Ooops… sorry there mate. I thought so at first, but then the “joke” just kept on going....

OK, now for the other questions asked tonight.

Hi Shane,

I don’t get the jump to overpopulation. isn’t over consumption?

We could really oversimplify it and draw up a rough equation that looks something like this.

Earth’s finite resources / population = lifestyle.

So… if you want to fit more and more people on planet earth, and maybe switch to a vegan lifestyle, go for it!? But… someone will have to inform all those extra “consumers” that there isn’t as much to consume.

At some point we’ll have to figure out exactly what the long term sustainable carrying capacity of our civilisation is. It’s an ever shifting equation that changes as technology improves our chances, while environmental problems become more and more serious.

Just keep in mind 1.3 billion Chinese peasant farmers can do just as much environmental damage as 300 million first world American consumers.

also got me thinking about the cost of changing current practice

just wondering how we might prepare for the peak apocalpyse - do you have a recommendation for a car to buy (if any)?

50% of the energy a car ever uses is consumed by the time it is in the car-yard just in making the thing, so I’m not really into cars. I have one, but we are gradually making life changes such as where we send our kids to school etc so that we can live less car dependent lives. So I’m with the Australian peak oil Senate inquiry into this one, that basically concluded a “bit of everything” — including drastically rezoning our cities and upgrading public transport so more of us can walk and cycle and train and tram to work.

I was using E10 fuel - is it worth it - or is there a biodeisel option that is better- what cars does this work for?

It depends on the source of the bio-fuel. If it’s ethanol / bio-diesel at the expense of food, there are serious ethical concerns with that as Andrew Cameron pointed out in his peak oil article.

and in terms of wind farming and solar stuff - how practical would this be for the averge home or is it a lobby governemnt thing or both?

Absolutely both. The future of transport and energy is a diverse and decentralized renewable electric grid. Diverse means you can sell any excess solar power back into the grid, along with some neighbour that might even have a home scaled wind turbine… all feeding into the grid. Both large and small providers, wind, solar, biomass (not crop but crop residue / agriwaste) can all feed into the grid, backing it up from multiple directions. Imagine your suburb all gathering together and building their own local power sources? You can become a part owner in your own local power grid… if NSW legislation changes. It’s happened in Germany and there’s no reason it can’t happen here.

Did you know NSW coal runs out in 33 years? We’ve got to go renewable not just for global warming’s sake, but because we are running out of this stuff!

any dollar estimates on what it would cost me to make some lifestyle adjustments beside token worm farming, getting rid of the plasma and cloth nappies for the kids?

There are tons of little things you can learn to do. If you’re really interested, subscribe to a Greenie tips sort of magazine.

We recently put solar thermal hot water on, and I think the rebate on that is even bigger now. It cost us over $3000 and works really well in summer, pretty well most of the year. Should get the money back in 5 to 7 years through saved electricity, and then the rest is free for the rest of it’s 20 to 25 year lifespan… until the tank needs replacing. It reduces our electricity consumption for heating water, which can be about 1/3 of a home’s electricity use. It’s FAR cheaper that way than rigging up a solar PV system to capture electricity and then convert that to heating water. No way! Just use the sun’s heat directly.

For conscience sake we went with 100% green electricity with Energy Australia, which means our “fraction” of electricity use HAS to by law come from renewable energy somewhere. It costs us about $400 a year extra. I can’t be a greenie activist and refuse that hey? We run a business from home, and so are POWER HOGS! So to be a greenie power hog, I just have to pay for it.

However, I understand in the next 5 years all sorts of amazing cheap solar PV will be hitting the market, and then I’ll probably buy up big (God willing). But even then I’ll still use Energy Australia for the night. Decentralised and diverse mix of power sources and use.

The reality is that our electrons are probably a mix of coal and renewable — whatever’s on the grid. But the money I pay for electricity funds a wind turbine or something somewhere. Not sure what they’d do if EVERYONE suddenly switched to 100% green electricity, and how fast they could implement it, but there are some remarkable new 24 hour baseload renewable energy schemes. Solar thermal with heat storage for overnight, CETO wave power, solar chimney’s, geothermal and huge wind farms up and down the coast of Australia can all pretty much well function as a coal fired power station. Of course, in combination these are unbeatable. If renewables received as many subsidies as oil and coal, we’d be well under way weaning off the foul fossils.

