I’m talking today at a Brisbane Institute forum on oil and whether it’s running out. 12:30 at the Hilton. I’ll try to post my presentation soon.
387 thoughts on “Peak Oil”
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John Quiggin 
P.M.Lawrence, I believe that I asked you for some evidence. Evidence might take the form of, you know, a citation or something like that, not waffle.
When you say “I specifically avoided conductivity”, you mean that when you said “Conductivity is a misleading measure”, you were specifically avoiding conductivity.
What conclusion can I draw from this? You’re a liar or a fool, or both.
James Sinnamon Says: Could you please tell me your surname so I can reciprocate.
You may call me “J” if you wish.
I am delighted to find that you researched the fertilizer topic.
You now realize (I hope) that it’s energy dependent, not simply “fossil fuel” dependent
Nitrogenous fertiliser, like urea, can be visualised (currently) as granulated natural gas. 0.6 tonne of natural gas is required to make a tonne of solid urea. Yes, the hydrogen gas could ideally come from somewhere else, but this does not yet happen. If the hydrogen economy happens (most unlikely in the medium term), all the available hydrogen will probably be used for transport in miraculous fuel-cell vehicles, like the Hydrogen buses in Perth, Beijing and Reykjavik. Even the hydrogen economy will at least initially get its hydrogen from natural gas (while it remains common). Perth’s buses now run on hydrogen made from oil.
Thanks, Bruce and Dave Kimble.
So, If we are to keep the ‘Green Revolution’ going we need massive inputs of energy to create ammonia based fertilizer on a scale necessary to feed six billion people after oil runs out.
The fact is that those policy makers who decided in the 1960’s to force nearly all of the world’s farmers to become dependant upon fossil fuel based fertilisers and pesticides instead of the more natural methods they had used up until then, had no idea how agricultural productivity would be maintained once fossil fuels were exhausted.
Whilst Andrew Reynolds, and SJ remain absolutely assured that we can obtain all the necessary power to keep the the world’s agriculture going, as well as meet all the energy needs of the world’s six billion plus people, with both solar and nuclear power, I would have thought it more prudent for our world’s leaders to have seen practical evidence of feasible alternatives to fosil fuels before they decided to embark upon the Green Revolution.
James,
To answer your first question – of course; many of the provisions of the ‘anti-terror’ legislation are wrong and I maintain that line. None of them would have stopped any of the recent acts of terror and they represent a completely unjustified intrusion in to our lives. I also, as I have stated here many times before, oppose the IR changes on two grounds: firstly they remove from the States powers that should properly be theirs and secondly, but more mildly, they do not go far enough in removing the rules surrounding employment.
Moving on; Ian Gould – yes government can sometimes correct the errors – I have never denied the need for a government and I believe that the government has a vital role in ensuring, for example, that all children born into our society have the information they need to become functioning adults in our society. They also have a role in enforcing a monopoly of violence. Property rights have, sometimes, to be enforced by violence or its threat and it is important that this power is not abused.
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James,
Without the Green Revolution, which you denigrate, a lot of people in the third world would have continued to die young. I suggest a good look at the results of this policy in India for example. Personally, I prefer to see people live long, happy and, if they choose, productive lives, rather than die of starvation. One, or more, of those whose lives were saved by these policies may well be contributors to the process that ensures that we can all live our lives to our own satisfaction, as can our children, well into the future. I think that this is one of the greatest hopes of these policies.
A world that assumes that we cannot fix problems would be the worst possible outcome.
During the later stages of the First World War, British blimps got their hydrogen from a batch process that passed steam through an ignited mixture of coke and an excess of quicklime. It would be quite simple to adjust this process to use renewable feedstocks, and that would actually make the resulting hydrogen chemically purer.
For anyone who is going to quibble that I didn’t cite references, in this sort of area I merely pass on information that I came across earlier and independently. I didn’t collect it deliberately along with references for the purposes of citation. Anyone who wants to check it is welcome to repeat the search, but I am not generally in the game of proving a point when I contribute to blogs.
James,
We are not running out of coal, uranium etc. We have masses of the stuff. You seem to repeatedly make this leap of logic error.
1. Oil running out.
2. Oil is an energy source.
3. We need lots of energy to make XYZ.
4. Therefore XYZ will become scarce.
As I see it there is only one major energy consuming process that is currently highly dependent on oil supplies and that is transportation.
