Curmudgeon: "Sorry fellas but you are still short of an energy crisis."

Well Curmudgeon, if you know how to use google, dig up for me a link to any large OECD government funded body that says we won't. That way someone might take you seriously. Right now you sound like an old man describing the world in his youth. It doesn't sound particularly relevant to us youngin's.

Charger: "I think the die like flies option is on the cards -- at least for some of us."

It depends who "us" is Charger. Populations in the world have been dying like flies every time a drought hits for as long as I can remember. It has always happened, and will continue to happen. Since time immemorial humans have over populated in the good times and died like files in the bad times. This century things will be a little different for we Aussies as it looks almost certainly it will start happening in our near neighbours - as opposed to 1/2 way around the globe.

It doesn't necessarily have to happen us though. To me it looks like we could avoid it, this century anyway, if we decided we wanted to. We are one of the few countries that have that option. Of course dying flies is also the option we are implicitly choosing if we continue let our population grow and in general ignore the problem. But right now, we get to choose what fate we suffer towards the end of the century.

"We've been running out of oil ever since I was a boy." - Prof. Frank Notestein.

Ah, the Looming Energy Crisis; it's the security blanket of the Malthusians. Every time the real world proves their pet theories wrong, the pull out the Looming Energy Crisis to have a bit of a suck on and get their fix of misery.

And they can always be relied on to point to a short-term downwards trend as "proof" that they are, at long last about to be proved right.

Stick around, guys, the Great Prophet Zarquon is coming back eventually, too.

"More people, and increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. Many fail in the search, at cost to themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen. That is, prices eventually become lower than before the increased scarcity occurred." — Julian Simon

"The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil" — Sheikh Zaki Yamani

This article ties in very nicely with Chris Martenson's website over at ChrisMartenson.com. In his Crash Course he discusses this very problem together with the other looming crises of exponential debt and environmental limitations.

rstuart, Anyone who doesn't have access to water (and a means to move it round), arable land, has a large population and lack of energy (be it horses or tractors) is likely to die like flies. That would seem to be be large parts of Africa, China, India and maybe Japan. Although it could be anywhere. e.g How many weeks food supply do you have a home? How much food is in your supermarket? Do you even grow your own food?

Clownfish, yes there is a bit of doom and gloom but that still doesn't make it what's being said wrong. The author's article is correct. No more energy no more economic expansion. At current usage the world oil supply will last about 30 more years (a short history of the future, surviving the 2030 spike, sorry can't remember who wrote that one). If we want to avoid this then we'd best be starting now. We're not. I haven't heard of any plans to be build more power stations for the (presumed) electric cars or any suggestion of what to replace oil with other then more fossil fuels (i.e. natural gas).

If the economy is to grow (is that entirely such a good thing) it will need more energy. Most of which we have now is running out with no practical replacement in sight.