THE Stone Age, as former Saudi oil minister Ahmed Yamani famously observed,
did not end because people ran out of stones. It ended because they found
something better. Will the oil age end the same way?
Last week, people protesting against high fuel prices brought parts of Europe
to a standstill simply by stopping fuel tankers leaving refineries. More
protests are threatened in Europe, and there are troubles brewing over expensive
heating oil in North America. Will the chaos that these protests cause be the
last straw, the point when we decide we need something better than oil? It may…
