There is some movement towards recognition of peak oil with the Transition Towns movement – communities looking at ways they can support each other in future-proofing themselves. It will mean looking at ways to generate local power supply from renewables as well as supporting local business and production.

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Sleepy, it only needs a small reduction in recreational driving to produce a 20% drop in deaths. Compared with commuter driving, recreational driving is high occupant and high speed. So a a couple of percent reduction in rural driving could easily hide a continuing couple of percent increase in commuter driving.

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BP: I’m not denying this issue, as it appears to me to be a more real and present problem than AGW

On that we do agree. Only the most batty of people believe that either there is infinite oil down there, or that it regenerates itself quickly enough to bail us out. The reality is visible today.

In my mind there is no doubt that climate change is an issue, probably the greatest issue of our time, but the effects of the end of cheap oil will be on us much more quickly, and will be far more disruptive in the short to medium term. There is very little time. The greatest optimists give us but a few decades.

What was, just a few years ago, the “peak oil nutters brigade” becomes more mainstream by the day. There is now a greater understanding that the issue isn’t actually how much oil is down there, but at what rate we can extract the oil. A hundred million year supply of oil isn’t terribly useful to us if we can only get say 10 million barrels a day, at least not unless the world adjusts to have just that amount of oil available.

Helen was (if not the first) one of the first leaders to mention “the oil peak”, Bush has hinted at it, and now Rudd.

The real problem is, how do you tell the world that unprecedented change is coming in such a way that the impact from the announcement will actually be any better than the slow jog towards the nightmare?

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Kevyn,

Have people started driving less, because of the high oil prices? The latest Listener magazine claims that we’re still consuming the same amount of oil as last year, its just consumption growth that has slowed, although perhaps we’ve cut down on driving and diesel use may have gone up due to the agricultural boom.

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OutinFront said “population don’t really get it even now…..and aren’t inclined to get it if it means they are worse off.”

That’s human nature. If there’s no short term reward then they simply don’t want to know. Or if its a short term reward that they don’t care about, such as the 20% reduction in the road toll caused by high oil prices.

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Is the era of cheap oil really behind us, though?

I’m not denying this issue, as it appears to me to be a more real and present problem than AGW.

If it is real, then clearly we do need to act quickly. When will all politicians be fast tracking new electricity generation projects?

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To be fair to Rudd, he has to take everyone along with him, so he can’t just burst out with the bare naked truth. Truth is people who can handle it and as any green knows, most people most definitely can NOT handle the truth. If they could, we would have seen big changes years ago on environmental issues.

Most of we humans are slow, dim beasts. Creatures of habit – in deed and thought.

The usual spectrum of denialists and don’t-wanna-knows will have to be incrementally dragged along the path of acknowledgment of the developing reality to the point where everyone, including them, agrees that fundamental changes must occur.

Then real change can occur quickly.

Otherwise, you end up where we are in New Zealand. The people who have been paying attention know what’s up and what needs doing. But the other 70%+ of the population don’t really get it even now…..and aren’t inclined to get it if it means they are worse off.

So though an ETS is long overdue, there is not popular support for it. People have not been brought along as they should have been. That’s because it was just one priority among many……and few pay attention.

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