Peak Oil and the UK's first green MP

For a couple of years I have been hearing about "peak oil" - mainly from environmentalists who slightly surprising often quote reports and studies from their "enemies" in the oil / petrol-chemical industries.

I used to partly believe the stereotype that the green party was largely made of "left wing eccentrics", with passionate ideas but not always the most well-balanced and happy people (tree-huggers as Jeremy Clarkson or my brother would say). To my slight surprise, over my 6 years in Brighton, I have got to know several of our green activists, attended meetings, been to a House of Commons Select Committee (on Carbon charging) and I found the greens to be intelligent, realistic and surprisingly happy and balanced in their personal lives. Like a folk musician explained recently in an interview (Dick Gaughan on Mike Harding's Radio 2 show) - "I want to create a historical record ... to leave a foot-print in the sand ... that there those who fought against what was wrong". Going on there is an understanding that it is going to be very difficult to change the "majority tabloid driven" views however it is important to stand-up and say what you believe in and to start to make the difficult changes which it is human nature to resist. History has shown collectively we have a tendency to ignore tough problems until it is too late. Hard chance is going to be forced on us all in a "post-peek oil world", the general public may not accept this yet but the environmentalist and right-wing oil industry already know this.

One of the side effects of the current labour party collapse is to make the UK's first green MP in Brighton Pavilion a real possibility, the last general election (2005) was close

Labour 15427
Green Party 9530
Liberal Democrat 7171
Conservative 10397

in local elections since 2005, the green party have done stunning well. Caroline Lucas is a very impressive candidate, clear, well-spoken and stylish. She could well now become the UK's first green MP. Caroline was on the World Tonight (Radio 4) this evening - talking sense but it was not easy listening - we are going to have get used to a world with less and less cheap fuel and increasing oil production in the short term will (a) not solve the fundamental problem of peak oil and (b) not going help with CO2 emissions ...