Out-of-town shopping malls suffer as fuel price deters shoppers

[Paul Mobbs]

Hi,

On Sunday, April 10, 2011 07:32:23 am Chris wrote:
> However it needs changing to over a long period eg 20 years
> by a progressive tax on energy content, not overnight. Introducing it
> randomly like this will just lead to one of the kleptocracies' other
> long term preoccupations

That's exactly the format that energy depletion will enact because both 
politicians, the media, and campaign groups, are ignoring it.

The French Prime Minister announced in the National Assembly last week that 
oil production had peaked and was going to decline in the future; the IMF 
issued a report last week saying roughly the same, the pointing out the severe 
economic risks from this trend. And over here?... we're talking about tuition 
fees and cuts to the arts.

The thing is, I entirely agree with you, but the way to stop this descending 
into a free-for-all is to address the problem and cut consumption ahead of the 
depletion curve. From my own experiences briefing individual MPs and doing a 
formal presentation in Parliament in 2009, they just don't want to know 
because that means the end of the illusion of growth and "more affluence 
tomorrow".


> Libya where I believe there are oil reserves, Afghanistan where
> transit is needed and slavering over Iran and lining up over arctic
> and other offshore.

Libya makes no difference in terms of the scale of demand; Afghanisan has no 
oil but there's an idea to put a pipeline across it to the Gulf to export from 
central Asia -- although the amounts of oil there make very little difference 
either. Likewise the Arctic. One of the great hopes for oil production was the 
continental shelf around the Falklands; every hole they've drilled in the last 
two years found no produceable quantities of oil.

If you talk to geophysicists about the prognosis for oil you'll get a very 
different picture from that spun by oil executives, politicians and economists.

That's the reality of peak oil -- we need to be discovering and developing 
three times more than we currently are just to off-set the post-peak decline in 
existing oil fields. Four times more if we want to meet the present growing 
demand as well. The world doesn't run on the theoretical quantities of oil, 
gas or coal in the ground, it's how much can be produced right now that 
determines the price.

Personally, I think peak oil is one of the "God send" solutions to climate 
change -- if only the environment movement would get of their high horse of 
'sustainable consumption' and accept it for what it is.

Have a read of my reply to George Monbiot on nuclear -- that lays things our 
on the general picture -- http://www.fraw.org.uk/f.html?monbiotcritique

For the more economic/UK oriented picture, my 2009 presentation to APPGOPO is 
still up-to-date in terms of the present trends -- 
http://www.fraw.org.uk/f.html?appgopo


Thanks,

P.


-- 

.

"We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government,
nor are we for this party nor against the other but we are
for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom,
that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness,
righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with
God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
(Edward Burrough, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')

Paul's book, "Energy Beyond Oil", is out now!
For details see http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/ebo/

Read my 'essay' weblog, "Ecolonomics", at:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/ecolonomics/

Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations
3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England
tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864
email - mobbsey at gn.apc.org
website - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/index.shtml
public key - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/mobbsey-2011.asc

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