We're so screwed.

Why? Because it turns out that we don't have nearly as much oil as we've been led to believe:

In particular, the allegations cast a shadow on the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its present level of 83 million barrels a day to 105 million.

External critics have frequently said this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and that the world has already passed its peak in oil production. Now the ''peak oil'' theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment.

''The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120 million barrels a day by 2030, although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116 million and then 105 million last year,'' said the IEA source, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry.

''The 120 million figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

Malaysia's oil reserves will last for just another 20 years. Worldwide reserves... well, it looks like we can't trust the official figures anymore, if the whistleblower turns out to be right. Solar tech is advancing rapidly, but even then it'll be another 50 years till it gets to the point where it can start to replace our oil dependence, if not longer.

I've started to revise my previous anti-nuclear stance. It looks like we'll need nuclear tech after all, if only in the short to medium term, until alternatives prove more viable. The problem with nuclear power plants is that they're too big, too damn expensive and too dangerous. Hundreds of millions to build, an additional hundreds of millions a year to maintain... plus Malaysia doesn't exactly have a good record with maintaining standards. Present nuclear plants are just too heavily entrenched in the Cold War model, and not what we need now. We need a new kind of nuclear power plant, one that's relatively cheaper, causes less havoc on the environment, and less easily weaponised. As hard science fiction writer Charles Stross points out, nuclear technology had the bad luck of being discovered right around the time a major war was brewing.

Will we ever get to the point where widespread, peaceful applications of nuclear tech is possible? We might be closer than you'd think: India is preparing to export plutonium-free nuclear reactors to other countries.