Crude Impact – a brilliant documentary, shown on SBS last night.

It explained the ominous nature of peak oil, in conjunction with the human population explosion that has been facilitated by the exploitation of this enormous resource.

Climate change, resource wars, an actual decline in quality of life in many oil nations compared to the era before they exploited oil and compared to non-oil nations, and many other aspects were explored.

But most significantly, the sense that the near future is extremely ominous, was projected very powerfully. The need to develop alternative energy sources and to become much more frugal with energy usage was of course expressed.

But it was taken one big step further: the need for humanity to stop growing was expressed as the paramount necessity. The point was made that if we do manage to develop alternative energy sources but don’t address the continuous growth factor, we will just come up against another resource barrier in the near future. We MUST address continuous growth factors along with the consumption and technological factors.

This is the best effort at expressing the urgency of directing ourselves towards sustainability that I have encountered.

An absolute must-see for everyone.
(Unfortunately not due to be repeated on SBS for a year or more, and not readily available elsewhere)

Ludwig, I fear that as before, Mother Nature will balance the books. It might be in the form of massive earthquakes and tsumanis, droughts and famine, floods and famine, plagues, crop failures, but it will come. Look for example at the effects of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu had on rebalancing the population. Not to mention humanities contribution through wars.

This mindset will obviously not be popular, but may I point out that it has happened several times throughout history - lets not be so vain as to think that it wont happen again.

human population will be reduced, c gal, and famine, war,and disease will do it.

but while 'philosophical' about the coming cull, i still get angry about the blind stupidity of allowing the nation, and the human race, to be managed by politicians.

in the end, i have to accept that the average intelligence is not high enough, the average education too shallow, to allow racial survival. irritating, as we are close to good enough if the powerholders helped rather than hindered. of ourse, they got to be powerholders by being greedy, arrogant, and selfish

Ludwig,
the thing that grabbed my attention the most was how quickly the worlds population has increased since the industrial revolution. When oil production falls, how can we produce enough food without machinization?

We really should be reducing the worlds population now. Question HOW?

We should seriously look at our population as well.

We can generate electricity with coal, gas, wind and solar but how do we replace the motor vehicle?

Yep, big,big changes are heading our way.

DEMOS, the problem is that most people focus on their daily lives and struggles and dont consider a problem if it is not reasonably imminent and if it will not affect them. I've always said on these forums that country people are far more efficient users of say water, as they are aware of the consequences of overconsumption and they face imminent personal hurt (be it having to pay for a water delivery). As for the rest of us, well we've never been very good at learning the lessons of history, so I guess we will continue learning the hard way.

Banjo, I am not so concerned about loss of motor cars, although living a long way from my family and travelling for work will mean that I am personally greatly affected. My primary concern is the loss of rail and truck services and no fuel for farm machinery. It we cant produce the crops nor get them to market, we are going to be in a very dire state indeed. Importations wont be an option as there'll be no fuel to run ships (sailing ships might be fine but no good for fresh food). Personally I'll be ok with this one, as I have access to land on which to grow food and water to grow it with. But many will have a lot of trouble indeed. Funnily enough we will probably find our poor 3rd world neighbours will be in a better position than us, as they are mainly subsistence farmers with little or no technology. How things might change!!

Fuel for farm machinery is not a huge problem, with zero till fuel use is kept to a minimum and a broadacre farms fuel needs can be met by using approx 5% of the area for oilseed production like canola or mustard seed.
Canola at 40% oil will produce 800 litres/ha (2t/ha yield) which could be used direct(though has it's problems) or converted to bio-diesel. Farming uses around 40L/ha in production.The question is can we afford to divert more agricultural land to produce fuel for general transport, I think not.