Singapore Peak Oil

A frightening article about what peak oil means for our societies. Do our ministers realise where we are heading? So what have they done to prepare Singapore for peak oil? Let's see: Integrated Resorts, Singapore Grand Prix, investing in UBS, Citigroup and Merill Lynch, 2010 Youth Olympics, target population of 6.5 million....er...huh, go figure...

By Nicolas van der Leek (Nick)

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=434714

...Say goodbye also to the services that rely on airlines, such as courier companies. This means FedEx and UPS, Say goodbye, too, to the likes of Amazon.com.

Giant scale operations -- from air travel, to farming, to industry (think General Motors) -- will scale down drastically.

This represents an implosion in world tourism, which means world spectacles like the FIFA World Cup and the 2012 Olympics are going to be beyond reach for 90 percent of consumers. This also has an impact on all those services that survive on international tourism -- entire hotel chains, car hire companies, restaurants and the like...

...We will see a stock market crash based around the realization (in markets) that not only is economic growth no longer logical, but depleting energy means breakdowns in all the financial architecture that was designed on top of it -- from property markets, to banks, to entire industries, including (of course) the auto and food industries. Obviously, when entire banks fail, so will capitalism and what remains of the financial apparatus.

Money will have little or no value in the future, and commerce will be done via barter, and probably in a disorderly manner. Agriculture will become a big industry, along with other forms of resource management (mining, forestry, etc.).

Disorder

It goes without saying really that all these transitions are likely to be associated with unpleasant levels of public disorder. It is likely that around the world authorities will struggle to maintain law and order. Governments will have a hard time staying relevant and of use to suddenly impoverished mobs. These struggles will place additional strain on those Cheap Oil Relics that survive, for example municipal services and roads. Who will maintain these in a world that can no longer afford very much?

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=434714

Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Princeton University and author of the book Hubbert's Peak, on the current oil crisis (excerpts):

May 27th, 2008

http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html

In 2005, world oil production stopped growing and oil prices shot up uncontrollably. My graph of production versus price is now two weeks old and the price is already off the top of the paper. This morning, West Texas Intermediate is $130 per barrel. In Econ 101, they taught us that increasing prices would enlarge the supply. The economists may have envisioned a large inventory of oil wells, temporarily shut down because of low oil prices.

What happened? We hit "peak oil" – also called "Hubbert's peak," – a geological limitation to the oil supply in the ground. With no additional supplies, a bidding war began in 2005 over the remaining oil in the ground. This is not a news story that goes away after a month...

How big is the problem? Multiplying production (barrels per year) times the oil price (dollars per barrel) gives a total cost in dollars per year. It's an enormous number; tens of trillions of dollars per year. To put a scale on it, the three thin curves on the graph show the oil cost in contrast to the total world domestic product; the annual value the goods and services added up for all the world's countries. The three curves show the oil cost at one percent, two and a half percent, and five percent of the total world economic output. At $130 this morning, we are at six and a half percent.

Oil production obviously cannot consume 100 percent of the world's income. My intuitive, uninformed guess is that it cannot go above 15 percent. If we see oil at $300 per barrel, we will be looking out over the smoldering ruins of the world's economy...

So what about the experts and the oil companies who assure us that peak oil won't happen anytime soon? They have plenty of stories to tell:

• The USA is now a service economy; we don't need as much oil as before.
• Energy and food prices are too volatile to be included in the "core price index."
• Oil prices have gone up, but we are still surviving, sort of.
• Oil companies could find plenty of oil if they were allowed access for drilling.
• Alternative energy sources will appear that replace conventional oil.

Despite the all the arguing, the oil problem really does matter.

• Been to the grocery store lately? Agriculture is a heavy user of energy.
• Ford and General Motors are having difficulty selling big SUVs.
• By my count, seven passenger airlines have flown to that great airport in the sky.
• After many consumers pay for gasoline and food; they don't have money left to make their mortgage payments.

What do we do? First – admit that there is a problem. Several analysts are still in the initial denial stage: Jad Mouawad, Michael Lynch, Daniel Yergin, and ExxonMobil...During the upcoming presidential campaign, let the candidates know that peak oil is the issue of overwhelming importance. A modest tax write off for wind energy is too little and too late. It's the oil supply, stupid.

Link

Excerpts from a speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the World Cities Summit, 24 June 2008:

The first element of sustainable living is to conserve resources. It is especially important to conserve energy, in the form of electricity and fuel. This is both to minimise wastage, and also because usually energy derives from fossil fuel, and saving energy also reduces carbon emissions.

The idea is there, but it does not convey the urgency and gravity of the sustainability problems that we are facing due to resource depletion. It would have been better, albeit tactless and undiplomatic, to have said bluntly: "The first element of sustainable living is to understand that any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will collapse. (Tainter's Axiom)"

To have the greatest effect, energy efficiency should be factored into the way the whole city is designed, including its urban layout, buildings, transport system and industrial facilities...Such cities can still improve their energy efficiency, for example by encouraging use of public transport instead of cars, and not over-cooling or over-heating buildings. But substantial improvements will take time.

Energy efficiency is, of course, desirable. What the Singapore government often overlooks is total consumption. There are, after all, finite amounts of fossil fuels and no measure of efficiency is going to stop us from exhausting what's left in the ground if the total quantity of energy we extract increases every year. Instead of focusing purely on per capita consumption, it's more important and logical to be mindful of total energy consumption.

Look at the charts below and compare how even though we have improved our energy efficiency, total electricity consumption has risen relentlessly.

Sources: EMA, Singstat and E2Singapore

One more thing about efficiency that we need to be mindful of - Jevon's Paradox

In economics, the Jevons Paradox is an observation made by William Stanley Jevons, that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource tends to increase, rather than decrease. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to popular intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given output, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource – which increases demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect predominates. --- WIKI

Ideally energy should be priced not just at today’s market levels, but also taking into account the likelihood of a future carbon-constrained world, be it due to scarcer supplies of fossil fuels or a post-Kyoto regime to restrain carbon emissions.

"Scarcer supplies of fossil fuels" - Peak oil, Peak Natural Gas.

Another strategy is to shift towards clean and renewable energy, like wind and solar power, with a smaller carbon footprint. These should be part of the solution, but realistically they lack the scale to replace more than a small proportion of fossil fuel use.

Good. He realises that alternative energies are not a direct convenient replacement for oil.

There have been breakthroughs in water technologies, more so than in clean energy. In the last two decades, advances in reverse osmosis and membrane technologies have made desalination, water reuse and other water purification techniques significantly cheaper, and enabled them to be deployed on a large scale. This has transformed the problem from an absolute resource constraint to a question of economics. More water is available, at the right price.

