Oil: Caveat empty

Without any press conferences, grand announcements, or hyperbolic advertising campaigns, the Exxon Mobil Corporation, one of the world’s largest publicly owned petroleum companies, has quietly joined the ranks of those who are predicting an impending plateau in non-OPEC oil production. Their report, The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, forecasts a peak in just five years.

Gas Pains: Summer fuel prices a portent of the crisis that’s here

Heinberg and others who subscribe to the peak oil theory… believe that once the peak is crossed, the supply of oil will be outstripped by demand, and our petroleum-based industrial civilization, with no other plentiful cheap energy source readily at hand, will inevitably collapse. The only question is how hard the fall will be.

What will we eat as the oil runs out? [update]

A major international conference on “Food Security in an Energy-Scarce World” is planned for June 23-25 in Dublin, Ireland. The conference will seek to answer the question: “How can the world’s population be fed without the extensive use of fossil fuels in the production, processing and distribution of food?” [The impressive list of participants is now available.]