Z has set a new record for petrol prices with 91 up to $2.23. The others are expected to follow. We are in a new oil shock due to peak oil. The once unimaginable $2 a litre is now the low price. Ironically, the high dollar that is killing our exporters is protecting us from much higher petrol prices. So why is our government investing $12 billion on deepening our oil addiction?
We know that more sprawl is actually twice as expensive to the rate- and tax-payer than increasing density within existing urban limits because […]
Whether you accept the evidence that the consumption of oil is currently peaking or not, it is undeniable that a) the world’s fossil fuel resources are finite and we’ve already consumed a large fraction of it and b) we won’t keep consuming evermore per day until it’s all gone. So, inevitably, the shape of human fossil fuel use is going to look like this.
The Government has binned part of the Northern Wellington Corridor ‘Road of National Significance’ – the four-lane expressway between Otaki and Levin that would have cost $400m. The government’s not getting enough road tax revenue and they had already cut all other transport funding to the bone – so something had to give. But it’s just the start.
Yesterday National pollster David Farrar excitedly quoted from a George Monbiot article saying peak oil isn’t happening. Two problems: 1) Farrar omitted to quote the bits of the article saying that the flipside of no peak oil would be runaway climate change. 2) the report Monbiot’s article is based on is written by an oil executive who claims we’ll stumble on endless cheap oil and all live happily ever after.
