An interesting report on the likely effects of Peak Oil on the UK has been released by the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security. Here’s a summary from Going Solar:
If the UK’s transport system is considered at risk of being seriously impacted by higher oil prices, I’d hate to even think what the risk is to New Zealand’s highly car dependent transport system.
The full report can be read here.
Processing...
Its hard to read the actions of our present government as being anything other than the complete reverse of what is advised above. RoNS is nothing other than a great race to capture as much money for roads as quickly as possible before the game is up. Laugh or cry? I dunno. Do they all just stick their fingers in their ears when they hear the words peak oil? I do feel that they really think they’re fighting the good fight against dangerous crazed lefty-greenies. Another billion on a road is like a new medical breakthrough for them; they are fighting for a world view. Mansion in Parnell, girls at St Cuths, SUV to Omaha, quick trip to somewhere sunny, Sky Sport…
Global warming, peak oil, that’s just being negative, only loser moaners talk like that. Not successful people.
Perhaps the real thing is that the culture around these bright and breezy Nats is that they never hear or see a contradicting view; it’s a hermetic world … ah the simple life!
I think the problem is that it is much easier for politicians to react to a crisis than pre-empt anything…
If John Key came out tomorrow and said Peak Oil is an immeadite threat and we need to massively cut our GDP by consuming less, driving less, cycling and investing massively in PT, no one would vote for him, those that would already vote Green, most would vote for Goff…
The crazy thing is that the 100 year reign of self-drive, self-park, privately owned automobile traffic in towns is on the way out, historically speaking. This is due to ever more negative environmental perceptions of the car (including traffic calming and pedestrianisation) and also due to forthcoming Automated Electrical Transportation (AET) technologies, which are several times more energy efficient and eliminate parking space requirements by keeping vehicles shuttling around on call.
AET vehicles will range in scale from personal pods (long term) through to various sorts of driverless metros and freight-handling robots. Driverless metros are already happening in cities overseas, through freight robots are so far only confined to factories. In technology generally, there is a move from steam, diesel and petrol systems controlled hands on by a human worker, to electric ones remotely controlled. This trend has existed for decades and it has been progressively scaling up and moving out of the factory into the public realm as computers and the Internet have become more effective.
Such technology revolutions are normal in history and generally take most people by surprise. Ironically, this means that spending up large on big roads right now is a lot like investing in horse stables and buggy whips in 1900. After all we’d been riding gee-gees for millennia, right? An even better analogy would be investment in kerosene lamps, on the verge of the community getting electric lighting. Or typewriters just before the coming of the Internet. Incidentally this also shows how historically appropriate railway electrification is right now.
The freight robots in the Porsche factory are literally amazing…
You make a good point, when we were relying on shipping and electric rail and tram way we had the ability to really ramp up effiency and make the oil last for centuries, instead we went the way of trucks, cars and jet planes… Quite stupid really…