Agreed, except we can take steps to reduce our impact, we can reduce our carbon footprint and we can still travel. Part of the environmental debate is ensuring that we stop burning fossil fuels indiscriminately - and we can relatively easily - we just need to decide to. This is a societal decision and people will need to accept that there are going to be changes - there will be industries that disappear, new industries and those that adapt to the new energy sources.

As individuals we need to as well as the costs of heating our homes is going through the roof - hopefully not due to lack of insulation. It is estimated that 25% of UK energy consumption is domestic heating lighting etc (excluding transportation) - controlling that will help control bills for individuals. That is why it is important that new houses integrate energy saving and generation technologies at the outset - so have solar panels for electricity and hot water, well insulated, use rainfall to flush toilets etc - all can be built in at little or no extra cost but they make a massive difference to the running cost and environmental impact of the house.

The same applies to new industrial buildings they should have, as a matter of course, have solar panels so that they generate electricity and feed the grid - it is not rocket science but the way some politicians speak you would think that you are asking the home owner to wear a hair shirt - how those politicians must have reacted when people decided that having a roof on a house was a good idea would be interesting to know.

Yes, there will be changes over a relatively short period of time but the alternative is even less rosy.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.