Not to forget most fertilizers that have been an absolute necessity to try and feed the 7 billion people world-wide are made of oil.
World wide demand is currently sitting at 86 million barrells per day according to the International Energy agency and has been stuck at that every since the global financial crisis hit, after preceeding growth alomost every year before that BUT notice how nearly all the major economies are seriously affected by the global financial crisis yet we still have $100 oil !!
What happens to the oil price as soon as the economies start some feeble attempt to grow again, oil goes ballistic of course. At present from what I can see there is an absolute maximum production capacity for oil around the world which leaves very very little headroom for demand growth, some experts reckon there's as little as 1 million barrells of spare capacity if all the pumps ran at full capacity at present yet as many know, there's heaps of oil fields, especially in the Middle East that start to run dry later this decade and some economists and forecasters are predicting a supply shortfall of as much as 20 million barrells of oil per day later this decade and that's without any economic growth !!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smRo7...eature=related
The answer for Australians is LPG, there are many many decades of proven reserves and its very very cheap, a liquid injection LPG Falcon is a complete no brainer for any forward thinking Australian resident who wants a large car and affordable motoring for the forseeable future, unfortunatly the picture regarding LPG reserves is less clear in N.Z. and current prices of $1.30 per litre are significantly less attractive.
What we were all shocked by in mid 2008 when fuel prices soared was the warning we all need to consider and its definitly a portender of much worse to come in the near future. Maybe then the Leaf will make sense ?? because it doesn't now. The era of cheap oil is coming to an end, think about it, how will you cope when petrol and diesel goes to $5 a litre ?