When the oil gives out (new book excerpt)

“One way to evaluate the prospects of Eldertown might be to start from the viewpoint of one of the more apocalyptic environmental groups. The peak oil movement focuses tightly on the issue of energy, the Achilles heel of industrial society. Convinced that global oil production will soon peak — or perhaps already has — the peak oilers predict a horrendous cascade of disasters in our near future.”
(Roszak was author of the 60s classic The Making of a Counter-Culture. In this book, he predicts that as the Baby Boomers become seniors, they will shake society once again – for the better)

Blessing or a burden: population, reproduction and the demographic imagination

Whatever methods of restraint we eventually enact – and I think we will enact them, so let them be good ones, that lead to a justice and honorable society – we must begin from this – every child that we have, every birth is a gift, and if our gifts are fewer than in past years, we must only treasure them the more.

Peak People: The Interrelationship between Population Growth and Energy Resources

This paper investigates the link between population growth, energy resources and carrying capacity at a global level, to determine if there might be dependencies and if so, how they could be modelled. Different qualities of energy resources may interact differently with population growth. Finally the implications of a peak in energy resource availability on population growth are examined.

Malthus and vice

Malthus might have earned more respect for his Law of Population if he hadn’t proposed it just at the moment when human production first tapped into the coal seams and oil streams that fueled the industrial expansion. It is only today, when those resources have peaked, that we are revealed to be much more like the other animals than we thought…