1. Imagine Van Gogh being born before the technologies of cheap oil paints.

2. Cheap energy, specifically cheap oil, quite literally fueled this record economic expansion.

3. Personally, I feel enormously grateful to have lived through the age of cheap oil.

4. We know that the end of cheap oil is imminent, but we refuse to believe it.

5. It opened up the prospect of cheap oil from Russia, driving down the price of oil and reducing the west's dependence on oil from the Arab states.

6. And one of the ways I like to do that is to look back at the stories people used to tell before we had cheap oil, before we had fossil fuels, and people relied on their own muscle, animal muscle energy, or a little bit of wind, little bit of water energy.