Energy question may spell end of the good life for the West

N HIS 1939 book On the Marble Cliffs, the German soldier and scholar Ernst J

Since the Second World War, the economic and social progress of the planet, for better and worse, has been heavily influenced by the policies and cultural make-up of OECD nations. That progress, if such it be, has been fuelled largely by supplies of oil and natural gas from parts of the world over which, in one way or another, OECD members have held sway.