Inelegant mystery

How is it possible that these tomatoes, from Italy, can still be sold at $1.28 a tin, which on this particular day was a fraction more than the Australian product. Usually they are even cheaper than this, and the Australian product is more expensive. Italy is not a third world country! The only competitive advantage here are European subsidies. Regardless of competitive advantages, which have been in place for many years, the price of transport has gone up by degrees in the last year. How can tomatoes which have been shipped 15,971 kilometers still be sold at almost the same price as the local product?

Surely these costs will come to bear before long.

Good TV

Peak Moment produces programs about peak-oil, and a host of related topics like relocalisation, organic farming and growing, and other stuff. They are 30 minute programs and are mostly interviews with people, but are usually pretty interesting. Mike Ruppert and Richard Heinberg are interviewed amongst others. There's a particularly interesting one on Cuba's reaction to its lack of oil imports after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The ABC program Four Corners has produced a really good documentary about Peak Oil,

Available as video on demand here

It's a good introduction, and will save you trawling through web pages, which can be a bit daunting.

Interesting times

Photo -Have we reached the end of cheap oil?
Originally uploaded by Grant Neufeld


During the last few years, as I have read more and more about energy depletion, climate change, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, globalisation of corporations and many other developments of our post-modern era, this phrase has popped into my mind many times.

The saying "May you live in interesting times" is usually referred to as an ancient chinese curse. History, of course, reveals that the most interesting times have usually been the most chaotic and revolutionary.

I think we are now living in increasingly "interesting" times. Gen X'ers like myself have often been accused of being apathetic and disinterested in politics and current affairs. Whether this is true or not, it is our generation and those which follow who now face a very uncertain future. The one thing which is certain is that very big changes are coming. We are facing an historical turning point. We are living at the end of what will probably be referred to in history books as the "oil age". Oil has certainly been the commodity which has allowed the exponential growth of wealth and population we currently enjoy. But the oil age will end, and it will happen in our lifetimes. Nobody has yet worked out what comes next.

For those of you who are interested, and would like to know more - or find out where I got these crazy ideas from, I've posted some links on the sidebar. The Energy Bulletin's Peak Oil Primer, has a very good summary of the energy problems we now face.

For those of you who find this all a bit overwhelming, I have relief. It turns out that the saying "May you live in interesting times" is not an old Chinese proverb at all, and a bloke called Stephen E DeLong researched the origin of the phrase in the late 90's. You can read about his discoveries here.

I will be posting more on this topic in the future, as it interests me very deeply. As you can see from my other posts, I still conduct a normal life and I haven't started losing sleep over this yet, but it is something I would like to share with anyone who would like to listen.

Thank you for listening....