Melton Sustainable Living Group

Being resilient is about being able to withstand a shock to the normal way of life.  Recently there has been a shock in the form of the Global Financial Crisis, however I believe that it was tame compared to what is about to come in the next decade. Two big issues come immediately to mind.  Climate Change and Peak Oil. You have probably heard about the concept of Climate Change, and we are already feeling the effects of extreme weather events in our part of the world.  Doesn't it seem strange that we are getting more and more '1 in 100 year events' closer together and they are becoming more like 1 in 10 year events?  Not strange, but normal according the climatologists.  Climate change means more extreme weather, not just getting a bit warmer. Of course the climate changes over time and has many times before in Earth's history, but not in a matter of years or decades, we are talking centuries for these events to occur naturally. You can't take millions of ...

I am assuming that most of the members are aware of Climate Change and the possible effects it will have upon us all if we don’t act soon to avert the crisis.  So if anyone wants me to cover it off in a post, let me know. I will dedicate this post to explaining Peak Oil and what it means to us on a local level.  Peak Oil is basically the end of cheap oil.  The worlds oil fields get to a point that it takes more than one barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil, therefore the field goes into decline.  When all the oil fields in the world reach this point then we reach the plateau that is know as Peak Oil.  The graph below shows Australia’s oil production and demand predicted out to 2030.  As you can see, our oil fields in this country have now clearly peaked. After that event, which the International Energy Agency has determined happened in 2007, oil demand outstrips supply and oil gets expensive.  We have seen that happen already, and it wa...