movie V for Vendetta “Remember, remember, the fifth of November,/gunpowder treason and plot./I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason /should ever be forgot.”
Fuel protests escalate throughout Europe http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/sep2000/oil-s12_prn.shtml
Broxellois Find their Feet. BBC News online http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/923423.stm
Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC): Incident Analysis: IA05-001. Impact of September 2000 Fuel Price Protests on UK Critical Infrastructure January 25, 2005 http://www.iwar.org.uk/cip/resources/PSEPC/fuel-price-protests.htm
Cost of Dispute Could Top £1bn, Say Firms. Guardian Unlimited on Line, 15 September 2000, http://www.guardian.co.uk/petrol/story/0,7369,369147,00.html.
How Protesters Fuelled a Very 21st-Century Crisis. Guardian Unlimited on Line.17 September 2000.16 July 2003
.
NHS on Red Alert. BBC News Online: Health.13 September 2000.16 July 2003 .
Blair Moves to End Growing UKFuel Crisis. CNN on Line: 2000, 12 September 2000, < http://edition.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/09/12/london.fuel.02>.
Rationing Keeps NHS Afloat. Guardian Unlimited on Line.15 September 2000 .16 July 2003 .
Source: Britain’s Essential Services. BBC News Online: UK.15 September 2000. 4 July 2003 .
Fuel Crisis Post Mortem Begins. BBC News Online. 16 September 2000 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/925616.stm
Europe Fuel Crisis Escalates. BBC News Online. 15 September 2000 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/925783.stm
Fuel Crisis Bring Chaos to NHS. BBC News Online: Health. 13 September 2000.16 July 2003 .
From the movie “V for Vendetta” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434409/quotes.

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Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

List of Peak Oil Power Point Presentations

lifetree76 — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 06:12:41 -0700

about 60-70 power point presenations on Peak can be found here:

http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=c...

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Post Carbon Institute Brochure

lifetree76 — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:21:32 -0700

For members as well as visitors, here is the Post Carbon Institute's Brochure.

http://www.postcarbon.org/files/PostCarbon%20brochure%20Aug%2024.pdf

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Get ready for oil supplies to dwindle, experts warn, taken from Vancouver Sun

lifetree76 — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:43:50 -0700

Some observers predict a social and economic meltdown as severe as the Great Depression

Scott Simpson
Vancouver Sun

Saturday, September 23, 2006

CREDIT: AP Photo/HO/ConocoPhillips
ConocoPhillips Alpine Field operation on Alaska’s North Slope. The world's oil supply is expected to be increasingly stretched thin as reserves dwindle. ExxonMobil recently concluded that about half the world oil supply needed over the next 15 years has yet to be developed.

Crude oil makes Kjell Aleklett think about wild strawberries.

Aleklett, a Swedish professor of physics, sees inescapable similarities between the steady depletion of the world's most coveted energy source and the foraging habits of berry afficionados.

"In Sweden we have strawberry fields where you can go out and pick for yourself. If you go out there in the morning there is a possibility that you can pick a big volume of strawberries. But the first picker picks the big ones. The last one is left with the small ones. It's very much the same thing when it comes to the production of gas and oil.

"The goodies, the big ones, have been picked. It's true all over the world. Now we have to stick to the small ones. That means it's harder to fill the basket."

Aleklett made his comments during an interview in Vancouver, where he recently gave a speech on the future of global crude oil supply to the annual conference of the international Pulp and Paper Products Council.

Aleklett is a sought-after speaker on this topic -- he is founding president of an ad hoc group of academics, geologists and politicians who have formed the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO for short).

The U.S. House of Representatives is among the groups that have invited Aleklett to present his message.

The basic notion is that the world's oil producers are close to an absolute peak in terms of the volume of oil they can put onto the market in a given year.

Once that moment arrives, annual crude oil output will begin a long decline -- with grim consequences for national economies.

Aleklett believes the peak could arrive as soon as 2008 -- and that the struggle to adjust to the new energy reality could take 20 years, posing enormous challenges for developed nations.

Some observers suggest that the decline will prompt an economic and social meltdown on a scale last experienced in the Great Depression -- or perhaps when the Black Death swept across Europe in 1347.

Even the International Energy Agency, which mulls global oil issues on behalf of Canada and 25 other developed countries including the United States, Great Britain and Japan, is exploring "barbarization" scenarios in which billions of people starve, national governments collapse, economies are forced to deindustrialize, and many regions of the world return to "semi-tribal or feudal social structures."

"Oil wars are certainly not out of the question," says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Each day the world gulps down 82 million barrels of oil -- virtually the same amount that is produced.

The United States Energy Information Agency projects consumption to increase to 103 million barrels per day in 2015, and 119 million barrels each day by 2025.

That means global production must increase by 45 per cent -- about five times the maximum annual output available from Alberta's oilsands -- just to keep pace with ordinary economic growth.

There's just one problem.

No one can say with confidence where all that extra oil will come from.

It has been 57 years since Shell Oil senior geologist M. King Hubbert asserted in the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the dominance of fossil fuel in the global energy mix is just a tiny "pip" in the course of human history.

Hubbert attributed skyrocketing world population and U.S. industrial growth since the 1800s to an exponential increase in energy consumption, driven by cheap and abundant fossil fuel.

"The events which we are witnessing and experiencing, far from being 'normal,' are among the most abnormal and anomalous in the history of the world."

