Eat The Suburbs" is promoting a new venture by the co-founder of the permaculture concept David Holmgren, who has launched a new global scenario planning website, www.FutureScenarios.org.

Holmgren says his future scenarios will help both policy makers and activists come to terms with the end of the era of growth.



While the end of growth is so unthinkable to many policy makers and economists that they use the term ‘negative-growth’, Holmgren says we are already entering a generations-long era of ‘energy descent.’ We now face less and less available energy each year, coupled with a destabilised climate.

“The simultaneous onset of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilisation. Each limits the effective options for responses to the other,” writes Holmgren on www.futurescenarios.org.

Holmgren uses a scenario planning framework to bring to life the likely cultural, political, agricultural and economic implications of peak oil and climate change.

“Scenario planning allows us to use stories about the future as a reference point for imagining how particular strategies and structures might thrive, fail or be transformed,” says Holmgren

Future Scenarios depicts four very different futures. Each is a permutation of mild or destructive climate change, combined with either slow or severe energy declines. Scenarios range from the relatively benign Green Tech to the near catastrophic Lifeboats scenario.



“Many futurists are looking at Facebook, robot pets and other i-fads, whereas David has been studying a much bigger picture. He works from the fundamental resource and environmental constraints, and I’m convinced that he’s got his assumptions right where others have them very wrong. He has followed through with unusual insight, drawing on 30 years of permaculture thinking, which I would say makes him the most important futurist in the world right now,” said Adam Grubb founder of Energy Bulletin (www.energybulletin.net with over 400,000 visitors a month.)



“These aren’t two dimensional nightmarish scenarios designed simply to scare people into environmental action. They are compellingly fleshed out visions of quite plausible alternative futures which delve into energy, politics, agriculture, cultural and even spiritual trends. They help us reconcile our own competing fears and hopes for the future, and to consider the best strategies for adapting to a changing world,” says Grubb.



Holmgren says “we will need resilience and adaptability in the face of radical change.”

Holmgren coined the term ‘energy descent’ in 2005 as a less negatively loaded way than ‘decline’ or ‘collapse’ for describing a future defined by constantly diminishing energy production.

“I chose the word ‘descent’ because it implies a long and sustained process through which it is possible to survive and even thrive. While energy descent does suggest the demise of globalised industrial civilisation, that process will play out over many decades, if not centuries. For individuals, households, organisations and communities focused on socially and ecologically adaptive design, energy descent is as much an opportunity as an obstacle. Realistic assessment of the larger forces at work in the world helps empower us to better refine our strategies.”

The ABC's Lateline program during the week had an interview with Caltex Australia CEO Des King, who said we could be looking at an oil price of $200 a barrel in the not too distant future.

ALI MOORE: You've warned you'll cut production if refinery margins fall below operating costs, how close are they right now?

DES KING: We're a long, long way away from that point, but we just wanted to make people realise that we're certainly prepared to run this business for the long term and that means running for maximising cash.

So it would be, for example, if margins were to drop in the second half of the year significantly we would operate the business to maximise cash, which would be cutting back on output if we needed to. That's just a worst case scenario and we certainly hope we don't have to go there.

ALI MOORE: You say worst case scenario, but given the rising cost of crude and the stronger Australian dollar, neither of which show any sign of turning around, is your scenario more likely than not to become reality?

DES KING: I don't think it's likely to become a reality, but it's important that we have plans in place should that eventuate.

What's really going to happen is going to depend on what happens in the United States. The United States is the biggest consumer of fuel, particularly petrol. If their recession becomes extended that could impact the margins for petrol.

It's really that refining margin that's important. We certainly hope the US slowdown isn't extended and they start getting back on track for growth again. It's just scenario planning for us.

ALI MOORE: Let's look at the price of oil. It's currently nudging US $120 a barrel, is $200 a barrel on the cards? Where do you think it's heading?

DES KING: We wish it would go lower rather than higher. We just don't know. It's all supply and demand.

But looking at how the world's demands for energy keep going up and up, I think a $200 oil price is somewhere in the future. We don't know how far away it is. But even though the world is going into a slower growth this year, China and India are still going ahead and a number of people are saying we're going to consume over a million barrels a day more oil in 2008, compared 2007.

