When I was at school, the cause of the industrial revolution was attributed to Watt's steam engine, and even at university the expiry of fossil fuels was never discussed.

There was a tacit assumption that it would never happen, or if it did, ingenuity would find a substitute. Our aim as engineering students was to design better engines, not because it would eke out a scarce fuel, but because it reduced running costs. We never had a single lecture on alternative energy, but that was more than 60 years ago.

Alastair Harper's gloomy forecast (letters, July 16) of the end of cheap energy seems to me unrealistic. I do not think the adjective cheap is right for energy.

Energy will always be affordable because it is the basic resource of civilisation. The benefits of abundant energy have been enormous. The indirect benefit is seen in the increased expectation of life in countries with large per-capita consumption.

Abundant energy has created lifestyles that are difficult to reverse. A century ago family members tended to remain in or near their natal locality, where they could visit the extended family on foot.

When cheap buses became available they moved further afield, but tended to be on bus routes. Cheap cars removed the bus-route restriction for both families and jobs, which is one reason for the difficulty in getting commuters back on public transport: insufficient numbers live on common routes.

Now families are much further apart, in many cases abroad, but can still keep in touch through cheap air travel. Now the advocates of dear air travel want to break up that family connection, despite the importance of family stressed by politicians.

It is not so long ago that cheap air travel was cited as being good for international relations.

These and other factors will make it difficult to make individual transport too expensive. I know from our extended family in the US that members often live hundreds of miles apart, but still keep in regular touch by car. Their dispersal came about as it did in the UK, by following job opportunities in the expanding economy. Expensive energy will not solve that problem.

In any case, I do not see the dire disaster forecast by Mr Harper. Fossil fuel may be on the way out, but we can always build nuclear power plants.

The alternative is to become the poor relations of countries such as France, China, India, et al, which have no hang-ups about nuclear energy. Faced with that prospect, the nuclear objections will melt like summer snow.

Chris Parton 40 Bellshill Road Uddingston.