14 December, 2004

It seems to me that there are quite a few things that will have, and in some cases are having a large impact on our lives that are all converging to a point in the not too distant future. These things are beginning to make me very nervous and I have mentioned most of them before. The biggies: Peak oil, global warming, rampant consumerism. All three make me sound like a raving lunatic and are real party killers but none-the-less all three are making me nervous. Oil is an obvious issue, without it our lovely wealthy lifestyles go down the crapper. Everything we do relies on oil in some form. Global warming is, interestingly, a related problem and seems to be causing problems already. Consumerism has also led us down the dodgey path of ever increasing living costs and personal debt. Apparently to be debt free these days is a rarity and I notice the money lenders all now have pretty flashy logos and TV advertisements.

Why am I worried. All three of these issues have two things in common: intelligent, knowledgeable people who typically are not prone to panic are starting to panic and fire off warnings and the timeframes on each are vague. Global warming seems to have been used in the media before as a bit of a hippy issue but now we’re getting real warnings about climate change (and after this summer I’m thinking we’re starting to see it), peak oil trends are there for everyone to see and when the reserve bank releases a warning about debt it pays to listen.

The timeframes are vague, in that it’s uncertain when these issues will blow (if nothing else it’s no longer a case of ‘if’ but ‘when’). The problem there is that despite the enormity of these issues they are easy to ignore or write off as the rantings of a lunatic (or hippy). So be it I guess but I’m seeing a house of cards and a strong wind starting to blow.

On another slightly related note, we had a meal last night made up primarily of vegetables from our garden. It was fantastic.