ALI MOORE: If we bring it back to Australia and the price at the petrol pump, what will that mean, we're already close to two dollar petrol?

DES KING: We are and if you look at the cost of crude, petrol today is about 1.50 on average and the cost in crude in that is 80 to 85 cents. It is a large component so it does impact the price at the pump.

Obviously if the Aussie dollar gets weaker that will actually drive up that element of the crude price if the crude price stays the same. Hopefully the price of crude will soften before it goes up, but the long term trend unfortunately is for higher crude oil prices.

ALI MOORE: Can you be anymore exact than that? What do you think the price at the pump will be in, say, three months' time?

DES KING: It's very hard for us to project that. It depend on refinery production worldwide, US demand a whole number of features. But I think there may be ups and downs, but long term unfortunately I think the price of petrol is going to keep climbing.

ALI MOORE: At what point do you think price will really become prohibitive for motorists? At what point do people stop buying petrol, leave the car at home, curtail the amount of time they spend on the road?

DES KING: We've already seen pretty slow growth of petrol. If you look at the total demand for petrol in Australia in 2007, compared to 2006, there was only 0.8 per cent more petrol consumed in Australia 07 compared to 06. When we look at the most recent result, first quarter 08 compared to first quarter 07, it was pretty flat. People are already not buying more and, in fact, we're starting to see the impact of the higher prices on consumption.

The Oil Drum has a post from Major Cameron Leckie of the ADF on the impact of peak oil on the Australian Army.

Oil is vital to virtually everything modern industrial societies do, yet it is mostly taken for granted. It provides 90 per cent of our transport fuel, 95 per cent of the goods in shops use oil and 95 per cent of our food products require oil use.1 Oil is a fi nite resource—one day we will run out. While this will no doubt be a long time off, what is becoming clear is that global oil production will peak and then commence a terminal decline almost certainly within decades and quite possibly within the next few years.2 While some official organisations, such as the US Government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA)3, make optimistic predictions and see oil production continuing to increase in the short to medium term, there is increasing concern among elements of the oil industry that the peaking in production is imminent or has already passed.

The implications of the peaking in global oil production are enormous. Predictions vary from a global economic recession to the collapse of modern industrial societies. Despite this, there is relatively little emphasis placed on preparing for the onset of Peak Oil by governments, the media, businesses or individuals, with some notable exceptions.4 In the event of an early peak, this will be to society’s great detriment and is something that should be of grave concern to all. The magnitude of this problem for defence forces is summarised by the following excerpt from a Boston Globe report on the US Department of Defence:

A new study ordered by the Pentagon warns that the rising cost and dwindling supply of oil—the lifeblood of fighter jets, warships, and tanks—will make the US military’s ability to respond to hot spots around the world ‘unsustainable in the long term’.5

If rising costs and dwindling supplies of oil have the potential to do this to the US military, it is likely that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) will face similar problems. The ADF will not be immune to the impacts of Peak Oil. All three Services are heavily dependent upon oil as demonstrated in Financial Year 2005–06, where the Services submitted bids for liquid fuels totalling $340 million (including unfunded, non-ADF requirements). All three Services are heavily dependent upon oil. Stuart McCarthy from the Australian Association of the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) believes that increasing consumption and rising prices triggered by Peak Oil could see ADF fuel costs increase to 4 or 5 per cent of total Defence expenditure in the foreseeable future.6 The impact of Peak Oil on all three Services is likely to be severe and will challenge the ADF’s ability to conduct joint operations. For example, in a liquid fuel constrained environment, the ability to conduct strategic lift and provide close air support could be severely hampered.

Although Peak Oil presents significant implications for the wider ADF and Australia’s military strategy, this paper will focus on the implications of Peak Oil for the Australian Army from a Raise, Train and Sustain perspective. If the Army is unprepared for the challenges that Peak Oil presents, it risks becoming ‘functionally dislocated’, with inappropriate doctrine, equipment and an inability to train or possibly perform the tasks that the Government requires of it. This is the motivation for this paper—to ensure that the Army does not become ‘functionally dislocated’ and that it can continue to serve the Australian people in the same manner as it has throughout its history. The aim is to provide a starting point from which discussions and informed decisions can be made in planning and preparing for an uncertain future. ...