Published: Wednesday, 30th April, 2008 16:30
Get used to being fuel-less
By Eric Baxter
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What would it be like to live in a world without petrol and diesel?
That’s a thorny question everyone will have to face up to when the last drop of oil is extracted.
Biofuels were thought to be the answer to help replace oil — now these are blamed for soaring food prices because farmers are using grain to make them instead of to produce food.
An oil-less world seemed many years off, however there are still fears the Grangemouth dispute might eventually dry up pumps temporarily despite fuel being shipped in.
Politicians have repeatedly tried to stop motorists filling up every other mile by intoning the ‘don’t panic, don’t panic’ mantra popularised by ‘Dad’s Army’.
That was among the most consistently side-splitting TV comedies ever made, but there’s nothing funny about what’s happening now.
Scotland’s oil ’crisis’ didn’t even merit much national attention until the threat of cutting off a pipeline emerged. Then UK Energy Minister Malcolm Wickes popped up on Radio Scotland to say he was liaising closely with the ‘Scottish Executive’.
The interviewer promptly pointed out it is now the ‘Scottish Government’, but, whether accidentally or in a deliberate snub to the SNP , Mr Wickes immediately referred to it again as ‘the Scottish Executive’.
A minor point, perhaps, but if he couldn’t even get the name right, what else was he failing to do? Maybe we should all save our last drops of oil to spray on rusty bike wheels?
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