“This sounds absurd today, but if oil declines from now on at 4% per year, as may be the case (and it may decline even more quickly) that means that global oil supply will be halved by 2025. It is very unlikely to be a smooth decline and there may troughs of supply which look and feel like short-term or even prolonged shortages.

This implies an emergency transition away from oil (and coal and gas may be far more limited than heretofore thought) and towards reduced consumption and local production of necessities, including energy. Part of this transition will mean a kind of ‘shock therapy’ in which we subsitute fossil mobility for solar mobility and use muscles where we can and where we can’t, we substitute electric motors running on renewable energy.”