Following the dawn of the oil industry in the 1800s, demand for oil steadily grew. Initially driven by demand for kerosene as an illuminant, the world’s thirst for oil accelerated with the mass adoption of the internal combustion engine. But the demise of the oil industry has been predicted throughout its history. A 1909 newspaper article from Titusville, PA—where the U.S. oil rush began—contained predictions by the United States Geological Survey that petroleum supplies would be exhausted within 30 years. But the oil industry instead simply moved west. Subsequent predictions came and went. The most famous peak oil prediction was from Shell geophysicist M. King Hubbert. In a 1956 paper, Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels, Hubbert suggested that oil production in a region would approximate a bell curve, increasing exponentially during the early stages of production, reaching a peak when approximately half of a field had been extracted, […]