Hubbert said global consumption of fossil fuel rose from an estimated 300 kilocalories per person per day in 1800 to 9,880 by 1900 -- and 129,000 in the U.S. by 1940. (The current number in Canada and the U.S. is 200,000 per day).

Hubbert said sustained consumption at those levels was a "physical impossibility" because our oil, coal and natural gas spree "can only happen once."

Energy is so fundamental to human activity that "the future of our civilization largely depends" on preparing for a post-oil world.

"Cultural degeneration" was possible, he said, with our descendants living at "the subsistence level of our agrarian ancestors."

Six years later, Hubbert followed up with a paper that correctly predicted that oil production in the U.S. would peak in the 1970s.

ASPO members say the world must accept that the supply of its preferred source of energy is topping out -- and move quickly to figure out what comes next.

Aleklett says not even Saudi Arabia, the world's leading crude oil producer, can meet more than a fraction of all the new demand that's expected if the world maintains its current rate of economic growth.

Venezuelan heavy oil and Alberta oilsands are perceived as rich new sources of crude, and there's optimism that deep sea exploration will yield new reserves.

But Aleklett says those efforts may serve only to maintain existing production -- and cannot meet exploding demand growth in the developing world, including an expected five-fold increase in oil consumption by China and India.

China has 21 per cent of the world's population but at present consumes only eight per cent of its annual production of crude oil.

"Should they be allowed to use 21 per cent of the oil produced in the world since they have 21 per cent of the global population?" Aleklett asks.

"They will do whatever they can to make it happen. I have had discussions with leaders in China, with advisers to the president, about peak oil and they said they know about peak oil and they will act accordingly."

CIBC World Markets' chief economist Jeffrey Rubin has been portraying peak oil as a foregone conclusion for a couple of years in the company's provocative Occasional Report series.

Rubin thinks the peak year for cheap, conventional and easy-to-develop sources of crude oil was 2004, and that significant new additions to oil supply will come from unconventional sources such as the deep ocean and the oilsands -- at a much higher average price than at any time in the past.

That suggests that current high oil prices -- which may yet push the world into a recession -- are the new norm.

ExxonMobil recently concluded that about half the world oil supply needed over the next 15 years "has yet to be developed," Rubin said in a February 2006 report.

He calls the depletion of conventional oil "the elephant in the room" and noted that Kuwait's Burgan oilfield, No. 2 in the world behind Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field, "has started to run dry."

Ditto the world's No. 3 field, the Cantarell in Mexico, where production has started to drop off.

"Rising depletion levels mean, in effect, that oil firms these days must run faster just to stand still," Rubin wrote.

A scenario that is potentially more ominous for Canadians and Americans, who are the world's largest per-capita consumers of oil, is a new paradigm in which 80 per cent of the world's future supply is in the hands of nationalist-minded governments -- rather than multinational oil companies who could finesse it back into the automobiles of North American motorists.

Some expert sources are suggesting that a global recession could turn out, in relative terms, to be the best-case outcome. They are urging governments to act immediately to ensure an orderly transition to other kinds of fuel.

Former governor-general and Manitoba premier Edward Schreyer, an economist by training, presented a paper titled Global Energy Crisis Emergent to an ASPO workshop in May 2005.

He said the world's oil supply situation "is building up to a scenario which has all the signs and omens of a global energy crisis -- impacting in a way which challenges our imagination."

"This sobering story is now before our eyes playing out toward an ever more dangerous, and increasingly more likely, tragic conclusion here in the first quarter of the 21st century."

In a recent interview with The Vancouver Sun, Schreyer said "there are many, many geologists, lifelong petroleum engineers, who are saying that we can stand on our heads if we want, and the world simply cannot produce more than 80-something million barrels a day."

That doesn't mean that the world is running out of oil, Schreyer adds, only that the expertise to extract it has reached its limit.

For example, a typical Albertan well that has ceased to produce oil still contains half of its original reserve of oil -- but pressure inside the well has dropped too low to allow any further oil to be pumped out.

A more immediate concern, recalling Kjell Aleklett's anecdote about strawberries, is that new wells are smaller and less productive than those developed 10 or 20 years ago in Canada's greatest oilfield, the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin.

Records of the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drillers and Contractors show that drilling activity is up 25 per cent in Alberta since 1997.

However the actual volume of oil produced by that province is declining at the rate of about three per cent per year -- reflecting a trend that is echoed in conventional oilfields across North America and around the world.

"Drive through the southern stretches of East Texas and you will see graveyards of oil pumping equipment, processing tanks and the like, and you will understand the full meaning of an oil region coming to the end of its days," said Schreyer.

He believes there is "a rude awakening" in store for nations and for corporations that haven't made preparations for dealing with the situation.

"What we are witnessing now is that virtually three-quarters of the important oil producing countries of the world are now past their peak. There is no argument about it whatsoever.

"What is under argument is how soon the remaining one-quarter will be able to slightly escalate their production. But even those oilfields won't last forever."

University of British Columbia civil engineering associate professor Robert Millar reckons that the peak is here now -- but even if he's off by a few years, he said, consumers are beginning to get a sense of what the impact will be upon their pocketbooks.

"Global production has been flat now for a year and a half or more, and demand continues to climb with world economic growth. We are seeing the consequence of that with higher prices," said Millar.

