Chris - I've posted this many times now - it should be abundantly clear that society as we know it cannot run if 20 to 30% of the workforce and resources are devoted to producing energy.

Chart is not zero scaled running from 50 (left) to 1 (right).

What is happening now is that high eroei fuels (that are fast depleting) are being used to subsidise production of unsustainable fuels - temperate latitude ethanol in particular. The tar sands are marginal.

What must happen is that we invest the high eroei fuels in a sustainable energy infrastructure, that includes wind, solar, hydro and most likely unavoidably nuclear.

What needs to happen with some urgency is that all major infrastructure projects built around burning liquid FF are abandoned - or at least no new ones are begun - and all these resources need to be poured into power generation and electric transportation projects. The shear stupidity of what is going on right now in the UK with road building and expanding airports is difficult to comprehend. And painting a line down the side of a road and calling it a cycle lane, is mind numbingly pathetic - especially since the paint wares off after a couple of years.

The government must legislate on energy efficiency at energy production and consumption stages so that all inefficient practices are discontinued with some urgency - this will mean closing or upgrading all our coal fired power stations so that all the 65% + waste heat is recovered and used.

I don't know who it is that posts the sayings in top right corner - either Kyle or SuperG - but I was looking for the one that said we cannot expect to solve problems with the thinking that created them - couldn't find it but came across all these wonderfully perceptive quotes whilst I was looking.

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…” —Winston Churchill, November 1936

“Data always beats theories. 'Look at data three times and then come to a conclusion,' versus 'coming to a conclusion and searching for some data.' The former will win every time.” —Matthew Simmons, ASPO-USA conference, Boston, MA, October 26, 2006

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” —Gandhi

“The infrastructure of suburbia can be described as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” —JH Kunstler

“No civilization can survive the physical destruction of its resource base.” —Bruce Sterling

“What people need to hear loud and clear is that we're running out of energy in America.” —George W. Bush, May 2001

“I'd put my money on solar energy… I hope we don't have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” —Thomas Edison, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, March 1931

“It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.” —Upton Sinclair

“We have only two modes—complacency and panic.” —James R. Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, in 1977, on the country's approach to energy

is there any meaningful thinking at all?

I sent a semi-rant to Pielbags.

These ppl - energy ministers, gvmt types, fawning advisors - are stupid because they think that decrees, administration, slight adjustments to the present state of affairs, seen as somewhat abstract, working thru representation, symbols, or paper fiddles (e.g. tax, by-rules, tariffs, technology, research funding, etc.) will suffice. Jackboots for the rowdy and too-demanding are part of the conventional picture as well. That is the charitable view - the confident role of the administrative class, from Sumer to the US today.

It is possible that their belonging to the 'ruling' class inures them to any real life problems - me no worry, big desk, big salary, best contacts, lovely second wife, big car, etc. Being amongst the ‘top’, (high paid flunkeys, like the medieval steward) in a cosy circuit of contacts and discussions of like minded people, all reassuring and stroking each other, blinds them absolutely.

Lastly, perhaps the ‘chosen’ and the ‘elected’ in democracies are so precisely because they aren’t too bright, caring, educated, ambitious or perspicacious.