[fiedag]

(Cross-post from Australia NZ forum. It's more relevant here.)

The South Australian state parliament have voted to convene a parliamentary select committee to investigate peak oil.

This is a welcome development, but unfortunately it is not getting a lot of media attention here. it doesn't help that the initiator is an ultra-progressive senator recently pilloried for her pro-Ecstasy (the drug) stance.

Her terms of reference are drafted in a pretty narrow and prescriptive way, (i.e. increase public transport and how). I am preparing a submission which will address the terms of reference anyway.

However I plan to also add an essay dealing with the matter in a more general and comprehensive way. I am going to take them at their word and believe they really want to listen to what people have to say. It's not entirely ludicrous...

I have decided to envision the "best possible future" for South Australia. A picture of the world in 2028.

In this future, the rest of the world has undergone many traumas and indignities. However South Australia stands out as one of the few regions of the world which has made a truly inspired transition.

Planners and leaders from all over the world come to learn the secret of how to adapt to a low-energy world and still remain a liberal democracy.

At the moment I grant that this is not a realistic speculation.

Yet I plan to present a retrospective from this future. A view in the rear view mirror, of what decisions the people of SA made.

What corrections and adjustments did they make to their laws, attitudes, and living arrangements?

Who were the players? Who were the antagonists? What were the sacrifices? The high dramas? Who were the losers? What are the tensions which remain?


Now I could do with some help.

If someone has a perspective on this, feel free to write. I think that Australians themselves sometimes don't have the best perspective so overseas input is welcomed.

fiedag

[kokoda]

Barn door is already wide open and the horse has well and truly bolted.

This is the sort of thing that might have made a difference a few years back.

[fiedag]

Barn door is already wide open and the horse has well and truly bolted.

This is the sort of thing that might have made a difference a few years back.

Well thanks for that really rather useless contribution smartypants. For as long as I am breathing, I am going to continue to "make the best of it", and plan for the future. What are you doing? Sitting on the couch with a loaded shotgun?

[kokoda]

Barn door is already wide open and the horse has well and truly bolted.

This is the sort of thing that might have made a difference a few years back.

Well thanks for that really rather useless contribution smartypants. For as long as I am breathing, I am going to continue to "make the best of it", and plan for the future. What are you doing? Sitting on the couch with a loaded shotgun?

I am entitled to be smug. I, like many others, saw this coming ages ago. I make a point of regularly bothering politicians in regards to our energy policy ... or lack there of.

Politicians were well aware that oil is a finite commodity and yet most chose to do precisely nothing to mitigate the problem.

Don't you find it disturbing that no politician seems to have anything even remotely approaching a plan to deal with this? Putting together a Parliamentary Select Committee at this stage is kind of like ... well I have already used the barn door analogy.

We might have already hit Hubbard's peak, and if we have then there is nothing much more we can do except enjoy the roller coaster ride as we go down the other side.

Sitting on a couch with a loaded shotgun may be as good a plan as any.

[turner]

I am very disappointed that the govt is dragging their feet on this issue. I knew Howard and his cronies would never do anything but I thought the Labour govt stood for taking some issues on centrally rather than leaving it to mkt forces. The means test on solar power was downright stupid and just left a big hole in the expectations of anyone who has the right idea.

I know it seems too late but I think we have to do the best we can with the situation with which we are faced. I think Australians are hard to convince of a problem but once taken they are like a dog with a bone. I see a very positive attitude towards water conservation and recycling compared to the rest of the world (have lived on two other continents). I have some faith that we could harness this enthusiasm if only we could the message across to the public.

Couldn't we sell our resources (oil, gas, uranium) at high cost and use the money to develop renewable? I know that would mean a drastic change of life and some would say we need the resources but the reality is they will come and take them anyway so why not sell and use the money to fund our own sustainable world. I'm feed up with inaction on these issues!!

[fiedag]

So would I be right to be advocating a strategy of reducing the demand for petroleum, at a rate which is greater than the natural depletion rate? That is what all my thinking has led me to.

Here's what I intend to argue in the summary.

A certain natural depletion rate is inevitable. Hubbert has it that the global depletion rate will be quite smooth, and follow strict geological constraints. Prices and demand will be quite irrelevant.

_Global_ depletion will be smooth. Be it 3% p.a. for the first 3 years, growing to 5% p.a. after that. Whatever. It will be smooth.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with price or availability, or even economic activity. We can leave that out. Safely.

This assumption is every bit as good as most others, and probably better. If it turns out to be wrong, it was still a good assumption on which to base public policy which must attract a good deal of public support.

It occurs to me that South Australia should pursue a policy of
reducing petroleum consumption by at least the global depletion rate. Whatever it is.

The key advantage is that it gives us a hard numerical target aim for.

Now how to derive what this depletion rate will be?

I think that the safest assumption is symmetry of the bell curve. In other words, we extrapolate a depletion curve which is the mirror image of the leadup to peak.

In 10 years time we may be able to conclude that this assumption was not entirely accurate, but for now it seems entirely as good as any other assumption.

It says nothing about the availability of petroleum or any other transport fuel within South Australia. Sure we have plenty of alternative (gas) but again let's just deal with the depletion of petroleum.

Then we go further and assume a 85mbpd plateau of 5 years. This arises out of an eyeball consideration of the shape of the depletion bell-curve. The results are not sensitive to whether it is 2 years or 8, and 5 seems the most sensible. The plateau years are thus 2005-2009.

Now we extrapolate a decline in availability which is the reverse of the leadup to peak. I.e. 2010 consumption would be equal to the 2004 consumption, 2011 would mirror 2003 and so on.

Now remember that and lock it in Eddie.

At some point we have to stop guessing what the rest of the world is going to do, and just assume that there is some degree of aggregate behaviour which is strictly deterministic. The assumption of demand symmetry is a good one. Simple, well-understood and robust.

Next we say that whatever happens globally due to geological constraints, we should do locally because it's good to be masters of our own destiny.

If the oil fields want to decrease output by 3% in 2010, then our policy should aim to decrease output by 4% in 2010.

With any demand destruction mechanism other than price and rationing.


Now I said that price should be irrelevant and I agree that price should not be used by government policy to reduce demand - that is what the market does, and it's what we're here to prevent because it causes misery. Otherwise what is the point of having government policy?

Still government policy needs to make some assumptions about what the prices will be in order to plan how to make demand reductions of the required amount.

How do we arrive at a consensus on oil prices in the future? Some people see it rising inexorably to dizzying heights. Others see it collapsing due to recession. Where is the middle ground?


Why not carry this idea of symmetry a little further?

Perhaps the 2010 price will also be equal to the 2004 price, but inflation adjusted. The 2003 price equal to 2011 price but inflation adjusted. I think this makes due allowance for the likelihood of complete economic collapse, and (again I need to make this point) even though the assumption is very likely to prove wrong, it is acceptable, and definitely much better than arguing about it and not doing ANYTHING!

Thoughts?