For goodness' sake! Russia has announced that it has already reached "peak oil production", ie they have extracted as much oil as they economically can, other major oil producers are desperately searching for new fields to exploit because they know they have passed the "peak oil" point, but have been unsuccessful in that search. The only oil that is left is going to be VERY expensive to extract, and guess who will be footing the bill? Oil prices are NEVER going to come down in our or our children's children's lifetime. We have run out of cheap oil and we need to be thinking NOW about how we're going to survive without it. We need to wean ourselves off the oil/petrol/plastics habit now. The governments of the world are too scared to tell us the truth but the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, the credit squeeze, and rocketing food prices are all symptoms of the same disease, ie exploitation of finite resources for short term gain. That's how we've reached the state we're in. WE need to "be the change we want to see". We can buy locally produced, in season food, grow our own food if we can, eat less meat, walk or ride a bike whenever we can (using "personal" energy is doubly rewarding, you save petrol and burn calories!), lobby for better public transport, take the train not the flight, turn off the light in the empty room, start living our lives on the basis of NEED not WANT. Learn about ways of conserving energy in every aspect of life. We aren't going to get a second chance. Assume that someone is going to throw the energy switch to OFF very soon - it is going to happen, but it's just possible that a better way of life will emerge at the other end of that dark, dark tunnel. And if this sounds like hippy dippy preaching, well, I'd rather think about solutions than problems, so I'm very happy to admit to trying to spread the "Sustainability" word - and I humbly suggest that if people want to see a happy future for their children and grandchildren in a no-longer oil-rich world, we need to start thinking really hard about how we can work together towards that end. Governments won't do this one for us until we show them the way.