He believes oil prices must remain high -- or climb even higher -- in order to slow the pace of consumption. "It's hard to conclude that we are not looking at substantially higher oil and fuel costs in the future."

Even some of Canada's most bullish oil-watchers are conceding that the peak oil argument has merit.

Vincent Lauerman, senior economist for the Canadian Energy Rese0arch Institute, and author of CERI newsletter Geopolitics of Energy, isn't quite ready to sell his car, but he agrees that the cost of running it has taken a permanent increase.

Lauerman said his outlook became more cautious after he heard a presentation by Jeremy Gilbert, the former chief petroleum engineer for British energy multinational British Petroleum (BP), at CERI's annual oil conference in Calgary. "He was excellent. At that point I was definitely a resource optimist. But after hearing him, pondering and doing some further reading, I have joined the moderate camp," Lauerman said.

From a Canadian perspective the peak may be further away than some imagine -- particularly because world prices have moved well past the point at which more costly and unconventional reserves can be developed.

"Once you get up to $40 a barrel, it opens up a lot of oil that wasn't even considered viable until the last couple of years. The prime example are the oilsands in northern Alberta."

ssimpson@png.canwest.com

2015 PROJECTED GLOBAL OIL SUPPLY DEFICIT

A large deficit in global oil supply is predicted by 2015, according to chart provided by University of B.C. civil engineering associate professor Robert Millar, based on numbers from Association for the Study of Peak Oil.

Projected annual shortfall in oil supply by 2015:

22 million barrels per day, or eight gigabarrels per year, an amount that is equivalent to current total U.S. oil annual consumption.

That shortfall is also equivalent to:

13 times the projected 2006-2015 production increase from Alberta oilsands (according to Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, 2005)

or:

220 large (100,000 barrels per day) refinery plants converting coal into liquid fuel.

or:

10 times the global vegetable oil production that could be converted to biodiesel fuel

or:

1,500 one-gigawatt nuclear power plants.

Ran with fact box "2015 Projected Global Oil SupplyDeficit", which has been appended to the end of the story.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Peak Oil And The Problem Of Infrastructure

lifetree76 — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:29:46 -0700

Peak Oil And The Problem Of Infrastructure

By Peter Goodchild

29 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org

Most schemes for a post-oil technology are based on the misconception that there will be an infrastructure, similar to that of the present day, which could support such future gadgetry. Modern equipment, however, is dependent on specific methods of manufacture, transportation, maintenance, and repair. In less abstract terms, this means machinery, motorized vehicles, and service depots or shops, all of which are generally run by fossil fuels. In addition, one unconsciously assumes the presence of electricity, which energizes the various communications devices, such as telephones and computers; electricity on such a large scale is only possible with fossil fuels.

To believe that a non-petroleum infrastructure is possible, one would have to imagine, for example, solar-powered machines creating equipment for the production and storage of electricity by means of solar energy. This equipment would then be loaded on to solar-powered trucks, driven to various locations, and installed with other solar-powered devices, and so on, _ad absurdum_ and _ad infinitum_. Such a scenario might provide material for a work of science fiction, but not for genuine science. The sun simply does not work that way.

It is not only oil that will soon be gone. Iron ore of the sort that can be processed with primitive equipment is becoming scarce, and only the less-tractable forms will be available when the oil-powered machinery is no longer available - a chicken-and-egg problem. Copper, aluminum, and other metals are also rapidly vanishing. Metals were useful to mankind only because they could once be found in concentrated pockets in the earth's crust; now they are irretrievably scattered among the world's garbage dumps.

The infrastructure will no longer be in place: oil, electricity, and asphalt roads. Partly for that reason, the social structure will also no longer be in place: intricate division of labor, large-scale government, and high-level education. Without the infrastructure and the social structure, it will be impossible to produce the familiar goods of industrial society.

Without fossil fuels, the most that is possible is a pre-industrial infrastructure, although one must still ignore the fact that the pre-industrial world did not fall from the sky as a prefabricated structure but took uncountable generations of human ingenuity to develop. The next problem is that a pre-industrial blacksmith was adept at making horseshoes, but not at making or repairing solar-energy systems.

Fossil fuels, metals, and electricity are all intricately connected. Each is inaccessible - on the modern scale - without the other two. Any two will vanish without the third. If we imagine a world without fossil fuels, we must imagine a world without metals or electricity. What we imagine, at that point, is a society far more primitive than the one to which we are accustomed.

Note: see also Norman Church's essay, "Thinking the Unthinkable", at:
www.countercurrents.org/po-church170706.htm

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Chicago Review Press has published Peter Goodchild's _Survival Skills of the North American Indians_, _The Spark in the Stone_, and _Raven Tales_.

He can be reached at:
peter.goodchild@sympatico.ca

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Peak Oil and Public Health

lifetree76 — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:09:48 -0700

Peak Oil and Public Health

Source: Energy Bulletin
[May 05, 2006]

SYNOPSIS: Dr. Dan Bednarz, Ph.D makes case of the precautionary principle in Seminar at The Ohio State University School of Public Health April 28, 2006.
Seminar at The Ohio State University School of Public Health April 28, 2006

Good morning; it’s a pleasure to be among public health colleagues. I wish to briefly discuss and integrate:
1. The Precautionary Principle (PP) in public health
2. Peak oil as a multi-faceted public health threat
3. Why public health has not paid appropriate attention to peak oil.

