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THE Stone Age, as former Saudi oil minister Ahmed Yamani famously observed,
did not end because people ran out of stones. It ended because they found
something better. Will the oil age end the same way?

Last week, people protesting against high fuel prices brought parts of Europe
to a standstill simply by stopping fuel tankers leaving refineries. More
protests are threatened in Europe, and there are troubles brewing over expensive
heating oil in North America. Will the chaos that these protests cause be the
last straw, the point when we decide we need something better than oil? It may
be, if governments listen to what the protesters are telling us.

Economic growth and ballooning demand have more than doubled oil prices
across the globe over the past decade. But in much of Europe, the tax on vehicle
fuel is three times the oil price, and rises with it. This is supposed to curb
oil consumption and emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. But it
also means that a rise in oil prices that causes discomfort elsewhere leads to
real distress鈥攁nd revolt鈥攊n Europe.

One message of the protests is that it would be political suicide for
governments to make fuel pricey enough to really cut CO₂ emissions.
Europe is already weakening its resolve on greenhouse gases, and several
governments now want lower fuel prices.

In response to the howls of pain from consuming countries, oil producers are
boosting output. Whether this will be enough to reduce prices remains to be
seen. What is certain is that it will raise the world鈥檚 CO₂ emissions
by 0.1 per cent, roughly what Finland and Austria together emit per year.

But there could be a silver lining. High fuel prices are supposed to make
people adopt alternatives鈥攂ut they haven鈥檛. Europe hasn鈥檛 become a
paradise of hydrogen-powered vehicles because there are none on sale. Penalising
people who have no choice gets us nowhere. If taxes are to achieve anything,
they must push those who can choose between selling oil and developing
alternative energy in the right direction.

That means the oil companies. They have invested heavily in alternatives, but
while there is still oil to sell they have little incentive to bring them to
market. What they need is financial persuasion. Oil companies, for example,
dominate the manufacture of photovoltaic solar cells. If taxes discouraging oil
consumption were coupled with tax breaks for solar-powered devices, these
companies would be more likely to boost production and bring prices down.

The list of imaginative tax ploys is as long as the list of technologies now
waiting to be brought from test bed to market. If companies are given government
support they will set up distribution networks for vehicle fuels derived from
plant residues. European governments could widen the subsidies they already give
for recharging the fuel cells of commercial vehicles to cover cars, too. Tough
requirements for truly fuel-efficient vehicles would force designs off the
drawing board and into the showrooms. And while the world gears up to run its
cars on hydrogen generated by offshore wind turbines, or something more
futuristic such as wave power or geothermal energy, natural gas or liquefied
petroleum gas might be more widely adopted as transition fuels if they weren鈥檛
taxed so heavily.

Of course, no investment will be made in these things if, as bankers are
warning, high oil prices lead to economic recession. The right tax structure
could protect the prosperity of industrialised countries if it shifts us away
from oil. Prosperity might even grow if, say, revenues from oil taxes were used
to reward alternative technologies, which generally create jobs, and to keep
down income tax so that consumers see the benefit.

For now, these are merely the pipedreams of energy analysts. But if applied,
they might actually cut greenhouse emissions while giving tired industrial
economies new ways to grow. The oil companies know the days of cheap oil are
over, and that consumers will soon be ready to pay equally good money for the
alternatives gathering dust back in their labs.

We can鈥檛 let them wait until the oil runs out. Last week鈥檚 protests showed us
how vulnerable our precarious, oil-addicted, just-in-time economy is. All it
needs is for the lorries to stop rolling for a few days: the chickens starve,
bodies go unburied, hospitals shut and supermarket shelves empty. Potential
protesters know that, and will strike again until we kick our addiction.

If we want an end to oil shocks, the remedy is there. We have the technology.
All we need to do is give people the incentives that will make them use it.