Time to face reality.

Energy consumption worldwide is rising fast, partly because we're using much more of it - for air conditioning and computers, for example. In Australia alone, energy consumption jumped by 46 per cent between the mid-1970s and the mid- 1990s where our population grew by just 30 per cent. And energy use is expected to increase another 14 per cent by the end of this decade, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Then there's China, which, along with other fast-growing nations, is developing a rapacious appetite for power to feed its booming economy.
And fossil fuels won't last forever. Current predictions are that we may reach the point of peak production for oil and natural gas within the next decade - after which production levels will continually decline worldwide.
That's if we haven't hit the 'peak oil' mark already. That means prices will rise, as they have already started to do: cheap oil has become as much a part of history as bell-bottomed trousers and the Concorde.