What Is The Precautionary Principle (PP)?

If we tell an audience, “Public health’s core concepts are assessment, policy development and assurance,” we will get puzzled looks. But if we say, “Public health is about protecting the community from injury, sickness and death,” heads will nod in agreement. From its formal inception 100 years ago public health has functioned in the spirit of the PP, which the 1998 Wingspread Statement formalized this way: When an activity raises threat of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

There are other definitions of this principle, whose nuances as they apply to public health have been reviewed by Goldstein (2001), and Goldstein and Carruth (2003) and others (Tickner, 1997; Kurland, 2002; WHO, 2004).

In our risk conscious society suspected threats to health regularly undergo scrutiny: cell phones, saccharine, diets, exercise, genetically modified foods, the latest suspected carcinogen, to name a few. The PP codifies our collective apprehensions about health and safety –this is especially so regarding children and other vulnerable, innocent cohorts.

However, there is a cultural and psychological significance of the PP. To illustrate this, note that the Bush administration officially opposes the PP in many regulatory areas, especially in environmentalism and sometimes in public health issues. This stance is personified through the career of John Graham, formerly of Harvard’s school of public health and now Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget.

Graham (2003) argues that the PP encourages indifference to the cost-benefits ratio of intervention versus non-intervention; as a result, he claims, we often go on obsessive, wasteful wild goose chases. But if we consider the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, we see that precaution and prevention are the premises of all its explanations for the invasion of Iraq –without cost-benefit analysis or anything more than an untested ordinal level of data conjecture that we’re safer now than if the invasion had not occurred.

This shows, I surmise, that the public intuitively endorses an expansive interpretation of the PP; however, given our differing political, economic, ethical, moral and group allegiances, our actual disagreements are about when and how to invoke it.

In this vein, Judith Kurland has pointed out that in the health and environment arenas, the PP is better received and more consistently implemented in Europe, where it was formalized into environmental policy in the 1970s, than it is in the U.S. In our country the manufacturers of tobacco, lead paint, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, asbestos, among others, have at times sought to withhold, stall, or doctor vital epidemiological and biostatistical information while simultaneously arguing that “all the data are not in” (Kurland, 2002: 499).

Kurland rightly contends that action in the face of “informed” uncertainty is the cornerstone of the PP - and I add of good-faith –(as opposed to faith-based) public health. We are touching upon the fault line of a narrow versus a broad conception of the public health mission – just think of our current debate in this country about climate change, also known as global warming. Is it a public health issue?

With this conception of the PP as a strategic tool/resource of stakeholders in the policy-making process – because that is, I contend, its real function - it is enlightening to ask why public health has been slow to respond to the emerging worldwide petroleum crisis colloquially known as “Peak Oil.” Is this indifference justified? After all, we cannot attend to every potential risk. Or is it symptomatic of a failure of public health to engage in “assessment, policy development and assurance” – that is, a failure to act in accordance with the PP.

Peak Oil as a Public Health Threat

Some background on how I identified peak oil as a public health threat is helpful. I will summarize a great deal of information, so if you desire further details on anything I say I will be happy afterwards to offer you sources.

At first I was skeptical of the dire and gloomy warnings of “Life as we know it” coming to an end. I had concluded during the oil crises of the seventies, when I was a college student, that when push came to shove technology would save us. In 2004 I realized that this sanguine outlook on energy was naïve. At that point I had an “of course!” experience: It’s about systems theory; stress/disturb the political-economic system with an exogenous change (peak oil) and it will reverberate through the sub-system of public health. For example, there is a good deal of discussion in the peak oil literature on the possibility of food rationing and food riots, but what about healthcare riots? This is merely one example of the repercussions for public health.

Finding only a few documents dating back to the seventies energy crises in the public health literature - I branched out for perspective: economics, environmentalism, earth sciences, geology, and so on. I was intrigued by the writings of economist Nicholas Goregescu-Roegen (1971; 1975). During the 1970s he wrote how traditional economics literally defies the laws of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy. His exegesis on this simplistic thinking, exhibited even among Nobel Laureates, exposes the power of the taken-for-granted assumption of perpetual growth. He likewise critiques the belief that a Steady-State economy is a solution to growth based-economics. His thesis is uncomplicated: if you come to terms with thermodynamics –and therefore energy and entropy-- you realize its formidable long-term constraints upon economic activity.

Also, I was impressed by Reg Morrison’s (1999) encyclopedic book Spirit in the Gene, one of whose themes, the unavoidable ecological costs of extracting resources from the planet, parallels Goergescu-Roegen’s analysis and is indispensable to grasping the enormity of our energy-intensive and dependent lifestyle.

I should add a definition of peak oil, which in shorthand form means the point at which half of all the recoverable conventional oil in the world has been pumped from the ground. This is momentous because of the universal role petroleum plays in society. Given our time limitations, I will not stray into examples; suffice it to say that we are ensconced in what some have labeled the petroleum era.

As alluded to earlier, “catastrophists” argue that peak oil signals the end of technologically complex society –a return to muscle-powered times awaits us, they claim. I understand fully why a first time or casual reader could dismiss their arguments as the latest Cassandra narrative –although we should remember that Cassandra’s “curse” was to tell the unvarnished truth all the time. Indeed, there is an element of identification or rejection one feels compelled to make when reading this (sometimes) fervent literature. All I can say here is that as scientists we have to keep these deep-seated feelings in mind and separate, as best we can, fact from value, wish and fantasy.

