Smil’s final section tackles the question of how long oil will last. Unfortunately, any answer depends on many unknowns that would require significant assumptions and yield unreliable answers, so Smil uses this section to give a historical perspective on oil’s role in global energy supply, as well as a discussion of the fallacies and facts of peak oil. He does a good job dispelling the alarmists’ arguments about peak oil ultimately leading to a catastrophic breakdown of society:
“Historical evidence is clear: energy transitions have always been among the most important stimuil of technical advances… promoting innovation.. higher efficiency.. and resource substitution. … To think that these stimuli will cease with a gradual move away from oil is baseless: they have actually been at work for some time…” (p. 175)
gurufocus
