I live in one of these Western fringe suburbs, Campbelltown, and I am continually dismayed at the extreme levels of car use. It seems people around here either don't know or don't care about what is happening in the world around them. It's probably not fair of me to bag out my friends and neighbours, but I'm going to do it anyway.

I have lived in the area basically all my life and I love it. My suburb in particular is like a quiet little sanctuary in the middle of an ever expanding city. It is a completely walkable suburb, aside from a few steep hills here and there, with a supermarket 10 mins walk away, two very good schools within minutes, a great local pub just around the corner, fantastic sporting grounds and a semi regular bus service to Campbelltown proper and to the train station. Yet no matter what time of day or night or day of the week you hardly see anybody walking around. There are two mothers who live in my street who drive their big 4WD's every single day down to the school. For me to walk my son it is a 15 min round trip. A mother who lives next door to me, who's child goes to a private school elsewhere actually drives to the bus stop, which is about 2 mins walk away, to pick him up.

A very close friend of mine who lives elsewhere in Campbelltown has been listening to me rave on about Peak Oil and other related issues for the last couple of years now and is probably the most aware person I know, other than me of course. Having this knowledge still didn't deter him from buying an older type V8 Commodore which gets about 2km/L. This from a guy who works a casual job, has two kids and a wife to feed and is constantly worried about his finances. This is repeated time and time again all over the area. I just scratch my head in wonderment.

The trouble I see is that the working classes still have absolutely no clue about anything of a worldly nature. They only see Channel Seven's Sunrise, the Daily Telegraph and Foxtel as their points of reference. What chance does Average Joe have when he has absolutely no clue about anything of importance.

The local media are actually counter productive a lot of the time as well. The Macarthur Chronicle had a few stories about petrol pricing last week complaining about individual service stations and the editorial was longing for the days when the garage attendants came and washed your windscreen and filled your tank. All the criticism was directed at oil companies and their profiteering, not once even mentioning that there could be something else afoot.

I wrote an email to the editor about Peak Oil the day the paper was released and within an hour or so got a phone call back from them acknowledging the letter. The man said that it made them look at things a little differently. My letter will be published this week and I'm sure there will be a reaction from somebody in the community, positive or negative, and I plan to react to the reaction. Hopefully this will be the start of something positive for Campbelltown.