For years now, I have been saying that the 20th Century was built one brick at a time, as and when it was needed, using ever growing amounts of surplus energy that were both very cheap and easily accessible….. and as Limits to Growth rears its ugly head more and more often, all the signs that we are no longer able to do this is becoming obvious; because we have now reached the stage when all those old bricks (and steel and concrete and…….) start needing to be replaced while at the same time the new infrastructure required by the growth monster has to also be built.

Enter the Genoa bridge that collapsed last week….. photos of it crumbling weeks before the tragic event that seems to have killed 43 people were posted on social media. I’m no structural engineer, but it looks pretty bad to me. Dangling cables and the middle buckling under its own weight are not good signs… Falling apart comes to mind. Anyone in their right mind would have closed it down and more than likely condemned it, but no, let’s not get a few lives get in the way of profits. At fifty years old, it wasn’t particularly ancient, but shoddy workmanship and even mafia involvement in supplying dodgy concrete are issues making their way to the Italian media.

With Italy on the cusp of bankruptcy caused by energy decline, how will they afford to replace this ‘important infrastructure’ linking France to Italy? In reality, is it even worth contemplating in the face of dwindling oil supplies?

And it’s not just Italy. In the US, where some 58,000 estimated bridges are past their use by date and many are dangerous to boot, a similar collapse occurred in Minneapolis with the I W35 falling into the Mississippi killing 13 and injuring 135……

But wait there’s more…… this bridge was replaced with a new one, and at just seven years old, this new bridge is already showing signs of wear and tear….. I kid you not!

Furthermore, as the debt bomb ticks away and authorities become less and less able to service exponentially growing debts, repair and maintenance budgets are falling through the floor…. The US, which was first in the world to go nuts with road and highway building is in biggest trouble.

On my recent return to Tasmania from Queensland, I experienced the tunnel building boom when my son kindly drove me to the airport. I was gobsmacked. After having lived in Brisbane for decades and knowing it like the back of my hand, I had no clue where I was…. and all that concrete? Why do I even feel guilty about the few cubic metres of concrete in my house when that would only build five metres of highway or tunnel, if that….?

On take off, I observed acres and acres of what looked like white sand which was not there two years ago when I last flew to Brisbane (I arrived in the dark) Some quick research discovered they’re building a new runway! Obviously, nobody in government has ever heard of peak oil…..

While they’re building this monstrosity, I read that schools in inner Brisbane are really stressed due to overcrowding, caused, I guess, by more and more families living in apartment towers.

While Australia, unlike Europe and the USA, is as yet not showing too many signs of crumbling ageing infrastructure, we are paying for the so called ‘gold plating’ of the poles and wires that constitute our grid. It may well be the world’s most reliable, but everyone is sure complaining about the cost of their power….. and it remains to be seen exactly what will happen when we eventually close down our remaining coal fired power stations, as must happen, no matter what our idiot government wants t believe.