July 10 2006 - I just posted this on the Australian ABC’s Four Corners website as a tip-off about relevant information related to tonight’s special on Peak Oil. Click here to see their site.

“I am a general practitioner in a large Australian city, concerned about the looming effects of peak oil. I have recently started a blog called “Peak Oil Medicine - An exploration of health care options for a scarce oil future”. It already has some interesting and thought-provoking content, and you are welcome to link to or reference it.

In addition to my medical degree, I have additional qualifications in acupuncture, integrative medicine, hypnosis and reiki. I feel that I am in the unexpected position of synthesizing alternative models of future healing with the possible effects of peak oil.”

My comments on the discussion forum:

*The Cuban experience is also a great model to start with from the health care point of view. I am a medical professional in NSW and I have just started a blog on peak oil medicine to explore the implications for health care of a scarce oil future. Relocalisation and community-building is really the name of the game - in Cuba health professionals live and work within walking distance of the communities they serve; they know their patients individually and if someone doesn’t turn up for an appointment they visit them at home. We need to examine the models of all of the main institutions and amenities that our society has developed and come up with non-wasteful alternatives. Replacing petroleum with say ethanol or coal to liquids is pointless if our profligate waste continues (not to mention the climate change implications). Thank you for covering the peak oil issue in such depth and including some of the main players in the advocacy game.

*We need to remember that hydrogen is an energy CARRIER not an energy SOURCE - think an invisible, flammable, and hard to store battery: it needs an energy input from somewhere to generate it in the first place - the energy source can be natural gas, nuclear, or renewables like solar: it depends on your design solution and values.

*I also started a thread on peak oil and medicine that only got one reply - see my entry here:

“The way I see the link between medicine and peak oil is as follows:

1. Modern medicine runs on fossil fuel (ie petroleum products).
2. Petroleum products are most likely to imminently be in short supply (making them more expensive and harder to get).
3. There are no ready substitutes for oil that are cheap and large scale.
4. The need for modern medical services is progressively increasing (for example as populations age and climate change becomes a reality).
5. We are therefore probably racing towards an imminent bottleneck (aka crisis) in medical service provision of a magnitude unseen in the last 50 years.

Just as we appear to be moving into a post-antibiotic age, we also seem to be approaching the post-oil age. But there may not be only darkness ahead. As awareness of the issues increases, more and more resources and ideas will be allocated to solving these problems. How well they are solved remains to be seen, however.”