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Monday May 30, 2005

Singapore government conducts environmental survey

Just received this in my mailbox :

As part of the Singapore Green Plan 2012 Review, the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) is seeking public feedback on significant environmental issues in an extensive online environmental survey.

For the first time, it aims to gain a better insight into peoples' habits and perceptions and the kind of environmental strategies they are willing to support. Members of the public who take the survey can stand a chance to win a $5 Borders Electronic Gift Card, while stocks last.

In the free-form text areas asking about suggestions on improving air quality, I wrote :

1. Carry out much stronger enforcement, introduce harsher laws for owners of smoky vehicles, especially commercial diesel vehicles and motorcycles.
2. Implement and enforce anti-idling laws to deter vehicle owners from keeping their vehicle engines idling while parked. SBS buses idling at bus interchanges should not be exempt.
3. Enhance tax incentives for people who wish to buy cleaner vehicles, especially hybrid-electric vehicles. However, under the current taxation schemes, a 1.5L hybrid car costs as much as a normal 2.0L car - 99% of potential owners will and do obviously go for the 2.0L models. Exempt electric drivetrain and hybrid components from taxation in order to narrow the price differential.

As for the recycling section, I weighed in with :

1. Recycling bins are almost nowhere to be found in the HDB housing estates, where the majority (over 80%) of the citizens live. They should be introduced - even if via private efforts (let companies bid for collection rights).
2. This goes against the nature of our "throw-away" society, but efforts must be made to promote reuse and repair, instead of "throw away and buy a new one". If the government does nothing, the market may take care of that in a drastic way - via exponential increases in basic commodity prices, leading to runaway inflation and hence sharp rises in the prices of new, finished goods.

- Now, let's see if I get the $5 Borders "electronic gift card". If I do get it, let's see, should I use it to purchase my own copy of Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over or Powerdown, or Matt Simmons' Twilight in the Desert, or Jim Kunstler's The Long Emergency? Hmm. I wonder if they do carry those in the first place, anyway.

(2005-05-30 22:24:17 SGT) [Env] Permalink Comments [1]

Peak Oil on MSNBC News front page

peakoil.com -> msnbc.msn.com

Peak Oil is now the first item in the Business section on the MSNBC News front page. According to Google News, the original AP article by Matt Crenson has now been syndicated on over 200 mainstream news outlets. The story is also front page or business section news on many newspapers across the United States.

The timing of the AP article is pretty interesting, coming as it is just as the traditional summer driving season in the USA is set to begin. Of course, the context would be a lot more interesting if crude prices are simultaneously hitting $60, but I think we're probably on the way there anyway.

The folks over at peakoil.com are complaining that MSNBC *had* to throw in the EIA graph that may mislead people into thinking that the peak is far away, but the editors probably might have thought that carrying the ASPO graph would cause some panic. Of course, regular readers and members of the community know that it is the *ASPO* graph which is more likely to be right. Who knows? One day, the ASPO graph might be the front-page item - *then* we'll see what happens next.

Peak Oil : The Movie

energybulletin.net :

A telemovie produced for the US Rupert Murdoch / FOX owned cable channel FX looks set to deal with the events of a sudden catastrophic loss of oil imports, apparently due to a shipping disaster. The content, however, is obviously influenced by the bleaker end of Peak Oil discourse.

The trailer uses footage reminiscent of the LA riots, and explains in that all too familiar movie trailer voice-over style that "It has already begun. A chain of events that will spark fear, create panic, and result in a catastrophe that will change our lives forever. Americans didn't realize how fragile their existence was."

Called Oil Storm, it will be shown at 8PM Eastern Time on June 5th

View trailer:
www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/oilstorm/main.html (site requires Flash 5)

Direct links to Quicktime movies:
56K: www.fxnetworks.com/video/qt/oilstorm_trailer_qt_56k.mov
Broadband: www.fxnetworks.com/video/qt/oilstorm_trailer_qt_dsl.mov

(2005-05-29 23:07:14 SGT) [Energy] Permalink Comments [1]

The Great Malls of China

peakoil.com -> nytimes.com :

DONGGUAN, China - After construction workers finish plastering a replica of the Arc de Triomphe and buffing the imitation streets of Hollywood, Paris and Amsterdam, a giant new shopping theme park here will proclaim itself the world's largest shopping mall [with 7 million square feet floor area].

The South China Mall - a jumble of Disneyland and Las Vegas, a shoppers' version of paradise and hell all wrapped in one - will be nearly three times the size of the massive Mall of America in Minnesota. It is part of yet another astonishing new consequence of the quarter-century economic boom here: the great malls of China.