Regards,
Terje.
P.M.Lawrence Says:
Shorter PML: I’m full of crap, and anything I say can safely be ignored. I feel free to make false statements, and if you believe them, it’s your fault.
Terje wote :
“As I see it there is only one major energy consuming process that is currently highly dependent on oil supplies and that is transportation.”
So what do you think drives irrigation pumps, tractors and other farm machinery?
… and where do you think plastics and pharmaceuticals come from?
We are using up fossil fuels at the rate of 100,000 times the rate at which it took natural process to create them (according to Sonia Shah). Before we started to use fossil fuels the world’s population was only about 1 bilion in 1850 before we strted to seriously use coal (have a look at the graph at http://www.dieoff.org/). For most of recorded human history our population was less than 300 million. Now is 20 times that.
If you can comprehend these simple statistics you may come to understand why many very clever and thoughtful professionals who have worked both with fossil fuels and with alternatives, believe that we will not be able to generate from alternative sources (essentially nuclear, geo-thermal, direct solar or indirect solar) anywhere near the massive quatities of energy our civilisation is now using.
If you are convinced that nuclear power is a panacea, I suggest you read those three articles (two for one against) I referred to above. The balance of evidence, as I see it, is that the fossil fuel energy input costs and the associated hazards mean that we will be very lucky to come out ahead.
All of the other forms of energy will incur huge environemental costs if they are to be able to generate the same vast quantites of power that we are getting from fossil fuels.
For example, if we use the oceans currents, the necessary generators would be hugely expensive to build and they would considerably slow down the ocean currents from which they are to capture energy with yet more unredicatble consequences for the marine environment and the climate. (“Renewable Energy Limits” by Ross McCluney in The Final Energy Crisis page 166.)
Solar energy requires vast areas of land to be covered with solar collectors. It’s uncertain that we have enough, particularly given our greater need form agricultural land (McCluney p 163).
All of the alternatves will require massive initial inputs from fossil fuel energy to get going and it is not clear if they can contiune to run without more fossil fuel energy. (After they wear out , how do we bulid new generators?)
We simply have to accept that if we are to have any hope of pullng ourselves through this grave looming crisis we will have to find ways to get by with much less energy, and we will have to make it happen through conscious decisons reached democratically involving as many members of our society as possible and not by leaving the control of the overall direction of society in the hands of the same unelcted corporations and wealthy elites that got us into the mess we are in today.
QUOTE: and where do you think plastics and pharmaceuticals come from?
REPONSE: The oil in this case is not for energy but as a raw material. However I am happy to concede the point.
QUOTE: … clever and thoughtful professionals who have worked both with fossil fuels and with alternatives, believe that we will not be able to generate from alternative sources (essentially nuclear, geo-thermal, direct solar or indirect solar) anywhere near the massive quatities of energy our civilisation is now using.
RESPONSE: Are you actually stating that we are soon going to run out of coal?
Terje – “As I see it there is only one major energy consuming process that is currently highly dependent on oil supplies and that is transportation.”
..and the problem with that is that our global economy is based on cheap transport. How do running shoes from the third world reach the first world markets? How does food arrive at your supermarket? How does the fertiliser arrive at the farm?
“Are you actually stating that we are soon going to run out of coal?” – well what do you think will happen? There seems to be this myth that there is plenty of coal for everything, forever when the reality is quite different. If we started using coal for all liquid fuels, electricity, fertiliser etc it would last less than what has been quoted possibly as little as 70 years. This is quite apart from the effects of releasing all that carbon into the atmoshere. If peak oil does not end the party, global climate change surely will.
BTW we do not have masses of uranium either. Without reprocessing it will last a finite time as well. Not to mention that it requires fossil fuels at the moment to mine it and process it.
The only long term energy source is the fusion reactor in the sky. We need to reduce to be able to work with it. Even assuming that we do reproduce fusion on Earth, which I guess we will do eventually, we will still need to transform from oil as fusion does not produce liquid fuels. If we start now to transform then we will arrive at a place where fusion can stimulate further growth in an already transformed economy. If we don’t then maybe we will not be able to sustain the fusion research and the chance will be lost.
Ender,
Fusion can produce be used to hydrogen, which can be used as both a feedstock and an output of the process. Not saying it can be done at present, but it is a technical possibility.
