2009/01/01 by Charles A. S. Hall, John W. Day · 4 citations
Energy · Environmental Science · #Global Energy and Sustainability Research #Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies #Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy
paper · doi:10.1511/2009.78.230
openalex publication_date 2009/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
tal impacts of human activity, especial ly those related to climate change and biodiversity, but far less attention has been paid to the diminishing resource base for humans. Despite our inatten tion, resource depletion and popula tion growth have been continuing re lentlessly. The most immediate of these issues appears to be a decline in reservoirs, a phenomenon commonly referred to as peak oil because global production appears to have reached a maximum and is now declining. However, a set of related resource and economic issues are continuing to come home to roost in ever greater numbers and impacts?so much so that author Richard Heinberg speaks of peak everything. We believe that these issues were set out well and basi cally accurately by a series of scien tists in the middle of the last century and that events are demonstrating that their original ideas were mostly sound. Many of these ideas were spelled out explictly in a landmark book called The Limits to Growth, published in 1972. In the 1960s and 1970s, during our formative years in graduate school, our curricula and our thoughts were