Canungra community hosted the recent film forum on Australia Pumping Empty which was incredible. Engineer and energy expert, Lionel Orford, attended the evening and spoke of our imminent future and our only real alternatives to the energy crisis we face - conservation and sharing our resources to get by with less. Attendees travelled from Boonah, Beaudesert, Ipswich, Canungra area, Tamborine Mountain, Beechmont! Not big in numbers, but big in awareness. Deputy Mayor, Cr Dave Cockburn, and indigenous elder, John Long, opened the forum onto Scenic Rim Transition to Resilience.Lionel Orford's new book "Peak Capitalism: Our Opportunity to Choose between Survival and Collapse" will be released soon. It shows that our economic system is undergoing a systemic failure and that emergency action is now required by governments worldwide to prevent an economic collapse. The book proposes a plan to restore a functional economy through fundamental reform of the financial system and the construction of the infrastructure needed for a world with much less oil. A vast roll out of electric rail and Solar Thermal power is proposed for Australia. For countries where solar thermal power is not viable, the case is made for developing new generation nuclear power in order to save them from total collapse. You can download the draft Executive Summary of Lionel's new book here.
An explanation of peak oil and futher information is available from the Energy Bulletin here. The DVD can be ordered from http://www.aquilaproductions.com.au/
A recent article by Joanne Knight More of the same no cure for inherent ills also discusses the consumer society consuming itself.
It begins with the quote from writer William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)
AFTER one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say: I want to see the manager
.....The leaders are intellectually bankrupt. Their answer is more of the same. If a car has a design fault and it keeps overheating, eventually this problem will destroy the engine. Consumerism is such a fault within our economic system.
We need a new economic driver. In their book Climate Code Red, David Spratt and Phillip Sutton argue that the greatest hope for the planet in the "climate emergency" is for government to make large investments in energy efficiency technology, renewable energy production, zero-emissions transport and carbon-capture technology such as biochar....
The whole article can be accessed here.
http://business.theage.com.au/business/more-of-the-same-no-cure-for-inherent-ills-20081106-5jej.html (Joanne Knight worked for seven years as a consumer credit and housing adviser for the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Victorian Government)