I think it is amazing that, in the hundred-or-so years since the first mass produced engines, there has been little progress in the design. I could understand if we had not seen advances in other industries, but it seems that only the motor industry has stayed with a century-old technology. Why? Profits, that's why. Reliance on the combustion engine = reliance on oil. Alternative technologies have been around for many years but have been stifled by the big oil corporations.

Whilst I agree that there is a need for locally produced raw materials as well as a competitive work force, those who were thrown onto the unemployment scrap heap years ago were not, in my opinion, given the chance to be competitive. Employment, health and safety regulations simply did not and, in some cases, do not exist in the countries to which they transferred their production. They couldn't have cared less about their employees and their working conditions. They only cared and still only care about profits. Now that things are starting to cut up rough for them, with those other countries being pressured to introduce employment legislation to protect their workers from exploitation, they want to come back to US and/or UK. I don't know about the US, but the real spending power of wages in the UK has dropped significantly due to higher prices and comparatively lower wages. Oil goes up, profits go down, the company gets it in the neck from the share-holders, therefore the workforce has to be cut or paid less for the same amount of work. But the CEOs still get their $m dollar bonuses.

True, even a million dollars wouldn't keep most multi-national companies afloat for long but, when we see CEOs creaming the top off of our ailing industries, it seems as though, whilst the rest of us have to knuckle down and work harder, these CEOs and higher management are getting rewarded for failure.

The oil crisis is not temporary! Saudi has said that it can produce more oil but all that is happening then is that the reserves are being used up quicker.

Tractors, harvesters, heavy machinery and public transport should, in my opinion be prioritised for oil, whilst cars, recreational vehicles and non-essential business vehicles should be modified as soon as possible to use other forms of fuel. It will be necessary for other forms of fuel to be used by all machinery eventually, but let's start somewhere for crissake!

Of course, it will take many years for any of that to take place, but they've known this would happen for decades and have just buried their heads in the sand, stuck their hands out and pocketed the profits. Now, in UK at least, they are researching into going back to coal-fired power stations. They may even have to go back to "town gas" (as opposed to natural gas) which was also made from coal. We have massive coal seemes under the North Sea.

Whilst coal could help in the short-to-medium term, it is still not the answer to long-term needs and will have to be replaced by other means of getting our power. Water, solar, hydrogen and nuclear are all less damaging to the environment (unless there is another Three-mile-Island disaster, of course - so nuclear might not be the answer either).

For too long, people have been expecting the earth to provide everything we need for our unsustainable lifestyles and now that we are coming to the realisation that this cannot go on forever, what are we doing about it? Stamping our feet, spitting the dummy and pulling our hair out, but very little else. Big business has to maintain it's stranglehold on us and the main way it can do so is to control the power that we need. That is why their has been little advancement in any eco-friendly energy production. They have stifled it's growth, bought-up any patents that looked promising, closed down or underfunded research into it. Now, we can see that we have all put our eggs into one basket and that basket is about to topple - big time.

We can't say we weren't warned. Western governments - in particular the United States, it has to be said - have consistently ignored the warnings and signs, consistently sheltered huge corporations by refusing to introduce more eco-friendly policies, and continued to stick their head up their arse and blame everyone else for their self-inflicted wounds. The billions of dollars wasted on wars, covert operations and snooping on private citizens could have gone a long way to helping research into other forms of energy and helping people to change their lifestyles to avert this crisis. Instead, it was frittered away on tax-relief for the super rich. Not just US, but the US government is by-far the biggest offender in the West.

John