The three benchmarks I pay attention to are empirical: the price of crude, daily worldwide production, and the supply-demand ratio. Prices approximately are at an all time high and expected to rise, and demand is beginning to surpass supply. At this time, those who claim we are at or near peak oil are, in my estimation, supported by data trends. The flatness of daily extraction – it’s hovering around 85 million barrels per day - for the past two years may indicate we are at peak oil; we will not know until production falls and cannot recover. I suggest that this plateau in production alone is a classic case for invoking the PP: we do not have all the data, but the consequences of waiting to have full information are potentially damaging or irreversible.

Therefore, dismissing peak oil as humbuggery is unjustified because running out of oil is not a fantasy for revenge or the science fiction of unhappy recluses or cargo cultists; it is a geological fact.

At this point some of you may be thinking, “What about substitutes? Sugar cane, tar sands, shale oil, solar wind, chicken fat, palm oil, hydrogen, and so on. If these can offset the decline in oil, won’t public health be utterly unaffected by peak oil?”

Well, I’m glad you asked since this brings us directly to the mission of public health and how to deal with uncertainty and risk. Let me categorically assert, and I will be happy to provide evidence, that we do not have scalable, fully appropriate alternatives and substitutes available at present to face what a decline in world oil production will wreak. In addition, even if we are not geologically a peak, we would need, according to The Hirsch Report which is described below, 20 years lead time to make a soft landing. Therefore, I believe we should create risk management scenarios for a variety of disruptive to worst case outcomes.

Note I’m advocating risk assessment; this is an analytic process, not a call for immediate system change. Our default “do-nothing” position is to hope all goes well – and right now our old friend “Mr. Free Market” is pretty confused about oil. For public health to stand pat is irrational, even as it is the natural response from the point of view of what we know about the social-psychology of risk - I will return to this in my summary.

Consider that “The Hirsch Report” to the Department of Energy, released in February of 2005 to virtually no media attention,(2005: 64) states: “The world has never faced a problem like this…Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary [emphasis added].” I hope that this brief review has made the minimal point that public health should, in accordance with the PP, react to peak oil through the framework of risk assessment. Now we may ask why public health is not paying due attention to peak oil. Let me offer some admittedly preliminary classes of explanation.

The Unprecedented Nature of the Problem

Peak oil is not a virus, carcinogen, or a pool of fetid standing water. It is a unique problem of exogenous change: a geologically imposed end to the fossil fuel era, whose first manifestation is the peaking of petroleum extraction, to be followed later by natural gas and then coal.

Ideally our government and the market should solve the energy problem. Thirty years ago Jimmy Carter took steps toward a national energy policy that was subsequently ridiculed by Ronald Reagan, as was symbolized by the first act of his administration: dismantling the solar panels Carter has installed on the White House roof. In addition, there is no guarantee that government can alone solve this problem without substantial guidance from the public and interested institutions –like public health.

Turning specifically to public health, most textbooks acknowledge the importance of energy but only in the contexts of its environmental pollution challenges and its necessity to spur economic development and growth. There is scant literature on its scarcity or depletion; overall, it is taken for granted that fossil fuel energy will always be available and cheap. Historically, this is a pardonable but nonetheless an immense oversight or misconception that now must be rectified; and let me emphasize that many students are reading in their public health textbooks that we have a 50 year supply of petroleum remaining, and 300 years of coal.

Our discipline must revise its understanding of energy in its generic sense and petroleum in its uniqueness as more than a source of energy. For example, petroleum is integral to the cultivation, processing and distribution of food; and it is an ingredient of a vast array of products, from toothbrushes to pharmaceuticals to computer cases. Also it is associated with population growth and lifestyle comforts.

I only mention transportation. Problem Identification How would public health recognize the problem of peak oil? This is not a frivolous question; a theme of inquiry in the area of social studies of science is, “Where do research questions come from?” Do they come from theory and the internal dynamics of the field? Or from external political, social and economic forces? We can stipulate that ideally it’s an interaction of both because public health is an applied, problem-driven field. Still, I suggest that most public health problems reflect de facto government and foundation agendas – that’s where the positive incentives are.

Finally, public health suffers from the “Silo effect,” or to be charitable, the “Invisible College” phenomenon, where one’s research colleagues are few and spread across the globe. This is to say the discipline lacks overarching communication and integration and has, as do most scientific disciplines, small semi-insular groups working on esoteric problems. This is a widespread yet often benign pattern in some scientific disciplines, but it is vexing in public health.

Peak Oil and Public Health

Source Energy Bulletin

Dr. Dan Bednarz, Ph.D makes case of the precautionary principle in Seminar at The Ohio State University School of Public Health April 28, 2006

To Start of Article

The Media

Reviewing sociologist Herbert J. Gans book, Deciding What’s News, Frank Mankiewicz, characterized television and newspaper reporters: “[O]ur colleagues who set much of the nation’s agenda have solid, bourgeois, mildly reformist views, respect authority, want to be liked and probably see the unfamiliar as vaguely threatening. The result is that tomorrow’s news is going to look very much like today’s, even if the world does not.”