I disagree. The question is not entirely one of money but more importantly energy. Water treatment plants require huge energy inputs to operate. How are we going to produce affordable potable water if the price of energy continues to ascend? How can we maintain or increase our current treated water output levels if there is a shortfall of energy? Like the Minister Mentor, he is holding on to a fundamental error held by mainstream economists by believing that money will solve our resource problems:

Error: Economic activity as a function of infinite "money creation", rather than a function of finite "energy stocks" and finite "energy flows". In fact, the economy is 100% dependent on available energy -- it always has been, and it always will be. LINK

The full text of the PM's speech can be found here.

'Water is a precious resource, without it you will die,' Mr Lee said. 'YOU CAN LIVE WITHOUT ENERGY.'

LINK

Nothing new, really. As we have seen in previous posts (here and here), the Minister Mentor is out of touch with reality on energy issues.

---

TWO incidents drove home to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew the need for Singapore to strive for self-sufficiency in water.

The first was when the island fell to invading Japanese troops who blew up pipes transporting water from Johor to Singapore in February 1942.

The second incident happened a few days after Singapore's separation from Malaysia in August 1965. Then-Malaysian prime minister Tengku Abdul Rahman remarked that 'if Singapore doesn't do what I want, I'll switch off the water supply'.

Since then, the 'quest for water independence' has dominated every facet of urban development here, he told an audience of 650 international officials and water experts.

http://wildsingaporenews.blogspot.com/2008/06/rising-to-water-challenge-from-day-1.html

What about the quest for food independence? What would it take to drive home the point that depending on foreign farmers hundreds and thousands of miles away for 90 percent of our food is a sign of poor resilience? Empty supermarket shelves? Food rationing?

The Singapore government and a majority of Singaporeans are going to be caught off-guard when the oil crisis hits home.

Mr Mah Bow Tan, Singapore's Minister for National Development, in today's Straits Times:

More than 700 policymakers, governors, urban planners and environmentalists from various countries are gathering at the Suntec Convention Centre, where the concept of 'sustainable development' will be in the limelight.

It is 'one of those terms that people use without knowing the meaning', noted Mr Mah, who defined it as such: 'It's how do we continue to grow in a way that doesn't adversely affect our living environment.'

With all due respect, I have to ask him, "Minister, do you know that the phrase 'sustainable development' is an oxymoron?" It is oxymoronic because the arithmetic of steady growth becomes exponentially large over a period of time, and due to physical constraints development or growth has to stop somewhere when the limits are reached. See video.

While Singapore has done 'fairly well over the last 40, 50 years', it faces new challenges in terms of resource constraints - energy, water, and land - as it tries to maintain growth, said Mr Mah.

To grow, he added: 'I submit that we need to continue to attract talent.

'More talent, more people means more strain on resources. More strain on resources means growth may be at the expense of the environment. So how do we reconcile that? It can be a vicious circle or we make it into a virtuous circle.'

I'm glad Mr Mah sees the toll a higher population exacts on the environment, but strangely he does not see the obvious solution. How do we reconcile that? He asks. Well, the simple answer is we can't. We can't reconcile environmental protection with ever-increasing human numbers and consumption. Logic dictates that conclusion as we live in a finite world with finite resources. The only (unpopular and politically incorrect) solution is to replace the doctrine of population and economic growth with a Steady State Economy.

How in the world does Mr Mah intend to make "more people" a "virtuous circle"? It's impossible. Is the minister familiar with Garrett Hardin's Three Laws of Human Ecology? I don't think so, and even if he is, he is not taking them seriously.

First Law of Human Ecology: "We can never do merely one thing." This is a profound and eloquent observation of the interconnectedness of nature.

Second Law of Human Ecology: "There's no away to throw to." This is a compact statement of one of the major problems of the effluent society.

Third Law of Human Ecology: The impact (I) of any group or nation on the environment is represented qualitatively by the relation

I = P A T

where P is the size of the population,A is the per capita affluence, measured by per capita rate of consumption, and T is a measure of the damage done by the technologies that are used in supplying the consumption. Hardin attributes this law to Ehrlich and Holdren (Ehrlich and Holdren, 1971).

http://dieoff.org/page39.htm

Said Mr Mah: 'Now we've got to look at energy. How do we save energy? How do we make better use of energy? How can we, can we recycle energy?'

Does the minister even understand what he himself is saying? You can't "recycle" energy because the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that. Energy once used is transformed from a state of low entropy to high entropy. Entropy measures the unavailability of a system’s energy to do work. When you burn gasoline, chemical energy is transformed into heat energy to power the car. How do you "recycle" the dispersed heat that has been used to do work? Is it possible to assemble the used energy for "recycling"? The answer is you can't. The entropy law dictates that this transformation process is one-way only and is therefore irreversible.

One cannot help but despair of the future when the minister who is responsible for a sustainable living environment makes such ludicrous statements.

---

The Straits Times, June 23, 2008

http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_250709.html

Next target: Cut energy use

Minister Mah suggests reduction of 20%-30%; people will need to rethink how they use electricity By Li Xueying

SINGAPORE has to work harder at cutting down energy usage - perhaps by 20 per cent to 30 per cent, as countries around the world increasingly emphasise sustainable development.

National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan, who said this, noted that Singapore has scored relatively well on the water and land usage fronts.

'But I think (on) energy, we've not done enough. I think we need to do more,' he said in an interview with The Straits Times.

There would have to be a multifaceted approach taken, he noted.

On the Government's part, it can examine policies such as using new materials to construct HDB blocks, examining new ways of designing and maintaining lifts which currently 'use up a lot of energy', and installing energy-saving lights in public carparks.

Singaporeans, as consumers, also have to play their part in understanding the amount of energy that their various appliances use up, and going for energy-saving versions, he added.

'So I think we need to go into the details of each and every one of these items, and see how we can cut down energy usage 20 per cent, 30 per cent,' said Mr Mah.

His remarks come as the inaugural three-day World Cities Summit - co-organised by his ministry - kicks off today.

More than 700 policymakers, governors, urban planners and environmentalists from various countries are gathering at the Suntec Convention Centre, where the concept of 'sustainable development' will be in the limelight.

It is 'one of those terms that people use without knowing the meaning', noted Mr Mah, who defined it as such: 'It's how do we continue to grow in a way that doesn't adversely affect our living environment.'

Certainly, there are challenges as Singapore seeks to cut down on its energy usage, he conceded.

'Upfront costs may be a bit higher, but we have to (do it), if it makes practical sense. And (whether) the payback period is two, three, five, seven years, whatever, if this makes sense, then we have to do it,' he said.

'How many taxes, how many incentives are there, what are the things we need? I think these are things that we need to sit down and discuss.'

These are details that an inter-ministerial committee - co-chaired by Mr Mah and Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim - is thrashing out.

It will be rolling out a 10-year roadmap next year on how Singapore can adopt green solutions in transport, housing and industry.

While Singapore has done 'fairly well over the last 40, 50 years', it faces new challenges in terms of resource constraints - energy, water, and land - as it tries to maintain growth, said Mr Mah.

To grow, he added: 'I submit that we need to continue to attract talent.

