ASPO is concerned that the threats that Peak Oil poses are being systematically ignored and there will be chaos if oil shortages hit Australia.  We should plan well ahead for petrol droughts and oil crises, just as we do for cyclones and bushfires.  Oil vulnerability assessment should be a routine risk management feature, not a rarity.  The most probable date for Peak Oil is 2012 (+/- 5 years)

ABARE's determined forecasts of falling oil prices have been consistently wrong for five years, as it is geological limits that control oil production not economics.  Economists do not realise that geological forces are more powerful than market forces.  A random number generator would perform better than ABARE's forecasters.  See graph at www.ASPO-Australia.org.au/References/Bruce/abare-mar-08.jpg

Transcript of an address given March 4 to the Brisbane Institute by the Honourable Andrew McNamara, Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation.

I’d like to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we gather this evening.

I want to thank the Board of the Brisbane Institute for the invitation to address this gathering.

Tonight I want to talk about capital S Sustainability.

By that I don’t mean the usual narrow environmental concept of sustainability in agricultural production and land use.

I mean the future of our society, our economy and our environment; the structure of our cities, their energy and water sources and demand profiles; the treatment of these sources of our wealth; the imminent peaking of world oil supplies; our use of finite resources like gas and coal; and the way we dispose of those resources when we’re finished with them.

I will begin by considering what sustainability means to me.

Ms NOLAN (Ipswich—ALP):

On Monday night in Ipswich two local engineers, Steve Posselt and Stuart McCarthy, in conjunction with the Ipswich Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Ipswich Green—an organisation of which I am a cofounder—ran an Ipswich leaders forum to outline to the community the serious challenge of sustainability.

Their timing could not have been better. Today the price of a barrel of West Texas crude oil passed through the $US110 mark. This is the highest price oil has ever reached, either in current or inflation adjusted terms.