Predicting global health trends: why peak oil matters

Just a few weeks earlier at the American Public Health Association meetings in Boston, DB had discussed how the leadership of public health was conceptually blind to the unprecedented population-level health threats posed by peak oil. And here was yet another example purporting to be a guide to health policy-making for the next three decades.

Unfortunately, many academic public health researchers work in settings that encourage them to avoid the discontinuous change that awaits the world. Instead they are busy working away at “normal science” – some of them of great importance and merit – projections that literally ignore the driving forces of healthcare in the 21st century. In other words: They assume that technological progress and economic growth will always be positive.
Energy Bulletin