Loudmouth suggested Utopia !
That is one thing it not be.
The transition will not be welcomed, very significant unemployment,
the cost and reduced supply of energy will require many people to
become farmers. Over time, some decades, those that started their life
as clerks, public servants, computer programmers etc will find
themselves learning to plough behind a draft horse.
The shortages will probably cause wars as countries try to obtain the
resources they need.
The world will not have the energy resources to support the present
population, so there will be a reduction in world population.
Malnutrition will reduce fertility.
That is just nature and she does not negotiate.

However all that is somewhat down the track, the early stages will be
easy to monitor. Just watch the unemployment, the government debt and
the struggle to maintain growth in the economy. The cost of food.

Ask a farmer about the cost of fertiliser. The disappearance of out
of season foodstuffs. The sudden government ruling that Chinese
companies cannot export food from their Australian farms.

These will be the signals to watch out for.
Some of them are here already on the wall right under your noses.

Eventually the smaller world population will settle in to a new energy
regime and live quite fulfilling and happy lives.
Remember Shakespear did not have a car or electricity or TV etc.
No different to as it is now, just in a different setting.

Squeers
Speaking of fascists, which of Hitler's economic policies do you *not* agree with?

You just gotta love life!
Our differences actually unite us.
Bazz with respect! mate, please do not start a thread by telling the rest of us we do not get it.
Our disconnect, is the very fuel that will/is being used against us.
More would be lost than gained by one world government.
Yet, within us all, the day it becomes an offer,a promise, a solution, we will buy it.
After massive deaths, a Pandemic? war? starvation, we will be told, for a short time.
In the interests of humanity,for our own good, SOME POWERS will be given to?
UN? who knows.
As more and more is taken from us.
A story will develop,we will be told that our pain/lost freedom, is short term our grand children they will tell us,will live in a better single world.

Well Belly, you don't get it, Should I lie ? Hi !

Wars will be very difficult to wage on the sort of style we are
accustomed to. Some people, not myself, believe that we have already
had the first oil war in Iraq. If it was just about oil they would
have taken the cheaper option and just bought it !
No, the changes are already knocking on the door but our politicians
just do not want to listen. It is not surprising really as most of the
population does not want to hear either.
However we pay politicians to be more proactive and have such
possibilities examined.
It is well known, and he has warned about depletion in parliament,
that Martin Ferguson does get it.
It is just that the parties have their collective heads deep in the sand and he is gagged.

The Guardian forced the British Government to acknowledge the report
they, the govt, had been given by their scientific Depts and oil
company executives. The report had to be forced into the open by a
court order.
So as it stands now only the UK and Sweden acknowledge that we have
a problem. The US Hirsch report was only revealed when some high
school kids hacked it out of its US Energy Dept hidyhole.

So as some would say there really is a conspiracy in place.
However I think it is an unspoken conspiracy not what is normally
meant by a conspiracy.

The implications are so great that politicians just don't know what to do about it.
So they worry about AGW instead.

Bazz I am an up front bloke and like you.
Feel however you are too fixed on oil.
Not wanting to divert the thread,am intensely interested in all views on the subject.
However sail, wind power took man, from many country's all over the world.
England gained an Empire by using it.
That Empire introduced this world to the Industrial revolution, using steam, generated by coal.
Even with no oil 3 maybe 4 century's will pass before we have no coal, modern sail boats, if we had to, would be fast very fast.
In fact, such an event as oil end could drive the very thing I talk of.
Lets turn this on its head.
Modern man has landed on the moon circled Mars, looks back at creation.
Yet we can not, or is it do not want to?
Stop wars, starvation, dictatorships,
Get a group, of history wisest best thinkers men and women , if it was possible.
Show them first our achievements.
The North Korea today, the starving refugees in those camps.
Last the pirates boarding ships,in this 21st century, and then we would see why some think it is a possibility.
Others a plan.

Well, Belly, it is not just oil, it is in fact almost everything.
Your thought that coal has hundreds of years is like many people's way
out of date. Various Uni and defense dept studies as well as some
university studies have found that peak coal will occur around 2025.
Unfortunately that was at the burning rate of about 2009.
Taking into account China's proposed burn rate peak coal could come as
soon as 2015 from what I have read.
Now all that probably sounds ridiculous to you but that is because
there is a different way of looking at coal.
Generally oil comes out of the ground quite cheaply but coal is different.
The best grades have mostly been burnt and what is meant
by peak coal is not measured in tons but in BTUs per ton.
As the grades get worse the cost escalate steeply.
It is complicated by the different types of coal.
Australia is a minor supplier in the world scale and we will not peak
for sometime after global peak. However that depends on how China
increases its export out of Australia.
A University in Texas even predicts peak coal this year, but no one
else has made the same prediction.

The German study found that many coal fields had not been studied for
more than forty years and that the reserve figure were simply unrealistic.

Yes, sailing ships could keep some semblence of international trade
going but nowhere near the level of todays 25knot container ships.
Take just one point; the roping for such an enormous fleet of sailing
ships would have to made from synthetics, made from oil.
However, at least twice as many ships would be needed, it all becomes
just too hard.

To get back to the thread, under the circumstances I describe a world
government becomes ridiculous, it simply could not communicate or
impose its orders.