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Terje,
Did you deliberately ignore my responses to you or did you just miss it? In your post you seem to be saying we need to reduce our population back to an 1850’s level – or even less. If I am correct, who precisely do you want to get rid of?
Well, using fusion reactors to generate ordinary hydrogen is analogous to using lasers to warm up your living room. There are more sensible ways to do it.
If or when fusion becomes commercially viable (2100?) it will become an important source of electricity, but in the meantime, Peak Oil still seems like a valid and important problem.
I’ll continue to catch the tram.
Will,
I would agree. I was just answering Ender’s point that “…fusion does not produce liquid fuels.”
I will continue to catch the bus and I am looking forward to walking my kids to school when they start next year.
QUOTE: Did you deliberately ignore my responses to you or did you just miss it? In your post you seem to be saying we need to reduce our population back to an 1850’s level – or even less. If I am correct, who precisely do you want to get rid of?
RESPONSE: I must have missed it. And I still can’t find it. Can you help me out with a quote or an extract phrase that I can search on.
Andrew – fusion still does not produce liquid fuels. The electricity from it CAN be used to make liquid fuels however why would you? If we go through the pain of transforming from liquid fuels now to electric transport then when fusion is commercially viable then it will fit straight in.
BTW I am with you – my kids walk to school and I ride a bike to the train station.
Terje,
Sorry, I meant James Sinnamon had missed it.
.
Ender,
The power produced by fusion (or some other method) must be stored in some way to allow independent movement by transportation (cars, buses etc.). Hydrogen is one storage option – batteries are another. A fuel cell is a fairly efficient way to transform the hydrogen back into electricity to power an engine.
Andrew – I am glad that you, unlike some other people, view hydrogen correctly as a storage medium. However in most cases fuel cells are only 30% or 40% efficient.
So here is the chain for hydrogen:
electricty -> make hydrogen (lose 50%) -> storage and pipeline (lose 10%) -> fill up car (lose 10%) -> make electricity in fuel cell (lose 60%) -> run electric motor (lose 10%)
Contrast this with an battery electric car:
electricity -> pipe to power outlet (lose 10%) -> store in battery (lose 15%) -> run electric motor (lose 10%).
Lithium batteries that enable 300+km range with short charging times are very close to being both affordable and practical. They are far nearer that street practical PEM fuel cells and 10 000psi hydrogen tanks.
Clearly why would you go to the trouble of making hydrogen when it is very difficult to make, store and pipe. Part of the reason I wrote about here http://stevegloor.typepad.com/sgloor/2005/11/hydrogen_cars_a.html.
Ender,
I have had the discussion on hydrogen several times and you are right – many still see it as a source of power. Personally I have found no hydrogen mines lying about the place.
So, if you are correct on your percentages (and I have no reason to doubt you) fuel cells would give about 15% efficiency in total and batteries about 69% efficiency. I think that the attraction of fuel cells is the potential to use methanol in them, rather than pure hydrogen. An internal combustion engine is still around 15% efficient (if I remember correctly), so in fuel use terms a fuel cell, powered by methanol, will still use about the same amount of fuel as today’s engines.
I would tend to agree that a battery would be more logical, given present (or reasonably forseeable) technology. The problem would be the refuel time – even an hour would be too long. Maybe there can be a standardised battery pack in some way to make them transferable between vehicles. Just a thought. The advantage of the methanol option would be that you could re-use today’s delivery mechanisms.
To me there are lots of options; the real worry would be an attempt to force a technical solution too early.
“For example, if we use the oceans currents, the necessary generators would be hugely expensive to build and they would considerably slow down the ocean currents from which they are to capture energy with yet more unredicatble consequences for the marine environment and the climate. (â€?Renewable Energy Limitsâ€? by Ross McCluney in The Final Energy Crisis page 166.)
Solar energy requires vast areas of land to be covered with solar collectors. It’s uncertain that we have enough, particularly given our greater need form agricultural land (McCluney p 163).”
I’m fairly certain both these claims are wrong.
1. Water is much denser than air, the energy contained in an ocean current is much greater than the energy content in a wind of the same velocity. We only need to extract a very small percentage of that energy – much less in proportionate terms than we do with wind turbines. The effect of wind farms on downwind velocities is minimal, the effect of wave energy devices is likely to be smaller by orders of magnitude.
2. I recently calculated how large an area you’d need to power the entire US with solar energy, the answer was approximately 7 million acres or 30,000 square kilometres, that’s aroudn 0.03% of the area of the US.