'More talent, more people means more strain on resources. More strain on resources means growth may be at the expense of the environment. So how do we reconcile that? It can be a vicious circle or we make it into a virtuous circle.'

This comes in tandem with record energy prices.

In an assessment of Singapore's efforts to date, the minister said: '(With respect to) water we have done very well: How do we save water? How do we make sure that water is reused and recycled?

'On land, I think we've been very conscious about how we make use of land: Better utilisation of land; we've already done intensification, higher plot ratios and so on.'

So what is lacking are efforts on the energy front.

Said Mr Mah: 'Now we've got to look at energy. How do we save energy? How do we make better use of energy? How can we, can we recycle energy?'

xueying@sph.com.sg

Oil exporting nations have been enjoying an economic boom in recent years thanks to the 6-fold increase in oil prices since 2002. This has resulted in an increased consumption of oil domestically by the producers themselves, which means less oil for export to oil-importing nations like Singapore. Look at the table below taken from theoildrum.com. 30 of the 44 net oil exporters in 2007 exported less oil than the year before even when demand was running high. If they exporters don't export, we importers don't get to consume. This does not bode well for us. Peak Oil is going to hit us faster and harder than what most people are expecting, and the worst thing is the Singapore government is oblivious to this matter. Our neighbour, Indonesia, is a net crude oil importer, which explains why they are not in the table.

This is a great article by Walden Bello. National food sovereignty and security have been compromised in the name of "free trade". Excerpts:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080602/bello

The apostles of the free market and the defenders of dumping may seem to be at different ends of the spectrum, but the policies they advocate are bringing about the same result: a globalized capitalist industrial agriculture. Developing countries are being integrated into a system where export-oriented production of meat and grain is dominated by large industrial farms like those run by the Thai multinational CP and where technology is continually upgraded by advances in genetic engineering from firms like Monsanto. And the elimination of tariff and nontariff barriers is facilitating a global agricultural supermarket of elite and middle-class consumers serviced by grain-trading corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland and transnational food retailers like the British-owned Tesco and the French-owned Carrefour.

This is not simply the erosion of national food self-sufficiency or food security but what Africanist Deborah Bryceson of Oxford calls "de-peasantization"--the phasing out of a mode of production to make the countryside a more congenial site for intensive capital accumulation. This transformation is a traumatic one for hundreds of millions of people, since peasant production is not simply an economic activity. It is an ancient way of life, a culture, which is one reason displaced or marginalized peasants in India have taken to committing suicide. In the state of Andhra Pradesh, farmer suicides rose from 233 in 1998 to 2,600 in 2002; in Maharashtra, suicides more than tripled, from 1,083 in 1995 to 3,926 in 2005. One estimate is that some 150,000 Indian farmers have taken their lives. Collapse of prices from trade liberalization and loss of control over seeds to biotech firms is part of a comprehensive problem, says global justice activist Vandana Shiva: "Under globalization, the farmer is losing her/his social, cultural, economic identity as a producer. A farmer is now a 'consumer' of costly seeds and costly chemicals sold by powerful global corporations through powerful landlords and money lenders locally."

Once regarded as relics of the pre-industrial era, peasants are now leading the opposition to a capitalist industrial agriculture that would consign them to the dustbin of history. They have become what Karl Marx described as a politically conscious "class for itself," contradicting his predictions about their demise. With the global food crisis, they are moving to center stage--and they have allies and supporters. For as peasants refuse to go gently into that good night and fight de-peasantization, developments in the twenty-first century are revealing the panacea of globalized capitalist industrial agriculture to be a nightmare. With environmental crises multiplying, the social dysfunctions of urban-industrial life piling up and industrialized agriculture creating greater food insecurity, the farmers' movement increasingly has relevance not only to peasants but to everyone threatened by the catastrophic consequences of global capital's vision for organizing production, community and life itself.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080602/bello

Robert Hirsch, principal author of the Hirsch report and Senior Energy Advisor, on CNBC. Video Link

What is capitalism?

An economic system based on a free market, open competition, profit motive and private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism encourages private investment and business, compared to a government-controlled economy. Investors in these private companies (i.e. shareholders) also own the firms and are known as capitalists.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capitalism.asp

What is a pyramid scheme?

A fraudulent moneymaking scheme in which people are recruited to make payments to others above them in a hierarchy while expecting to receive payments from people recruited below them. Eventually the number of new recruits fails to sustain the payment structure, and the scheme collapses with most people losing the money they paid in.

http://www.answers.com/Pyramid+Scheme?cat=biz-fin&gwp=13

Why is Capitalism a pyramid scheme?

Early entrants to capitalism and free trade (UK, the US, Western Europe, Japan) accumulated great wealth, but later entrants face huge problems: global warming, pollution, population growth and resource depletion, not problems when the US industrialized. The Economist projected that China will match the US as the largest economy in 2030, a straight line projection of current trends. What is unaccounted for by economists is the wealth-reducing damage to the earth that such unrestrained growth will already have caused.

Capitalism, in order to be a healthy, viable system has to sustain constant growth. A young, growing population is counted as a plus. A capitalist economy that does not grow is in a "depression." And yet, the earth has finite resources, and a finite "carrying capacity." The run up in energy and resource prices are simply indications of what is beginning to happen. Global warming is another, and portends increasing droughts in large parts of the world, reducing the amounts of food available, promoting famine.

For Americans to expect that they can continue their "way of life," when in competition for scarce resources with the huge countries of China and India is simply a fantasy. It is also a fantasy that the Chinese or Indians will someday enjoy affluent lifestyles like Americans. If the over 3 billions of people from those two countries and nearby East Asia consume and pollute even at (lower) European levels, the oceans will become deserts from over-fishing, resources that are not 100% recycled will become prohibitively expensive and global warming will render most agriculture way over-taxed to produce the necessary food (especially if the Chinese and Indians demand diets comparable to Americans). This is why capitalism is a pyramid scheme; it is not sustainable.

http://www.roman-empire-america-now.com/capitalism.html

Capitalism as one commentator puts it:

- capitalism thrives on profitability
- profitability thrives on economic growth
- economic growth thrives on increased consumption of goods

- increased consumption of goods thrives on increased use of natural resources (capitalism loves uncontrolled population growth)

- increased use of natural resources results in eventual depletion of natural resources

Therefore, capitalism promotes the eventual depletion of natural resources (and doesn’t care about overpopulation)

What’s the best ally of Capitalism?
Organized religions that promote lots of babies.

Does Capitalism really care about the human being?
No. That’s democracy. Don’t get them confused.
Capitalism cares about profitability.

