Ten Reasons to Take Peak Oil Seriously
Robert J. Brecha
Additional contact information
Robert J. Brecha: Physics Department, Renewable and Clean Energy Program, Sustainability, Energy and the Environment (SEE) Program, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469-2314, USA
Sustainability, 2013, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-31
Abstract:
Forty years ago, the results of modeling, as presented in The Limits to Growth , reinvigorated a discussion about exponentially growing consumption of natural resources, ranging from metals to fossil fuels to atmospheric capacity, and how such consumption could not continue far into the future. Fifteen years earlier, M. King Hubbert had made the projection that petroleum production in the continental United States would likely reach a maximum around 1970, followed by a world production maximum a few decades later. The debate about “peak oil”, as it has come to be called, is accompanied by some of the same vociferous denials, myths and ideological polemicizing that have surrounded later representations of The Limits to Growth . In this review, we present several lines of evidence as to why arguments for a near-term peak in world conventional oil production should be taken seriously—both in the sense that there is strong evidence for peak oil and in the sense that being societally unprepared for declining oil production will have serious consequences.
Keywords: peak oil; natural resource limits; non-conventional oil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/2/664/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/2/664/ (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:5:y:2013:i:2:p:664-694:d:23578
Access Statistics for this article
Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu
More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().