... already, four shopping malls in China are larger than the Mall of America. Two, including the South China Mall, are bigger than the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, which just surrendered its status as the world's largest to an enormous retail center in Beijing. And by 2010, China is expected to be home to at least 7 of the world's 10 largest malls.

Chinese are swarming into malls, which usually have many levels that rise up rather than out in the sprawling two-level style typical in much of the United States. Chinese consumers arrive by bus and train, and growing numbers are driving there. On busy days, one mall in the southern city of Guangzhou attracts about 600,000 shoppers.

For the moment, the world's biggest mall is the six-million-square-foot Golden Resources Mall, which opened last October in northwestern Beijing. It has already sparked envy and competitive ambition among the world's big mall builders, who outwardly scoff at the Chinese ascent to mall-dom, even as they plot their own path to build on such scale in China.

How big is six million square feet? That mall, which is expected to cost $1.3 billion when completed, spans the length of six football fields and easily exceeds the floor space of the Pentagon, which at 3.7 million square feet is the world's largest office building. It is a single, colossal five-story building - with rows and rows of shops stacked on top of more rows and rows of shops - so large that it is hard to navigate among the 1,000 stores and the thousands of shoppers.

... and at a time when the biggest malls under construction in the United States measure about a million square feet, developers here are creating malls that are six, seven and eight million square feet.

In Dongguan, the developers of the South China Mall say they traveled around the world for two years in search of the right model. The result is a $400 million fantasy land: 150 acres of palm-tree-lined shopping plazas, theme parks, hotels, water fountains, pyramids, bridges and giant windmills. Trying to exceed even some of the over-the-top casino extravaganzas in Las Vegas, it has a 1.3-mile artificial river circling the complex, which includes districts modeled on the world's seven "famous water cities," and an 85-foot replica of the Arc de Triomphe.

- More monuments to cheap energy (getting not so cheap as time goes by).

(2005-05-29 13:26:41 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

Peak Oil on Yahoo News front page

peakoil.com -> news.yahoo.com

Peak Oil has just hit the Yahoo News front page :

Experts: Petroleum May Be Nearing a Peak
By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer

Could the petroleum joyride — cheap, abundant oil that has sent the global economy whizzing along with the pedal to the metal and the AC blasting for decades — be coming to an end? Some observers of the oil industry think so. They predict that this year, maybe next — almost certainly by the end of the decade — the world's oil production, having grown exuberantly for more than a century, will peak and begin to decline.

And then it really will be all downhill. The price of oil will increase drastically. Major oil-consuming countries will experience crippling inflation, unemployment and economic instability. Princeton University geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes predicts "a permanent state of oil shortage."

... where you stand on "peak oil," as parties to the debate call it, depends on which forces you consider dominant in controlling the oil markets. People who consider economic forces most important believe that prices are high right now mostly because of increased demand from China and other rapidly growing economies. But eventually, high prices should encourage consumers to use less and producers to pump more.

But Deffeyes and many other geologists counter that when it comes to oil, Mother Nature trumps Adam Smith. The way they see it, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway and other major producers are already pumping as fast as they can. The only way to increase production capacity is to discover more oil. Yet with a few exceptions, there just isn't much left out there to be discovered.

There will be warning signs before global oil production peaks, the bearers of bad news contend. Prices will rise dramatically and become increasingly volatile. With little or no excess production capacity, minor supply disruptions — political instability in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or labor unrest in Nigeria, for example — will send the oil markets into a tizzy. So will periodic admissions by oil companies and petroleum-rich nations that they have been overestimating their reserves.

Oil producers will grow flush with cash. And because the price of oil ultimately affects the cost of just about everything else in the economy, inflation will rear its ugly head ...

Update : it seems that this story is now on over 200 mainstream news sources.

The incredible shrinking IT staff?

news.com :

By 2010, the number of IT staff in the profession will shrink by 15 percent, Gartner predicted Tuesday. Apart from the rise of outsourcers - who often provide their services from lower-cost countries like India - IT departments also face the diffusion of tech skills throughout an organization, Gartner said.

... in its latest report, Gartner forecasts increased involvement by IT staffers in business matters. By 2010, the firm said, 60 percent of the people affiliated with the information systems group will assume "business-facing roles around information, process and relationships." As a result, Gartner predicted, "the size of the IS organization will decrease, and...by 2010, IT departments in midsize and large companies will be at least one-third smaller than they were in 2000."