Alittle over a year ago we helped organise an effort among a wide range of groups in the US to draw public attention to the potential for two emerging trends to bring down the global economy. These trends, which affect the price and availability of energy, are the greater-than-expected pace of increased demand for oil in China, India and other emerging markets and the threat of disruption of Persian Gulf supplies by a terrorist attack. They have helped push the price of oil to more than $60 a barrel with forecasters seeing little prospect of it ever going below $50 again.

The sober awakening to these two trends by governments and the oil industry was underscored by a new round in the debate concerning the “peak” of oil reserves – the top of the bell-shaped curve that represents the world’s oil reserves and the lower production and higher cost of oil products that lie ahead when the peak is reached. Most experts agree that we will reach the peak within 25-30 years.