IMO the single most important message is to prepare for a world in which available energy will be less than it is today. This is very different from assuming that alternative sources of energy will be able to gradually replace FF's and allow BAU. Everything I've read, on here and elsewhere, suggests this replacement will fall way short. Probably the best analysis I've seen of this is the top-down approach of Odum the ecologist. But there are many others.

So for politicians the question becomes not how to manage an energy transition but how to manage an overall energy decline. What infrastructure to put in place and, perhaps most importnatly of all, how to encourage conservation (as opposed to efficiency) and reconcile it with current cultures.

TW