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Your concluding remarks warned that "if we don't take action now… it will be too late for the climate, too late for humanity and too late to say sorry to Isabelle's generation". Thus, in the threat of "climate chaos", we have an heir presumptive to the good ol' Millennium Bug, about which very much the same sort of arguments were applied in the run-up to Y2K.

People were persuaded by the Doomsday scenario then, but they won't buy it again without some determined customer resistance. For example, they will want to know why UK competitiveness should be hampered by energy targets and regulations when the world's biggest energy consumers (China, India and the USA) frankly don't give a damn.

Worse still, these countries actually see energy consumption as a key performance indicator of national economic growth and prosperity, much as we did in the immediate post-war years. So, are UK energy constraints to be another self-imposed straightjacket? Will it all have been worthwhile if, at some time in the future, global warming is not proven to be the result of human activity?

Isabelle's generation will be critical about inheriting the environmental consequences of our negligence (eg, the legacy of increasing nuclear waste with no sustainable disposal policy in sight), but it will be equally unforgiving about actions that have been nugatory.

My generation is appalled by the slaughter, almost to extinction, of the North American bison almost 150 years ago in an attempt to solve the "Indian problem". History now shows that they got it wrong twice over, and today's desperate imperative to do anything on energy issues, as long as we do something, merely facilitates the practice of "energy fad surfing". This is the practice of riding the crest of the latest energy panacea, and then paddling out again to catch the next one.

Energy fad surfing is always absorbing for academics and researchers, essential reading for learned societies, lucrative for consultants and contractors - but frequently ruinous for clients.

The hard truth is that there are no new panaceas. What is new is the sheer number of techniques, some new and some relaunched versions of older methods, that are now positioned as panaceas.

What is not new is the need for our profession to think independently and to manage; assess situations; think through options; set and implement strategy; learn and go forward.

In an age of instant answers, this is how we justify our keep as professionals.

Ian Brown FCIBSE