Oil (petrol) prices are steadily climbing with expected fluctuations on the way up, just as the cost of most other “stuff” is climbing.

Increasingly the realisation that the majority of the “stuff” we utilise arrives as a result of still cheap but “finite” fossil fuel energy (coal, oil and gas).

Think chemical fertiliser thus food, reticulated electricity, reticulated gas, mains water, sewerage and the manufactured “stuff” we import from China and elsewhere. The airlines are really taking a battering as will the tourism industry.

I wonder for how long the WA resource extraction industries can continue without cheap liquid fuel and gas to power the necessary remote mining machinery?

Not that it matters because finding and exploiting more finite fossil fuel and other finite resources will simply project the crisis a bit further into the future.

This will make it all the more devastating for our kids as we import more consumers to accommodate the growth aspirations of the resource industry corporations .

And the economic collapse is well under way as anticipated.

A micro version of what is about to befall Australia and the world happened to Cuba when the former Soviet Union collapsed in 1990.

Cuba lost half of its oil imports and 80 percent of its food imports back then.

To find out more an invitation is extended to attend the Mandurah Reading Cinema at 6pm on August 6 for pre screening drinks and snacks supporting the Peel Preservation Group’s showing of the film “The Power of Community – How Cuba survived Peak Oil”.

Listen to Suzan Hartley who travelled to Cuba to assess the situation first hand.

The greatest value $12 you’ll ever spend.

B Bucktin

Barragup