Presenter - Corinne Podger Speaker - Bill Clinton, former US president; Ken Livingstone, mayor of London; Gary Singer, acting mayor of Melbourne; Tricia Phelan of non-government environment organisation, Environment Victoria

More than 1,000 consumers were asked, 'If utilities buying renewable power on your behalf raised your rates 5 percent for the same amount of power and the entire cost was attributable to the higher price of renewables, would you be willing to pay an extra 5 percent?' More than half of respondents, with a margin of error of about 3.5 percent, said they would be willing to pay the increase.

But now, a growing number of Americans are shunning power lines, choosing to live "off the grid," without commercial power — and still enjoying their computers and large-screen televisions.

The figures come amid increasing doubts about the health of Venezuela's oil industry, whose output has been steadily declining according to outside estimates.

Orinoco is important, not because of current production from the region, a modest 600,000 barrels per day at a cost of $20 per barrel, economic but well in excess of the cost of Saudi or even Mexican offshore oil, but because of the size of the tar sands deposit. This has been variously estimated at between 1.2 trillion and 1.8 trillion barrels of oil, with higher estimates more recently. At the latter figure Orinoco represents 34% of all known world oil reserves, and 58 years of world oil consumption at current levels.

It took quite a while, but it appears that the Bush Administration has finally gotten around to acknowledging that Iraq has an oil problem. The Government Accountability Office is about to release a report that estimates 100,000 to 300,000 barrels of oil goes missing every month. According to the New York Times, the GAO will not offer a conclusion about what specifically is happening to the missing oil, other than it is probably lost to corruption, smuggling or just bad accounting.

A new estimate reveals vast new reserves, enough to make Iraq the world's second-largest producer. And much of the oil lies, unexpectedly, in Sunni territory Iraqis oil traders, on the other hand, tell me they think they know exactly where the stolen oil is going — the militias appropriate it to arm and feed the rank and file.

Yesterday's publication of the first in our Peak Oil series reports has sparked some debate and generated feedback which sadly indicates just how ill-informed the majority of the population seems to be on this issue.