The capitalist engine of our economies is constantly looking for more stuff to produce and sell in order to increase private wealth; meanwhile...
A slew of reports published this year have pointed to a coming tightening of global oil supplies. I recently considered six reports written by groups as wide ranging as UK business leaders, the US military, insurers Lloyds, Kuwait University engineers, the German military and an Australian think tank. Taken as a whole they refer to aging oilfields, oil industry underinvestment, the limited output of unconventional sources such as oil sands, increasing global demand and the possibility of the world being close to peak oil, the geological natural maximum output.