A retired Australian farmer writes, "Three of the bigger questions in my life have been: Is there a god ? Will the oil run out ? Are humans smarter than lemmings ?"

Acland was the site of the last underground coal-mine in Queensland's Darling Downs, closed in 1984. Now the town itself will disappear into the maw of a vast new open-cut coal-mine, and with it all the creatures that cannot get a ticket out - like the koalas and the trees. Mark Copland asks, "What is the price of progress - and who will bear the cost? He compares the treatment of Acland people to the treatment of the people on the Planet of Pandora in the film Avatar, where miners from earth were prepared to sacrifice almost anything in the pursuit of more of something, which ultimately, will never be enough. Copeland says, "I am sure when the Acland mine was first proposed there was never any mention of closing down a town."

Originally published as "Community must ask who bears the cost of progress" by Dr Mark Copland of the in the Tooowoomba Chronicle of 5 Jan 10 (URL of article unkown).
See also: Web site of the New Hope coal company: www.newhopecoal.com.au (including environmental impact statements, newsletters and assorted other pro-coal-mining propaganda); Friends of Felton web sites: www.fof.org.au, www.friendsoffelton.blogspot.com. (See article for links to other articles related to Acland.)

What you can do: Sign e-petition calling for resignation of Queensland Government. For further information, please read "Why Queenslanders must demand new state elections" of 8 Jan 10. The original candobetter.org name of this article was originally "The Pursuit of Unobtainium in Acland, Queensland."

This story is based on a report on France2 television news about growth in public and private stock of photovoltaic panels in France, payments by Electricite de France (EDF)for contributions to the electricity grid, tax rebates available, income from providing electricity to the grid and prospect of funding retirement through this for farmers and others with roof and other space. The bottom part of the article contains comments about the situation of rebates etc in other countries. Readers are asked to add comments about their own experiences. We can build up an international policy data base here.

In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection. How about it, Australia?

Nuclear power is promoted by the growth lobby as an investment opportunity which will provide employment, international importance, and new industries. Rationales offered to the public are the [manufactured] imperative to provide power for projected (politically engineered) population growth and the desirability of off-setting greenhouse gas contributions from coal-fired electricity and coal exports. (Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter.) Australian planning is dominated by what the corporate sector wants. There are many indications that public sector scientists are expected to support private, corporate research and development rather than leading with public research responding to public need, which might result in moderation rather than accelerated consumption. Let's look more closely at this 'investment opportunity'. See also "Normalising endless immigration and coupling it to nuclear power in Oz"See also "Ziggy Switkowski, Population Numbers and Nuclear in the Australian"

The propaganda against the 1/4 acre block started a few decades ago. - appearing as opinion pieces in newspapers. I believe this propaganda was aimed at very ordinary people in suburbs with traditional blocks. It was to prepare them to relinquish this lifestyle and for their children not to expect it in the normal course of events. It wasn't aimed at the rich; it was aimed at ordinary people.

Robert Nelson's "Deceptive green of suburban gardens," is another of those insidious articles that keep on coming out of The Age newspaper. Here we are presented with the false dichotomy of the continued existence of the evil - but green - suburbs OR the necessity of greatly increasing population density by destroying them to 'save the environment'. Neither is true; in the article people's private gardens are quite unfairly blamed for our environmental problems and the cause of those intensifying problems is actually presented as if it were a solution.

As the newsmedia clamours to whip the public into acceptance of the deal to sell the estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Gorgon gas fields to the Chinese in a deal worth AU$50 billion and Liberal and Labor politicians try to claim the most credit for the deal, Professor Julian Cribb argues that we may well find ourselves, in future, without the sufficient gas to manufacture nitrogen based fertilisers necessary to maintain Australia's agricultural productivity.

Article by Professor Julian Cribb originally published on Online Line Opinion on 27 August 2009. The version here is slightly updated. Join in the discussion, there or here.
See also: Global Food Crisis pages on Science Alert, Garrett defends Gorgon approval in the SMH of 27 Aug 09, Gorgon gas project 'environmental vandalism' by Naomi Woodley for the ABC's PM of  Aug 09, Gorgon gas deal could set inflation hare running on the ABC news of 19 Aug 09,Joe Hockey claims Coalition credit for $50bn Gorgon gas deal byNicola Berkovic in the Australian of 19 Aug 09.

The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) has recently put out an 'alert' about peak oil and the existence of a group they call the MAV Transition Community Working Group. It talks about the need for local governments to lead the adaptation to peak oil. This will be difficult in a pollity where all the power is being taken from local communities and they are being plugged into state and national systems which have been commercialised and which have no obligation to their 'customers' except to submit to some vague 'competition' in prices rulings. Nonetheless, it is the local councils which have the resources and potential networks to help people reorganise locally, despite the state and federal governments.

Most people would probably doubt that we could organize satisfactory communities without vast state bureaucracies and corporations. The achievements of the Spanish Anarchist workers collectives in the 1930s show what miracles ordinary people can do. We are entering severe scarcity where centralised and globalised systems will fail to provide for us and we will have to develop highly localized economies.

It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn’t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. The supreme need is for us to build a radically new economy within our town, and then for us to run it to meet our needs.

Republished on carolynbaker.net.

