How well placed is your area for Peak Oil?

DrBang

My family and I live in Brisbane. Brisbane is a nice enough place. We really suck at planning for the future though. We are growing really fast, but are not putting in the infrastructure to maintain the population. Water supply, the electric grid and the road network are all at straining point. The people seem ahppy enough going about their business. Life is good so why worry (then bitch like hell about about our politicans).

Real issues like climate change are just coming into mainstream conciousness. Peak oil is not in mainstream but I think our government is PO literate and is quietly planning. Bird flu is being prepared for very quietly (scary).

Mentally, the average person here has a paradigm shift coming. For most it will be not plesant.

On the good side

Electricity: Most of it is coal fired based on old tech. While bad for the environment, we still have power when peak oil passes the pain threshold. Also we are experimenting with solar power stations and we have huge geothermal deposits in SW Queensland and central Australia. They are ready when the political will is.

Water: Till recently we were in a nasty drought and all water supplies were literally dryng up. For the last 2 months or so we have been getting a lot of rain and huge amounst of flooding all down the east coast. When we get around to not being so wastefull we should be OK.

Food: Lots of fodd is grown in Australia but in remote areas. Transport will be an issue. If they set up a fleet of trucks that run on natural gas we should be OK. If not lots or arable land is around most of our cities. We won't have the abundance we have now, but we should get by (I hope). This is our most challenging problem.

Manufaucturing: A bit of a problem here. The vast majority of this went over seas in the 70's. When TSHTF, we will have to tool up. This will be a real challenge for us as we don't have enough skilled people now.

Geography: We are isolated enough. Lots of refugees may start coming in on boats provided they can get fuel to run them. This issue has divided our culture in the past. When we have to really start turning people away the divide will become quite sharp.

Energy fuel: We have a small amount of oil, a lot of natural gas, and a huge amount of uranium. Not enough to be worth invading us for though (I hope). The uranium we will end up selling to those who want it. More coal than we know what to do with.

Resources: lots of mineral wealth. Iron, gold, copper, nickel, etc. Lots of coal

Challenges:

Climate change: volatile to say the least. Bigger storms and more extremes forceing changes of practice across the board.

Biodiversity: Australia is a harsh environemnt mostly. Lots of natural bush has been cleared. This needs to be reversed.

Salinity: cut trees down and the water table brings up salt, right where you want to grow agriculture. Dumbass'

Overpopulation: Australia can support sustainably long term about 8 million people. We have right now about 20 million.

Dependance on transport: We are too few spread out over large distances. Will be a problem with our current load.

Sovereignty: Our leaders (John Howard being the last and best example) has sold off/given away our sovereignty to countries like the US. Before them it was British Empire. This has cost us dearly and has to stop.

All in all it will be OK but we have a crap load of work to do.
_________________
For every question , there is a lie. For every lie, there is a truth. For every truth, there is a way. And for every way, there is a time. This is the time.