Are we in danger of obsessing ove sit-at-home games and imported technology at the risk of being distracted from our own engineering and energy resources R&D...?
History shows the greatest engineering innovations in human history to have taken place from around 1820 to 1920. But was the "Industrial Revolution" won, or
has it simply halted temporarily?
Apart from forced development during the Second World War, there has been little that is really new that has been invented in engineering terms while reliance on soon to be outdated fossil fuel oil for energy continues in Australia.
Both problems are in a way an irony for this country, surely, when we have so much natural resource potential, as well as alternative energy that we are not using. We seem instead to prefer the easy way of selling it off at near give-away prices to overseas countries without making a real profit for our own people.
For example, the oil age is surely about to end. Whether this is in 12 or 15 or how many years to come, the price of oil, of petrol and diesel will increase weekly.
This is not because the world is about to "run out of oil" completely. There are estimated trillions of barrels to be extracted elsewhere in places like the Finnish claimed North Pole and Canada’s sandy wastes. But these areas are presently impractical. Finland won’t have much hope until the next ‘Ice Age’ when the world ‘flops over’ and the Poles change position – hopefully with the North Pole moving to Iraq. This could happen anytime. We’re about due for a change now. And the Canadian oil is presently too expensive to extract.
So, the Oil Age is nearly over. It is happening as surely as happened with the Stone Age, when humankind discovered new resources, innovation replaced stone tools. And then the Brass Age ended, to be replaced by Iron. Iron Age ended. It was replaced by Steel. The horse was replaced by the motor car, the balloon by the aeroplane.
But really, nothing mechanical has basically changed since Benz invented his internal combustion engine and bicycle manufacturers in Coventry like the Riley family introduced innovation for car design and development. The practical car engine still works in basically the same way.
Sure, there have been improvements, efficiencies. But nothing completely new.
And as we waffle on about a relatively meaningless .5c reduction in the price per litre at the bowser while petrol and diesel now rise to the $2.00 and above mark, there`s little focus on genuine alternatives.
Hydrogen fuelled cars - whether by hybrid-electric or direct fuel cell power
remain in prototype. Certainly not in the public consciousness for Australia.
Much the same with CNG powered private motor cars and trucks. Government buses are already using CNG, but the previous Federal government decided "chicken and egg" style that because there weren`t enough outlets for CNG that they`d endorse only the more expensive LPG.
This could soon change if our dinkum R&D engineers find a way of letting us
siphon off our domestic gas supplies for use in a CNG converted motor car.
But what then? Canberra levies a hefty excise tax on LPG as it does with petrol.
Although the tax on LPG is proportionately more. There is no excise tax on domestic CNG.
Further: In the meantime, why should we sell our natural resources, our primary industry products, overseas for bargain basement prices?
Why not do what the overseas countries like Saudi Arabia do using "market forces" as an excuse to get the best and highest price for our product?
Why can we not take leaf from the OPEC, the Saudis and Algerians
oil cartel book and tell the world with po-faced expression, `Why, there`s no need to increase supply because production isn`t being kept below demand...`? Let`s do it. The merchant banks do this sort of thing very well. if we`re to be a proper capitalist country, then we might as well act like share and stock holders and insist on profits, dividends for ourselves. The overseas buyers must come second. Why not? We accept this policy placidly with our giant supermarket chains. We merely grumble but do nothing as our precious politicians waste time, energy, and our tax dollars in largely useless debate about `the need to save a piffling .5c at the pump`.
Let`s do it like OPEC. Let`s tell our overseas customers we’re putting a premium on our gas and coal exports. Further, we could announce we`ve stopped selling off our means of production, our fields, our mines - and our farms - to importing countries who want our product cheaper still.
I`m not suggesting we subsidise energy in the way India does, nor perhaps take things to the extreme like Venezuela where petrol can cost .5c a litre.
But if we bother to work as a nation, to agree that our `emperor` in Canberra doesn`t have a `new suit of clothes`, and while we`re buying back the farm, the mine, the oil and gas exploration and extraction, exports, we might give ourselves genuine energy breathing space with proper low priced LPG to power our vehicles. Not just watch as domestic LPG prices inflate at the bowser as well.
Or are we to sit back complacently hoping that stop-gap Japanese and European ‘hybrid’ cars will be good enough as long as we can keep on distracting ourselves with imported cartoon culture, and make-believe video games?
- ‘Wylde’
