Optimism about oil: will innovation or organization further the industrial age?

When M. King Hubbert first presented his model -- the famous bell-shaped curve for extraction of finite materials -- he was roundly denigrated. Even when 1970 arrived, and oil production in the United States reached its all-time time, people thought he had completely missed on his forecast of a 1970 peak.

Then came 1973, when the serious economic issues associated with a post-peak America began to reveal themselves. Peak extraction is not clear until after the peak has passed, but 1973 was sufficiently long after the 1970 peak to give Hubbert the last laugh.

Of course, Hubbert wasn’t laughing at the economic misery brought to the United States in the form of supply disruptions in gasoline, high unemployment, and a plummeting GDP. But his model predicted these outcomes, many years in advance. Similarly, Hubbert’s model predicted the current economic issues around the world.

According to the well-respected Hirsch report, prepared in 2005 for the U.S. Government by Robert L. Hirsch and colleagues, mitigation must begin at least twenty years before the world oil peak is reached, if the world is to avoid serious economic contraction. The Hirsch report, which was published a few months before world oil peaked, took a broad and deep view of technological and organizational approaches to dealing with peak oil.

More than thirty years ago, U.S. President Jimmy Carter tried valiantly to promote conservation of finite resources. He was summarily dismissed from political life because he was not promoting the myth of perpetual economic growth.

Because the world oil peak has passed, and because industrialized countries of the world failed to address the issue in advance, the economy will continue to contract, with each recession eclipsing the former one in depth and duration. Princeton Professor Kenneth Deffeyes, a long-time scholar of energy issues and the leading proponent of Hubbert’s model, concludes that the industrial world will be squarely within the post-industrial Stone Age by 2025. The industrialized countries simply ran out of time to innovate or organize a solution to declining energy supplies.
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