Is it all kicking off?

Is this when the phoney war stops, and the panic begins?

Those were the questions that jumped out at me on Monday, triggered by three separate headlines.

First, a report from the respected German Energy Watch Group, concluding that world oil production had peaked in 2006, and was now on an inexorable slide downwards.

Second, the oil price hitting $100 a barrel, on the same day that share prices on both slides of the Atlantic went into freefall.

And third – less prominently, but no less worryingly – the discovery that absorption of atmospheric CO2 by the North Atlantic ocean had plunged by half in the last ten years. In other words, one of the world’s main carbon sinks was, for a reason that scientists could not explain, breaking down.

Now of course, none of the media presented these stories as a triptych. Share prices respond to all manner of factors; while the surge in oil prices was undoubtedly one of them, the market slide seemed mainly due to continued fallout from the latest credit squeeze. And both the oil price and the markets routinely ignore climate warnings.

And by the next day, shares had rebounded, the oil price slipped back in the face of reassuring blandishments about increased production from OPEC, and the carbon story was yesterday’s news.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Jeremy Leggett's, Britain’s Cassandra of Peak Oil, warning that “the day the markets get” the fact that the sun is setting on the oil era, and respond accordingly, would be the day to start panicking.

And I don’t think I’ve ever felt that the old mantra about ‘enough talk – time for action’ was more relevant...