Monday, 19th December

We have been busy working on our database and the depletion model for Africa which poses certain difficulties as source data available for these countries varies strongly.

Last Wednesday, Colin Campbell gave a speech in Schull together with Graham Strouts who teaches Permaculture at the Kinsale College of Further Education. Graham wrote a report about this evening called "Who really needs a Silver Mercedes?" which you can read below.

ASPO Ireland, Mascha Bender

Who really needs a Silver Mercedes?- an evening with Dr. Colin Campbell and Graham Strouts, Schull, West Cork, Dec. 14th 2005.

After a successful presentation with Dr. Colin Campbell in Bantry in September, I was asked to join him once again last night to talk to some 60 people who turned up at the Community School in the small village of Schull in West Cork, at an event organised by the Irish Country Women’s Association.

Dr. Campbell opened proceedings with a talk entitled The Decline of Oil can Bring a Positive Awakening. After a brief discussion of his early life as an oil geologist - including the now almost iconic photo of himself 45 years ago on a mule in Colombia - he went on to show some slides illustrating how oil has formed and been trapped in only very select and special geological circumstances. The story of how oil is formed is actually very important to gain an understanding of depletion - to the uninitiated, finding oil is merely a case of drilling down far enough until we hit some kind of underground lake awash with the stuff.

Once we understand how painstaking and arduous field work was gradually able to identify the specific source rocks and conditions that gave rise to the formation of oil, it becomes much easier to accept that once these rare places have been discovered, drilled and their treasures consumed, there will be no more. “As every beer drinker knows, the glass starts full and ends empty