Leo Lane states 'Our prosperity arises from mineral wealth and occasional good economic management, the latter being something which is completely lacking in the current government'.

Wrong, our prosperity arises from our ability to utilise cheap energy that then permits wealth leverage from mining, agriculture, fishing, business and a wealth of other economic activities.

Without cheap energy you cannot have growth, the laws of thermodynamics and physics guarantee this.

We have used most of the 'low hanging fruit' (energy) and as such we are now in the process of transitioning into a lower energy future, ergo, economic activity and so called wealth will diminish over time.

Simple, yet so many of you fail to grasp this basic concept.

I venture that perhaps you should read the recently released International Energy Agencies 'World Energy Outlook' and maybe Richard Heinberg's recently released book 'The End of Growth - Adapting to our new economic reality'.

This little Black Duck says hooray for Geoff.

Plus why not Google the topic environmental tipping points.
And the book World on The Edge by Lester Brown, especially the Amazon review by Robert Steele, and all of Roberts reviews.
Of course Brown's work will be dismissed by the usual techno-barbarian suspects that dominate this forum.

Leo Lane. I have been contemplating/struggling to find a suitable responce to that which I endured in reading Graham's post. your opening sentence said it all!! Well said, right to the 'pith' as it were, made me smile.

"techno-barbarian suspects that inhabit this forum"

Bbbwwwhahahah!

As one of the techno-barbarians suspects who insist on throwing cold, hard facts at Graham's dream of civilisation, I'll have to think of a suitable counter-label.. what about loonie-leftie or squishy-leftie (squishy instead of bleeding heart)??

Curmudgeon,
to keep it short & simple just use the term Morons.

The growthists like to crow that Malthus was wrong, even though Haiti and the genocide in Rwanda are pretty good evidence that he was right, but ignore the Cornucopians who also got it wrong, at least in the time frame they had in mind. Lewis Strauss was the head of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and had this to say in a speech in 1954

"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter... It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."

There are numerous examples of societies that outbred their resources and overexploited their environment before collapsing, but there are no long-term examples of a Cornucopian utopia. We have been receiving numerous warnings from the scientific community, which the Cornucopians are determined to ignore. The German military analysts have predicted civilisational collapse in the medium term

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-06-13/review-bundeswehr-report-peak-oil-section-22-tipping-point-nov-2010

Link to official English translation of whole Bundeswehr report here:

http://baobab2050.org/2011/09/04/bundeswehr-peak-oil-report-now-officially-translated-in-english/

As the report says (p. 91)

"Psychological barriers cause indisputable facts to be blanked out and lead to almost instinctively refusing to look into this difficult subject in detail."

Jeremy Grantham, the expert on commodities, also offers a dose of reality in his firm's newsletters

http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetter_ResourceLimitations2_2Q11.pdf

"Anyone who believes you can have infinite exponential growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist.” Kenneth Boulding ...

Children believe what they want to believe, and respond with emotion and anger when those beliefs are challenged. Adults face up to reality, even if it is unpleasant or threatens a cherished ideology.