Monday, May 02, 2011

Peak Oil

This might seem random, after not having blogged for awhile.

And not having blogged anything *meaningful* for even longer. There's so much I could say. I think of writing a blog entry often these days while I'm out and about - pretty much any time I'm not actually free to write. I could write about my relationship, about my band, about my work, about my radio show, about my students, about my obsession with watching series episodes exactly in the right order, and my equal pedanticness when listening to music - how I have to listen to a whole album from start to finish, and how I try to finish listening to a song before moving on to the next one. I could write about Melbourne transport, about my car, about relatives and friends and people who live on my street, about going to bars, seeing gigs, going on a holiday to Gippsland, seeing 2 Ridley couples getting married in 2 months, about my new touchscreen phone, new glasses, about the books I'm reading, about the symphony (!) that I've been commissioned to write and should be working on right now (instead of writing this).
And just writing about what *else* I could write about has already taken far longer than I intended. I was only going to say:

Peak Oil. Thoughts?

My reason for asking is that plastic comes from oil. Is there plastic that doesn't contain oil? Perhaps. But if not, then in a hundred years there would be no new plastic available. I...think that's right.
Of course peak oil has more ramifications than just for plastic. Cars, aeroplanes, rockets... I dunno... anything that uses oil is threatened when oil runs out.
My dad just sent me this article about peak oil. And there was a bit where it said how much the Australian government was spending on maintaining roads and stuff. Which suddenly seemed odd, if cars were going to run out of fuel. So then I pictured this apocalyptic future in like, 300 years or something, where all the countries have these giant unusable networks of roads with no cars. *tumbleweed drifts by*
But that's unrealistic anyway, because there are already hybrid cars and stuff which can run on ....uh, not oil. Hmm. And in 300 years we will probably have researched other sources of fuel or transport. So my scenario is unlikely, I guess.
Anyway, I was interested in your thoughts.

Also, if one of the things I mentioned earlier took your fancy, and you want to know more about that aspect of my ever-so-tedious life, let me know. I suppose I want to write about whatever's most interesting :) ...and also what interests me, of course...hence the peak oil.

Bye now

3 comments:

Ben Roberts said...

There'll always be a need for roads. The Romans built roads long before there were cars, and we'll need roads when cars are no more. But it does seem a bit surreal if vehicular traffic falls to a fraction of what it is now. The planners of, say, EastLink will look silly to historians.

Out of curiosity, who were the other Ridley couple?

The Saxman said...

Yes, good point. I think teleportation is still a fantasy. Roads are useful!

The other couple was/were Amanda and Andrew Parker. Shame I didn't know anyone at their wedding... and only one person at the reception. oh well!

Mags said...

As my friend keeps saying, MAYBE IT WILL CAUSE THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE!

It would be interesting. They could make a movie about it.

You should talk about your symphony. And about Avatar.