Tidily written Mr Lowe, another touching call to arms from a leading romantic. No, i'm no parrot of the flat-earth economic religion ('the market will provide') of Perseus & antigreen , but neither can i endorse naive 'we must/should/could use less' plea's.

The majority of humans in Australia and elsewhere have quite direct human experiences of selfishness winning over cooperative action, again and again and again, so its little wonder that when confronted with the prisoners dilemma of GHG's or oil depletion, the prime concern is getting theirs first. No amount of impassioned or logical text will alter learnt behaviour, at least not without years of unlearning, re-learning and re-experiencing, and thats assuming a society that supported cooperativism instead of predating on it.

It is only in sheltered 1st world (mostly white) humanist circles that the fantasy of the sustainability paradigm shift can be sustained, and even there few can really walk their talk for long (living as they do in a society that gladly soaks up their savings in a trice, ala Jevons). There is a small percentage, <10% of aussies for sure, that do get it and are making real progress in adapting their lives, but there is no historical evidence that the rest will even begin to adapt without some extremely pointy signals from Mr Overshoot. We've already said 'screw the whales', 'screw the climate' and 'screw the kids', its not till the very next chocolate biscuit is gone that most will concede some change is necesary. Such is (human) life, it seems.

No, Ludwig, I didn't watch 4 Corners on ABC. If I want information I google scholar, if I want a few laughs I watch ABC.

As for the rest, you cant have both peak oil and continued global warming. If oil runs out then obviously the CO2 emissions from oil also run out. And why all the shock horror stories. At $2/litre I will certainly fix my bicycle. I will lose weight, I will be fitter, I will live longer and get more done. And more importantly, my cycling will be safer because the $%&#@ in the Pajeros won't be able to afford the petrol they currently use to gas me and pretend that cyclists didn't pay the same amount for the road as they did.

In short, I can adjust to a petrol starved world in less than a week. Change may happen but there will be more positives than negatives for the optimists and more negatives than positives for the pessimists. Make your bed.

Anti-Green, I concur with your view, competitive opportunity will ensure technologies which are presently economically unviable will become viable as the price of oil increases, hybrid cars as an example – oh bring on the optimists.

Human ingenuity and the ability for inspirational innovation will ultimately overcome almost all challenges (eternal life and getting sense out of a bureaucrat or expert with a vested interest in a doomsday philosophy are the only non-starters).

As for making analogies between “slavery” and “energy usage”, Ian Lowe has, in harnessing such emotive and erroneous analogies, reduced his reasoning level and credibility to below that of the fanciful idiots who suggest cattle, sheep and other critters have the equivalent of human rights.

As for the plight of the .8 to 1.2 billion (depending on your choice of sack-cloth and ashes) lacking sufficient food or clean water, without seeming insensitive, the majority of those impoverished nations have benefited significantly from the endeavours of the supposed ‘wealthy nations’ since the end of WWII but have squandered that benefit on despotic incompetence and tyranny. My own view is, despite what idealistic “experts” thought, “benevolent colonialism” produces better social outcomes than “tyrannical self rule”.

As for emotional drivel like “It will only be sustainable if it is equitable, resourced and respects the limits of the Earth.”

We should continue to look toward reducing world population as we improve everything for everyone, rather than waste energy in diverting scarce resources on trying to make everything “Fair and Equal”

Perseus,

Peak Oil is different to CO2 and global warming. There is still plenty-o-coal in the ground. Australia has stacks of the stuff, and assuming we don't give a rats about 'the hole in the greenhouse' we can burn the stuff for power for many many lifetimes. But one day it will run out - as sure as the sun rises and systems obey the laws of thermodynamics.

But, I can't run my little hyundai 2-door on coal. There is only one plant in the world that can convert coal to synthetic petrol in commercial quantaties and that is in South Africa (See 4Corners). Suprisingly the cost is reported to be at about US$40 a barrel. 4C suggested it would take at least 10 years to get such a plant up and running given suitable investment and lack of greenie protests.

Without oil the trucks that deliver groceries to the supermarkets don't run. The planes that fly your mail (or you) don't work. Riding a pushbike from The Blue Mountains to Sydney (and back again) is not practicable - especially when you pick up some shopping. The trucks that move the coal for electricity don't work.

Given the choice, i'm sure most Australians if asked whether they wanted electricity at the cost of greenhouse gasses would elect to pick up the shovel themselves.

Given a sufficient public transport system, the effects of Peak Oil will be comensurate with the Great-Depression and not armagetton.

I too watched the ABC program. I watched for reasons of entertainment only. Surely, nobody believes that a complex and multi faceted field of knowledge can be reduced to a single 50 min TV presentation. One can have a great admiration for journalists with out expecting from them expert tuition on highly technical subjects.
The journalist correctly brings a subject such as “peak oil” to public attention. Surely, no body will argue that every detailed and differing expert opinion can be treated in any single publication.

For instance as students of calculus will understand, the selected experts did not stipulate if the “peak” was to be considered as a local maximum or an absolute maximum? There is none-the-less, a possible commonality between my position and that of the environmental lobby. Given that the peak is a local maximum there is no available prognosis for its duration.

By the way I have no objection to being likened to an ostrich. Who has ever heard of an ostrich shooting a messenger?

Shorbe, you wrote:

“However, to suggest that western society is on the brink of collapse is a bit alarmist I think, if for no other reason than the fact that it's certainly not in the interests of governments or corporations to have society wipe itself out. If necessary, governments would intervene and ration fuels, and basically outlaw private transportation other than bicycles, horses, etc. and move people around by buses…”

When we think of just how totally dependent on liquid fossil fuels we are and how predicted price increases can’t help but affect the price and availability of just about everything, and that the price of oil is very closely linked to inflation and monetary policy, and that rising unemployment will result from economic shock, followed by civil strife, we can’t help but view this whole business from a very ominous perspective.

Governments won’t act until the problem is blatantly underway, for two reasons;

1. Their gross economic rationalist outlook, which is so strongly enforced by big business, which does afterall hold the real power reigns

2. The fact that it would be political suicide to implement the policies necessary to prepare ourselves for this crisis until the crisis is absolutely upon us, because it would lead to major restrictions for the majority of the community, most of whom wouldn’t appreciate the magnitude of the situation, and many of whom would blithely think like Perseus; that we will be able to adapt to the changes as they happen.