Having read the initial report from conference, and no doubt there will be more reports and discussion as the days go, I am rather glad I saved my pension and did not attend.

I get bored enough with repeats on TV and it looks like this may yet be another re-run of previous conferences with the exception of the Peak Oil day on July 16^th.

But by far the most important thing that seems to be coming out of this conference, and many others, is not about what was said or by whom but more about what was not said or discussed.

We must start to move on to what the realistic and practical things that we can do as regard Peak Oil and it’s probably consequences become more pronounced.

We also need a good standard presentation for the facts as to why peak oil, with the graphs, and about the so called alternatives so that people that are unaware of the problem can be presented with easy to follow realistic and simple facts that they can understand and appreciate.

For those of us who are already well acquaint with what may be coming it is I think imperative that we start to move forward and go beyond Peak Oil.

If we do not then we may well end up with a nation of idiots in the centuries to come. We must ensure that those of us that are left have the leadership to lead us to as reasonable, realistic and comfortable life style as possible.

To think that our current leadership will lead us is utopian. To think that any of the alternatives that are being mentioned are realistic and achievable is again utopian.

The greatest danger in the path of a crisis is the tendency to delay the necessary action.

"A problem postponed is a problem half solved," Churchill is quoted as saying at the height of the Battle of Britain. He was then confronted with apparently imminent defeat, and as long as defeat could be postponed, there remained a chance of winning or at least surviving. However, not all disastrous situations are so clear-cut. Too often the conditions are more subtle, and while postponement of a solution to a problem indeed delays, the effort of facing up to the unpleasant choices, time so gained only compounds the problem which becomes increasingly difficult to solve.

Such an approach is taken with some logic by too many officials elected or appointed for a limited time. If one invests time and resources in a solution that will bear fruit only after one's term of office is over, the likelihood is that one will get no credit and all the blame; the credit will go to the successor during whose term the benefits accrue, while the blame will be put on the early period during which, in spite of all the resources committed, the solution did not materialize. The fine thread connecting early action and much later fruit is too often lost.

The tendency therefore prevails to postpone consideration of the problem until one's term in office has ended and it becomes somebody else's worry. In personal life, however, we know better. We learn, sooner or later, that the choices we face are invariably limited and diminish with time. The opportunity one misses at a given time may be regained only at substantial cost at a later date, if at all.

In the life of nations, on the other hand, we assume that something, somehow, sometime later, will turn out to save the day. Indeed, it is felt too often that the future will certainly bring increased choices and new opportunities. That is undoubtedly a legacy of an era in which the steady march of progress was taken as an article of faith. In subscribing to such a religion one tends to overlook that there is absolutely no evidence that similar progress will occur "automatically" by necessity in the future. While the optimism is based on past successes, the past must be taken only as a guide for the future. The past is not the future, and what has happened in the past is not to be assumed to be likely in the future.

As Heraclitus stated: "It is not possible to step into the same river twice"; the river flows and the water is constantly changing.

We must now start to lay out some realistic information on how we are planning to live during and after this event so that people can plan and make what ever adjustments they want. We must also remember that Noah did not build the Ark while it was raining.

I am not proposing that we no longer need to ‘get the word out’, that we no long need to make people aware of this very potential disaster, we do and with all the information that there is that should be no problem. At the present all of these conferences and meeting generally seem to be ‘preaching to the converted’. It is time to move on.

John Busy in his report of 2002 made many good suggestions; unfortunately I do not see any of these coming to fruition not with our current leadership but because I feel that it is now too late, there is no longer the time.  I see the future as a probable slow collapse that may increase in speed once it has started until it is realised that is no way that we can continue to live in anything like the manor to which we have become accustomed. By that time we, and probably most of the world, will be in a state of complete collapse and will have made very few if any plans to come through it. One thing is certain; we will probably never be as advanced technologically after the collapse as we are now unless we take immediate drastic steps now.

I have posted this in the hope that some may wish to contact me with their views and thoughts on this subject.

Norman