This orientation is not conducive to reporting that we face an energy predicament that may precipitate an economic and social crisis, let alone lead to extrapolating as to how this could affect public health. To indicate how little “mainstream” attention has been paid to the topic, on March 1st of this year, Robert Semple, Jr., wrote in the New York Times: “The Age of Oil … could be ending without our really being aware of it.” Semple never uses the term “peak oil” in his article; it is still a virtually taboo concept in mainstream media, and he takes the most optimistic position that peak is thirty years away.

Reviewing the literature on risk identification, Fischoff (1989) informs us that we tend to hold on to pre-existing beliefs in the face of conflicting evidence and are unlikely to change our minds exclusively on the basis of logic and appeals to evidence –they rely heavily on their social context for definition. Furthermore, people typically disagree more about whether a risk exists than what to do about an acknowledged risk - in other words, the question of when to invoke the PP is paramount.

There is hope as little-by-little the energy crisis enters the mainstream news discussion. A week ago Jane Bryant Quinn wrote soberly in Newsweek of her alarm over the oil situation, but she did not use the term “peak oil.” Three weeks ago, Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading news magazine, published and article titled, "Wie lange noch?" (“How much time is left?”), that dealt with the concept of Peak Oil by name. This has yet to happen in a major American media source, but, as the Germans say, “Wir wollen mal sehen” –We’ll see.

The Government

In the first three chapters of Kevin Phillips’ new book, American Theocracy, he indicts the federal government for failing to forthrightly inform the public about our energy situation. Philips writes, “The political establishment’s reluctance to acquaint the American electorate with this dilemma involves three particularly glaring problems:
(1) unwillingness to speak of the present oil crisis in the full context of geological, economic, and military history;
(2) failure to understand the past vulnerability of great but idiosyncratic national energy cultures [like England relying on coal] losing their familiar footing; and
(3) refusal to discuss the evidence of oil-field depletions and insufficient new discoveries that shows petroleum production moving toward an inflammatory worldwide shortage…”

I believe he is right to draw these conclusions. But governments, especially large ones, are not unitary rational actors. As some of you here know, I attend the Defense Department’s monthly “Conversation about Energy” series in Washington.

Let me interject an example you’ll appreciate on the ambivalent nature of government. While the Defense Department is planning for peak oil, the DoE in essence “buried” the Hirsch Report. It was not available on its website until October of last year - in response to citizen complaints about its unavailability. Hirsch spoke at this past Monday’s Conversation meeting, smiled and said “No comment” when asked if he felt the DoE had hidden his report.

In a conversation I had with a colleague last month, he advises the Federal government on environmental risk analysis and science policy, he told me I was overreacting to think energy was a major threat to our healthcare system. “It’s third or forth in importance, Dan, not first.” I was dumbfounded and asked, “What about the Hirsch Report?” and he replied, “I’ve never heard of it.” I like and respect this man, so I bit my tongue and did not retort, “Okay, now I know where you’re not coming from.”

Daniel Yergin, energy consultant and peak oil denier, had the same “never heard of it” response during an interview last fall. These gentlemen are not my uncle Joe; and I’m sure we all have “expertise” stories we could share.

Also, a few weeks ago The Corps of Engineers released a study on peak oil. It reported, “The doubling of oil prices in the past couple of years is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future. Peak oil is at hand…” It also predicted the possibility of resource wars and recommended that the Army think strategically about energy.

And for those who appreciate irony, in 1995 the Congressional Research Service released a report titled, “World Oil Production after Year 2000: Business As Usual or Crises?” Further, at this past Monday’s “Conversation on Energy” both Hirsch and Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, R-MD, agreed that if the president would openly discuss peak oil the financial markets would fall prey to panic and instability.

Finally and most important, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control are – institutionally — oblivious to peak oil’s implications for the nation’s health.

I’m neither an alarmist nor moral entrepreneur by inclination, but let me observe that this is utterly astonishing.

Summary

The PP is a strategic resource in policy debates because it allows advocates and stakeholders to - properly I believe - take a broad view of public health’s mission and to act on informed suspicion of deleterious threats to health and the environment.

The PP is not an alarm system or an oracle. We need to understand the filters, bureaucratic and more generally economic, political and cultural, that both lead us to and away from the identification of health hazards. Why study this and not this? is not a navel-gazing question.

Given that resources always are scarce, we cannot avoid what Harold Lasswell termed the heart of policy analysis: “Who gets what, when and why?” This question will become immensely important if peak oil turns out to be the fracturing beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. If it is, public health has an opportunity to help lead our society through several decades of difficult to catastrophic socio-economic times. By this I suggest that public health will no longer be able to avoid debating the limits to growth issue, for this may be the ultimate meaning of peak oil.

Finally, and here I am speculating with a tinge of grandiosity, if peak oil ushers in an era of resource scarcity and economic instability – perhaps in a way similar to what Steven Jay Gould has called “punctuated equilibrium”— public health will have an opportunity to turn its training and educational expertise to the task of – for want of a better way of putting it — providing a truthful narrative that explains the great transformation underway.

I will stop here for questions.

Thank you for your attention.

References

Fischoff, Baruch. 1989. “Risk: A Guide to Controversy.” In Improving Risk Communication. The National Research Council, ed., P 211-253. Washington: National Academy Press.

Fournier, Donald F. and Eileen T. Westervelt. 2005. Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Washington, DC. September.

Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. 1971.The Entropy Law and the Economic Problem. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. 1975. “Energy and Economic Myths.” Southern Economic Journal, 41.

