Where are the economists?

…The independent Energy Watch Group projects a major decline in global oil consumption from the current level of over 80 million barrels per day to 58 million by 2020 and 39 million by 2030 (not even half of current consumption). Since presently observed trends exclude filling the gap with nonexhaustible energy and green substitutes for refined oil products, the upbeat predictions about vigorous economic growth (accompanied by a slow but steady rise in oil consumption) during the coming decades appear to be unrealistic. Will the straining of Middle Eastern production capacities alter these projections, pushing out the time of reckoning by a few years?

There is no precise answer but it is clear that already the current generation will have to adapt to an oil-constrained world. Given all this, wouldn


If you entertained such expectations you would be speechless upon looking at the Table of Contents of top journals in economics.

As robustly demonstrated by the latest editions of the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Theory, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Econometric Theory, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Review of Economics and Statistics, European Economic Review, and International Economic Review, the looming oil emergency did not unfetter the wings of creativity in the highest echelons of the profession. (Ranking of journals was borrowed from Professor W.C. Horrace, University if Syracuse.)

Does the bulk of academe still believe in the simplistic myth that, thanks to the never-ceasing interaction between always-ready Mr. Backstop Technology and irresistible Ms. Unregulated Market, the world is already pregnant with a solution to its oil predicament, that the everlasting neediness of material goods will never ever meet unalterable physical constraints?

Energy Bulletin