The thing about oil supplies is that you can't really safeguard them - there's only a limited amount of the stuff, and when it's gone it's gone.

The existing supplies of fossil fuel, laid down over millions of years, and squandered in a century and a bit, provide a window of opportunity during which we can organise for the fast-approaching time period when we'll be getting along without it.

That should mean non-fossil fuel - solar energy, tidal and wind energy, and biomass, together with energy saving, by more efficient engines and more efficient lifestyles. It shouldn't mean nuclear fission, because that just stores up horrendous problems of waste. If the technology that allows economic non-polluting nuclear fusion shows up some time, maybe it will have a part to play. But relying on that to save us is a gamble. There's already a wonderful nuclear fusion plant pumping out energy we can use - the Sun.

But desperately scrabbling to get oil to last a few more years is a blind alley. And Jerry Pournelle there quoted by Don Firth was quite right - our limited supplies of oil are far too useful to waste this way.