The whole quote Bazz goes, life wasn't meant to be easy, but delightful.
Yes you are right mate, energy is implicated in growth.
Every western style economy rests on just two support pillars, energy and capital; and basically started going backward, with the first oil shock.
Energy is only dear because our pollies seem to be colluding with the fossil fuel industry, and eco-fascists, who say energy, and all the staples of life that then flow from it, must be dearer!?
Simply put this is BS.
Cheaper energy is possible, by utilising solar thermal heat, to turn endlessly abundant sea water into hydrogen, utilising the older catalytically assisted, water molecule cracking method.
This would produce hydrogen for less than 3 cents a cubic metre, given virtually no moving parts to wear out, wind or wave powered pumps; and the heat source completely free.
The only outlays, by and large, are infrastructure, and start up outlays.
Thorium, is cheaper than coal, and our own biological waste can be powering our cities, via the world most fuel efficient, whisper quiet ceramic solid state fuel cells; and, providing a saleable surplus, if we add in food scraps/wastage.
Lighter than air methane, can be passed through a simple catalytic conversion process, to produce petrol replacing liquid methanol.
Algae can be grown to provide, a ready to use as is unrefined, fuel.
One variety produces ready to use diesel, while another produces ready to use jet fuel.
The ex-crush material, is eminently suitable for net energy gain, ethanol production
Some algae are up to 60% oil, absorb 2.5 times their own bodyweight in carbon emission, and under optimised conditions, quite literally double that bodyweight and absorption capacity, every 24 hours.
Cheers, Rhrosty

Rhosty,
The quote perhaps modified by Malcolm Fraser was just;
"Life wasn't meant to be easy"
in response to a political claim that something the government was
doing was difficult.

Re hydrogen, anything using fuel cells is just not viable as my son's
father in law told me as they cannot even get large ones for buses to
be viable because of short life time.
There are bans on underground parking for hydrogen vehicles.

Oil is now 10 times the 2000 price because it costs more to get out of
the ground. Think of the insurance premiums for deep sea drilling.
That is before considering Arctic drilling.
As much as I am wrapped in electric cars, in the much longer term the
individual's car is doomed.

Hot rocks geothermal and nuclear are the main hopes for electricity
generation.
Solar without some better storage than anything on the horizon will
be expensive to have sufficient storage and just not available for everyone.

Gas might make a transition fuel but it would cost massive dollars.

It really all works like this:

The EU's financial strategies have left Mediterranean members with highly elevated unemployment, rising taxation, huge pension-benefit and services cuts and lastly high debt levels, personal, corporate and sovereign. The 1% is now intent on taking personal savings. The only thing that keeps the nations from going bankrupt is more debt, in the form of ECB loans.

Here is how European democracy works: everybody will do what Berlin wants. Similarly in the US and spreading to a city near you in the future, debt will come home to roost, Europe is just the first in line to show that hubris makes stupid

We now have a situation where no European small saver will ever feel safe again, it’s like breaking an egg; restoring confidence is no longer an option.

Eventually people will realise the truth and bank runs will push banks over the edge, requiring more bailouts, rinse and repeat.
Ironically the 1% doesn’t care. They don't care that the entire southern part of their union is falling over the edge. They don't care what happens to the people in the streets of Nicosia, or Porto, their jobs, their savings, their well-being, their children. They're not accountable to those people.

The only reason for Mediterranean nations to remain in the Eurozone and the EU will be bullying from Brussels and Berlin. This bullying from the core, from those who preach union above all else, which will be the undoing of the entire project, but after more pain of the same kind that now hit the Cypriots will have spread north and eventually globally (the rot won't stop).

Staying in the union offers nothing positive to anyone anymore, except for those presently in power in Brussels and in the capitals of the rich core nations. The dissolution of the union is inevitable. Unfortunately, given the hubris of the general population, so is the inevitable bloodshed that will pave the way there. We in Australia should be wise and watch what will follow and make the decisions now to ensure we don’t suffer the same fate.

I have just spent about 30 minutes listening to a BBC program,
"World Have Your Say", most of the speakers were in Cyprus and they
really are in difficulties, and it has only just started.
Millions of Euros were helicopted into Cyprus from somewhere.
Most of the speakers blamed the Germans, and a couple of Germans said
they have been pumping money into southern Europe although they
thought it wrong to cut depositors funds.

Their problem started when Greece had to cancel government bonds.
The Cypriot banks had invested a large percentage of depositors money
in Greek bonds. Much of it came from Russia.

When the Greek bonds evaporated the Cypriot banks lost most of their assets.
Therefore they had banks but the banks had no money or assets.
That is the crux of the problem, the bank has lost the depositor's money.

cont:
So the problem in Cyprus is different to say, Greece, but they had
let the banks there get too big in that they were handling so much off shore money.
The problem in Cyprus is exactly the same as if the people had invested
in some sort of investment trust, but then it went broke.
In an investment trust, if it goes broke so do you.
As the reasons are the same, that is why the depositors are treated the same.
The banks have no money and have little assets.
Some accounts are said to be insured, but by whom ?
The government ? Was their money in the bank also ?

If they were not in the Euro they could devalue the peoples accounts
and print Million Drachma notes.
The people may not be any better off with their devalued amounts.

What a mess !

more;
I just stumbled across this article linked.
I thought the Cyprus solution was too far out for us until I read this which predates Cyprus;

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/cyprus-style-bank-account-confiscation-is-in-the-new-canadian-government-budget

or this;
http://tinyurl.com/cx7bbvf

Is this one of the subjects that got discussed at these G20 etc conferences ?
Just bear in line that Wayne Swan has been attending them for some years.
If Canada can put that on their list of must dos I think there is a
good chance it has been seriously looked at in case it is needed.