Even if we could find a source of cheap renewable energy or use some of the myriad suggestions above and if such sources of energy were practical, it would only exacerbate, not resolve, the problems of humans living on the planet.

Today we stand at the peak of consumption, and on the downslope of many critical metals, and other resources such as phosphate. Our ability to grow food has also peaked.

Releasing more heat into our environment, creating more electricity to power more gadgets and furher undermine the cycle of life on the planet is not what we need. As with most technology in the past, were this to become practical, given the inability of human beings to transcend our evolved evolutionary feelings and patterns of action, it would contribute further to the disparity of wealth, and hasten collapse.

The pursuit of some perpetual motion machine or free energy is a form of denial, one of the major psychosocial roadblocks to the possibility of transforming ourselves into a sustainable species.

Transmuting lead to gold, hydrogen to helium will not feed or clothe us or bring happiness. Its still a Faustian bargain where we lose our soul....

The 20 years figure sounds like 20 years of production at known reserves and is low. I doubt that the figure is right. The stat is missing something, which is probably why its been ignored in the media. Another problem is that they keep on discovering more reserves so in 20 years time you may find that the production to reserves ratio is 30 years, as in fact has been happening since they discoverd oil.

Yes peak oil is dead, but in any case it was only ever intended to apply to easy lift oil - the stuff from the big oil reserves and wasn't so bad if you took into account just oil on land. But it was never intedned to apply to total oil production, and the forecast in its modern form by Campbell and Laherrere, did not anticipate the deep ocean oil finds now being made (look up the article in Scientific American in, I think, 1988 its available online).

Gosh Curmudgeon you just can't let it go can you? Peak Oil is more alive than ever. The biggest oil find since the 1960s, the Kashagan oilfield in the Caspian Sea has 13 billion barrels of proven reserves. Development of the field has however been plagued with funding problems with Shell shutting its Caspian office in May last year. At this stage it is unlikely this field will produce anything close to the original estimates due to ongoing delays with development. Just another nail in your 'Peak Oil is Dead' arguement.

On a more important point, most here seem to believe that consumer lifestyles can be sustained as long as the world transitions to renewable energy and we produce goods more cleanly and efficiently. This assumption, reflected in political discussions, continuously pushes the message we can grow our economies while reducing ecological impact, clearly a myopic view which relies heavily on the belief renewable energy can be substituted for fossil fuels. There is little discussion whether or not that expectation is possible.

Globally we are already in overshoot. Technology will never be able to solve the ecological crises, certainly not in a world based on economic growth and with a growing global population. Claims technological solutions can solve the ecological crises and sustain economic growth are simply ridiculous.

After examining all the evidence on varieties of solar, wind, biomass, hydrogen, as well as energy storage systems, experts have concluded the figures just do not support what almost everyone assumes; they do not support the argument that renewable energy can sustain a growing consumer society.

Growing economies require vast amounts of electricity and oil which today simply cannot be converted to any mixture of renewable energy sources, each of which suffer from limitations arising from intermittency of supply, storage issues, resource limitations, scarcity of rare-earth metals land for biomass competing with food production, not to mention inefficiency.

We must, as global consumers, learn to live ‘simpler lives’ using less resources and energy and build a new economic system based on equality and sustainability.

"We must, as global consumers, learn to live ‘simpler lives’ using less resources and energy and build a new economic system based on equality and sustainability."

I'll drink to that! It's a shame that the mega-wealthy, the warmongers, the capitalists, the Oligarchs and the imperialists won't!

Curmudgeon has raised an interesting point about 'deep ocean oil finds', namely, the ultra-deep pre-salt deposits off Brazil and elsewhere. Despite their huge depth (the Tupi field lies below 2,000 metres of water and then 5,000 metres of salt, sand and rocks), the Brazilians are certainly beginning to produce from these. Whether they can do so without major environmental accidents like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or whether production of such oil will have a high enough EROEI to make it worthwhile in the long-term, remains to be seen. It would be nice to have a cushion from the coming oil shock but, on the other hand, the atmoshere would hardly cope with having an additional 400 billion barrels of oil burnt. Maybe it's time the world agreed that we have to keep a lot of our coal and oil reserves in the ground to save ourselves from irreversible climate change.

Yes popnperish, that's why I named my son Sam Yandwich.

I think you'll find that the world is never going to agree on anything. And even if it does, there will always be some way consensus is undermined from within. That's the whole problem - you just have to learn to live with it.