[Hegel]

Hello everyone,

When I posted the first time on this forum, I was quite an optimist concerning the peak-oil issue. I thought of (dreamt of) some kind of combined "global team-spirit" scientific effort that might either corner peak-oil or lessen its mind-boggling consequences by introducing more efficient combustion engines. Probly, it won't come true this way, although there is some elegance to be found in external combustion engines like solar-powered stirling engines for instance. Well, guess I am no optimist any longer when I stumpled across certain laws passed in Germany during the "Sommerloch".

It all started when I read a posting from a czech national on this forum dealing with ordered energy rationing in the Czech Republic the other day. I was keen to check what the German goverment got in store concerning a future energy crisis, since both Czech Republic and German Republic are full members of the EU. I found the following rather interesting bills passed from July through August by the german goverment. Two bills deal with emergency management replacing older emergency laws from cold war times and a rather new one, passed couple of days ago, that deals with the kyoto protocol energy rationing model by the notorious clean air trading scheme. Now that might not sound alarming to non-german readers, but emergency bills have got a rather ugly reputation in germany, since a certain dictator took power in the not-so-long ago past by passing them. For german readers, I post below the links to the Bundesanzeiger to read the bills in question.

Wirtschaftssicherstellungsgesetz die Wirtschaftssicherstellungsverordnung (WiSiV)
http://217.160.60.235/BGBL/bgbl1f/bgbl104s2159.pdf

Gesetz zur Sicherung von Verkehrsleistungen (Verkehrsleistungsgesetz - VerkLG)
http://217.160.60.235/BGBL/bgbl1f/bgbl104s1865.pdf

Gesetz über den nationalen Zuteilungsplan für Treibhausgas-Emissionsberechtigungen
http://217.160.60.235/BGBL/bgbl1f/bgbl104s2211.pdf

In order to understand my trouble with above laws, you have got to know that german goverment recently introduced new social welfare laws to cope with the ever growning number of unemployed people in germany. Lowering social benefits and even introducing "forced" 1-Euro jobs, which in turn lead to a revival of the so-called "Monday" demonstrations that ironically brought down the former east-german stalinistic state. If you combine emergency laws, energy reduction laws and a merely shadow of the formerly renowned german social welfare system with a decline in fossil fuel production, me thinks one get a good headstart for a coming crisis by gradually "powering down" energy consumption for the middle and lower class. The term "forced transition" comes to ones mind.

I was checking Matt Savinars news section of his website three or four days ago. When I notice 20+ links to U.S. American Emergency bills which the U.S. President has at his disposal. All of these bills are quite similiar to the german ones, but I guess the USA and Germany are so different in all kind of ways that there ought not to many similiarities in emergency laws. I'm neither a lawyer nor an expert in emergency management ...

Now my questions to you:

Were there any new emergency laws/bills passed in your country lately and with what kind of threat do they mainly deal with?
(German ones mostly deal with economic/energy/transportation security)

Do newly passed laws/bills replace former laws or enhance present ones to a further degree?

Have these laws/bills passed come in effect the very moment they were passed or is there a date when these become active and what is this date?
(German ones became active the moment they were passed)

Please name your country if you intend to reply.

P.S:
Hopefully, someone can calm me down on this matter :D

[Licho]

I think that all countries have bills for various emergency managements..
Special measures are prepared for the event of natural catastrophes, wars, epidemics, industrial disasters, nuclear catastrophe. Here, in Czech Republic, they are often not passed as laws, but rather prepared as emergency measures by various ministries, it's therefore harder to get them and read them.
Goverment is currently not changing anything with this, last bigger changes were after floods few years ago. Only new thing I know about are these new plans for the case of oil crisis that I presented here..

On the social scale, changes are much bigger. Goverment is planning huge cuts in social benefits. It will be cutted to just 1/5 in most cases.. And we have social left-wing goverment right now.. "Forced work" for unemployment people is planned too.. Changes are probably similar to what is going on in germany right now. But I think it's driven by economic pressure and not peak oil. Uneployment is very high here (10%) and production is often moved to Asia, due to high taxes and higher cost of labor here. Also, social benefits are almost always higher than minimal salary and can be higher than average salary (if you have 5-6 kids) so it's very demotivating, and people who cannot get well-paid job often simply don't work and use social system. Some 80% of gypsies here are unemployed and are using social system to it's full extent, having as many kids as possible

[EnviroEngr]

In the US:

Nationally Scary:
Patriot Acts 1 & 2

{go to http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.html and type Patriot Act in the Word/Phrase Search box to get to the new legislation. You'll have to navigate to get to the original texts. You can use this Search page to get to previous session of Congress:
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d108query.html}

Locally Scary:
The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act

There are others, but these are the nastiest new brooms in the closet.