peak oil

About 70 people attended the joint Engineers for Social Responsibility/
Sustainable Energy Forum conference on "Responding to Oil Depletion
and Climate Change" in Auckland on Saturday 26 July. Most of the
conference presentations, plus the conference statement and report,
are now available online at

http://www.sef.org.nz/conferences.html#2008

I've also reproduced the conference statement, which has been
distributed to various media outlets and is the basis for ongoing
discussions with Auckland local authorities, below.

Regards
Tim Jones

The Radio New Zealand Sunday Group discussion on Peak Oil and the future of oil supplies, broadcast on Sunday 8 June, is now available as a podcast from the Radio NZ site:

http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sun/sun-20080608-1005-Sunday_Group_for... (12.5 MB)

It's about 30 minutes long. Chris Laidlaw, who ran the discussion, chose to focus mainly on the international situation, but there are some references to NZ in there.

The participants were myself, Richard Hale from Hale & Twomey, and Rob Jager from Shell New Zealand.

- Tim

My paper on Peak Oil and New Zealand, A View from the Top, Downunder
is now available for distribution at
http://simontegg.wordpress.com/. It's 10,000 words and takes about an hour to read.
It should leave the reader with an in-depth understanding of oil depletion and the implications for New Zealand.

Another paper that critiques the Governments oil price assumptions is also available

Simon

With world oil prices nudging over US $100 per barrel in the past few days, the media is suddenly paying attention again. Simon Tegg, who's produced an excellent paper on what's wrong with the Government's oil price forecasting - see http://greens.org.nz/campaigns/peakoil/OilOutlooks.pdf - is being interviewed on National Radio this coming Thursday, 10 January, after the 10am news, on the coming peak in world oil production and its implications for NZ. Should be worth listening to.

- Tim Jones

I was very pleased to find out at Climate Change Festival in Wellington this weekend that there is an active Transition Towns movement in New Zealand. Transition Towns, http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/, are towns where a group has taken on the responsibility to plan the transition to a lower-energy and lower-emissions future. It's a concept that's gained a lot of traction in the UK and Ireland, and now it's coming to a town or suburb near you.

The Urban Sustainability Group will be screening The power of Community, How Cuba Survived Peak oil. The film looks at how cuba dealt with severe shortages of oil by turning to alternative agriculture and shows how peak oil can be used to rebuild community. The shortages cuba underwent provide a useful picture of what the rest of the world is going to have to go through over the next decades and provides clues for how we can best deal with the challenges posed by peak oil

The film is an hour long and we will be sharing coffee and cake afterwards.

Electric vehicles are hitting the news regularly these days, and there's been some good discussion of them on this site. But are they really the answer - or an answer - to our transport problems? And can electric public transport also help to lessen transport's wretched greenhouse gas emissions record and make us less vulnerable to Peak Oil?

Dugald McTavish: Dugald McTavish is the driving force behind Hampden Future Energy Inc.Today on route from Dunedin to Oamaru we stopped in at Hampden to meet Dugald McTavish and Rick Tanaka.

Dugald and Rick have been busy readying the Hampden community for the 'energy restrained future'. They have recognized that as a society we need to wean ourselves off oil for two reasons.

1. Oil is a fossil fuel that contributes to climate change.
3. At some point in the near future oil is going to start running out. This is the 'peak oil' phenomenon.

With this in mind Dugald, Rick and a few other people have set about making some changes in Hampden.

This is the text of a feature article I wrote which was published in the Dominion Post on Friday 2 November. It hasn't appeared on the Stuff web site, so I'm making it available here.

You might be wondering "what has this got to do with climate change"? As the article describes, the problms of dwindling oil supplies and climate change need to be addressed together.

- Tim

The Future of Oil

Oil prices have grown strongly since 2004, and recently spiked over US $90
per barrel. Speculation, international politics, exchange rate changes,
and the risk of terrorism and war have all played a part. But the basic
reason is that world oil production has not grown since 2006, while demand
continues to increase.

Pathways to Resilient Communities

Engaging communities to plan for future shocks.
Te Papa, Telstra-Clear Suite, 7th and 8th March 2009

Our World... and Wellington are facing a broad range of serious and growing threats: increasing oil prices and peak oil, climate change and erratic weather patterns, rising food prices, energy shortages, transportation strikes and economic downfalls.