Sooner or later affordable oil has to run out. People don't seem to grasp that even with electric cars some 10 kilojoules of oil energy go into every 1 kilojoule of food energy we eat. Batteries won't adequately power combine harvesters or aircraft for that matter. I understand that refinery input is changing from conventional crude to gas condensate, helped no doubt by the fact that in the US and UK all their wind, solar and nuclear requires about 40% gas backup.

It also means that some emissions scenarios like RCP 8.5 are implausible. We won't be burning as much fossil fuel in a few years due to lack of oil and the inability of coal to power all activities. That means 2bn people won't make it to middle class and the other 6bn will have a reduction in living standards. Yet we blindly preoccupy ourselves about reparations for historically aggrieved parties. Think about future people doing it tough.

We export all our sweet light crude and pay a king's ransom for ex-refinery rubbish to take its place! Our sweet light crude needs only a chill filtering through a sand filter to make it ready as naturally occurring diesel.

Our natural gas or scrubbed biogas can be passed through a catalyst to convert it to methanol, a good alternative to high octane petrol/avgas. Albeit needs a larger tank due to the fact that the range is marginally less.

We can use marginal grazing land to grow millions of hectares of salt, drought and frost resistant, native wisteria from which we can crush to make ready to use, billions of litres of biodiesel.

The ex-crush a superior feed lot. animal feed and fish farm feed. Something for the useless hand ringers in official government office to consider while we have time to convert and transition to.

Also, we need to lift the delf imposed government embargo on nuclear energy always providing we can ensure real and robust competition by installing govt. owned and operated comp.

Or we do what we've always done, namely SFA and wait for someone else to save our bacon. As we sacrifice our young people as cannon fodder in someone else's war.

Methinks our official begging bowl is hugely overused and could see us become a poor pariah in our region of a more affluent Asia!?

There are many viable solutions that won't get done by themselves but need leaders with vision and ticker, which is all that's missing from today's spineless, gutless, toadying "leadership"!
Alan B.

The only crisis we face is that of POPULATION.
Too Many Humans.

too many humans,
ateday,
Too many humans doing the wrong thing !

Interesting Ateday;
The basic problem is that Peak Crude Oil occurred in 2005.
As it is in slow decline the world has been relying on fracking to
make up the difference. However the companies investing there face
real difficulties in that the life of a well is only a few years.
There is a lot of gamble in their finance judging by the number failing.
I have not read much in recent times but I doubt that much has changed.
Either way the oil companies appear to have had a word in the ear
of the car makers that like Shell & BP the industry will wind down
their oil interest. See Royal Dutch Shell (as it was then) 2017 AGM
report on their planning to leave the oil industry.
The cost of finding new oil fields and then developing them was the
reason Shell gave. BP is less forthright but note their new motto;
"Beyond Petroleum" says it all.
Just 2 years after Shell's announcement a whole flock of car companies
announced they would be producing electric cars. Co-incidence ?

We have huge reserves of shale oil, enough for well over 100 years of our projected usage.

What we don't have is politicians with enough nouse & guts to organise the harvesting & refining of those reserves.

I have done a fairly amateurish calculation on how much extra
electricity generation would be required if all cars were electric.
Australian petrol consumption is 54 Million Litres per day.
Diesel consumption is 57 Million litres per day.
One litre of petrol = 9.1Kwatt/hr
Just for cars we would need about an extra 5 power stations the size
of Eraring.
My calculation can be guaranteed to be not accurate. However it does
give us a rough idea of where we are heading.
I just cannot see it happening as another 5 or perhaps 12 more
power stations needed if we include diesel. The Greens would have a stroke !
I would appreciate it if someone would check my calculations.
This may force the introduction of nuclear power.
I suspect this is another case of bureaucrats and politician not just
picking up a calculator and doing a rough check on what they propose

Kudos Ateday. Yes the problem is too many humans- China and India have more people than the next 18 nations combined. What is the UN doing about it- nothing- the UN is irrelevant to the sources of conflict in the world.