However, despite Andrew Cameron’s great work on Global Warming and Peak Oil, I haven’t seen any serious papers addressing what to do about overpopulation from a Christian perspective. Byron Smith’s cool peak oil article was the closest thing I’ve seen approaching population, but didn’t quite end up covering that topic.

Sorry all, long posts I know but thought I’d better add this. This guy sounds like a big corporate high flyer, once a Woolworths chief but now a Walmart director. His wiki says:.

“He is now a director of Wal-Mart, Reserve Bank of Australia, Fairfax Media and Chairman of the board of directors of ALH Group, a hotel and poker machine operator, which is 75% owned by Woolworths Limited.”

Check out this for a non-tree hugger’s claims about peak oil.

ENERGY costs could increase up to tenfold over the next few years, profoundly changing the way business and society operate, a former Woolworths chief says.

Roger Corbett told a Queensland University of Technology business leaders’ forum in Brisbane today that rising energy costs would “no doubt” present challenges for the retailing and business sectors.

“Our lives in the Western world are absolutely dependent upon the unit energy cost, whatever it may be, most of all the petroleum costs,” Mr Corbett said.

“And I don’t think it’s ill-conceived to think in the next few years that energy cost may go up by a factor of five or 10 times - certainly five.

“And I think that’s going to make an immense difference to the way we all live our lives.

“The question of the cost of energy is going to be the big challenge to business in the years to come....”

One of the Christian replies I got this morning was “If a Great Depression is inevitable, then we will cope. Christians really should not be too bothered by the prospect of material deprivation.”

Are Christians to be concerned about societal economic chaos or not? A Great Depression might not be “Mad Max”, but plenty of people seemed to be pretty hungry during it. (See “Cinderella Man” again).

I think if we met people on the street we’d be concerned, and wondering what the church could do about it. Now it seems that some Christians are annoyed at the idea of a Great Depression if some greenies predicted it was going to happen because of peak oil. There’s a scary attitude that just shrugs and says, “So what — we don’t need STUFF do we?”

In a Great Depression, poverty hits new lows and people go without basic needs. It’s not about cutting back on exuberant “greedy” expenditure — it’s about your neighbour getting his daily bread. I thought that was something us Christians ought to care about.

Hi Dave,

Hows your backyard veggie garden, orchard and fishery going?

Dave said:
This guy sounds like a big corporate high flyer, once a Woolworths chief but now a Walmart director.

Hi Dave,

Roger Corbett has indeed been one of Australia’s leading businessmen
and the chief executive who grew Woolworths to its current market-leading position.
As the brief wiki said, he still holds various “professional directorships”.

Roger Corbett describes himself as a committed Christian and has been involved in a Sydney Anglican parish not too many kilometres from you. [A brisk bike ride or so away.  8-) ]

Grace & peace,
Terry
[Edit: for clarity]

Dave Lankshear - 16 April 2008 12:53 AM

Not sure what they’d do if EVERYONE suddenly switched to 100% green electricity, and how fast they could implement it, but there are some remarkable new 24 hour baseload renewable energy schemes. Solar thermal with heat storage for overnight, .

A couple of points,

Firstly, Green Power is only a couple of percentage points of the total electricity throughput. There just isn’t the supply to meet a seriously big demand.

That leads to my second point - There just isn’t the supply to meet a seriously big demand YET. There hasn’t been much in the way of market influences in this thread so far, so let me bring in some capitalist democracy.

There isn’t a lot of development of actually plugging green power into the grid at the moment. Sure there is the odd wind farm here and there but it is not a lot. If the demand was there for a premium product in big quantities then the market would react and create the supply.

Thirdly, most of the assumptions of ‘running out’ of resources do not allow for price increases as scarcity increases. For extractive industries this price increase sees a number of previously uneconomic sources come on line (see the upswing in Oil & Gold as these have gone through the roof). We will probably have these resources for longer but at a higher price. For some of these, however, the environmental consequences will trump the availability issues anyway.

