It won t be easy, but as the octogenarian said of old age the alternative is even worse . Europe faces the same predicament as North Sea production plummets. Although it may draw on gas from Russia, North Africa and the Middle East to see it over the transition, assuming that new pipelines can be built in time, that creates a new and unwelcome geopolitical dependency. All of this is so incredibly obvious, being clearly revealed by even the simplest analysis of discovery and production trends. The inexplicable part is our great reluctance to look reality in the face and at least make some plans for what promises to be one of the greatest economic and political discontinuities of all time.
Time is of the essence.
It is later than you think. The purpose of the talk is to evaluate the resource base and its depletion. Then we can go on to study the present crisis and try to see how it will evolve. Finally we can think specifically about Germany's predicament. The hope is that this time too, the crisis will quickly evaporate.