How is Russia going to protect itself from China if China decides it wants to 'share' some of those resources? 1 Billion vs. 150 million seems like a tall order without resorting to nukes, especially since Russia already gave China its best 'toys'.

Ron, while I believe your comments on the natural advantages of Russia are basicly correct it is not true that they have few environmental or pollution problems.The 70 years of communist management resulted in appalling degradation.
Nancy Lubin wrote a chapter on this subject in "The New World Order" edited by Carol Rae Hansen (1992).
Also,Vaclav Smil's "China's Environmental Crisis"(1993) could be of interest.
I'm sure there is more up to date information around as well.

I think Australia is in a much better position than Russia. As a net energy exporter, Australia stands to benefit from any rise in energy prices.

Oil seeps off the NSW coast are yet to be assayed, perhaps a billion barrels there. The QLD coast is completely unexplored because of the great barrier reef. SA has geothermal energy sources estimated in excess of 50 billion barrels. Every state has massive energy resources close to population centers.

Australia also has vast areas of prime agricultural land that are uninhabited. Not to mention a climate which is warm and varied. Even though we are still in the grip of the worst drought ever Australia still manages to produce enough food for 70 million people. Much of this is energy intensive meat and dairy products. Water is a huge issue, but considering how bad things are now, is it really that critical?

If you consider Japan with only 17% of it's land arable and that's including land for urban and industrial use can supply half it's food requirements, Australia could support a population in excess of 200 million. Of course the lifestyle would be radically different, but that is a matter of choice. Just think about it; we cull 5 million kangaroos every year that go into dog food. Even that amount of meat would be sufficient. Dogs and cats just need a little bit of curry powder.

There is so much excess consumption here it is ridiculous, people just throw stuff away that is perfectly good. Many will loose their jobs, but there are so many areas that there are labor shortages that people will simply have to change.

Social order is the most important issue. How people react will determine their fate. Once people realize how well off they are compared to the rest of the world they will have great incentive to ensure that social cohesion is maintained.

Anyway, moral of this story; you better hurry up and emigrate while the doors are wide open. They will slam shut once the ideals of endless economic growth are seriously challenged.

Right, what I am saying is even if we can manufacture solar panels using solar panels, we can't transport them or mine the material to make them without solar power..

The development of fossil fuel technologies in the 18th and 19th centuries was initiated through the use of biomass energy (a relatively inefficient form of solar energy) mostly in the form of food for workers and animals. With 21st century knowledge even more efficient solar energy utilization methods can be used to grow a solar based economy. Concentrated solar thermal can be used directly to melt metals and glass in order to make parts for more CSP systems.

Gail - I want to thank-you for posting this about the Dmitry Orlov book. I ordered it this morning on-line.

I have watched a presentation that you gave on Peak Oil (on-line I don't have the link) and I was very impressed. I have just begun giving peak oil presentations and I want to ask you about giving peak oil presentations to high school senoirs. Do you think that's too young?

Joe

Cars depreciate so rapidly that they are pretty valueless after 5 years anyway.
The exception to this would be electric cars which cost very little on maintenance and last many years.

We have no need to replace vehicles at all; cars, trucks, light rail and even bicycles are now obsolete.

Star Trek type teleportation is here, Yay!

http://www.physorg.com/news102681027.html

only 5 years away, apparently.

perhaps 10.

We have a built infrastructure problem. Even if we could suddenly make solar powered vehicles of all types, all of our current vehicles would lose most of their value - become "stranded assets".

cars could be converted to electric cars and the remaining parts sold or the cars scraped.

Gail -

Unfortunately, the retrofitting of almost anything is generally fraught with all sorts of serious problems and compromises and usually turns out to be more expensive and troublesome than starting from scratch. (Think of the cost of adding a major addition unto your house as opposed to the cost of buying a house big enough to begin with.) I can hardly think of a more hopeless technical exercise than trying to retrofit existing ICE cars to run on solar power. Any even halfway viable solar-powered car has to be ultra light, slow, and purpose designed.

The best thing would be to let the old fleet of ICE vehicles to die a slow but merciful death, whilst at the same time vigorously promoting vehicles tied to various forms of alternative energy. Various financial incentives could speed up the process greatly.

I tend to think that the current fleet of SUVs will eventually wind up being used as de facto pickup trucks for various contractors, which is about the only legitimate use of such large vehicles.

Don't forget: during the mid to late 1970s the back rows of used car lots were filled will all sorts of muscle cars that the dealer could hardly give away (today the finer specimens in pristine conditions command six-figure prices). So, in many respects the market is pretty efficient in getting rid of unwanted and/or obsolete technology. But one has to give it time, something which we don't have a hell of a lot of.

Most of the compacts and subcompacts could be converted to EVs, which could be recharged with solar.

A fair number of the pickups and SUVs might be kept running for quite a while with WWII-era "producer gas" devices. This would be feasible for local travel, at least.

If we somehow had a cheap attachment to our existing cars and trucks that allowed them to run on solar power, we would be a whole lot better off--but no one even suggests this may be possible.

What about the hybrid conversion kits we've already started to see like the Poulsen hybrid? I don't know how well these work now but there is probably great scope for improvement in these. Add this to the work ppl are doing with things like the Solar Prius project and converting cars to solar-electric doesn't seem that far fetched does it?

If we somehow had a cheap attachment to our existing cars and trucks that allowed them to run on solar power, we would be a whole lot better off--but no one even suggests this may be possible.

Isn't the issue that sunlight is too diffuse an energy source to allow cars to run on solar? Even if the roof and hood were covered with highly efficient solar cells that charged battery packs, the amount of energy you collected from them would at most allow you to drive a few miles per day, even in Arizona. If you're charging from PVs on the roof of your house, that's a different story. I'm still waiting to see how scalable / cheap Nanosolar's non-silicon PV panels will be.