Fourthly, on food (where all this started). This is the market acting rationally - moving resources away from low profit consumers to high profit. Historically we have seen if the market does not move to solve the starvation issue then a political response will occur - hungry people are angry people and angry people are bad for business.

Fifthly, on global depression. During the 1930’s my mother lived in Coolamon as a little girl and told stories of homeless men coming to the farmhouse looking for odd jobs for food. Starvation wasn’t a part of the Australian experience of the 1930’s the way it was in the US dustbowl (think ‘Of Mice and Men’) Since then Australia’s supply of food has gone up tenfold. Australia’s issue in a depression will not be food - it will be manufactured goods and electronics.

James Flavin

Mr Langshear wrote

Did you know NSW coal runs out in 33 years?

They are based on ‘proven’ reserves (that is the coal has been measured. There is a lot more there.

Let me give you one example. One of my clients has a small farm used mainly as a spelling paddock and in drought times and largely unstocked apart from the kangeroos the rest of the time. ITs about 300 acres. Under it is 3,000,000 tonnes of proven reserves in the upper seams. The mine company that has hte license knows there are lower seams which will only be able to be mined by underground means but has not investigated them. Its only interest is in the 3,000,000 tonnes that it can extract by open cut mining.

No one knows how much is under the earth. By way of another example, the South Maitland fields (where the coal seams were 20ft or thick- compare that with Europe where most seams are about 4ft thick) are largely ‘officially’ worked out. But geologists tell me there is more winnable coal there then has been removed, its all a question of economics.

I was looking for some information about ethanol and this link helped me to hear the arguments put out by the ethanol industry in the US

http://www.ethanolfacts.com/

Does this link fit in with your preconceptions?

Ethanol is an alcohol that is used in gasoline—resulting in a cleaner-burning fuel with higher octane. Ethanol is currently blended into about 46 percent of the nation’s fuel supply.
Ethanol has been blended in gasoline for decades—and billions of miles have been driven on ethanol-blended fuels.
Corn is the primary feedstock for ethanol production. About 18 percent of the nation’s corn crop went into ethanol in 2006—some 2.15 billion bushels. Ethanol can also be made from other grains such as sorghum as well as from “biomass” sources such as corn cobs, cornstalks, wheat straw, rice straw, switchgrass, vegetable and forestry waste and other organic matter.
Ethanol offers a number of benefits to our cars, our environment, our economy and our national security:

* Ethanol adds oxygen to gasoline—helping it combust more completely and reducing the level of toxic exhaust emissions

* Ethanol reduces our nation’s dangerous and expensive dependence on imported oil

* The ethanol industry creates jobs and investment across the nation—especially in rural areas

* Ethanol increases America’s fuel supply—helping keep gas prices down

* Ethanol adds value to America’s corn harvest and helps reduce the cost of federal farm programs

I imagine for the fruity fringe, this must be music to their multi-studded ears - but what about to the Christian? The Christian message is one of hope and a future that God has clearly prepared us for. He’s the master of Climate Change, not puny man. I believe agro greenie Christians have quite a bit to answer for when it comes to ‘depressing’ society.

Hi Andrew
Not sure we’ve met or conversed before but I feel it necessary to respond to your remark.

Are you making a point or just trying to insult someone?

Can I suggest you would make a far stronger argument if you held off on the name calling and your own sarcastic agro - its ugly and depressing - almost as depressing as eco apocalyptic doomsaying as per the SMH article you referrred to.

there are ways and there are ways.

enjoy grace
shane

Andrew Andrew Andrew,
(sighs)

Aren’t those promises about our future for heaven only? Can you show me one promise that guarantees today’s civilisation?

