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Tag: development

Energy Exploration and Development in Australia

May 30, 2018 / / 4 Comments

Australia’s economic stability depends on reliable supplies of cheap energy, mostly in the form of coal and oil. Members of remote communities would be the first to suffer if fuel became difficult to obtain, or if prices surged. For example, in my community of Kangaroo Island, everything depends on oil. Without oil there would be no ferry or planes to the island. There would be no fishing, no farming, no way for tourists to travel to or around the island, or on boat trips or safaris, no food or furniture transported to the island, no building, no maintenance of infrastructure. In other words, no way to live.

It is in the best interests of all Australians to support and encourage responsible local energy development. Even more so for those who live in remote locations, or in communities dependent on tourism, fishing or farming.
This short survey will help you to review your knowledge of energy development, and your interest in balancing energy needs and concern for the environment.

Question 1
By far the greatest proportion of oil spilled into the ocean, about 45%, is from natural seepage. The highest proportion of human caused oil spills, about 25% of the total, occurs as an accumulation of day to day losses, the oil change tipped into a drain, for example, and minor operational spills like Sea Shepherd’s 500 litre diesel spill near the Great Barrier Reef in 2012. Another 20% comes from major transportation spills. Only about 5% of the total occurs during exploration and development. One key way of reducing ocean oil spills is to reduce the total volume of oil transported over long distances. Would you rather:
a. Continue the present risk of spills from large volumes of oil transported over long distances?
b. Reduce the risk of spills by encouraging responsible local energy development?

Question 2
Most of our current oil supply comes from Middle Eastern states. Most of these states are dictatorships, or ruled by a small elite. Some of them, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, use oil revenues to support terrorist groups. Would you rather:
a. Continue the present system of supporting states which fund terrorism and support undemocratic regimes?
b. Build Australian employment and expertise by encouraging local energy development, and have energy producers pay royalties which help fund local hospitals, roads, schools and pensions?

One of twenty-three oil rigs operating in the Bass Strait.

One of twenty-three oil rigs operating in the Bass Strait.

Question 3
Australia has very high environmental and safety standards for any energy development. Coal mining in China, for example, results in over 1,000 deaths per year from accidents, and a similar number from mining related pulmonary diseases. Pollution from poorly regulated mines and wells in countries governed by dictators or highly centralised non-democratic governments continues to be a major problem. Would you rather:
a. Continue present support for energy sources with a high risk of accident and pollution due to poorly regulated exploitation and transport operations?
b. Reduce the risk of environmental damage, disease and accident by encouraging responsible local energy development?

Question 4
Scientists have expressed concern that constant high levels of artificial ocean noise – noise pollution – may interfere with the migratory patterns of marine species including turtles, whales and salmon. The noise of waves slapping against the sides of an empty tanker is at a similar volume to that of acoustic imaging, which allows energy developers to identify likely sites for further exploration, reducing the need for and impact of exploratory drilling. But acoustic imaging is carefully monitored and takes place in any one location for only a few days. The sound of freighters and tankers plying the oceans is constant. Would you rather:
a. Continue the present system of high levels of ocean noise pollution and risk to migratory marine species?
b. Reduce ocean noise by encouraging responsible local energy development?

Question 5
Many of the states which supply our current oil needs have very poor human rights records. In particular, immigrants, women and gays are frequently treated as chattels or with horrendous brutality. Some of these states would not survive without the income from oil supplied to Western countries. Would you rather:
a. Continue to support regimes which torture and oppress gays and minority groups?
b. Work for human rights and justice by encouraging responsible local energy development?

Fat Facts

November 7, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The People’s Republic of San Francisco has decreed that happiness is no longer permitted. At least, not in the form of happy meals. Or any other meals that include toys and TOO MANY CALORIES. Such meals are now banned.

Meanwhile, back in less ‘liberal’ and consequently, less authoritarian, Australia, a professor of health education and nutrition has pointed out that fears about childhood obesity have been exaggerated by the media. She goes on to say that restrictions on the availability of junk food will do lttle to resolve the problems that do exist:

“People have to stop exaggerating the numbers about childhood obesity – that’s not to say that it is not an issue but you know, hysteria, fear campaigns and exaggeration are not very scientific,” said Dr O’Dea.

