Ever since the industrial revolution, our world has been running on oil. The black sticky stuff is the liquid remains of fossilised sea creatures, plankton and algae. Crude oil is recovered mostly through oil drilling, refined and separated by distillation, to produce petrol, plastics, fertilisers, solvents, adhesives and pesticides. About 80 percent of the world's readily accessible oil reserves are located in the Middle East, with 62.5 percent coming from the Arab 5: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait. The world at large consumes 30 billion barrels (4.8 km³) of oil per year. The current rate at which we consume oil is unsustainable as well as highly damaging to our environment. Industry leaders and analysts agree that the production of oil will peak before 2020, and gradually decline from there as oil sources become scarce. This will result in oil products becoming more expensive and finding alternatives will be necessary. Substitutes such as coal and gas are fini...

My trees, real and fake! What is Christmas/Yule without a twinkling fir tree, laden with baubles? It has been a custom to decorate spaces with greenery for festivals since pre-Christian times. Medieval churches purchased holly and ivy for Christmas decorations. In the town of Rye, holly twigs were wound up with broom and candles placed among them. Private homes were decorated likewise, with holly inside and ivy on the porch, and anything else that could be found green at that time of year, like rosemary, bay laurel, yew, box, broom, and mistletoe. The Protestant reformers weren't keen on all this "paganism" and sought to ban Yuletide festivities altogether. Christmas decorations disappeared between 1645 and 1660 when Christmas was actually illegal in England. When Christmas made a comeback, the 'kissing bush' was invented. The custom of kissing under a bush of foliage, five or six feet round, spread across the whole of England by the nineteenth century. Elab...