No promises for civilisation
As Byron Smith, minister at Leichhardt Anglican wrote — and I quote extensively and hope everyone will read this kick in the pants against one of the biggest “Christian myths” we adopt:

It is possible to generate a ‘Christian’ version of this blind faith, based on unqualified claims of God’s sovereignty. For example, if God is in charge, he won’t let our civilisation collapse. And, if God loves us, he will protect our society from anything too bad, so we can ignore dire predictions of impending catastrophe. Perhaps this feeling is stronger in America, where many people still assume their nation has special prerogatives as a divinely chosen instrument,but I suspect that a weak version is held by many of us in the West who assume, perhaps subconsciously or implicitly, that the wealth and growth of our society is a mark of God’s basic approval of our democracy and freedoms.

After the flood story in Genesis 6-8, God made a promise to Noah guaranteeing against another global disaster that would end all life.But God made no such promises about specific civilisations.The next major incident in Genesis is the tower of Babel and the sudden, permanent breakdown of a society. Moving further into the biblical narrative, Israel’s status as God’s chosen people did not protect her from slavery, exile and scattering. The Roman Empire, when it fell, was a largely Christian society. However we are to understand it, belief in divine sovereignty does not justify closing our eyes to the possibility of disaster. God’s rule is no guarantee against calamity.

It will simply not do to deny the possibility of catastrophe based on blind faith, whether faith in the market or in God. Following Jesus means being freed from false hopes. If, as Christians believe, God raised Jesus from the dead, then God has promised to also raise those who follow Jesus and to restore and transform the entire created order.

In light of these great promises, there is no need to generate a mistaken belief inhuman, or western or capitalist invincibility. If God can raise the dead,vthen death (whether individual or social) need not terrify us. And this means that Christians are freed from having to believe the myth of infinite growth or relying on the market’s ability to solve the world’s problems. The market may have a place, but it no longer needs to be seen as humanity’s saviour and hope.

By trusting in the God who is committed to humanity it is possible to ask hard questions about what might be on the horizon. It may be that predictions of peak oil turn out to be incorrect or based on false assumptions, but these are discussions Christians ought to be entering, indeed initiating and leading, given the potentially huge social suffering that may well be around the corner.

From theology to real world stuff now.

Export Land Model
After reading more about the Export Land Model, I’ve realised many of my “rosy” preconceptions about how we were going to handle peak oil are probably wrong. The catastrophic and anarchic collapse of food supplies and food transport, law and order, peace and prosperity is very much on the table again. I’m “hoping” for a Great Depression — but honestly wonder if I’m kidding myself at even that rosy outcome? And Kevin Rudd wants to debate child care at this 2020 summit? If the Export Land Model is correct, will someone please tell me what our kids are going to eat?

See my short introduction to the Export Land Model.

Aren’t those promises about our future for heaven only? Can you show me one promise that guarantees today’s civilisation?

Well there will be believers when Christ returns… though that only shows that humanity will survive, and not necessarily civilisation.

Dave… your blog scares me. Those poor jellyfish… that was disgusting.

Agreed Dannii, and I’ve never suggested that Global Warming and peak oil are the end of this world, the end of humanity, or anything like that.

Civilisations come and go. Famines come and go. 30 million Chinese starved to death in Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”. It was fundamentally a human induced resource management disaster. My grandfather in law had been a missionary in China, and had to be evacuated when the Chinese came to power. There were Chinese Christians caught up in that.

1 million Irish died in the potato famine — another agricultural disaster. There were Christians caught up in that.

The fact is that our agricultural systems are utterly bound up with oil. Oil is also the current means by which we build new infrastructures, energy or otherwise, which means we’d better get started weaning off oil while we still have some.

Australia has a lot of coal and gas, yet so much of our transport infrastructure is oil dependent that we’d better start switching the IMPORTANT stuff over to liquefied gas ASAP. The “Emergency liquid fuels act” I understand is set up to guarantee fuel to basic infrastructure. Consumers like you and I will just have to get by if the worst comes to the worst. (Read: petrol rationing will be required to keep the food coming into the store, and you’ll just have to find your own way to the store, work, school, church, everywhere.)

Go pushbikes!

But our cycling everywhere may not be enough. If the oil supply really drops off in 10 years and we are down to say 8% of today’s demand (what Australia might be able to supply itself with by then) how are we going to have the time to build all those wind turbines and solar thermal plants and trams and trains that I love so much? Make no mistake, I love renewable energy and clever, modern city planning. I want us to wean off the oil, and can see an attractive, modern but very different sort of future Sydney… one that is cleaner and quieter, with the gentle noises from trolley buses and trams rather than everyone driving SUV’s.

