According to the conventional wisdom, we live in a post-industrial information age. This book, however, paints a different picture: We live in the age of oil. Petroleum fuels and feedstocks are responsible for much of what we take for granted in modern society, from chemical products such as fertilizer and plastics, to the energy that moves people and goods in a global economy. Oil is a nearly perfect fuel: Energy dense, safe to store, easy to transport, and mostly environmentally benign. Most importantly, oil has been cheap and abundant during the past 150 years. In 1998, two respected...

Oil is the lifeblood of modern industrial economies. Petroleum powers virtually all motorized transport, which in turn enables most economic activities and provides mobility for citizens. But oil is a finite resource that is steadily depleting. In the past decade, the phenomenon of global peak oil - the fact that annual world oil production must at some point reach a maximum and then decline - has emerged as one of the twenty-first century's greatest challenges. South Africa imports over two-thirds of its petroleum fuels, and history has shown that oil price shocks generally translate into...

The modern financial system was developed to support the rapid economic growth that took off about 200 years ago with the phenomenal amounts of cheap energy made available through the exploitation of fossil fuels. As a result, its viability is completely dependent upon the continuation of that growth. Unfortunately, the more recent fossil fuel discoveries, especially for oil, have tended to have lower production levels than earlier ones. In addition, greater amounts of energy are required to extract the fossil fuels leading to less net energy available for society. The Energy Return On...

Neoclassical growth theory is the dominant perspective for explaining economic growth. At its core are four implicit assumptions: 1) economic output can become decoupled from energy consumption; 2) economic distribution is unrelated to growth; 3) large institutions are not important for growth; and 4) labor force structure is not important for growth. Drawing on a wide range of data from the economic history of the United States, this book tests the validity of these assumptions and finds no empirical support. Instead, connections are found between the growth in energy consumption and such...