Thoughts after a weekend away and then the movie 4

Went to a music weekend at a lodge near here. One would have thought that these people would be fairly au fait with peak oil issues but no so. (Not that I ventured into many conversations on the topic, I was too busy with the music.)

What I did notice was that many had gas guzzling vehicles. Then someone explained that he couldn’t afford to sell his gas guzzler because to replace it with a smaller car was going to cost so much. I heard that someone had envied the couple in the 80 sq m central city apartment, because they “had so much freedom”. This couple had just bought themselves a four wheeled drive truck with a housebus on top they could take off in their garage. Good luck to them.

One guy had just travelled through USA. In the one conversation I had with him on peak oil, he claimed America had plenty of oil, they were just not getting it out yet. Then an accountant claimed the same thing. The traveller said McCain wanted to get out the oil in environmentally sensitive areas whereas Obama didn’t want to. What a horrible thought, ruining the rest of the environment so that we can burn more fossil fuel and cook the planet even more.. But Americans will have been able to drive cars for a few years longer…

In a discussion I was able to quote from an ABC 2007 documentary I saw where an oil exploration engineer asked his conference members to raise their hands if they thought the world was past peak oil. Half of them raised their hands.

In a conversation about making soup I commented I had not been able to get barley. Someone asked me where I shopped and I told her Otaki. Maybe Wellington supermarkets get first choice for the available barley.

Later today we went to the film “4”, four seasons, four musicians. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is played in Tokyo, Australia, New York and Finland. Although it is about seasons and how Vivaldi's music illustrates them, there wasn’t a mention of growing food. No planting, no nurturing, no harvesting, no seed gathering, no rest season for growing food. Weird. So out of touch with how it would have been in Vivaldi’s day. Beg your pardon, the word ‘harvesting’ was actually mentioned once. Vivaldi lived in Venice at a time when 80% of the population of Europe lived on the land. I guess he would have been well aware of the seasons and the harvest...