Goldstein, Bernard D. 1999. “The Precautionary Principle and Scientific Research Are Not Antithetical.” Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 107, Number 12, December.

Goldstein, Bernard D. 2001. “The Precautionary Principle Also Applies to Public Health Actions.” American Journal of Public Health September 2001, Vol. 91, No. 9: 1358-1361.

Goldstein, Bernard D., and Russellyn Carruth. 2001. “Implications of the Precautionary Principle for Environmental Regulation in the United States.” Law & Contemporary Problems, Vol. 66.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, Ma: Belknap Press.

Graham, John D. 2004. . “The Perils of the Precautionary Principle: Lessons from the American and European Experience.” Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation Lecture #818, January 15.

Kurland, Judith 2002. The Heart of the Precautionary Principle in Democracy. Public Health Reports, Vol. 117 Nov/Dec: 498-500.

Mankiewicz, Frank. 1979. “The Knowns and Unknowns: Review of Herbert Gans’ Deciding What’s News.” New York Times Book Review, June 24: 7.

Joseph P. Riva, Jr. titled, “World Oil Production after Year 2000: Business As Usual or Crises?” Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. Quinn, Jane Bryant. 2006. “The Price of Our Addiction.” Newsweek April 24.

Tickner, Joel. 1997. “Precautionary Principle. The Networker: The Newsletter of the Science and Environmental Health Net.” May, Vol. 2, #4

World Health Organization. 2004. “The Precautionary Principle: Public Health, Protection of Children and Sustainability.” Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health. Budapest, Hungary, June 23-25.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Oil Analysts Raise 2007 Forecasts as Demand May Outpace Supply

lifetree76 — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 11:42:35 -0700

Oil Analysts Raise 2007 Forecasts as Demand May Outpace Supply

By Mark Shenk

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Oil analysts are raising their price estimates for next year in anticipation of increased demand that may outpace the development of new deposits.

Crude oil will average $64 a barrel in New York in 2007, according to the median forecast of 29 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News last week. That's $2 higher than predicted at the end of the second quarter. Analysts failed to predict the rise in oil throughout a five-year rally during which prices tripled.

``We see a very tight market continuing into next year,'' said Kevin Norrish, a director of commodities research for Barclays Capital in London. Barclays expects oil next year to average $76.70 a barrel, the highest forecast in the survey.

``The recent fall in prices is due to short-term factors,'' he said in an interview. ``We're looking for fairly strong global growth, and we don't see capacity expanding by much.''

Benchmark oil futures touched a record $78.40 a barrel July 14 on the New York Mercantile Exchange on concern that fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon would spread through the Middle East, the source of almost a third of the world's oil. Prices fell after fighting ended in Lebanon and the Gulf of Mexico storm season passed without a repeat of last year's hurricanes, which crippled oil production and refineries. New York crude ended yesterday at $61.03 a barrel.

Oil's climb from less than $20 a barrel at the end of 2001 has been driven by the failure of producers to generate new supplies fast enough to keep pace with rising demand, especially in China. Analysts are betting that trend will continue.

They forecast that oil would be $58 a barrel at the start of 2006, according to the median in Bloomberg's survey last December. So far, crude oil has averaged $68.26, higher than any prior year.

Supply Increases

``We just haven't seen dramatic increases in supply,'' said James Rollyson, an analyst at Raymond James Financial Inc. in Houston. Raymond James is predicting $70 oil next year after forecasting $58 at the beginning of this year.

Oil consumption worldwide climbed 9 percent to an average 83.8 million barrels a day between 2000 and 2005, led by China and the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Department. Global oil supply rose 8.6 percent to 84.5 million barrels.

Prices surged during the first half as Iran, the fourth- largest oil producer, pushed ahead with nuclear fuel enrichment, heightening tensions with the U.S. Iran has the world's second- biggest proved oil reserves and borders the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which nearly a quarter of the world's oil is shipped.

Talks in Berlin between Iran and European Union officials aimed at breaking the deadlock over the atomic program produced some progress, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said on Sept. 28.

``It's been relatively cool on the political front recently, but odds are this won't continue through next year,'' said Rollyson at Raymond James.

Oil will average $65.50 a barrel in the fourth quarter, according to the median estimate in the survey. Analysts in June said oil would average $67.65 a barrel during the third quarter. Prices averaged $70.60 during the past three months, a record.

Economic Growth

Strategists who forecast a drop in prices next year say a slowing U.S. economy will coincide with increased output. U.S. economic growth slowed to a 2.6 percent pace in the second quarter, 3 percentage points lower than the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Sept. 28.

``We're very pessimistic about the U.S. and global economy next year,'' said Eoin O'Callaghan, an analyst with BNP Paribas SA in London who expects oil to average $59.80 next year. ``The last four years, there's been limited spare capacity, making us sensitive to disruptions and geopolitical risk.''

Rising fuel stockpiles in the U.S., which is responsible for 25 percent of global energy use, helped cause the decline in prices in the third quarter.

Spot prices are cheaper than futures for oil delivered later in the year, a market condition called ``contango.'' This has led to increased inventories, but it may end in coming months, said Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank Securities AG in New York. He expects oil to average $61 a barrel in 2007.

