An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters' contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their native languages. The French head of the committee, who had insisted on speaking only in French throughout the week suddenly demonstrated the ability to speak excellent English with English-speaking delegates.

We experienced similiar fears in the 1880s, at the end of World War I and II. And we ran out in the 1970s.

We are living in a new age of energy supply anxiety.

The North Sea was supposed to run out in the 1980s. Then in the 1990s. And now production is still on-line.

Even Silicon Valley investors have put well over a $1 billion in new energy technologies.

To meet the energy challenge requires the most important energy of all - human creativity. That's the real prize.

The world has produced about 1 trillion barrels of oil since the start of the industry in the nineteenth century. Currently, it is thought that there are at least 5 trillion barrels of petroleum resources, of which 1.4 trillion is sufficiently developed and technically and economically accessible.