How then, do we move backwards? How does a society, with most of the people having no clue of future events, move from being dependent on a vast and intertwined network of goods and services produced by the indigenous people of whereever, to a local resource and renewable energy based society, and do so in the timeframe available (20-30 years using the most liberal extimates, 10-20 with resonable estimates, 5-10 with worst case scenarios), all the while prices on everything increasing, world politics getting more militaristic, governments continuously reducing civil liberties, shortages of goods on the market and weather patterns resembling bad Hollywood movies?
Joined: Oct 09, 2005 Posts: 53 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2006 9:31 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
coyote wrote:
No, after Peak Oil electricity will not remain cheap for many years, let alone centuries.
The whole economics of aluminium production is predicated on (very) cheap electricity.
Here in NZ we have the Cromalco smelter, which runs on clean, green, 100% hydro generated electricity. The deal to get Cromalco here was done many years ago, when NZ was 100% hydro electricity.
Times change, of course, and now total renewables now make up 70% of our electricity, the rest being NG and coal. Comalco are looking fo another good long-term deal giving them cheap electricity, in a country (...world) that is facing increasing energy costs.
NZ is torn - we'd like to see the back of Cromalco, they use 15% of all our electricity, so getting that power back would make a big difference to our thermal generation needs. But losing Cromalco would mean the end of lots of jobs (effectively the dessimation of a region, a bit like what happened to mining villages in Wales), and loss of foreign income and tax.
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 4:42 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
It's quite pathetic how all the drink containers were made out of glass and recycled earlier to now where nothing is reused. Convenience is what has fueled this massive uptake of disposable products, infact convenience is still making inroads into every corner of our lives, until oil runs out, our lives will become more and more convenient until the system topples over itself. I still perfer plastic bottles over glass, I believe glass bottles are dangerous, where ever I look there is a smashed bottle somewhere, animals, humans, cars and bikes all suffer when moving over broken glass, and our Australian bush is absoultly littered with glass and broken bottles which causes bush fires on hot days
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