From oil dependence to local resilience

Sunday Group Peak Oil discussion now available as a podcast

Dear All,

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.

Regards
Tim

Tags: Chris, Group, Laidlaw, Oil, Peak, Sunday, podcast

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Doug Craig on June 23, 2008 at 14:18

Hi Tim,

Good to hear you are out and about on peak oil issues. I am part of St Albans Transition Town (suburb) initiative (see www.stalbans.gen.nz for forum and newsletter).
Just saw something on Global 3000 on DTV over weekend that spoke of Mazdur City in Abu Dhabi. The sheiks are using their oil money to sponsor a futuristic renewable energy city using solar and wind. It seems to be the first new city to be built from the ground/sand up!!. Other initiatives include the Ecovillages movement and BEDZED in London. I think the combination of newer energy technologies, incentives and behaviour change towards resource conservation will make more progress than any so-called emission trading regime. Any response?

Cheers

Doug Craig
Community and ecological planner
021 235 3552

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Permalink Reply by Tim Jones on June 23, 2008 at 19:21

Dear Doug,

Good to hear from you! I, like you, don't have great hopes for the ETS - although I still support it being passed, as the alternative is a continuing policy vacuum. It would need to be much more stringent to have any meaningful effect.

I'm also cautious about "magic bullet" techno-fixes, but incentives do have an effect - and rapidly rising oil prices are a powerful incentive, so long as ways to reduce dependence on oil are available to people.

If you'd like to talk more off-list, I'm at timjones (at) actrix.co.nz or 027 359 0293. It would be good to catch up!

Regards
Tim