I just don’t know if we have the time to get there. I’ve been arguing the case for “hope” and a decent goal for a decent post-oil Sydney at Sydneypeakoil.com. I resigned as leader there because it was starting to be swamped by doomers and I was getting into too many fights being too optimistic. Yet if this Export Land Model is right… maybe they are too.

It’s nearly 4 years ago since I found out about peak oil. It’s nearly 3 years since my Sydneypeakoil.com team briefed the minority parties in the NSW Legislative Council. (Upper house for the uninitiated). The Greens where there (of course) as were Fred Nile’s Group and the Democrats. They were shocked by what we presented that day, thanked us for the show, and then.... a comment or 2 in the Hansard the next day, and nothing.

It’s nearly a year since I briefed Maxine McKew.

Nothing.

When I started on about this oil was at $50 a barrel. It’s doubled. Other than a few shows on the ABC, and a few government reports filed in the “too hard” basket — nothing. Where is the societal discussion? Price monitoring schemes? WHAT A JOKE!

I’m of the opinion that Christians should be informed, and be leading the way because of the profoundly dangerous implications of peak oil. This could end up being a humanitarian disaster, or a catalyst to a better life. 3rd world nations will go belly up if we leave it to a market bidding war, or Archbishops and church leaders can urge congregations to demand Australia ratify the Oil Depletion Protocol.

(edit to add)

Signing the ODP seems to be the best way to setting up an oil sharing agreement that benefits Australia as we all collectively wean off the stuff, stabilises markets, as we do so, and shares it with the 3rd world. Or is Andrew McNamara, MP for Hervey Bay, Queensland, correct when he told me that 3rd world nations will just go “Mad Max”.

Surely a Christian response to this is to consider the needs of other less financially viable countries and how their agriculture might implode if we outbid them for the remaining oil?

Dave Lankshear - 17 April 2008 07:32 PM

Famines come and go. 30 million Chinese starved to death in Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”. It was fundamentally a human induced resource management disaster. My grandfather in law had been a missionary in China, and had to be evacuated when the Chinese came to power. There were Chinese Christians caught up in that.

1 million Irish died in the potato famine — another agricultural disaster. There were Christians caught up in that.

I think these two famines were primarily economic in cause - the Irish were exporting potatoes to England for all of the Famine.

There is a world of difference between political leaders letting populations die and the types of agricultural disasters being Acts of God (if I may use that phrase).

James Flavin

Yes, that’s exactly my point! These were economically immoral decisions to make — exporting Irish food for profit instead of feeding the markets, and whatever Mao was trying to achieve with his peasant smelting thang instead of them farming.

By ignoring peak oil, our governments are making economically immoral decisions right now. We need to gear our entire economies off “oil” because of countless, repeated acts of man… eg: filling up SUV’s. God didn’t burn all the “cheap oil” — we did.

54 of 65 oil producing nations have peaked. Oil has doubled in price in 4 years. Even Exxon Mobile — peak oil deniers — admit that the non-OPEC oil has peaked (half the world’s oil!) OPEC oil does not allow external audits.

Shell’s CEO admits it’s happening. Chevron boldly states “The Era of easy oil is over”. Alternative energy sources cannot do the job oil does in the volumes it does it — so it’s time to switch all our transport systems over to electric — and drastically reduce the need for transport by clever city design in the first place! The Senate decided all this over 2 years ago.

Still, nothing’s happening. It’s outrageous and not a little bit surreal. Our economies rely on oil. They could be geared up to do without it — but we need enough oil to get us from here to there. We could be down to 10% of our oil in just 9 to 10 years if the exporters have peaked this year. (Export Land Model, above).

Time for a beer and a computer game, this is too intense.

Dave Lankshear - 17 April 2008 08:16 PM

By ignoring peak oil, our governments are making economically immoral decisions right now.

Gaa! I take a break and I come back to discover another peak oil thread has sprouted.

I ask you.