Peak Oil 101: Why Isn’t This Class Available Yet in My College?

Currently, the list of academic institutions offering relevant and up-to-date information and courses geared to confront the imminent energy slope is awfully short. If you have ever tried to enroll in your local university for some hands-on Peak Oil learning experience, you may have found yourself disappointed in knowing that no such course is offered. Even in certain high-level economics courses that scrape at energy depletion and natural resources, you will probably be able to teach your professor a thing or two (if you are a keen reader of TOD) 🙂 .



Now, this is a very wide generalization. There are quite a few universities that are currently pushing the envelope in Ecological Economics, Energy Economics and developing some very insightful research (Dr. Hall’s EROEI paper is a good example of students and prof. working together in these issues). Every day, more and more faculty is ramping up on their knowledge of Peak Oil nationwide and passing on the news to students. Still, if students are not fortunate enough to be near the handful of universities that offer Peak Oil-related syllabi (including Duke, Oregon U, URI, Vanderbilt and others), chances are they will be stuck without any classroom education regarding declining energy and what to do about it. Even in universities where one may find Peak Oil information, open conferences and non-official meetings are significantly more frequent than formal classes and structured courses. Given that universities are the ideal spawning grounds for elaborating on and raising awareness of declining energy-related topics, it’s worth to analyze a bit more why such a weighty matter is not being fully discussed and integrated into university curricula all over the country.

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