Democracy does not thrive on profitability.
It does not address profitability.
It is a model for majority representation with good or bad outcomes.

http://www.pieandcoffee.org/2005/10/17/checks/

I am currently reading A New Green History Of The World by Clive Ponting. It is a concise and interesting overview of the history of humanity's relationship with the environment. The book is available for borrowing at the Singapore National Library. Here are some excerpts from the last chapter:

The number of people who have to live on less than $1 day rose from 1.2 billion in 1987 to 1.5 billion in 2000 and within the next decade the total is likely to rise to 1.9 billion or more than a quarter of the world's population. If some attempt was made to combat the glaring inequalities in the world and the standard of living of the poorest countries were to rise to current European (not American) standards then the world's consumption of resources would have to rise more than 150-fold. It is unlikely that there are enough resources in the world to sustain this level of consumption. Even if there were the consequences, in terms of industrial pollution, would be disastrous.

For example, if China were to achieve Japanese levels of car ownership (still far below US levels) then there would be 640 million vehicles in the country compared with thirteen million today. This would increase the number of vehicles in the world by over 80 percent compared with current levels. Apart from the resource consumption and pollution this would involve it would also have severe effects within China. New roads and parking areas would be required which would, given the experience of the industrialised countries, take up about thirteen million hectares of land. This is equivalent to the land area that grows half of China's current rice crop. Where would the extra land come from and how would the population be fed?......It is highly unlikely that the evolution of mass-consumption societies in the industrialised world can be replicated elsewhere...

...[Natural gas production] will peak long before reserves become exhausted - the most likely date is around 2020 followed by a long decline in output. The decline in natural gas output will occur in conjunction with the fall in oil production and this will therefore greatly exacerbate the problems that will have to be faced...

...Indeed it is difficult to see how the energy consumption required to sustain the rise in living standards and resource consumption to bring the poorest parts of the world up to European levels set out in the previous section could be sustained. The world is clearly approaching a major crossroads. The profligate high-energy societies of a small minority of the world's population that developed in the twentieth century cannot be replicated for all the world's people. Indeed it will be increasingly difficult to sustain it for the few far into the future...

...The achievements of modern industrial, urban, high-consumption, high-energy consumption societies have been remarkable. However, the other side of the coin is that the scale of the environmental problems they have created as a consequence of these achievements is unprecedented and of a complexity that almost defies solution. From a wider, historical perspective it is clearly far too soon to judge whether modern industrialised societies are environmentally sustainable.

Jay Hanson, creator of dieoff.org, commented in his killer_ape-peak_oil yahoo group as to why a soft landing to our converging crises (peak oil, overpopulation, etc.) is impossible. He attributes it to pride and social status. Is he right? You can request to join his message group by contacting him at http://warsocialism.com/contact.html.

Will Singapore's leaders change our policies about population and economic growth when they realise that they are fundamentally wrong? Or will pride, as Jay alleged, get in the way?

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/killer_ape-peak_oil/message/7387

I finally have the big picture with respect to human nature and social organizations. In the past, I thought that a lack of training prevented social scientists from understanding how the world really works. After more than ten years of thinking about it, I now realize that social scientists are subconsciously LYING to prevent losing social status!

Fathers kill their daughters to increase social status. Almost all social organizations -- including governments -- PRIMARILY serve the fitness of the people involved in the day-to-day operations of those organizations by increasing their social status -- by increasing their fame and fortune.

The drive to increase status motivates almost all consumption in capitalist countries (e.g., faster cars, more expensive food, bigger houses, more arcane vacations, the list is literally endless). Moreover, nearly everyone LIES (albeit subconsciously) while attempting to inflate their social status.

Selfish genes guarantee that so-called "civilizations" are little more than a bunch of peacocks prancing around preening their magnificent tails. It's all about the spectacle.

A soft landing is impossible because those in positions of power can't stop lying and thereby lose face. It's that simple.

Jay
============================

Ps. Another impediment to a soft landing is the national security complex which works to prevent the publication of papers on EROI because they would undermine America's national political agenda:

"In 1965, RAND created a fellowship program for economics graduate students at the Universities of California, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Chicago, Columbia and Princeton, and in addition provided postdoctoral funds for those who best fitted the mold. These seven economics
departments along with MIT's, an institution long regarded by many as a branch of the Pentagon, have come to dominate economics globally to an astonishing extent." http://www.paecon.net/StrangeHistory.htm

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http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/killer_ape-peak_oil/message/7390

So, the big picture is six billion people struggling to increase their social status -- increase the size of their peacock tails -- by depleting natural resources. All organizations within a country -- all branches of government, universities, corporations, and lobbyists -- work to support the genetic drive for more status by its leading members while suppressing dissenting opinions.

The genetic drive for status is ENORMOUSLY powerful with people willing to go so far as to kill themselves (e.g., hara-kiri) and family members (Muslim Father Kills Daughter for Not Wearing Hijab). Besides being one of the most powerful, the genetic drive for status can never be satisfied:

"I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death." -- Thomas Hobbes

In other words, if your neighbor appears to increase his status beyond yours, then you must work extra harder to increase your status and get ahead of him (buy more-expensive car, bigger house, better job, etc.). We used to call is "keeping up with the Joneses".

All leading people within the national paradigm deliberately lie (most subconsciously) to further their drive to increase status. Moreover, no one is willing to lose social status ("lose face") by admitting they were fundamentally wrong all along. So not only do all organizations within a country work in concert to promote the national paradigm, all leading people are genetically-biased against telling the truth because they would lose social status. http://www.warsocialism.com/SelfDeception.pdf

When people are frustrated in their endless drive to increase fitness, they resort to violence (e.g., South Africa). The only alternative to public violence is the endless conversion of natural resources into ever-more-marvelous peacock tails.

But the laws of thermodynamics tell us that less-and-less natural resources are available for conversion into these ever-more-marvelous peacock tails. The genetic drive for more-and-more colliding with thermodynamic laws allowing less-and-less is known as the "Thermo/Gene Collision" and MUST lead to a new world war over natural resources. http://www.warsocialism.com/thermogenecollision.pdf

Any questions on the above material?

Jay

Can you think of any problem, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way, aided, assisted, or advanced, by having continued population growth at the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally? ---Albert Bartlett

If you have been following the news, you should be aware that Singapore ministers keep harping on the fact that our birth rates are too low, and that our population needs to keep growing for us to prosper economically. I wonder, do they have any understanding of the term "carrying capacity"? If we need more people to maintain economic growth, what happens when we hit 6.5 million people in 20-30 years? Do we aim for 10 million next? And when we reach 10 million, do we target 20 million? Our government's blind and relentless pursuit of growth is shortsighted; Nature is not going to accommodate all of us.

Singapore's ruling party, the PAP, prides itself on being far-sighted:

We operate with a very long-term horizon. No problem is too remote just because its effects may only be evident in the future. We CAN SEE AHEAD to guide our people along the best way forward.

http://www.youngpap.org.sg/abtus_vision.shtml

This statement is laughable. How can they operate with a "very long-term horizon" when the subjects of peak oil, energy depletion, carrying capacity and limits to growth are absent from their publications and speeches? The word "sustainable" may be used quite often in the government's publications, but they are merely paying lip service to true sustainability as their policies betray their line of thought. Our ministers’ lack of understanding of sustainability is a serious problem.

