[Trusties] Trusties Digest, Vol 20, Issue 2

[ONEILL Patrick R (SVHM)]

-----Original Message-----
From: trusties-bounces at lists.permaforesttrust.org.au
[mailto:trusties-bounces at lists.permaforesttrust.org.au] On Behalf Of
trusties-request at lists.permaforesttrust.org.au
Sent: Friday, 1 August 2008 8:59 AM
To: trusties at lists.permaforesttrust.org.au
Subject: Trusties Digest, Vol 20, Issue 2

Send Trusties mailing list submissions to
	trusties at lists.permaforesttrust.org.au

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/mailman/listinfo/trusties
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	trusties-request at lists.permaforesttrust.org.au

You can reach the person managing the list at
	trusties-owner at lists.permaforesttrust.org.au

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Trusties digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Peak Oil- are we teetering on the brink? (Sean Seefried)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 08:58:57 +1000
From: Sean Seefried <sean.seefried at nicta.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Trusties] Peak Oil- are we teetering on the brink?
To: Permaforest Trust Email List
	<trusties at lists.permaforesttrust.org.au>
Message-ID: <00146673-3514-45AF-8ED8-823C3764827B at nicta.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi all,

I'm not economist but I can't really see how a free market economy  
will allow us to decline from the brink without strife.  This article  
solidifies that view. That's why I'm quite interested in Richard  
Heinberg's Oil Depletion Protocol. (http:// 
www.oildepletionprotocol.org/) The basic idea is that a single, or a  
series of, international treaties are drawn up in which countries  
agree that whatever proportion of the world's oil supply that they're  
using now will be the proportion they use into the future.  An example  
will help. Say the U.S. uses 20% of the world's oil at present. Then  
they agree that even under declines in production they will still only  
use 20% of the oil. So if the world produces 87 million barrels a day  
then the U.S. gets 17.4 million. If that drops to 70 million the U.S.  
gets 14 million.

Now we can argue about with this is likely to happen, whether nations  
will sign such a treaty. But we can't really argue about its fairness,  
in principle.  First, the variability in the amount nations consume at  
present is huge. Some nations consume only tiny percentages of the  
total while others take huge chunks. This might already be considered  
unfair but at least it wouldn't get any worse under the protocol.  To  
not sign such a protocol would be, in effect, to say, "I deserve as  
much as I can get my hands on, through whatever means."

This becomes a little untenable. At least when oil production was  
increasing a nation could say to another, "There's plenty out there,  
just go out an produce/buy more".  But this won't be the case during a  
decline.

Sean

 



You're right, we could argue about whether countries will sign up to a
treaty that restricts the proportion of oil they have access to, and I'm
guessing that we would be on the same side of the argument. I don't know
how you could claim this to be "fair" however. It's well accepted that
imbalance of resource use is grossly unfair, and many are now using
climate change as a chance to rectify this. Contraction and Convergence
is one protocol, designed not only to deal with limiting GG emissions,
but also to redistribute resources (fossil fuel use) from developed
nations to developing nations, allowing these nations to increase living
standards in the face of a global reduction in fossil fuel use. Of
course this would require international co-operation on an unimaginable
scale, but is certainly more fair that any system which allows
over-consuming nations to keep over-consuming. Just because a system
that is unfair is prevented from becoming more unfair, doesn't mean it
becomes fair. Fair enough??


Pat

Disclaimer : The contents of this e-mail including any attachments are intended only for the person or entity to which this e-mail is addressed and may contain confidential, privileged and/or commercially sensitive material. If you are not, or believe you may not be, the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete this e-mail and destroy any copies.
______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email 
______________________________________________________________________