Yesterday's post,

I've had some feedback from yesterday's post. One correspondent thought my final paragraph was over-optimistic. Lots of people, not just shopaholics and conspicuous consumers, would find giving up flying, for instance, a very real sacrifice. I agree - some important qualifications were missing from my final paragraph.

Giving up flying was fairly easy for me because in recent years I never did much flying anyway, I can easily get to a Eurostar terminal and I don't have family the other side of an ocean. If I lived in Scotland or the north of England, I think giving up flying would have been a much bigger step for me than it actually was.

Incidentally, when I make rules for myself (eg about not flying), I aim for 80% compliance, so don't be too shocked if some time over the next five years you catch me boarding an aircraft - it won't be my first bit of backsliding.

Which brings me to today's big news - Geoff Hoon's announcement of the go-ahead for the third runway at Heathrow. This confirms that there is a huge gulf between my understanding of the threat of climate change and Government's. I don't think for a moment that the runway will ever be built. It seems inconceivable that wiser counsels won't eventually prevail. I could rant at length about that decision but I won't - it's not strictly relevant to my own energy descent.

My view that the runway won't be built is strengthened by a website on which I have just spent four hours:- http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse It has utterly blown my mind and my judgement may be affected for the next few hours or days. Whereas my post yesterday advocated that we change our lifestyles radically in order to lessen the risk of catastrophic climate change, Chris Martenson's course explains with crystal clarity why those radical changes are inevitable anyway. Because of the coincidence of the debt crisis with Peak Oil, he implies to me that the present recession actually represents the final ending of our present profligate lifestyle. Whether we like or not, what lies beyond the present recession won't be the renewal of economic growth in the developed world but an enforced transition to a simpler lifestyle and economy. There may be fatal flaws in his argument, but I haven't spotted them yet. Highly recommended, even if he's wrong.

In any case this is bang in line with the thinking behind Transition Towns - "Climate change makes this carbon reduction transition essential ... Peak oil makes it inevitable" (see http://transitiontowns.org).