What is carrying capacity?

Ecologists define 'carrying capacity' as the population of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a defined habitat without permanently damaging the ecosystem upon which it is dependent.

http://dieoff.org/page13.htm

Due to peak oil production, our foreign food sources will become increasingly unreliable in years to come. Industrial farming will peak and their outputs will be greatly reduced. Our food transport systems will be disrupted by soaring fuel prices, protests and strikes. What do we do? We need to grow more food here at home. But the question is, how many people can we feed on our own?

Here is my feeble attempt to calculate the carrying capacity of Singapore. As there are many complex variables (water, food, pollution, sanitation, soil fertility, etc.) which affect the carrying capacity of a habitat, I have greatly simplified my calculations and will only touch on the food production/consumption aspect of it. My method is simple: divide Singapore's land area by the minimum land area required to feed a person.

Singapore land area: 682.7 sq km = 168,698 acres

Acres per person needed for a standard American diet: 1.2 acres to 2.11 acres

Acres per person needed for a largely vegetarian diet: 0.3 acres to 0.6 acres

If Singapore adopts a standard American diet, our carrying capacity would therefore be between 80,000 and 140,000.

If we adopt a largely vegetarian diet, then our carrying capacity would be somewhere between 280,000 and 560,000.

In reality, if we attempt to pursue self-sufficiency, our true carrying capacity is probably much lower than the numbers given above since most of the land in Singapore is not fit for crop cultivation because of our tropical soil and high degree of urbanization.

The possibility of Singapore's population plunging by more than 90% in the years ahead is not out of the question. Rome, the largest city of the ancient world, had a population of one million at the height of the Roman empire and dropped to 20,000 by the 14th century - a plunge of 98%. Thomas Homer Dixon argued in his book, The Upside of Down (available at the National Library), that the ultimate cause of the Roman Empire's collapse was due to diminishing energy returns on investment, or as Joseph Tainter put it: diminishing returns on investments in social complexity.

Likewise today, Singapore is disregarding the axioms of sustainability outlined by Bartlett and others by exhausting critical resources foolishly in our pursuit of economic and population growth to keep Singapore "dynamic, vibrant, and beating" - all of which are unsustainable in the coming decades.

(Tainter’s Axiom): Any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will collapse.

(Bartlett’s Axiom): Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.

To be sustainable, the use of non-renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.

In 1989, Isaac Asimov, when asked about the population problem, said it well:

Moyers: What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if population growth continues at its present rate?

Asimov: It will be completely destroyed. I like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor: if two people live in an apartment and there are two bathrooms, then both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want to stay as long as you want for whatever you need. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution.

But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in the freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, "Aren't you through yet?" and so on.

The same way democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more people there are the less one individual matters.

Issac Asimov, quoted in A World of Ideas by Bill Moyers (1989)

We have to accept the fact that we are entering a phase of economic and societal contraction. The sensible question to ask is, do we contract in orderly fashion or in anarchy? Judging from the daily news and our ill-preparedness, my hunch is that it will be chaotic and ugly.

Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) has a published a report (dated Nov 2007) on Singapore's energy policies. You can download it here: Energy For Growth - National Energy Policy Report

There are many things to commend about the report. It touched on the need to improve energy efficiency, reduce CO2 emissions, diversify energy sources, promote public transport and to control air pollution.

But to be blunt, it's better titled Energy For Unsustainable Growth because even though they keep repeating the word "sustainable", their policies really are UN-sustainable as they seem to have a total disregard for the axioms of sustainability outlined by Bartlett and others. Throughout the report, the impression given is that economic growth is always good, essential and limitless. Overpopulation was not touched on.

The core objective of our energy policy must thus be to secure Energy for Growth. (p.22)

If overgrowth in consumption and population are the root causes of our environmental concerns, then why do our policymakers continue to establish growth as the "core objective of our energy policy? Is more growth the answer to our problems? Does it make any sense at all? If smoking is causing you to have poor health, then the natural and logical thing to do is to stop smoking. If overgrowth is the problem, then non-growth or anti-growth is the solution.

Here's an analogy: Eating when one is hungry is satisfying and nourishing. Following our policymakers' logic, if eating is good for you then overeating must be better!

What does "grow" mean? What do you mean when you tell someone to "grow up"? Most people would agree that to grow means to expand; to increase; to gain. But an overlooked definition of "grow" which is more applicable to our economies and population is "to reach maturity".

Let's look at some other definitions of "grow":

American Heritage Dictionary: "to develop and reach maturity"

Merriam-Webster: "to spring up and develop to maturity"

Etymonline: Grown-up (adj.) "mature" is from 1633; the noun meaning "adult person" is from 1813

A child who grows up and reaches physical maturity is said to have "grown-up". If he grows any more, either taller or sideways, then it's a possible sign of ill-health. A "grown-up" continues to grow by developing knowledgeably and spiritually, not physically. Even if he or she develops physically with regard to muscle building, it should be obvious that even then there are limits as we cannot expect a bodybuilder to attain the strength of a gorilla or an elephant. There are, however, no limits to knowledge and creativity.

When our economy has "matured" to a certain stage, or when GDP reaches a certain level, it's time to say enough is enough - the economy cannot grow forever. There must come a point where we have to learn to be satisfied with our material achievements and move on to qualitative or spiritual development for the earth is finite in matter and energy and cannot satisfy all our physical wants. If owning a car makes you happy, will 10 cars take you to heavenly realms?

Now for the most disturbing part of the report:

World proven coal reserves are equivalent to 147 years at 2006 consumption levels, based on the British Petroleum (BP) Statistical Review of World Energy 2007. For oil and gas, proven reserves are estimated to be sufficient for only around 40 and 63 years of 2006 levels of consumption respectively. Nevertheless,oil and gas production is not expected to peak within the next two to three decades. With more exploration and improvements in extraction technologies, substantial new reserves will be added. Since 1980, globally proven oil reserves have expanded by 81 per cent, while proven gas reserves have more than doubled. (p.13)

This is so wrong I am astonished MTI even had this in the report. Compared to climate change, now I know why the Singapore government has paid scant attention to the peak oil problem - because they take BP's Statistical Review as gospel truth.

(Compare the Google search results of "climate change", "global warming" and "peak oil" in the .gov.sg domain. The results are 3000, 1560 and 3 respectively. Climate change and peak oil are related because they result from human dependency on fossil fuels.)

The current CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, disputes the peak oil theory and it was reported that he entered a wager with Kjell Aleklett of ASPO to bet that global crude production in 2018 will be greater than the current daily output of 85.5 million barrels per day. My bet's on Aleklett.

