A new piece about peak oil, entitled “Peak oil – are we sleepwalking into disaster?” has been written by Dean Carroll. Below follows a short teaser and a link to the entire article.
Governments and oil companies have been silent over the ramifications of fossil fuel depletion, but we have now reached the moment for an urgent debate on a future without cheap oil. Like climate change, peak oil is often perceived by the more pessimistic analysts as one of those apocalyptic conundrums where we are already past the tipping point – meaning that any solutions human ingenuity can deliver will simply mitigate the worst-case scenario. Certainly, oil-field discoveries have been in sharp decline since the 1970s. And there is a consensus that peak oil has already been reached, at some point between 2004 and 2008. It does not bode well at a time when huge emerging nations like China and India are experiencing energy-hungry industrial revolutions. China’s economic growth was 11% last year, and in India, it reached 9%. Increased demand could soon outstrip depleted supplies.