Professor O’Dea also points out that childhood obesity is largely a problem for the poor. Tackling poverty, she suggests, is the best long-term way to tackle childhood obesity and many other children’s health issues.

But it seems to me that childhood obesity is evidence of one of the key attitudes that keeps some people poor.

There is nothing wrong with take aways as an occasional treat. But good quality day to day food; fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, fish, lean meat, etc, is cheaper than McDonalds or KFC.

Of course, such meals take a little longer to prepare, and need some thinking in advance.

So if take away food (take-out if you’re an American) is more expensive, why do people on low incomes eat more of it?

It is easy to claim that poverty is caused by structural injustices. And some is. The anti-development policies of organisations like Greenpeace, and their lobbying of governments and organisations like the Word Bank, have kept incomes and life spans in some third world countries much lower than they would otherwise be.

But in wealthy western countries this is less often the case. Poverty, and the disadvantages to children it causes, cannot be changed by acts of government.

‘The poor will be with you always’ Mt 26:11

Those Sunnies Are Expensive

October 2, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The UK’s Daily Mail reports toady that Bono’s ONE foundation received donations of 9.6 million pounds in 2008.

Only 118,000 pounds (just over 1%) was given to people in need.

5.1 million pounds was paid in salaries. The rest was spent on ‘raising awareness.’ And sunglasses.

To be fair, the ONE foundation has always advertised itself (which it does very well) as an advocacy organisation.

For example, one of the things it advocates for is increased government commitment to development assistance for developing nations.

You know, the kind of development assistance that developing nation economists have been saying for years should be stopped, because it hinders real local and national economic development, and slows the climb out of poverty.

What About Economic Sustainability?

August 22, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Amidst the deafening and ceaseless talk about environmental sustainability, Australia seems to have lost any reality based sense of the need for a sustainable balance between production, taxation and expenditure.

By Walter Starck on the Quadrant website.

All over the world developed nations have created more government than their increasingly uncompetitive, over-regulated, over-taxed economies can support. Deficit spending is epidemic and borrowing is reaching the limits of capacity to even maintain payments on interest. Increasing numbers of local, state and national governments are running on empty. Unpaid bills, layoffs and cuts to welfare and essential services are spreading. Financially desperate governments seem determined to seek and destroy any remaining pockets of economic viability via increased taxation and regulation.

While better off than most, Australia is not immune to this global malaise. We too suffer from chronic balance of trade deficits, unsustainable government commitments and proliferating bureaucracy strangling any productive activity. Australia has the highest house prices in the world, the highest level of personal debt, the steepest increases in food prices of any OECD country over the past decade and a declining manufacturing sector that is now the smallest in the developed world.

The city-centred cult of environmentalism puts up dire tales of species loss and climate change as barriers to new resource development, energy production, and manufacturing projects. But these tales frequently have no connection to reality, and draw their ‘facts’ from the popular media.

Like over-indulged children, the non-producers feel neither guilt nor gratitude, but rather a sense of entitlement. To this purpose environmentalism serves an important role. The world of non-producers begins at the shop and ends at the rubbish bin and it largely exists in an urban realm wherein nature has been virtually exterminated. From this viewpoint, only producers despoil the natural environment. Environmentalism affords non-producers a satisfying sense of moral superiority over those who support them. Not surprisingly, it is a popular belief commonly held with great conviction and righteousness. 

Anyone who produces anything is seen as an irresponsible exploiter. Our failure to make sensible use of our own fisheries is just one example:

In fisheries the situation is even worse. With the largest per capita fisheries resource in the world, we have the lowest production and our harvest rate is the lowest in the world at only 1/30 of the global average. Our fishing fleet has already been reduced to one-third of what it was two decades ago. All this is entirely because of bureaucratic mismanagement and over regulation. None of it is due to overfishing.

That we now have to import two-thirds of the seafood we eat, and all of it comes from much more heavily exploited resources elsewhere, is unconscionable. That we are selling off non-renewable resources to pay $1.7 billion annually to import a renewable one we ourselves have in abundance, then call this sustainable management and pat ourselves on the back with self-proclaimed status as the world’s best fishery managers, is beyond moronic.

Over the last few years, at both state and federal level, we have seen increased government spending, massive debt, manufacturing hampered, land and other resources locked up, and a failure to build and maintain transport and energy infrastructure.

How is this responsible and sustainable?

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