Let's review some points:

• Global oil discovery peaked in the late 1960s
• Since the 1980s, oil companies have been finding less oil than we have been consuming
• Of the 65 largest oil producing countries in the world, up to 54 have passed their peak of production
• Oil production from existing oilfields is declining at a rate between 3 and 5 percent while oil demand has been increasing at about 2% per year
• World oil production growth trends have been flat from 2005 to 2008
• The 81% increase in global oil reserves since 1980 are not "proven" or audited. The large increases in the BP report stems from the fact that BP quoted directly from OPEC members who gave them phony figures. Their REAL oil numbers are a state secret. OPEC members grossly overstated their reserves in the 1980s to increase their production rights.
• Improvements in extraction technology will not add substantial reserves since the cause is geological limits. If it's not there, it's not there. You can't create oil from thin air. The North Sea was developed by private companies using the best technology there is with no restrictions on drilling, yet oil production from those oil fields have been declining since 1999.
• If you factor in dramatic increases in coal usage to make up for oil and gas declines, taking into account also the Hubbert Peak phenomenon and the varying coal qualities and accessibility, Energy Watch Group predicts coal to peak in 15 years.

Sources:
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#Middle_Eastern_reserves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5655
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/29919
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG-Coalreport_10_07_2007.pdf

Whoever wrote that part of the report is seriously disconnected from the real world. Note that this report was published in Nov 2007, when peak oil was already making its way into mainstream media. Seriously, who the heck wrote that paragraph?

The Singapore government is clueless as to where we are heading. We are sleepwalking into an energy crisis.

If geologist Jeffrey Brown is correct, the shit will hit the fan sooner than what most people anticipate - including the pessimists. According to his calculations, Mexico, the 3rd largest exporter of oil to America, will approach zero net oil exports by 2014. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia (2nd largest oil exporter to America) have signalled that they would slow down their oil production capacity to preserve their oil endowment for future generations (a more likely reason is that they have peaked). The largest oil exporter to America, Canada, is unlikely to ramp up their oil extraction from tar sands fast enough to make up for the shortfall due to a peak in North American natural gas (an important factor in the extraction process). The next three largest oil exporters to America, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Iraq are not friendly and reliable sources. Can we say we are on the verge of Dark Ages America?

Meanwhile, GIC is investing, or should I say mal-investing, billions in dollars of Singapore's foreign reserves in American bank Citigroup, which will in all probability fold up when peak oil momentum gets underway; this is an unbelievable lack of foresight on the Singapore government's part.

With regard to the government's decision to go ahead with the Integrated Resorts, they will be go down in history as white elephants.

Export Land Model

It models the effects of the decline in oil exports as a result of the peak in oil production in oil exporting countries while at the same time domestic consumption increases in those same countries. This combination of declining production and increasing domestic consumption leads oil exports to decline at a far faster percentage rate than oil production itself is falling.

What The Export Land Model Means For Energy Prices

"What’s more important: the fact that global oil production is falling ... or that the oil exporting nations are cutting off their exports?”

“From this point out I think we’ll see a geometric progression in prices… you know, $50, $100, $200, $400, whatever. The only question now is how short the periods will be between prices doubling again.”

“The reality is that this thing is coming so much faster and so much harder than even most pessimists were expecting.”

For a useful way to think about energy exports and prices, Jeff Brown points to the current situation with global rice supplies.

As long as there are abundant local supplies, countries are happy, eager in fact, to export excess production in order to generate foreign exchange. But as soon as local consumption exceeds locally available production, then all hell breaks loose and the next thing you know countries are banning exports, a move that has already been undertaken by Vietnam and a number of other countries.

In that scenario, price eventually no longer becomes a factor in the availability of the commodity. Vietnam, for example, is not going to let its people starve just because higher global prices would allow it to earn an extra $10 a bag of rice.

And so in the face of the prospect of any serious shortage of an important resource – energy being maybe the most important – export markets freeze up and the price begins to be set at the margin, literally based on a global competition for the dwindling supplies that manage to leak out around the edges.

“People are crazy not to be focusing on the oil export situation,” Dr. Brown told me.

Full Article

Diesel prices in Malaysia have gone up by 63% recently. Naturally, this will squeeze the truckers' profit margins who transport vegetables, eggs and chickens to Singapore. Elsewhere in Asia and Europe, truckers have gone on a strike.

Trucks transport most of the world's food. If truckers go on strike, where will the supermarkets you shop from import their food?

The recent news reports of truckers protesting high diesel prices are a warning to us that we need to re-organise how we obtain our food sources. Depending on farmers who are hundreds and thousands of miles away for our food supplies is a sign of poor resilience. We need to grow more food here at home and intensify organic urban agriculture development. This step is imperative for Singapore to prepare for peak oil. Bear in mind that we import about 90% of the food we consume. As improbable as it may seem, do not discount the possibility of empty supermarket shelves in our "Food Paradise" if oil prices continue to rise. I don't wish to imagine the outcome in the event of food scarcity here in Singapore, which has one of the highest population densities in the world.

The Straits Times - Up prices of eggs and some vegetables

Meanwhile, Malaysian transportation companies have informed importers that they will charge up to 30 per cent more to haul leafy vegetables into Singapore. Last Thursday, Malaysia cut back its fuel subsidies, which increased pump prices for petrol by 41 per cent and diesel by 63 per cent.

The increase has trickled down to wet markets here, which have already been forced to raise prices because of a supply crunch.

---

Fuel Protests Erupt in Asia As Oil Hits $139 a Barrel

Protests over soaring fuel prices erupted in Asia on Tuesday as truckers in Hong Kong and tire-burning demonstrators in India and Nepal added their angry voices to protests that began last month in Europe.

---

Truckers' strike clogs highways, causes supply disruptions in Spain

Vendors warned of shortages of fruit, vegetables and meat this week at Madrid's sprawling wholesale market, Mercamadrid, if the strike continues.

TheOilDrum

We are now in the early stages of a full blown energy crisis that was predictable if not wholly avoidable. Politicians are awaking to the crisis now that escalating energy costs make its existence plain to see. It is highly unlikely that politicians will now grasp the gravity of the situation that the OECD and rest of the world faces and the responses will likely be ineffectual and too little too late.

The principal reason for current high oil price is the proximity of a peak in global oil production. Politicians must understand this and then grasp that natural gas and coal supplies will follow oil down by mid century. Reducing taxes on energy consumption right now is the wrong thing to do. Taxation structure needs to be adjusted to oblige energy producing companies to re-invest wind fall profits in alternative energy sources on a truly massive scale.

Energy efficiency should be the guiding beacon of all policy decisions and this must apply equally to energy production and energy consumption.

Full Article

Giving subsidies will not cure high prices for food and oil, and neither will a "dynamic economy" as MM Lee indicated. Will more money alone solve our problems? Will more paper dollars guarantee that we can continue to buy food at market prices as MM Lee suggested? Will Vietnam and Thailand sell any rice to us if they have a poor harvest? Can money buy you food that is not available? Can money buy what is not for sale? Instead of a "dynamic economy", we ought to be thinking of how to increase local food production so that we can be more self-sufficient.