The average price for Brent crude, traded on the London- based ICE Futures exchange, is likely to be $61 a barrel in 2007, according to the median forecast.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Shenk in New York at mshenk1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 2, 2006 21:19 EDT

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Natural gas has eight years left according to Natural Resources Canada

lifetree76 — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:21:34 -0700

Energy
Natural gas has eight years left
A Natural Resources Canada presentation in the heart of Canada’s energy industry lays bare the stark reality of energy resources
by Dan Crawford
The University of Calgary’s Geology Department played host to a presentation given by Dave Hughes: “The Coming Energy Sustainability Crisis: Alternatives to Oil, Implications of Demand Growth and the Way Forward.”

Hughes is a full-time employee at Natural Resources Canada. He spends much of his time delving into North America’s energy situation, heavily focusing on the natural gas component. In recent years, his research and presentations have garnered interest across Canada, as well as globally. As a result, Hughes has spoken at more than 90 engagements in the past three years and 40 in the past year alone.

The auditorium in Calgary was filled nearly to capacity with people from all walks of life—a surprising turnout for a Friday night lecture.

Hughes began with a slide showing the resource pyramid. Located at the top of the pyramid are the high-quality resources normally found in large distinct pools. Going down the pyramid to the base, the resources become more abundant but of lesser and lesser quality and dispersed over larger and larger areas. Exploiting these resources eventually leads to a point where the energy used for the extraction and distribution equals the amount of energy recovered, marking the transition between energy source to energy sink.

A look at global primary energy growth showed that over the past four decades, growth has been 165%, with 4.3% growth in 2004 alone. Overall, natural gas has been the fastest growing fuel source in percentage terms at 283% since 1965. In most recent years, from 2001 to 2004, the fastest growing fuel source has been coal.

For natural gas, North America is now on what Hughes calls an “exploration treadmill,” meaning that the number of wells drilled must be continually increased in order to hold production steady.

The published numbers from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) concerning Natural Gas production in Canada confirms his statement. Look at the number of wells drilled by year, followed by production for that year: 1997: 4,842–15.7 Bcf/d; 1998: 4,991–16.1; 1999: 7,018– 16.6; 2000: 9,078–17.1; 2001: 10,757–17.4; 2002: 9,061–17.4; 2003: 12,951–16.9; 2004:15, 126–17.0.

North America peaked in terms of conventional natural gas production in 2001–2002. Notable examples of the effects of this peak are the dramatic increase in prices for natural gas and natural gas-dependent products, such as fertilizers and plastics, leaving North America’s largest natural gas producer, Encana, publicly stating that the company focus is now on “unconventional” resource plays.

Hughes walked through various scenarios where the shortfall in conventional natural gas supplies could be made up. He touched on Liquefied Natural Gas imports, coal bed methane, and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. His conclusion was that it is going to be extremely challenging, perhaps even impossible, to keep North American production at a level plateau in the years ahead.

Consumption trends and patterns were also explored. In every case, the phenomenal growth rates in our economy show a complete disconnect with the reality of the resources currently supporting them. Canada, for example, has 8.1 years left in natural gas reserves.

In terms of resources, two-thirds of the world’s remaining hydro-carbon energy is in the form of coal. This also happens to be the lowest-cost hydro-carbon source. Due to coal’s abundance and low cost, a large growth in consumption of this resource is anticipated in the years ahead. A heavy focus on clean coal technologies is now emerging. In Germany coal is burned in a 3,900 megawatt electricity plant to achieve 43.2% thermal efficiency. In comparison, Alberta’s coal plants are more than 30 years old and run at 32% efficiency.

Hughes’s talk concluded with a look at world population and the divide existing between the industrialized and the developing nations. It was shown that Canada is the world’s number one energy consumer per capita, consuming five times more than the overall world average. In comparison to India, we consume 30 times their average and 100 times the average for Bangladesh.

The one billion people making up the industrialized world consume 60% more energy than the five billion in the developing nations. The developing nations, though, are growing their consumption at much higher rates, as well as doubling their populations since the 1960s. China’s per capita energy consumption growth is 300%, and total energy consumption growth is 600% in that time. India’s per capita energy growth is 200%, and total energy consumption there has grown 600%. Indonesia’s per capita energy growth is 600%, and total energy growth is 1,400%.

At the end of the presentation, Hughes stated that there is no question that the world will eventually become energy sustainable. The only question is how that transition will occur. A number of general guidelines and solutions were offered, mainly involving better design and planning of infrastructure for both transit and buildings. The importance of conservation and efficiency was also stressed, along with the savings that will result from “demand destruction.”

It was a very refreshing experience to attend such a talk in Calgary, in the very heart of Canada’s oil and gas industry. It was also encouraging to see an employee of Natural Resources Canada voice these concerns to the public.

There is no doubt that people are beginning to question their reliance on, and the availability of, energy. As talks like this one become more common around the world, less and less people will be able to state truthfully that they had no idea about the impending energy crisis. Now comes the toughest part: actually doing something about it.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

One way to communicate Peak Oil

randypark — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:05:55 -0800

As a professional speaker and specialist in how people think and make decisions, I have given considerable thought to my Peak Oil presentations and how to have people consider the message. Too gentle, and people don't think they need to be concerned. But too strong, and people will just tune you out.

One way is to use satire, and let people reach their own conclusions. A part of my presentation where I do a characterization is now on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWdbpHDT75g

In this segment, "Bill the stock broker" explains why we don't have to worry, while "Einstein" provides commentary.

Randy Park
www.EnergyPredicament.com

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)