Quotes & Sayings About Peak Oil

Saudi Arabian oil production is at or very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future. There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption. — Matthew Simmons

My fear is that the global consumption of oil is going to increase, but European oil consumption has already reached its peak. The amount of oil available globally, I think, has already peaked. — Gunther Oettinger

Watch a French housewife as she makes her way slowly along the loaded stalls ... searching for the peak of ripeness and flavor ... What you are seeing is a true artist at work, patiently assembling all the materials of her craft, just as the painter squeezes oil colors onto his palette ready to create a masterpiece. — Keith Floyd

I'm not a peak oil person. I'm not a biohazard apocalyptic kind of freak. I don't have a supply of weapons or gold bars under my house. — Tim Hecker

Probably no single event highlights the strength of Campbell's argument (on peak oil) better than the rapid development of the Alberta tar sands. Bitumen, the world's ugliest and most expensive hydrocarbon, can never be a reasonable substitute for light oil due to its extreme capital, energy, and carbon intensity. Bitumen looks, smells, and behaves like asphalt; running an economy on it is akin to digging up our existing road infrastructure, melting it down, and enriching the goop with hydrogen until it becomes a sulfur-rich but marketable oil. — Andrew Nikiforuk

There are many disturbing news. We believe that the production of conventional petroleum reached peak oil already in 2006. The oil fields in the North Sea and the US are collapsing ... time is running out. — Fatih Birol

The nation was cracking under the weight of bloated modernity and all the patches pasted onto its excessive and malfunctioning hypercomplexity, and people were bewildered by the strange glitches, failures and shortages. Going forward, nothing would really work anymore as it was designed to, yet the hope and expectation that it would all magically recover dominated the chatter in the rare moments when people could step back from their frantic lives and share a meal or a drink. — James Howard Kunstler

Peak oil: The over-populated UK's ability to feed and supply itself for our privileged lifestyle requires the land and resources of other nations. Against a background of depleting oil resources, this is a dangerous strategy — Phil Harding

We are not good at recognizing distant threats even if their probability is 100%. Society ignoring [peak oil] is like the people of Pompeii ignoring the rumblings below Vesuvius. — James R. Schlesinger

Urbanization, the industrialization of food systems, and the building of highways may have contributed to GDP over the short term, but they have created societal vulnerability over the longer term. In a world of Peak Oil, scarce fresh water, unstable currencies, changing climate, and declining trade, true "development" may require implementation of policies at odds with - sometimes the very reverse of - those of recent decades. — Richard Heinberg

In my humble opinion, we should now have reached peak oil. So it is high time to close this critical chapter in the history of international oil industry and bid the mighty peak farewell. — Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari

This much is certain ... No initiative put in place starting today can have a substantial effect on the peak production year. No Caspian Sea exploration, no drilling in the South China Sea, no SUV replacements, no renewable energy projects can be brought on at a sufficient rate to avoid a bidding war for the remaining oil. — Kenneth S. Deffeyes

Regardless of how you feel about peak oil or global warming, the increased use of natural gas is a positive thing because it is being found at a rate that is faster than that of new oil reserves, it is relatively abundant and the reserves are longer lived than the oil reserves. It does not get the kind of attention it deserves. — Robert Bryce

One the one hand, our economists treat human beings as rational actors making choices to maximize their own economic benefit. On the other hand, the same companies that hire those economists also pay for advertising campaigns that use the raw materials of myth and magic to encourage people to act against their own best interests, whether it's a matter of buying overpriced fizzy sugar water or the much more serious matter of continuing to support the unthinking pursuit of business as usual in the teeth of approaching disaster. — John Michael Greer

We're at peak oil, peak water, peak resources, and so either we figure it out and let science lead or we head down a very bad, dark trail to where a lot of people aren't going to make it. — Henry Rollins

On good days, I can see the inherent goodness in people, and that human beings have a high capacity to learn and adapt. But things like the environment, nuclear weapons and ideas like peak oil - if you think about them too much, they can really freak you out. — Conor Oberst

Prominent exploration experts have recently predicted that total world production of liquid oil will peak by about the end of this decade-or a few years later if production does not rise much-and will decline thereafter. — Amory Lovins

The concept of 'peak oil' has penetrated the hearts and minds of people concerned about energy for the future. 'Peak fish' occurred around the end of the 1980s. — Sylvia Earle

The number of children is not growing any longer in the world. We are still debating peak oil, but we have definitely reached peak child. — Hans Rosling

Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning) ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide; bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are or have been; bridges to non-violence. Those bridges are effectively gone. — Michael Ruppert

Because of its sheer size and population, China is on a collision course with the planet. The country's oil use has doubled in the last ten years, and if the Chinese by 2030 use oil at the same rate as Americans do now, China will need 100 million barrels of oil a day. However, current world production is only around 80 million barrels per day, and is unlikely to rise much further before the 'peak oil' point is reached. There simply isn't enough oil in the ground to bring Chinese consumption up to Western levels-the global resource buffer is already being hit. — Mark Lynas

The era of cheap oil and natural gas is coming to a crashing end, with global oil production projected to peak in 2010 and North American natural gas extraction rates already in decline. These events will have enormous implications for America's petroleum-dependent food system — Richard Heinberg

A significant number of petroleum geologists believe that we will reach the global maximum of petroleum extraction within this decade or that we have already reached it. Peak Oil happened in 1970 in America, when over half of our oil that we gained from the soil was exhausted ... This is very disturbing, regardless of global warming. — William J. Clinton

There is a major problem of unsustainability of our environment, and we're seeing it in our natural resources, peak oil is probably upon us, and it can't be sustained. We're on an unsustainable path, and at this point in history we are responsible for that. We're going to have to change our ways. We're going to have to think through this problem. — Edgar Mitchell

The problem with cap-and-trade and programs such as carbon capture and storage is that they all assume that business as usual can continue. The financial meltdown and peak oil has pretty much demonstrated that business as usual's not going to work. — Andrew Nikiforuk

Oil production should peak out around the world in the early 1990s ... That means in five years' time we may have chewed up most of the possibility of further expansion of oil production. — James R. Schlesinger

I reject the peak oil theory insofar as it refers to technological limits on human ingenuity. — Robert P. Murphy

Transition Initiatives are based on four key assumptions:
1. That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it's better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.
2. That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.
3. That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.
4. That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognize the biological limits of our planet. — Rob Hopkins

So far in facing this huge [peak oil] challenge, our political/economic system seems unable to cope with reality. We are forced to carry on living in an illusion that we have so much time to adapt to post-oil that we don't even need to be talking or thinking much about what a world without plentiful oil would look like. Reality has become too dangerous. — Madeleine Bunting

Confronted with the twin disasters of climate change and an impending oil peak, it is hard to see how anyone could justify the assertion that the need to drive a car which can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles an hour in 4.5 seconds (the Audi S4 for example) overrides the Ethiopians' need to avoid recurrent famines, or the whole world's need to avoid the economic catastrophe we'll suffer if petroleum peaks too soon. — George Monbiot