The Australian Academy of Science have released their report into Australia's Renewable Energy Future - Australia's Renewable Energy Future (pdf).

This is a guest post from Cameron Leckie of ASPO Australia.

There does not appear to be any metric by which we could argue that our current socioeconomic systems are sustainable. Despite this, we delude ourselves into believing that business as usual can continue indefinitely. We assist ourselves in this art of self-delusion by failing to ask the right questions or simply limiting the information that we are willing to consider. The recently released Australian Energy Resource Assessment (AERA), particularly the aspects related to oil, is yet another example of how our Government, and the bureaucracies supporting it, are failing to ask the right questions. The unfortunate consequences of this approach implies that Australia will be left with few options to respond to a very challenging set of problems, something that could and should be avoidable.

It should be noted that most of the information in Chapter three - oil of the AERA is good, particularly the assessment of Australia’s future oil production. To the lay person it would appear to be a thorough and accurate appraisal of Australia’s oil situation. The problem’s lie in the nuances, the fallacies, the assumptions and the reliance on a narrow and far from fool proof set of data and projections on the international oil arena. These shortfalls could have significant implications for Australia, so lets take a closer look.

SMH - The city is choking thanks to our idea of transport nirvana

At our behest, successive state governments have been pursuing a magnificent dream, to make Sydney a place fit for cars to be driven on all occasions. Now the Herald-commissioned independent inquiry headed by Ron Christie has exposed that dream for what it is: the wrong tram (forgive me).

Scoop.co.nz - Industry leaders warn of imminent oil crunch

The Green Party is calling on our Government to prepare for a significant oil crunch, in light of an industry led report warning the UK Government about the threat of rising oil prices.

The UK’s Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security has released its second in-depth analysis of the risks to the economy from the end of cheap oil.

Science has a paper on the changes to the current global food system required to support the expanded global population we'll see in a couple of decades time, noting that radical changes to agriculture will be required to support 9 billion people - "Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People". The full text of the article is available here.

A threefold challenge now faces the world: Match the rapidly changing demand for food from a larger and more affluent population to its supply; do so in ways that are environmentally and socially sustainable; and ensure that the world’s poorest people are no longer hungry. This challenge requires changes in the way food is produced, stored, processed, distributed, and accessed that are as radical as those that occurred during the 18th- and 19th-century Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions and the 20th-century Green Revolution. Increases in production will have an important part to play, but they will be constrained as never before by the finite resources provided by Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere. ...

Recent studies suggest that the world will need 70 to 100% more food by 2050. In this article, major strategies for contributing to the challenge of feeding 9 billion people, including the most disadvantaged, are explored. Particular emphasis is given to sustainability, as well as to the combined role of the natural and social sciences in analyzing and addressing the challenge.