MM Lee Kuan Yew is holding on to a fundamental error held by conventional economists:

Error: Economic activity as a function of infinite "money creation", rather than a function of finite "energy stocks" and finite "energy flows". In fact, the economy is 100% dependent on available energy -- it always has been, and it always will be.

Economic students are taught that banks "create" money every time they make a loan, and that the economy is powered by money instead of energy. The juxtaposition of these two data (the first is true, the second is false) leads even Nobel Prize-winning economists to conclude they have discovered a perpetual-motion machine:

"Should we be taking steps to limit the use of these most precious stocks of society's capital so that they will still be available for our grandchildren? . Economists ask, Would future generations benefit more from larger stocks of natural capital such as oil, gas, and coal or from more produced capital such as additional scientists, better laboratories, and libraries linked together by information superhighways? ... in the long run, oil and gas are not essential." [ p. 328, ECONOMICS, Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus; McGraw-Hill, 1998; http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0070579474/brainfood.a ]

No person has had a greater influence on the thinking of experts who have become government regulators of the world's oil and gas industries than economist Morris Adelman: "There are plenty of fossil fuels and no limit to potential electrical capacity. It is all a matter of money." [ p. 483, THE ECONOMICS OF PETROLEUM SUPPLY, by M. A. Adelman; MIT, 1993; http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262011387/brainfood.a ]

But of course, economists like Samuelson, Nordhaus, and Adelman are wrong. The First and Second Laws of thermodynamics tells us there is a limit to potential electrical capacity -- it's not all a matter of "money", it's all a matter of "energy".

The money supply is not constrained by the laws of matter-energy (ecosystem/biosphere) within which our economy must operate. When the physical constraints of our production are reached, the disparity between our monetary and physical system will manifest itself as price inflation, which is what we are witnessing today.

It is lamentable that our leaders do not recognize the errors of the conventional economic system, which explains why I will continue to be pessimistic about our future until there is a fundamental shift in their worldview. They are still trapped in their old mindsets and change will not come easily as they were taught and trained to think "economically" instead of "thermodynamically". Modern economics is not based on scientific laws.

MM Lee: Because with a good currency, 'however much the price of rice goes up, or meat, or whatever, we will not go hungry'.

Modern industrial agriculture is highly dependent on high energy inputs. When oil production begins its irreversible decline, large-scale agricultural outputs will follow suit. In view of the recent news that several countries have curb their grain exports, do you think food exporting nations will sell any food to us if they are unable to satisfy their citizens' stomachs?

The keywords to our future survival are "self-sufficiency" and "redundancy". It may not be economical to produce our own food and to ramp up solar energy production now, but these steps will increase our resilience in times of food and oil disruptions which look increasingly likely each passing day. Unfortunately, redundancy is often at odds with economic efficiency - a "sacred cow" in the Singapore context. When it comes to food and energy production, being "economical" and "efficient" increase our vulnerability to external shocks.

MM Lee's typical "money-will-solve-all problems" thinking is best summed up by Richard Heinberg who was writing hypothetically from the future:

The economists had been operating on the basis of their own religion - an absolute, unshakable faith in the Market-as-God and in supply-and-demand. They figured that if oil started to run out, the price would rise, offering incentives for research into alternatives. But the economists never bothered to think this through. If they had, they would have realized that the revamping of society's entire energy infrastructure would take decades, while the price signal from resource shortages would come at the exact moment some hypothetical replacement would be needed. Moreover, they should have realized that there was no substitute capable of fully replacing the energy resources they had come to rely on.

The economists could think only in terms of money; basic necessities like water and energy only showed up in their calculations in terms of dollar cost, which made them functionally interchangeable with everything else that could be priced -- oranges, airliners, diamonds, baseball cards, whatever. But, in the last analysis, basic resources weren't interchangeable with other economic goods at all: you couldn't drink baseball cards, no matter how big or valuable your collection, once the water ran out. Nor could you eat dollars, if nobody had food to sell. And so, after a certain point, people started to lose faith in their money. And as they did, they realized that faith had been the only thing that made money worth anything in the first place. Currencies just collapsed, first in one country, then in another. There was inflation, deflation, barter, and thievery of every imaginable kind as matters sorted themselves out.

In the era when I was born, commentators used to liken the global economy to a casino. A few folks were making trillions of dollars, euros, and yen trading in currencies, companies, and commodity futures. None of these people were actually doing anything useful; they were just laying down their bets and, in many cases, raking in colossal winnings. If you followed the economic chain, you'd see that all of that money was coming out of ordinary people's pockets...but that's another story. Anyway: all of that economic activity depended on energy, on global transportation and communication, and on faith in the currencies. Early in the 21st century, the global casino went bust. Gradually, a new metaphor became operational. We went from global casino to village flea market.

With less energy available each year, and with unstable currencies plaguing transactions, manufacturing and transportation shrank in scale. It didn't matter how little Nike paid its workers in Indonesia: once shipping became prohibitively expensive, profits from the globalization of its operations vanished. But Nike couldn't just start up factories back in the States again; all of those factories had been closed decades earlier. The same with all the other clothing manufacturers, electronics manufacturers, and so on. All of that local manufacturing infrastructure had been destroyed to make way for globalization, for cheaper goods, for bigger corporate profits. And now, to recreate that infrastructure would require a huge financial and energy investment ---- just when money and energy were in ever shorter supply. (Peak Everything, pp. 175-177)

http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_241154.html

OIL and food prices are at record highs and look set to stay that way.

At the same time, there are Singaporeans who want subsidies for a range of items, from rice to bus fares.

But Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew made clear yesterday that subsidies are no way to solve problems caused by rising costs.

He argued that subsidies reduced the incentive for people to be competitive - which is what is needed to keep the economy growing in order to better pay for costlier essential items:

'As long as we have a dynamic economy, we can solve our problems. Subsidies cannot solve them.

'I read the newspapers and the simplest thing is to write and say, subsidise. Rice, oil, bus fares, even putting seat belts on school buses. That is the surest way to go downhill.

'Multiple subsidies have led to a welfare system that has trapped Europe in slow growth. Europe's welfare systems have lowered incentives for people to strive and to excel.'

Speaking to 6,000 constituents at the Tanjong Pagar GRC Family Day at the Queenstown Stadium, he dwelt on why the problem of rising costs is here to stay and how Singapore plans to deal with it.

He noted that the consumption of oil had risen, with few new oil discoveries. And as once-poor countries like China and India prospered, they needed fuel to make goods to export.

The world's population, now over six billion, is forecast to hit nine billion by 2050. But climate change is drying up agricultural areas.

'What are we going to do? We can see the signals,' he said.

'We can't grow tapioca, or corn; we can't compete in making Nike shoes or sewing gowns. We have to move up to more complicated jobs and services.

'We have to earn enough money by working hard and smart in manufacturing and services to pay market prices for food, rice, wheat, maize, vegetables, fruits, fish, meats, chicken and eggs.'