The Property Council of Australia's "Sustainable Urban Growth Conference" was the scene of lively protest for the first time as demonstrators against unsustainable population growth and infrastructure expansion handed out leaflets about peak oil and population to incoming conference participants. See also the second part of: Melbourne 2008: Life in a destruction zone

Writer and ecologist, Hugh Spencer, kicks off discussion here about Kevin Rudd's proposed $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan. "The only component of the scheme that I can wholeheartedly agree with is the roof insulation - but even then, it requires a far more coherent energy target - as 'roof insulation' can mean damn near anything...."

Some people were surprised to see an article by Ziggy Switkowski in Thursday's Australian newspaper questioning population growth "Populate without perishing" and wonder if an awareness of this issue is finally beginning to permeate the mainstream [press]. Dream on...
See also: "Scanlon report underpins threat to Australian democracy"

Political analyst, Dr Ted Trainer, takes political spectators of the world to task for their harsh judgement of President Bush's achievements. He calls Bush's detractors, "Not just uncharitable but lacking in insight about the way the world works and what has to be done to maintain our way of life." He says, "President Bush has done a great job here in very difficult circumstances, and he does not get due credit", and explains just why...

Potentially thorium breeder-reactors would enable a process of converting all the 98.3 per cent of the natural uranium into radioactive substances which can maintain a sustained fission process in a chain reaction.
No-one is doing this yet. Why?

The Garnaut Report has failed to discuss the energy assumptions underlying its conclusions. Tim Flannery argues that the core assumption that alternative energy technologies can be scaled up by the huge magnitudes required to replace fossil fuels is invalid. This failure should invalidate the Garnaut Report.

With The Final Energy Crisis, the editor, Energy and Population Sociologist Sheila Newman, gives us the opportunity to examine the theory, measurement, history and future of fossil-fuel depletion within a social paradigm where thermodynamics is the primary social constraint. This is 'applied peak-oil' - a multi-authored, but tightly integrated, collection of social and physical science writing, where the authors test the strength of the hypothesis that industrialised society faces an imminent energy crisis which will bring civilization as we know it to an end.

See also: Review of The Final Energy Crisis by Mark O'Connor author of Overloading Australia (RRP AU$20) on page 8 of the December 2008 newsletter (pdf 923K) of Sustainable Population Australia.

The energy advisors for both Barack Obama and John McCain have displayed some rudimentary grasp of peak oil, however neither shows any understanding at all of the consequences of additional millions of people on resource depletion and already dangerous ecological degradation.

See also: An immigration policy bought and paid for? of 24 Feb 08 by Tim Murray, Obama's Chicago Boys of 12  Jun 08 by Naomi Klein.

Hubbert's USD peak? Can the October 08 global market crash be linked to oil prices, oil depletion or peak oil?

Humans live in and from the biosphere. But in the first decade of the 21st Century, 85 percent of the primary energy consumed by the 6.7 billion humans comes from the lithosphere.

Jan Lundberg, former oil industry analyst, predicts that a total collapse of industrial society will follow the current meltdown of the U.S. financial markets.

Original article published as Collapse of Wall Street precedes complete disintegration of system. About those "green jobs"... on 16 Sep 08 on Culture Change.

Saccharine Republican Valkyrie an immodest advocate for barbarity to wildlife, using jet-fuel.

See also:
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin Wins 2008 Rubber Dodo Award in biologicaldiversity.org of 17 Sep 08, Sarah Palin's record on environment is abysmal in seattlepi.nwsource.com of 5 Sep 08 by Rick Steiner and readers' comments,
New Orleans: The City That Won't Be Ignored in The Nation of 3 Sep 08 by Naomi Klein. How Democrat Barack Obama has incredibly surrendered critical ground to McCain in New Orleans, in which the the Rebublican Bush administration scandalously mismanaged the relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

One impact of Georgia's nose-thumbing Russia has been for the US and Europe to take a step backwards, away from it. This leaves Georgia, not only vulnerable to a Russian take-over, but it also frees Georgia to succumb to Russia.

See also: Russia Never Wanted a War by Mihkail Gorbachev in New York Times of 19 Aug 08 for a view critical of Georgia's role in the conflict.

What do rural areas in Japan 'look like'? What are the main features of Japanese agriculture that make it different from agriculture in other countries? This article includes photographs of a rural city in Japan as well as a "food and energy crisis survival guide" survey for the city.

The OECD’s IEA is able to admit that future oil supplies will not meet likely or probable demand, but the US EIA and other diehards have not yet made that cultural revolution.

The increased interest over the last few years in the production of biofuels has run into intense criticism recently for causing a rapid rise in food prices. So is that the end of the 'biofuel boom'? What happens if we engage in a little creative reading between the lines of the leaders' statements from the recent G8 summit in Hokkaido?

Please feel free to leave comments to this blog if you have any questions or comments about my chapters in The Final Energy Crisis 2. Thank you.

In the early 1970's, a book titled "The Limits to Growth" was published, a report by the Club of Rome on the predicaments of mankind. Ultimately translated in 30 languages, it caused a furore, predicting that should civilisation continue on its present path, it would run out of every resource under the sun, causing a collapse of society and a major dieoff of human population.