A case in point is a recent opinion piece that denounced peak oil as “sheer nonsense,” on the grounds that the world still has some forty years of oil left at today’s rate of production. The author of this piece somehow managed not to notice that the peak oil theory focuses on precisely the point he took for granted, the sustainability of today’s rate of production. The world may well have the equivalent of forty years’ worth of current annual petroleum production left in its reserves, but if the amount it can produce each year plateaus and then begins to shrink due to geological limits, a global economy founded on ever-expanding energy supplies is in trouble. That’s the essence of the peak oil position, and waving around claims about the absolute size of global reserves doesn’t address it at all.
Still, it’s not surprising that so many people are finding such ingenious ways just now to avoid understanding the implications of peak oil. As worldwide oil production remains stuck in its current plateau – a plateau that increasingly has had to be propped up by massive production of high-cost biofuels and tar-sand products – some of the most basic presuppositions of the modern world are turning out to be well past their pull dates. Once production begins to slip down the far side of the world’s Hubbert curve, that process is likely to accelerate, and much of what counts as conventional wisdom today will end up sitting in history’s dumpster next to phlogiston and the divine right of kings.
One example with sweeping implications unfolds from a particular mismatch between current economic theories and the practical realities of the age of peak oil. Perhaps the best way to introduce this example is to invite my readers to put on their walking shoes, pick up their canvas shopping bags, and join me in one of yesterday’s errands.
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