What I’ve Learned Writing About the End of Oil on Medium

It’s sure looking like the loss of affordable oil will kickstart the economic collapse of modern capitalism

Crowded classroom, distracted students, circa 1946. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

This is beginning to look like a series. Following previous summaries of my writings on American politics and climate change, I thought it would be interesting to summarize what I’ve learned about oil, the master resource of our modern civilization. Among the 75 posts I have written since 2020, seven have dealt with the thorny question of where, when, and why our Age of Oil will come to an end. In this post, I’ll review and summarize all seven.

Envisioning The End of Oil

Inexorably wrapped up with the story of climate change is the story of fossil fuels and the demise of the master fuel, oil. How, when, and to what extent we will abandon fossil fuels is the most important driver of the most important question we face today: Can we limit global warming to a survivable level?

Updated Carbon Budgets Could Reset Our Global Warming Expectations

This post asks the question “How late is too late to quit fossil fuels?” One way to answer that question is to look at the projected temperature thresholds at which various…