For energy output per hectare I used actual output from state of the art solar plants operating today. Such plants typically don’t use anything like the whole surface area of the farm and other activities such as grazing cattle can continue in parallel.
Assuming we have the means to produce large volumes of hydrogen without releasing carbon dioxide (e.g. throughg electrolysis) it probably makes much more sense to react it with sequestered CO2 to produce liquid fuels for use in current cars rather than developing the whole structure for fuel cell cars.
For that matter, internal combustion engines can be retrofitted to burn hydrogen, this also makes much more sense than developing fuel cell cars.
30,000 square kilometres = 174 km x 174 km.
In the longer term I am far more bullish on solar technology than wind technology.
The 1970s saw the arrival of vast schemes that were called ‘High Appropriate’: vast solar farms, giant turbines tapping the Gulf Stream and the most baroque project of all, Gerald O’Neill’s plan for orbital colonies and immense solar arrays in space (here I betray my teenage reading habits!). A very popular option was OTEC, the generation of electricity with immense floating power stations that would exploit the temperature difference between the deep sea and the surface.
Whither OTEC? Where goeth the wondrous fantasies of yesteryear?
I thought the point of fuel cells was to convert petrol directly into electricity. If you could do that you would have an electric car run on petrol. This would give you the great energy density of petrol plus the superior torque/speed characteristics of an electric motor.
Terge – sorry to say fuel cells run on hydrogen and oxygen. You can fuel them with methanol however they have an in-situ reformer to split the methanol into hydrogen before the PEM cell. Running them on petrol would be only about as efficient as a petrol motor. We already have what you describe in the Prius.
Ender,
You can have them run on any of the hydrocarbons – but you are right, you do need to split out the hydrogen first.
Petrol is convenient because it’s so dense and portable, like water, but poisonous. Hydrogen is a wonderful fuel, but it’s incredibly light and bulky. A kilogram of the liquid gas occupies 14 litres and much of its energy will be employed to keep it cold. All of the above should be generally known.
Fuel cells are a superb technology that can use many forms of fuel – methane, hydrogen, ethanol – very efficiently, however, they are very expensive. According to a ‘Scientific American’ article last year, a decisive cost in the construction of fuel cells is that of palladium, the catalyst. If palladium or platinum were as cheap as gold, fuel cells might be viable.
I said a while ago that we’ll eventually have a hydrogen-solar economy: fuel cells will be an important part of that.
Where can we lay our hands on a few hundred tons of palladium?
Will,
The other technical option would be to find a cheap catalyst.
OTOH, if you do find a few hundred tonnes of palladium, please let me know – I am sure we can do a deal.
When I studied photovoltaics at UNSW in fourth year engineering it was mentioned that they had deliberately choosen to avoid any significant research on Gallium based solar cells. They focused on Silicon because it is a plentiful substance (think sand) that might one day lend itself to mass production. This has guided their research efforts (under Martin Green) since the 1970s.
It would seem that a similar logic might be applicable in fuel cell research. Why focus on solutions that require materials that are as rare as hens teeth?
Yes, a cheap catalyst would be most welcome. The photovoltaic research at UNSW is apparently the best in the world and should – in a just world – have household-name status around the nation.
I believe that gallium PV cells were promoted for that notorious boondoggle, Reagan’s ‘Stars Wars’ program: gallium was much more resistant to electromagnetic pulse than silicon, but much more costly.
A new fuel idea is the use of powdered iron for cars.
Uhhhh….correction. Gallium was promoted for the circuitry, not the PV cells. Sorry!
In any case “Star Wars” was not a mass production initiative.
It might have become one, if it wasn’t just a massive deception campaign to frighten the USSR (one theory about the SDI)
Will,
Gallium arsenide is used for the really top end solar cells, like the ones on some of the cars that compete in the solar rally each year. It just happens to be rare, expensive and highly toxic – not a good solution for a ‘clean, green’ alternative.
Andrew is right.
My point was that in photovoltaics their is a recognition (at least in some quarters) that certain materials are impractical for mass market solutions. Surely fuel cells that are dependent on platinum are impractical for the mass market.
P.S. metals are usually priced by weight. Out of interest I priced gold and platinum by volume. Per cubic centimetre platinum is about twice the price of gold.
