Peak Oil Concerns Sail Safely Beneath the Radar

SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) — When it takes a small university journalism project to uncover what is arguably the most critical challenge ever faced by industrial society you have Denial, with a capital


The issue in question – peak oil – is not new, having been proposed as a theory in 1956 by Shell Oil geoscientist M. King Hubbert. Simply put, peak oil describes the point when the maximum amount of oil will be – or according to some theorists, already has been – pumped out of the earth, at which time a permanent decline in production will begin. The consequences for industrial societies, built and dependent upon an inexpensive and reliable stream of energy and materiel derived from oil are staggering to contemplate.

In 2005 Project Censored featured a startling report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy that went missing in mainstream media. The report, formally titled