Surviving encroaching major social, environmental and economic change in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand
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Surviving the Immediate Future after Peak Oil

Have we peaked yet?

My view is that easy oil has probably passed its peak.
- Jeroen van der Veer, (CEO Royal Dutch Shell), 24 January 2006

We may be at a point of peak oil production.
- Bill Clinton, 28 March 2006

Peak oil is a reality. In May 2005 we had peak production, at 74 million barrels a day.
- Matthew Simmons (Chairman, Simmons & Company International)


Conventional oil production peaked in 2005–2006.

- Richard Heinberg (professor, journalist & author), September 2007

Oil prices have doubled over the past year.
- Tehran Times, 13 May 2008

Oil will go through $200 like a hot knife through butter.
- Matthew Simmons, 11 May 2008

The crucial point isn’t when oil runs out, it’s when the supply starts to run down. That started in 2005. We’re on the slippery slope. In August and September 2007, oil went up in price and the start of the meltdown of the American economy began. Anything you want to do will be harder next week than it is this week. It will be harder to do next month than it is this week, and much much harder to do a year from now than it is now, because the price of petrol and oil is going up. There’s not much time.
- Kevin Moore (author) Taranaki Daily News, 19 April 2008


Peak oil

Peak oil signifies a rapid decline in the availability of cheap oil - a non-renewable resource that is a component in just about everything we use and do in our daily lives – and the far-reaching social, financial and environmental impacts it is likely to have for all of us. An abundance of cheap oil over the past 100 years or so has permitted tremendous expansion in areas such as large scale food production, which in turn has supported an explosive growth in the global population.

Survival Hawke's Bay

This site is based on the premise that rapidly rising energy costs, escalating food prices, and financial decline are already upon us, that these trends are likely to continue, and that we may have little time left to prepare with friends and family for the major lifestyle adjustments we will probably need to make.

Alarmist? Some of the material is certainly intended as a wakeup call but, just like installing smoke detectors, the time to plan is before an event occurs and, if your preparations are never needed, so much the better!

The aim of this site is to focus mainly on the Hawke's Bay region and on peak oil and its likely fall-out, such as widespread financial decline and the end of cheap imports (in a country now heavily dependent on importing many of its manufactured goods, and even its food).

This is in no way intended as a reflection on the excellent initiatives now underway in the Bay to deal with other major issues such as climate change, but it is felt that the ramifications of the decline in cheap oil may be more immediate and imminent.

I believe I have a personal responsibility to at least consider the impact of a rapidly changing society on friends and family. Please do not base your conclusions just on the selective material presented on this site, but do your own reading and investigation. I look forward to your feedback and suggestions, in the hope that this can become more of a community-based site.

Tony
2 July 2008

 


World population 0 - 2000, clearly showing an incredibly steep rise  after 1900World population 0 - 2000, showing also the increased availability of cheap oil which made the population explosion possibleWorld population increase and oil use: 1900 to present day

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