At the start of the forum about ‘Peak Oil’, many people mentioned the ABC’s ‘Catalyst’ program and now we’re discussing the arcana of catalysts.
Millions of catalytic converters in cars have contained a pinch of platinum for many years now; a little precious metal goes a long way (Fred Forsyth’s novel ‘The Dogs of War’ is predicated on the growing global demand for the metal). I’ve no idea of the quantity of metal needed in a fuel cell, but there’s obviously a role for expensive commodities in the most mundane applications. Americium 241, a very dangerous isotope, is found in million of home smoke detectors. Palladium is amazingly good at soaking up hydrogen gas – it can absorb about one thousand time its own volume – so it might have a role in a hydrogen economy.
I’m not sure how toxic gallium is and arsenic is obviously non-edible, but in combination the compound is quite stable, like our old friend sodium chloride. The world computer industry already uses heroic quantities of very toxic metals and chemicals. If gallium were cheap and abundant, we’d no doubt use gallium arsenide all the time.
It would be nice if we discovered a cheap and cheerful alternative to the platinum-group metals as catalysts, but at the moment we can only play the hand chemistry dealt us. Perhaps nanotechnology will broaden the scope of alternative energy sources.
I expect that the long term contribution from nano-technology will be huge. However I expect that it will be in ways that we don’t readily anticipate.
Ian Gould,
Your figure of 0.03% of the land mass as being all that is necessary for the US to be met is wrong. The figure should have been 0.3%.
(Will write more later.)
Andrew Reynolds, you accused me of advocating the elemination of much of the world’s population. I never said that, but I won’t resile from pointing out that the world is badly overpopulated. Som eindication of this is that at least 1 bilion people now live in shanty towns on the outskirts of sprawlng third world metropolises without any useful role to play in the economy.
Do you think that it would be wise to go increasing our population so that in thirty years time we instead have two, three or four billion living in shanty towns, just at the point when all of the world’s petroleum and nearly all of its natural gas is likley to have been used up?
Of course, being one of the people who may be surplus to this planet’s requirements for human inhabitants is a paradox that anyone arguing for limits to population must confront, but that cannot be an excuse to avoid dealing with this urgent question.
The Australian Aboriginals learned how to keep their population numbers within the limits of what this continent could have sustained for most of their 40,000 year history. Why couldn’t our world’s policy makers have been at least as smart in the 1960’s?
Instead they have imperriled this and future generations by making the world’s agricultural system dependent upon finite non-renewable fossil fuels.
BTW my point in showing that population has been well under 300 million for most of its history was intended as a hint that figure may be much closer to what levels of human population can exist without depleting our natural capital of fossil fuels.
It is very difficult to capture energy from then store it on a scale necessary to support the curent world’s popuiation.
Dr Ross McCluney, who wrote the chapter, “The Limits of Renewable Energy” in The Final Energy Crisis believes that the figure of humans which can be supported without fossil fuel may be 1 billion.
I thought this forum might appreciate this comment, e-mailed to me by a friend :
… I just had to stop reading.
If free-markets are “freedom” then why would I have to spend half my life working to pay off a house? Doesn’t seem like freedom to me.
It would be because people who build houses like their freedom also and don’t give away their labour.
If your friends concern is about the price of land then he/she should take a look at zoning laws.
James,
The Australian Aboriginals did not ‘learn’ to keep their population within limits. Like all prehistoric people (I mean that in the sense that they did not keep a written history, at least not as we understand it and without being derogatary about the Aboriginal people) they were limited by Malthusian theory. Malthus may be wrong about modern, technological society, but he was right about the pre-technical. People lived lives that were nasty, brutish and short. There was no learning of population limits – it was simply deterministic.
James, you may choose to live with the idea that technology has brought nothing to enhance our ability to live and solve problems – I do not. I also do not indend to have anyone living in shanty towns. With sufficient growth there would be no need for anyone to do so.
.
I also wonder who, precisely, Dr. Ross Cluney had in mind to get rid of. I want my children to grow up in hope, not with the idea that we need to get rid of 5 out of every 6 people alive today, or, on your estimate, 95% of the world’s population. I say yet again, James – the human race has solved these problems before. We will solve this one. We will also solve the next one and the one after that. Wiping out 95% of the people is simply not an option.
If every country adopted a one-child policy, how long would it take for the world’s population to start declining?
