Busy week, alarming realities

This week has been wonderfully busy, but within that equally alarming.
On three occasions it become clearly evident that two people, unquestionably highly qualified, entrenched in the decision making echelons of our society and therefore people of undoubted influence, were not aware of peak oil and didn’t understand it complications.
Also, one fellow could not, or would not, advance an opinion and to worsen matters, that same speaker, who in my view should have had a definite opinion, avoided my question about nuclear power.
The first moment arose during a meeting involving members of the Victorian Urban Design Forum, many architectural and design people and several from the Victorian State Government organization, VicUrban.
That meeting held in the new VicUrban offices helped those attending understand something about four major community re-establishment sustainable projects within Melbourne – one at Maribynong, another at central Dandenong, Avondale Heights and the re-development of Harbour Esplanade at Docklands in central Melbourne.
At the end of the presentations, those at the meeting were able to ask questions and one about peak oil, directed at no-one in particular, but which seemed to fall upon VicUrban landscape architect, Mark Haycox, drew a response that seemed to indicate that he was at least confused only to see fellow VicUrban employee, Lynn Sweeney, quickly answer that peak oil was the reason the projects were being pursued.
The following evening, Wednesday, the University of Melbourne presented the free lecture – Unnatural disasters, the fractured science and politics of climate change – featuring Professor Barry Smit (above) from the University of Guelph in Canada.
He opened his presentation with a self-penned song about climate change that he sang to the Beatles tune of “Let it be”.

Arriving early at the lecture theatre, I filled in the time reading David Strahan’s 2007 book The Last Oil Shock that is about what he describes as “the imminent extinction of petroleum man” and in pre-lecture conversation with Prof Smit I asked for his view on peak oil.
He said it was not something he knew enough about and encouraged me to continue my reading.
Following his presentation, he is a truly personable man with extensive knowledge about climate change, questions from the audience brought many including one from me in which I mentioned that American Dr James Hansen, who works for the government and is described by some as “the grandfather of climate change”, has advocated for nuclear power to end our reliance on coal fired power stations and in answer to his thoughts on nuclear power, Prof Smit had no opinion to offer – it was a staggering response our dependence on coal-fired power, a process that Dr Hansen believes is the major contributor to climate change.
Prof Smit, a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, was at the Melbourne University as part of a speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand in a program organized by the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand.