Warm Air;
I do not think the electric tractors are totally impractical.
Difficult I agree, but if liquids fuels become very expensive it may
well become necessary to find a solution.
It could be a matter of rows of poles across the paddocks and modern
trolley buses can move a long way sideways without losing contact.
Another method could be contact rails spaces several disc plough widths.
There are enclosed systems already in use for other purposes.
Cranes are one place where I have seen them used.
One rail contains two busbars.

If the cost of food can be kept down it will solve many problems.

Foxy what worries me is that while experts suggest we are going to keep growing as you say, other experts suggest we can sustain this growth, while cutting emissions and, supply the needs fir other growing countries. I say other cow tries because if we don't continue supplying them we will have a huge population of dependents.

As for natural gas, I have huge deposits under my Miles land and they are suggesting there's a larger deposit much further down suggesting hundreds of years of supply.

We are in grave danger of becoming the next third world country especially if future governments can't maintain the current closed door policy to illegals. We are likely to be at war ourselves, only it will be the haves defending what they have against the have nots with the do gooders wondering why the with's won't hand it over to those without.

The only thing separating us from the likes of Greece is mining and exports, and the greenies are working overtime to shut down both.

We have enough water, it's just that we waste too much due to our anti recycling policy.

Bathing in A grade drinking water really is quite bizzar. We should be buying drinking water and reusing our piped water.

rehctub, how many people will happily bathe in water they *know* was flushed down the toilet with their pooh yesterday.

Yes, I know the technicalities are feasible.
But it's the psychology that's the trick.

More excellent ideas coming forward and making
me realise just how complex these issues
really are.

It has also made me do a bit more research - and as a result
I've come across the following quote from Tor Hundloe in
his book, "From Buddha to Bono: Seeking sustainability.
Hundloe says - "The language is dated - my apologies":

"All efforts to support economic growth, feed more
people and mine more minerals requires very large amounts
of energy - amounts that are doubling every 12 years...

There is only so much fossil fuel, only so much hundred-million-year
old sunlight in storage. We are burning our capital. We are
close to the end of our fossil fuel economy...

Even if we could invent a perfectly safe and clean source
of energy based on solar power, we would still be defeated
by the fact that the earth's climate can absorb only so
much extra heat before it changes too much for us to stand.

All the energy we ever use ends as heat and it has to go
somewhere. This is a law of physics and has nothing to do
with technology, politics, or economics.

This limit we are just finding out about, gives the final blow
to the widely held idea that if we had more and more high
energy technology we could solve our problems by desalting the
sea, making the deserts bloom, making metals out of granite
and food out of coal. In theory these things could be done, but
in reality such energy intensive solutions can simply not work
on anything like world scale, not because we shall never have the
energy but because we shall have no place to put the heat that
energy turns into..."

What Hundloe suggests for us is:

"We today should have a lower material standard of living so
that people tomorrow will be able to have a standard of
living at all. We can replace material goods with a range of
pleasures that do no harm to the environment. In this sense we will
be richer with less..."

Bazz,
Electrification of paddocks is totally impractical. But battery electric tractors could become practical.

If it were just a case of prioritising investments, we would have diminishing returns. But technological change enables us to overcome that.

EROEI is much less important than many people believe. Obviously we need positive net energy, but energy input is often a small part of the cost input.

Energy use growth and economic growth are two very different things. Although they're strongly correlated, we saw that relationship start to break down when the carbon tax was introduced.

In the days before low cost airlines, 200km/h trains might've been fast enough for a large proportion of the population. But they're not any more, and Britain is planning to build high speed lines for up to twice that speed.

We will always be able to finance a VFT. The real question is: will we be WILLING to?

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warmair, why do you call it a VST?

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Foxy, thanks to an Australian TV comedy, global warming as the result of too much hot air is known as the WhiteHouse effect.

But it radiates into space quite quickly, and it's nowhere near as big a problem as rising CO2 levels.

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rehctub, the biggest thing that separates us from the likes of Greece is that we have our own currency. We can't run out of money, and the value of our currency will automatically adjust to make our exports competitive.

Bathing in A grade drinking water is entirely sensible. And while there's plenty of scope to recycle water, directly recycling it into drinking water is generally a bad idea as too much can go wrong, and most of our water demand is for irrigation.