Because with a good currency, 'however much the price of rice goes up, or meat, or whatever, we will not go hungry'.

Singapore had to remain a competitive society to generate growth.

'The Government must ensure that everyone has the highest-paid job he is qualified to do. If his salary is below the minimum for a decent life, the Government will top up with Workfare,' he said, referring to the national income supplement for low-wage workers.

And if people know the cost of what they consume or use, they will spend their money 'more to (their) benefit', he said, instead of over-using or abusing subsidised items which they did not know the real cost of.

Mr Lee said neighbouring countries now had to grapple with the economically-necessary task of cutting fuel subsidies. In Indonesia, for example, there were riots.

But he noted that opposition leaders there also encouraged demonstrations over the cuts and rising food prices to weaken the chances of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono winning re-election next year.

'In Malaysia, determined efforts by former PM Mahathir to unseat PM Abdullah Badawi have not weakened his (Abdullah's) hold on the reins of power because he commands a decisive majority in Parliament, just short of two-thirds,' he added.

'But not to upset the electorate, his government has not reduced the subsidy on oil.

'Of our other neighbours, Thailand faces the danger of another coup. In the Philippines, charges of corruption hover over President Gloria Arroyo, damaging for investors and the economy.'

Citing recent natural disasters in Myanmar, he said Singapore had 'no earthquakes, no tsunamis, no typhoons because of our favourable geographic location'.

'Let us be grateful that we have long-term stability and therefore continuing high-value investments and good growth,' he said.

'In five years, we will have a more lively and beautiful city.'

He was also confident that other big cities in Asean - Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila, Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi - would flourish with the advent of the Asean free trade area and other free trade pacts.

MM Lee then apologised to the audience for not being able to speak too long last night, as he had a 'bad throat' and is scheduled to take the stand in court today.

The hearing is to assess damages that Singapore Democratic Party chief Chee Soon Juan, his sister and the party have to pay for defaming Mr Lee and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in 2006.

'I've got to save part of my voice to let him cross-examine me,' Mr Lee said. 'Of course, in the course of the cross-examination, I have a few things to say.'

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/349929/1/.html
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/255800.asp

I compiled these axioms of sustainability from Heinberg, Feeney, Bartlett and Monbiot. The Singapore government needs to abide by these axioms if we are to tackle climate change successfully and ensure a sustainable living environment for present and future generations. Failure to conform to these axioms will render MEWR's blueprint (Green Plan 2012) towards environmental sustainability ineffective in the long term.

MEWR's Green Plan 2012 does not address the following pertinent and important issues:

1. Singapore's overpopulated numbers and carrying capacity.
   
2. Our flawed neoclassical economic growth paradigm.
3. Our fractional reserve banking system which is based on a flawed assumption that infinite economic growth is both possible and desirable.
4. Peak Oil.
   
5. Food self-sufficiency.

There is a clear conflict between the wants and needs of humans and a sustainable environment.

These axioms and their corollaries make perfect sense and are straightforward. Click on the authors' names for the complete article and discussions.

Heinberg:

• (Tainter’s Axiom): Any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will collapse.
• (Bartlett’s Axiom): Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.
• To be sustainable, the use of renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is less than or equal to the rate of natural replenishment.
• To be sustainable, the use of non-renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.
  
• Sustainability requires that substances introduced into the environment from human activities be minimized and rendered harmless to biosphere functions.

Feeney:

• A finite earth can support only a limited number of humans. There is therefore a global “carrying capacity” for humans.
• Axiomatically, a population which has grown larger than the carrying capacity of its environment (e.g., the global ecosystem) degrades its environment...Such a population is said to be in “overshoot.”
• It’s axiomatic, as well, that a population can only temporarily overshoot carrying capacity. It will subsequently decline in number, to return to a level at or below carrying capacity.
• Because it degrades its environment, a population in overshoot erodes existing carrying capacity so that fewer members of that species will be supported by that habitat in the future.
• Among other factors, our extraction of nonrenewable resources such as oil and coal has allowed us temporarily to exceed the earth’s carrying capacity for our species. As these supplies are drawn down, if alternatives do not keep pace, we will struggle to maintain our present numbers.

Monbiot

• At any rate of use, non-renewable resources are, by definition, depleted. They will not come back.
• Beyond a certain rate of use, renewable resources are depleted.
• Beyond a certain rate of exploitation, renewable resources become non-renewable resources.
• The earth’s capacity to absorb pollution is limited.
• The system which governs our economic lives, which we call capitalism, is itself is a limited resource. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.
• The people who get hit first and hit hardest by any one of these realities are not the rich but the poor.
  

Bartlett

• Population growth and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.
• In a society with a growing population and / or growing rates of consumption of resources, the larger the population, and / or the larger the rates of consumption of resources, the more difficult it will be to transform the society to the condition of sustainability.
• The response time of populations to changes in the human fertility rate is the average length of a human life, or approximately 70 years. ( Bartlett and Lytwak 1995 ) [ This is called "population momentum." ]
• The size of population that can be sustained ( the carrying capacity ) and the sustainable average standard of living of the population are inversely related to one another.
• Sustainability requires that the size of the population be less than or equal to the carrying capacity of the ecosystem for the desired standard of living.
• The benefits of population growth and of growth in the rates of consumption of resources accrue to a few; the costs of population growth and growth in the rates of consumption of resources are borne by all of society.
• Growth in the rate of consumption of a non-renewable resource, such as a fossil fuel, causes a dramatic decrease in the life-expectancy of the resource.
• The time of expiration of nonrenewable resources can be postponed, possibly for a very long time, by (i) technological improvements in the efficiency with which the resources are recovered and used; (ii) using the resources in accord with a program of "sustained availability" (Bartlett, 1986); (iii) recycling; (iv) the use of substitute resources.
• When large efforts are made to improve the efficiency with which resources are used, the resulting savings are easily and completely wiped out by the added resources consumed as a consequence of modest increases in population.
• The benefits of large efforts to preserve the environment are easily canceled by the added demands on the environment that result from small increases in human population.
• When rates of pollution exceed the natural cleansing capacity of the environment, it is easier to pollute than it is to clean up the environment.
• The chief cause of problems is solutions.
• Humans will always be dependent on agriculture. Supermarkets alone are not sufficient. The central task in sustainable agriculture is to preserve agricultural land.
• If, for whatever reason, humans fail to stop population growth and growth in the rates of consumption of resources, Nature will stop these growths.
• In every local situation, creating jobs increases the number of people locally who are out of work.
• Starving people do not care about sustainability. If sustainability is to be achieved, the necessary leadership and resources must be supplied by people who are not starving.
• The addition of the word "sustainable" to our vocabulary, to our reports, programs, and papers, to the names of our academic institutes and research programs, and to our community initiatives, is not sufficient to ensure that our society becomes sustainable.
• Extinction is forever.