Everybody Needs a Hobby

Now that Britain is at the forefront of sustainable renewability, with forty-nine fiftieths of our energy coming from sources which are about to run out, a German report has stated that global oil production peaked in 2006 and will fall by about seven per cent a year. The report "relies ... on actual oil production data", which apparently the oil industry hadn't thought of, believing its own estimates to be more accurate. Well, after all, why wouldn't they be?

The report is peppered with reminders such as "For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more" and "the government prefers to sleep on" and accusations of "institutionalised denial". This seems rather strange, given that the consequences of the approaching energy crisis, assuming that nothing continues to be done, will be "scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month", not to mention wars and social breakdown. Scenes of mass unrest, wars and social breakdown mean that governments usually feel obliged to crack down on enemies of the state, call out the troops and start shooting at people. It seems a charmingly old-fashioned idea to believe that those in power might actually dislike doing such things, even if the Confabulation of Business Interests and its ilk were not around to give assurances that the starving, smoking ruins might, with proper management, continue to be an economically viable concern.