Ruth Brandon: The price we pay for petrol

In 1956 M. King Hubbert, a research scientist with Shell, produced one of the world’s most notorious graphs: a bell-shaped curve describing unrestrained production of a finite resource.

The curve peaks when about half the resource is gone, and thereafter declines. Hubbert fitted his curve to American oil production statistics, predicting they would peak in 1972. People scoffed, but Hubbert was proved right; and, in 1973, when the Middle East cut back production, America was caught short.