blog

Peak What?

Posted: 15-09-05

Peak Oil. Have you heard of it? No? Have you been living in a cave!? No really, have you?

At the risk of sounding like some kind of left-wing nut (I'm not I swear) I am concerned about the inevitable ramifications to my life and those of my family and friends of the shortfall that lies between predicted and required crude oil supplies.

By "required" I mean the amount of crude oil that it currently takes for Earth's societies to manufacture, produce and transport goods, food and electricity. All the stuff I take for granted from the moment I smear that crap from the corner of my eyes in the morning to that point at night where I successfully manage to slow my mind enough so that I may at last sleep.

Once you start to scratch the surface of the subject and think about your own reliance on oil and oil derived products (i.e. pretty much everything you touch or have ever owned) and then you read about experts from the oil industry itself telling you that estimates of predicted crude oil production have been heavily overrated, well you should then get to the stage where I'm at about now and where other, more informed people have been at for nearly five years.

I've just taken over the role of organiser of the Auckland Oil Awareness "meetup". If you've ever heard of meetup.com you'll be familiar with the idea: An organiser manages, via a web-interface, a group of people with similar interests, who live in or around a locality who want to meet-up and discuss a subject in a safe environment. By safe, I don't mean for fear of marauding yeti, large holes swallowing up children or were-rabbits! I mean: An environment where people feel able to express their ideas and views freely and easily without fear of ridicule or judgment.

OK, so I haven't actually attended our meetup yet (the first one is on the 14th of Sept) so I don't actually know how wide of the mark my pre-conceived notions of the ideal meetup are from reality – there's only one way to find out though I guess.

See you Wednesday then!?

If (as I think you should be) you are even vaguely aware and would like to find out more there is of course a wealth of information on the subject on the Internet. All are informed and well-meaning; some though are also guilty of scaremongering. There are ways to put about important information such as this. People need encouragement to emerge from their consumerist stupors and learn, they don't need scaring out of them using images of grim-reapers or the like (I have already seen one such site use this image to this effect)

I have read much from the following websites in recent weeks:

http://www.odac-info.org/ (The UK based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre)
http://www.postcarbon.org/ (The Post Carbon Institute, A US Think Tank)
http://www.energybulletin.net/ - specifically: http://www.energybulletin.net/8807.html (Energy Specific Online News Aggregation Service)

A change from the normal day to day musings of an Englishman in Auckland for sure, a change is as good as a holiday some say.

Take care folks.
Russ