Is there an elephant in the room?
Both the Independent and the Guardian (among many other papers throughout Europe) are leading with articles about the price of a barrel of oil, the IEA’s revision down of its estimate of available oil resources, and the rising price of food and transport.
While we may be forgiven in the antipodes for focusing on our latest Budget, the event was noticeable for the lack of engagement with arguably our greatest challenge: oil. Indeed, other than the Greens, our Parliament, local government, media and sadly the public seem blind to the slow train coming.
Our world is ticking towards midnight at the petrol pump, and no-one seems to notice. Aotearoa NZ has the fifth lowest price for petrol in the OECD and seems to have no answers other than to retreat at pace from any environmental policies that might upset truckers, SUV drivers, and boy racers.
A barrel of oil has now hit US$135. Previous IEA estimates that by 2030 the world could be producing 116B barrels of oil a day have been downgraded to less than 100B. World demand today is 87B barrels a day and climbing. Current output is not meeting even that demand, and Saudi Arabia, when asked by Dubya to raise output said they couldn’t see why they should and wouldn’t be raising it again for a while.
I pick here and now that a really large cut is coming your way very soon. It’s just not going to be the tax one you were after.
So let’s keep our eye on the real issues this year at our election. If we do not balance our transport demands with courage in environmental policy, food and commodity prices will continue to rise exponentially, and we can kiss goodbye to any progress that we have made on poverty. Alternatively, it might be time to build fences with razor wire in anticipation of the day people in our cities and towns can’t afford to buy food.
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