Tag Archives: Malthusians

Smil: No imminent danger of peak oil, but will peak oilers admit it?

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Michael Giberson

Vaclav Smil wonders, now that 2012 appears to have yielded a new record level of global oil output, will “some catastrophists and peak-oil cultists” have to back off their gloomy outlooks? See Smil, “Memories of Peak Oil,” in The American.

Here is my prediction: No peak oiler will find 2012 oil production data as reason to move away from peak oil gloom.

We can even operationalize my prediction by adding some parameters: I predict that no blogger at The Oil Drum who is on record as believing world oil production peaked sometime between 2004 and 2010 will post on that site within one year an updated claim concluding peak oil will not happen until after 2030.

Dr. Ehrlich, call your office

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Michael Giberson

I ended my semester in “Energy and Environmental Economics” talking about resource optimism and resource pessimism, framed mostly as a big picture debate between Julian Simon and others against Paul Ehrlich and Neo-Malthusians. Simon reports being puzzled at how folks could look at data showing human health and well-being getting better and better and come to the conclusion we were all doomed and it was probably too late to do anything about it.

I’m sure upon reading this New York Times story the pessimists will be as troubled as ever: “Life Expectancy Rises Around the World, Study Finds.”