Talking about energy decisions, talking about retaining a world that is habitable for humans

Dick Smith - a self-confessed
 huge user of fossil fuels.

Dick Smith is acutely aware of the energy decisions was must make if the world is to remain habitable for humans.

The Australian businessman, thinker, adventurer, innovator and general enthusiast, helped a national television audience understand something about how present lifestyles are built upon and are sustained by energy extracted from fossil fuels.

Demonstrating why his is Australia’s largest private consumer of those fuels, Dick flew, drove and generally blasted his way around Australia to help viewers understand the finitude of fossil fuels and the risks those same fuels pose for the users, that is you and me,

He looked at the renewable sources of energy, including solar, wind and hydro he considered energy created from other alternative sources, including biofuels and sawdust through some form of chemical alchemy becomes a combustible oil; Dick looked at a decommissioned nuclear power plant that he first saw in the ‘50s and observed that nuclear appeared the only feasible non-pollutant power source that could allow the maintenance of existing lifestyles; he explored electric cars and seemed excited to learn and understand that they could be charged from the existing power grid and then using those charged batteries, return power to the grid.

In the show, “Ten bucks a litre”, Dick involved school kids in a practical demonstration illustrating how modern life is critically implicated in and wholly dependent upon oil, fossil-fuel energy that is finite and of which half, that is both economically and easily accessible, is already gone.

Australia’s future will be different from what it is today; a future that can only be accessed peacefully and in a way that allows all to live a life in which they can flourish in a civil society if we have leaders who are courageous, innovative, moral, who understand the reason of democracy, are altruistic, value fairness and equality, and cherish our connection with nature, understanding that within nature’s survival and wellbeing is the equivalent of humanity.