IT'S FRONT page news. The world is heading for catastrophe as oil runs out and global warming increases. The headline above first featured on page one of a prominent UK newspaper at the end of 2005 - without the question mark.

Consider the facts: The world currently requires more than 30 billion barrels of oil a year - almost 1,500 barrels per second. A barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of nearly 25,000 hours of human labour.

So when oil runs out (in about 30 years) we're all going to be working a lot harder. To say the least. Global commodity war and starvation of 77 per cent of the planet's population may be nearer the truth.

By then carbon dioxide emissions - widely blamed for climate change - will have risen by 52 per cent. The resulting melt of the polar ice caps will change more than just our coastline.

Michael Meacher, who was Britain's environment minister for six years, is clearly terrified: "Civilization faces the sharpest and perhaps most violent dislocation in history".

With ecologists using the term "die-off" to describe a population that has grown too big for the resources that sustain it, it's time to wake up. Time to turn to God.