How important is oil to industrial societies?
HEINBERG: It’s about as important to industrial societies as water is to fish. The industrial revolution was, basically, all about fossil fuels. Coal came first, but when oil was harnessed, humankind discovered the cheapest, most abundant source of energy ever. As a result, we’ve increased our human population from just a few hundred million at the start of the industrial revolution, to over six billion, three hundred million now. We’re adding about a billion people every 12 years at current rates. This is something that’s never been seen before. We’ve added more people since 1999 than existed in the world just a few hundred years ago. This is an indication of the incredible impact that fossil fuels have had on human societies. Additionally, we’ve invented all sorts of technologies to take advantage of this energy subsidy through transportation, communications, manufacturing, etc. Machines now do things that were formally done by human or animal muscle power. We also do all sorts of th
