The climate change debate has turned into a joke in Malta, with people from the non-scientific community talking climate change down, people who have zero scientific credibility.

Better to prepare for climate change and be wrong than not to prepare.

Malta is extremely over-populated, lacks an abundance of potable water and, from what I read, its underground water supplies are diminishing rapidly. Arable land is turning saline and Malta was not blessed with resources such as coal, oil or gas. If climate change is man-made, then Malta will struggle for its very own survival.

However, I don't see the climate issue as the real short-term threat to us all but rather resource depletion as the real elephant in the living room.

When one takes a close look at global oil production going forward we see a plateau and by about 2013 a rapid decline with new finds not keeping up with declining rates. Indigenous demand for oil in oil-producing states is rising, which means less for export. The UK, Indonesia, Mexico and the US are already at this stage in oil maturity. Who's next, Saudi Arabia? Its oil output has already declined while its population increases. Much of Europe now relies on Russia for natural gas and Russian oil production peaked in 2008 and is also in decline. Gas and oil follow the same bell curve.

What is an economy? An economy is the input of cheap abundant energy for a return of made goods or services. As energy declines so does an economy. What happened to the global economy when oil hit £147? A global economic depression ensued.

Copenhagen was not just about climate change but about mitigating our energy decline. The respected journalist and BBC Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason clearly stated in his blog a few weeks ago that President Barack Obama has now, reportedly, accepted there will be a global resource crunch within a decade, led by peak oil.

I think that climate change is a nice way to say peak oil has arrived and our lives will now change in ways we have never seen before.