Energy is only part of a much larger puzzle at this unique time in the world. We have witnessed an unparalleled series of events in banking and credit markets with repercussions throughout the world economy. Over the months it has become clear that no one is immune and that globalization is not a concept, it is a reality.

We listen with concern to various mercantilist reactions around the world which is a fairly predictable reaction to the fact that no government is immune from its citizen"s anger - not the Americans, Europeans, Russians, Iranians, Kazakhs or Chinese. In responding to our citizens" pain and anger, we are challenged to avoid making the mistakes of the past. Ill-advised, but understandable reactions to the crash of 1929 contributed to setting the preconditions for global conflict. Many of those protective instincts are at large today.

It is clear that a number of structural imbalances, e.g. exchange rates and trade, went too far in recent years and it is also clear that our institutions, our governments and most of us are too far in debt. But there are no institutional, national or individual solutions to the problem. In energy, we face the risk that short term pressures on financing, credit and prices will lead to familiar mistakes. The upstream conventional energy markets are not likely to be, nor should they be targets for economic stimulus packages. There are better energy targets in grid energy, renewables or in end use efficiency. But there is the risk that upstream oil and gas will be under-funded particularly in light of the collapse in oil and soon, gas prices. By now we should have learned ways to address many of the issues facing global energy markets. They have been subject to radical cycles before such as the one triggered by the oil embargo of 1973, the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and yet another with the cascade of currencies in Asia - the world"s growth locomotive at the time.

Each time the market has set about righting itself - with the knowledge at hand and each time the market adjustment has overshot, setting the stage for a subsequent cycle. The reaction to the 1973 crisis saw the Shah asking the US to buy more Iranian oil already in 1977. The 1979 Iranian revolution returned to haunt markets in 1985 when Saudi Arabia initiated net-back pricing. Today"s high prices started in 1999 with an OPEC consensus that has since that time sought to restrict supplies to the market. This has been aggravated by deteriorating investment conditions.

This time the market reaction took ten years because while OECD demand was beginning to react to higher prices, subsidized non-OECD demand in China, India and the Middle East masked the predictable market reaction. Up until now.

Shall we react to this price collapse as we have in the past? Will investors" confidence in long term demand growth fade and investment in capacity fall off? How soon will consumers forget $147 oil and abandon their greater energy awareness?

Will sharply lower oil prices provide a temptation to delay actions on efficiency and low carbon fuels like renewables and nuclear?

Carbon prices have collapsed in the European Trading System (ETS). Does that mean investment in green energy is disincentivised or that the ETS has failed? Or that we need to rethink auctions and other trading mechanisms as we look out over a longer time horizon of shrinking carbon allowances?

We are all players in global oil and coal markets and globalizing gas markets and we all seek financial and other business service in the same markets. As technologies are demonstrated and their economics improve, we will all need the same technologies to address climate change. There is increasingly only one marketplace.

Davos is over and pundits are trying to reduce it"s messages to one-liners like a return to financial mercantilism or the end of long-standing free-market principles. Shall we reopen the desirability of progressing towards international economic integration or take advantage of the reality that we are already globalized and recruit that increasing integration as a tool for meeting the challenges?

The upcoming G20, G8 and climate negotiations in Copenhagen are all opportunities to restore confidence in ourselves and our institutions. Work on financial markets in the G20 is promising. Much damage has been done and enormous value lost by everyone. But the most dangerous path possible would be that of resorting to gratifying recriminations of others and defensive isolationism or protectionism. There are only global answers to these unique times.