Opening address

In recent years the public has been subjected to a barrage of reports, books, articles, television programmes; in fact every means of communication has been used to predict the more or less imminent exhaustion of the world's natural resources and fossil finds. These gloomy forecasts have been hotly contested by many distinguished and well-informed experts as so much doom watching and exaggeration. Then came the moment of truth when the price of oil went up. The argument was no longer an intellectual exercise. That one devastating stroke jolted the most complacent and delivered a painful swipe at the exposed, parts of that large section of the community which lives with its head buried in the sand.