Re: SC45

http://www.sundayherald.com/business/businessnews/display.var.1546237.0.china_booms_we_pay_the_price.php

China booms … we pay the price

ALL OF those cheaply produced goods from China-everything fromNikerunning shoes to electric kettles - are coming home to roostrightherein Britain. As factories multiply there to satisfy the Western world's insatiable demand for consumer goods, they use ever-increasing volumes of fuel.

The result is a coming oil crunch that will force up the price of fuel for cars, trains and planes, for home heating, for our own (diminishing) stock of factories and even the cost of money in the form of interest rates.

Judging by the latest figures from a variety of sources, those who think a quid a gallon at the pump makes motoring more of a luxury than a necessity ain't seen nothing yet.

The industrialised countries' energwatchdog,theInternationalEnergy Agency, delivered a blunt warning last week of a global shortage of oil within five years that will push prices to record levels and in the process render the West even more dependent on oil cartel Opec.

According to the IEA, which has a reputation for painstaking objectivity, "oil looks extremely tight in five years' time" with strong prospects of "even tighter natural gas markets" emerging even sooner, probably by 2010.

Right on cue, commodities indices promptly rose sharply this past week to year-high levels and crude oil prices hit an 11-month peak, with the benchmark Brent closing at US$76.86 a barrel, up over cents. Forecasters at Morgan Stanley warned that Brent would not take long to reach $80 in the present situation..........

.........While warning signs are appearing of associated crises in the rapidly rising Third World populations and the rising prices for diminishing world resources of food and raw materials, the International Energy Authority has belatedly accepted the reality of peak oil and the fearful impact this will have on the future of the world.

The devastating nature of this issue is that humanity has used up half of the world's oil reserves, with the remaining half overwhelmingly lower in quality and in less accessible fields.

...The cheap energy era is over. The scarcity of one commodity will beget another and the inevitable price rises on human necessities will impinge on the world's poorest, making food so scarce as to reduce the rate of human population growth.

The fatal consequence for the west is that a starving Third World will not submissively accept its fate but, rallying behind a militant leadership, will storm the citadels of the possessor nations. It has not escaped the notice of many that this inevitable process is under way................