[jbooth]

Which has the higher bound -- the amount of oil we can pump out of the ground in a given day, or the demand for that oil given that we have 1 billion new members of the middle class over the last 25 years alone?

What about the next billion?

[anigbrowl]

Wrong question - 25 from years from now, our aggregate energy needs will certainly have increased, but we will have had ample time to adjust for the decline in oil reserves by substitution and per-capita demand reduction, which is relatively elastic over longer terms.

If we wanted - and anyone who questions the existence of political will is right to be worried - we could replace our oil fuel use almost entirely over that timespan with nuclear power. I know, there's a peak uranium issue as well.

On the other hand, Europe and the US now find themselves awash in natural gas, which is a pleasant reversal of where we expected to be a few years ago; and renewable power generation is becoming price-competitive and deployed in sufficient volume to yield economies of scale, so we can reasonably hope for that trend to continue over the next 25 years too. I don't think we need to resurrect Thomas Malthus just yet.

[jbooth]

The political will issue is a tough one, since 45% of the electorate is adamantly opposed to any attempt by government to alter the incentives in play on principle. That means we need perfection from the remaining 55%. I'm not holding my breath.