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If China and India increase their consumption to just a tenth of the US average, they could suck Arabia dry in about 15 minutes. This would plunge the world into the Dark Ages. Or worse. Sociologists tell us that when the oil starts to go, nation will fight nation for the last few drops, and the social order will disintegrate.

They may have a point. When we had that trivial fuel shortage 18 months ago, people formed disorderly queues outside garages, waiting with fists clenched and blood vessels fit to burst as the chap in front filled his tank, and then his washer bottle and then his trousers pockets with petrol.

Imagine that on a global scale. Imagine if there were no trucks to deliver food to the supermarket and you knew that your neighbour had 300 tins of baked beans stashed away in his basement. Would you watch your children starve or would you pop round and shoot him in the face?

Same goes with power. You'll have your nose pressed to the gates at Sellafield begging for a cup of electricity to run your kid's iron lung. But they won't be able to help because, back in 2005, all the eco-mentalists told them that nuclear energy wasn't green.

Eventually, when every candle had been burned, and every tin of beans consumed, we'd be back in 1550, using beads to buy chickens. And dying three times a day from diphtheria and rabies. Death, famine and disease all topped off with a light sprinkling of nuclear holocaust. And it's all Porsche's fault for turbocharging the 911.

Unfortunately, the people who tell us these things tend to be card-carrying lunatics with an agenda. They're the ones who were chained to the fence outside Greenham Common, saying atomic war with Russia was inevitable, and that if the Earth's climate changes - something it has done since the dawn of time - we'll all drown.

They're the ones who see only bad in the world. The ones who lie in fields of gold on glorious summer days, complaining about the distant hum of traffic. The ones who see a corporate conspiracy at the bottom of every packet of crisps.

Life has usually dealt them a handful of low clubs and diamonds. How many good-looking women did you see at Greenham? And because everything turned out so badly, they want to change the system. That's why they want us to cycle to work and adopt a fox - because it brings us down to their level, not because the oil's running out. Because it isn't.