If the issue of Peak Oil itself is not worrying enough, what's is also cause for concern is that, as Dr. Goodstein mentioned, the politician are avoiding this issue like the plague. In the recent US and Canadian elections the concept of peak oil was not discussed at all, although most politicians are happy enough to pays some lip service in a rather superficial manner to the need for switching to alternative energy sources and reducing greenhouse gasses, but there was no discussion at all of the profound changes that peak oil will bring about in the way we organize and plan our communities. I understand since then that at least one Australian politician has had the guts and the gumption to publicly raise Peak Oil as an important issue that needs to be addressed and that cannot continue to be swept under the table. Good for him. Hopefully it will be the start of a trend.
Australian politician goes on record about peak oil and gas.
by Andrew McNamara
Mr McNAMARA (Hervey Bay—ALP) (8.39 pm):
I rise to support the Petroleum and Other Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill is necessary to ensure consistency and efficiency in the administration of the petroleum and pineline industries in Queensland, including implementing our vital coal seam gas regime. I say ‘vital' because we will soon be faced with the effects of the rundown of the world's oil reserves after the advent of peak oil. Peak oil represents the most serious and immediate challenge to our prosperity and security. It will impact on our lives more certainly than terrorism, global warming, nuclear war or bird flu. While it may not be a term with which members are familiar now, I predict it will come to dominate debate in this place over the next 10 years.
The concept of peak oil was identified in 1956 by the late US oil industry and government geologist M King Hubbert. Dr Hubbert suggested that the rise and fall of oil production in a nation, or indeed the world, would follow a pattern for individual wells; that is, rising sharply from when oil under pressure in the ground is first spiked, increasing as more wells are sunk, plateauing when half the oil has been extracted and tapering away as the remaining recoverable oil is pumped out. This is now referred to as the Hubbert curve. From the halfway peak, all oil flows decrease as the pressure in the oil basin declines. The cost of recovering the oil rises exponentially from this point as it has to be extracted with greater degrees of technical difficulty, such as flooding the reservoir with water to float residual oil into a recoverable position.
Dr Hubbert worked for the United States Geological Survey as a senior research geophysicist for 12 years. He was employed as director of Shell's research laboratory in Houston for 20 years. He taught at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Johns Hopkins University and made a number of outstanding contributions to the field of geophysics. Regretfully, his modelling of peak oil was ignored by government and rejected by industry, but he has been proven right.
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Let me conclude with this simple statement of fact. Peak oil is coming—soon—and no alternative energy source available to us today or in the foreseeable future is going to make up the total energy shortfall. The beginning of the end of the oil age is upon us, and it is time to respond fully to that challenge. The petroleum bill before the House is a necessary step in that process. I congratulate the minister on this reform as well as on last year's Petroleum and Gas (Production and Safety) Act and the Petroleum and Other Legislation Bill that collectively regulate and encourage the exploration and development of petroleum and gas resources in Queensland. I commend the bill to the House.http://www.energybulletin.net/4654.htmlHere's a couple more video links to a lecture and a documentary dealing with Peak Oil.
Professor Al Bartlett's lecture on exponential growth and resource depletion:Apple Quick Time (MP 4)
http://news.globalfreepress.com/movs/Al_Bartlett-PeakOil.mp4Real Player Version
http://edison.ncssm.edu/programs/colloquia/bartlett.ram Edited version of documentary End of Suburbia (24min):Apple Quick Time (.mov)
http://911busters.com/video/IQ1_20_END_OF_SUBURBIA_VIDEO_24.2_.movWindows Media Player (.wmv)
http://911busters.com/video/IQ1_20_END_OF_SUBURBIA_VIDEO_24.2_.wmvEnd of Suburbia is also available for rent at Netflix
http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?trkid=73&movieid=70022083 
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