If we all stopped eating sugar, how much cane would be available to make fuel? Could we genetically engineer ‘super-trees’ for fuel?
Should we plan ultra-dense cities to ease the human footprint on land? One of the most densely populated parts of the world is New York’s afflent Central Park West, with about 80,000 people per square km (in Australia it’s Richmond Vic at about 50,000). At that density, the world’s current population could be accommodated on just 75,000 sq km, Australia’s population on just 25.
The visionary architect Paolo Soleri designed cities with densities of hundreds of thousands of people per sq km.
There might be many logistical and energy advantages to higher density urbs.
To cosy communities!
25? 250 sq km.
The following resource seems to indicate that in the year 2050 the population will be somewhere between 7.6 biillion and 11.6 billion.
http://esa.un.org/unpp/p2k0data.asp
Some uncertainty! 4 billion: fingers are crossed for the lower guess.
It does not seem to include any allowance for immigration to Mars.
Andrew Reynolds: True, wiping out 95% of the population is not an ‘option’. But something like that is going to happen anyway, at some point. Our species is just another temporary configuration in evolutionary state space. Maybe we’ve had our day. Certainly if you were a member of any of the other species on our planet against which we’ve launched our holocaust, you might hope so.
The human race certainly has solved problems before, but not (I think) problems that even compared in scale with what’s facing us now. If Australians (who think the biggest problem facings them are terrorism, interest rates and petrol prices) are anything to go by, we don’t stand a chance.
Will,
Read this comment of mine – we seem to agree on the analysis. James seems to believe that we should spread out while eliminating 95% of the population of the planet to achieve a similar effect.
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Crispin,
As Keynes said: in the long run, we are all dead. If we plan for our own extinction it will probably only hasten the day. We are the first animal to develop in this way – maybe we will be the frst to break the extinction cycle. Who knows – but I, for one, will not work for that to be an outcome.
Andrew,
“I, for one, will not work for that to be an outcome.”
Better avoid a job with the corporatocracy, then.
Terje, firstly thanks for your insightful explanation of the issue of housing unaffordability. The reasons you have given are :
That builders charge for their services; and
Council zoning restricts the availability of land
So are we to conclude that the reason why, in the 1960’s, and 1970’s when I grew up, ordinary working class families, with single incomes, could, unlike middle class families of today, with two incomes, afford free standing homes, close to their place of work and close to amenities, was that builders did not charge for their services back then?
More seriously, council zoning policies come a little closer to the mark. It is one factor that effects the supply and demand equation.
Another, of course, is population size. Property speculators are well aware that higher population leads to greater demand and, so drives up the price of land and housing for all of us.
This was confirmed when, to my astonishment, in May last year, an economist working for the Property Council of Australia, openly stated, more than once, on Radio National’s “Australia Talk’s Back� radio talk-back program that they were looking forward to continuing immigration to lift the property ‘industry’ out of its ‘doldrums’, and cause house prices to go beyond the already obscene levels of the three hudred and four hundred thousand dollar mark. (Yes, you may have noticed that I made a similar point on the forum arising from the After the Riots article.) (Silly me. And to think that I had thought that the prime motivation for Australia’s immigration program was humanitarian.)
Your presumed solution to this problem created, in the first place, by our Governments, at the behest of land speculators and property developers, is to remove all zoning restrictions.
Possibly, it may help to solve the supply side of the equation, but for how long, if population numbers continue to rise inexorably (1 million more in South East Queenlsand expected by 2026 and similar numbers expected in Sydney in the same period)?
And what of the effects of yet more open slather urban sprawl? How much further will people need, each day, to travel through gridlocked traffic, in a world running out of petroleum in order to reach work? How much of today’s remnants of bushland and farming land can be expected to survive yet more relentless urban development?
Clearly we need to find ways to house the people we have, but those of us, who have watched the market gardens of Brisbane disappear as a consequence of thoughtless unplanned urban expansion, may, this time, prefer to see local councils and state Governments begin to exercise effective urban planning, rather than leaving it all up to developers.
Finally, how about, next time, just simply sticking to the point?
Everyone needs secure shelter in order to live a dignified life.
If someone, for example, my friend, whom I quoted above, finds that it is not possible to obtain this basic necessity without having to enter into crippling financial commitments for decades to come, then perhaps you should accept that he is fully entitled to state that he doesn’t quite have the same feeling of freedom which Andrew tells us incessantly we all enjoy.