Aime: Not quite correct. Oil is just the first, easiest and cheapest energy source. There will be others, just not as easy, cheap and profitable.
Oil has been accessible to humans for thousands of years. The real enabler was and still is science and engineering. Once electric technologies are advanced from their 19th century status we will wonder why we used oil so wastefully.
What is needed is an accelleration of the true enablers to expand the luxuries we take for granted to the rest of the human population in an environmentally sustainable way. The issues are more political than engineering.
I for one want to fly into orbit, be able to take holidays on the other side of the world. I also want the other 90% of the population to be able to do this without sacrificing their children's ability to do the same.
This can be done, we just have to stop acting like dumb animals or tribal power freaks.

Ozandy, could you explain a little more of what you mean when you say........

"Once electric technologies are advanced from their 19th century status we will wonder why we used oil so wastefully."

What sort of technologies?

Don't worry so much, we'll adapt, we have for thousands of years and that will go on, every age has doomsayers, you're not alone.

I do look on the bright side, that all the doomsayers in the world have always been and always will be proved wrong by events just happening on their own in their own time, not when "prophets" demand they do. I take great comfort in being able to ignore whatever doom is forecast as inevitably wrong, because it is always required in time for the said doomsayer to bask in the glory of the doom.

Your second last paragraph seems to me to be a long winded way of saying some “intellectuals” will set themselves up as the leaders of new religions, based on the age old tried and true method of explaining to the masses why things happen and how to avoid them, with a little emphasis on what will happen if you don’t listen.

I take it you count yourself among those “intellectuals” who will be one of the ones at the top of that little heap, maybe you will, there are always simple minded people looking for leadership, hence the myriads of green/eco clubs, groups, societies, faculties, unions, foundations etc.

Is that likely to be your “schtick”, is it, look on the bright side of people’s misery (they really deserve it!)?

Your desire for retribution against the adherents of the consumer generations in the west will of course be totally overwhelmed by the rising generations who have exactly that goal in the developing world, Africa, India and China. They do not give a cr*p about your sensitivity at all, they just want "cargo" to make their lives better and longer.

They will get it, then pull themselves up to the level of the west, and on we'll go - there will be natural disasters, we're long overdue for huge earthquakes and I suspect it will be events like that, that reduce the population rather than what you predict.

rpg, I'm sure there were people like you deriding the doomsayers before the previous 20-odd civilisations collapsed. Ozandy, you need to look at the energy profitability of other energy sources and the scale-up times for them. When you do you are in for a rude shock. Technology requires energy to be manufactured and to function. Don't think it will be a panacea to energy decline. In my opinion, Heinberg is probably the finest writer today in terms of expressing difficult concepts of sustainability to a largely scientifically uneducated public. You should read especially "The Party's Over". It make the connectino between energy and technological complexity obvious.

Wing Ah Ling wrote: "It seems that what environmentalists are opposed to, is human activity and indicators of social co-operation in general."

Why on Earth would you think that? THIS greeny has started a completely new community in his town, a Transition Town Initiative (http://www.transitionculture.org), and a new local newspaper. Anti-social? I don't think so....

Then he says: "Why don’t environmentalists just stop using fossil fuels, cars, housing, blankets, heating, lights, and computers?" Well, I have stopped using a lot of FFs, our house is fully solar powered, and as it turns out I no longer own a car. Blankets...? Well our house is so energy efficient we hardly need those, even though it WAS -1C this morning.. Computers are really an aberration which I doubt many of us will be using in 20 years, so I think I better make the most of it!

Now frankly, I really don't care if you think "greenie" ideas aren't worth following through, but when crunch times arrive, I am pretty confident me and mine will survive, and when you shrivel up and die of cold and starvation for not taking seriously the things Richard Heinberg discusses here, I won't be losing any sleep.... don't say you weren't warned.

Heinberg is merely stating facts about the overexploitation of our finite resources over what is historically a very short period .
He,like any real environmentalist ,is distressed by this overuse and the inevitable repercussions. Only if you live in a fantasy world of cornucopia could you believe in an infinite availability of non-renewable resources .To suggest that R.H.or any true environmentalist is barracking for a tragedy to occur is rank stupidity .The anger apparent in people like "clownfish"or "wing ah ling"at the thought of ever being deprived of the luxuries of life causes them to avoid the facts and "shoot the messenger"