peak mining

France has banned fracking, but the United States is allowing lateral mining to utterly demolish democracy and people are facing destitution and starvation because of the lack of citizen rights in the United States to protect farm and town water. Here are some quotes from the film: "Using our resources against us"... "Greed and money: they're just sucking all of the water out of the ground. Why can't I have a say? Why can't these oil companies understand?"..."We've got to have some restrictions on mining... "If we run out of water, we're going to have to pump it in and it will cost more than oil. So why do you think the people of this town should be quiet about it?" In the face of a winner takes all, some farmers are caving in and trading farming in for mining and selling off their water. "... If you've got to have the oil you have to use the water. The demand is out there." Australia's government is going the same way as the United States.

Former career mining professional Simon Michaux gives a public lecture in Adelaide describing the onset of 'peak mining' and its various implications for natural resource management. A significant and comprehensive update to the field. Governments will be watching this one and trying to ignore it.

A useful presentation of the decline in return on energy invested. The industry is having to work harder and harder in order to get returns. Of course the industry is not going to admit this to potential investors or to governments because, if they did, governments would put the brakes on, realising that we are heading for uncontrollable problems if we do not.

The United States with its fracking and oil-shale mining; canada with its tarsands etc - they are able to get money to invest in the short term because of high demand and low intelligence and education in the investor community. The same kind of thing is happening with many resources, including uranium.

This is the picture that is not shown by graphs of oil production, which manage to convey the impression that per capital production is on a very slightly declining trajectory. If the increasing cost of the extraction from the earth were actually taken into account, we would see a much more rapid downward curve.