After being held up for 12 long years by conservatism it has become urgent for action to begin. All government buildings need to be at least partially run on renewable power and if Rudd is serious he should adopt the Greens policy of issuing every home with solar panels and a solar hot water system. Wealth will not be important if this planet is allowed to go into deterioration mode.

Unfortunately, Lionel leads with an assertion that oil production has peaked, implying that its a commonly accepted fact. This is far from being the case - many Peak Oil researchers think it may have passed peak in 2005/2006, but admit that its really too early to tell for sure. As he's opened with such an easily disproven point, a sceptic would easily dismiss the rest of his letter as an ill-informed extremist rant, which is unfortunate.

Peak Oil isn't the immediate problem. What is of greater concern is the massive increase of demand for oil & its products, and that oil production hasn't and can't keep up with this demand - whether its peaked or not is beside the point. Furthermore the oil producing nations are developing their own economies and therefore increasing their own consumption of oil - which means that they are exporting less and less. Lastly, Australia did pass our own domestic Peak Oil back around 2000 (when we were mostly self-sufficient), and its estimated we'll be importing something like 80% of our oil by 2012.

These facts are readily apparent to anyone who wants to look, and are perhaps more relevant to Australia's energy future. Mr Rudd's government is certainly well aware of it. The question is what, if anything, are they going to do to prepare our country for a future where oil's availability becomes scarce and its price increases dramatically, regardless of whether or not global Peak Oil has arrived?

We already have the technology to move forward beyond oil all that is needed is the political will. We should stop making O.P.E.C richer and concerntrate on relieving the ordinary working families budget.

Lionel Orford is three-quarters correct, and I congratulate him on his sensible list of action points (most of them, anyway).

I don't think the picture is quite as dismal as Orford does. He makes a couple of very strong assertions which are not justified, the most glaring of which is that "There are simply no alternatives to oil." It's sufficiently qualified to make his statement technically correct, but the underlying conviction is undermined by neglecting the large and rapidly-innovating field of liquid biofuel (whilst simultaneously advocating coal-to-liquids!).

There's also a glaring omission of the possibility of adopting technology which provides us with the same services we now get from large quantities of liquid fuel, with less. This is as simple as France's new policy of retiring inefficient and discounting efficient equipment:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/12/france-to-insti.html

Orford says that coal is the only resource we have that can rapidly be deployed to deliver increased electricity, whilst advocating investment in CO2 capture and storage. There are three large errors here: we don't actually need more electricity than we already use (it is much cheaper per kilowatt to replace inefficient appliances than to buy new power stations, we can very cheaply release at least 25% of the existing supply this way); it is cheaper and faster to deploy smaller gas-fired and intermittent renewable generators than power stations; and capture-and-storage, being mostly nonexistent, *can't* be rapidly deployed.

His second-best choices for electricity supply, solar thermal and geothermal power, tap vast supplies of free energy and are proven techniques, immeasurably preferable to CCS for the investment required to deploy them widely.

Last, Orford's dismissal of large-scale deployments of intermittent renewable electric generation "because they can't be managed on a large scale" is timid and blinkered. Existing electrical networks deal with variations in demand of up to 50% of their gross capacity and would be "peakier" still without off-peak demand management. Wind and sunshine are strongest during the day, when demand is also high. Existing techniques used to cope with demand variation will cope equally well with variable supply, and could be dramatically improved upon in coming decades.

Do we really have the technology to move beyond oil? Perhaps in the laboratory, but certainly not in the real world where it actually matters.

Despite all the hype about biofuel, so far it has not been a viable replacement for oil. It can't be produced in anything like the quantities necessary, and what is produced is at a huge cost in fertile farmland and much-needed water. You can talk about the "second generation biofuels" as much as you like - I'll believe you when its demonstrated that they can produce even half of our current fuel requirements without taking a massive toll on our agriculture and environment. I'm not saying that research & money shouldn't be plowed into biofuels, just that we shouldn't assume it to be a ready-made solution.

Don't get me started about coal to liquids, with its horrendous C02 emissions and terrible EROEI.

If we can't rely on the availability of liquid fuels, is electrification an alternative? Well, to a degree. Food and ore could be moved by rail, provided Australia has an electrified rail network (oops). Farmers could switch to using battery powered tractors and combine harvesters, couldn't they? Our diesel-burning fleet of transport trucks - all they need do is switch to batteries. And I'm sure us consumers will all happily pay many thousands of $ for our vehicles to be converted, assuming that's possible.

Please forgive my sarcasm. Its just that none of these electrification "solutions" are commercialised yet, and nor is there evidence that they're on the way. How many plug-in electric cars are on the market now? What are Holden, Ford and Mitsubishi building at their struggling factories? Electric cars? Hybrids? Efficient small cars? Or thirsty big V6s and V8s?

We _could_ potentially use our vast Natural Gas reserves in the form of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) ... except we've already sold much of it to China at a fixed price contract over 30 years.

Face it, we're not ready for a shortage of oil, and our governments & industries are doing absolutely nothing to prepare.

This is a great letter, and Orford is a realist. There is no future in alternatives. Pages 16 to 41 of this report, http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html are based on government and scientific studies. Whatever attempts are made to develop alternatives will just use more fossil fuel in the process. It does not matter is global Peak Oil production occurred in 2006 or will occur in 2012. The time is now and the governments of the world have no risk management plans in place. The several posts by Chris Shaw on this site are worth reading, and all can be found here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5964