Power points

Our Online leader article 'Balance of power' highlighted the rising cost of fuel and the need for cheaper, more efficient vehicles. Here is a selection of your emails.



Oil production peaked in 2006 and it is about time the government accepted the fact and told us the truth.

Investment is needed quickly. Funds for alternative energy projects must be at the forefront of investment. Projects for wave power, fuel cells and solar power, and many others, need bringing to everyone's attention as these will take at least 10 to 15 years to come on stream. If not, the shortage of oil and gas will mean the lights will go out in the next five to 10 years.

Price will not be the factor, only a fight for the remaining oil.

Alan Dutton



Do the sums. In my younger days I worked at a filling station when petrol was 25p a gallon, roughly 5.5p a litre. With inflation, it should be 90p a litre. However, vehicle efficiency has improved more.

In practice, fuel costs are now relatively lower than in the mid-1960s, even for big wagons. Their fuel consumption might not have changed much, but the loads carried certainly have. So the fuel cost per unit of distance travelled is relatively the same, or less.

David Usher



The global rat-race of hedonistic, materialistic consumerism and population growth cannot continue, given the finite amount of fossil fuels, minerals and fertile lands. Aggressive protests will only reduce available wealth elsewhere if fuel taxes are lowered.

Green technical activity, such as more efficient cars, is only nibbling at the problem. There is not the sufficient political will to undertake what is necessary; a controlled global reduction in materialism, wages and expectations towards a simpler life.

All governments (with a few exceptions) pursue gross domestic product rather than gross domestic happiness. It will therefore be market forces that do the required job for us; but the results will not be equitable and they will not be without strife and starvation. Unchanged throughout all this will be the laws of nature and the principles of engineering.

Peter Field


There is something we can do. Rising prices of food and everything else, combined with wages cuts, means we are all worse off personally, as are our respective industries.

The time has come to forget the general British apathy and stand together to make our voices heard by those whom we have elected.

For too long we have been a nation of individuals sitting moaning and yet doing nothing — and governments have taken advantage of this.

This would not happen in France, where the people would vehemently oppose anything which affects the mass population, particularly financially.

Simon