A compelling article when it was written, and I think many of his potential solutions to problem have promise. But the article really suffers from not having been revised in the intervening years. For example, the view of oil is very '90s: everything will be fine until oil stops coming out of the ground, and then we'll have a crisis. But oil won't stop coming out of the ground for decades, so we have plenty of time to deal with it.
But the idea behind peak oil is that even a relatively small decline in oil can lead to drastic increases in prices, which would have devastating effects on the world economy. Peak oil isn't even addressed in McCarthy's writing, as far as I can tell.
Related is agriculture: McCarthy portrays it as an issue of water and arable land. But it's also an issue of fertilizer, and fertilizer production is dependent upon petroleum. So if we have a drastic spike in petroleum prices, that will lead to a drastic spike in fertilizer costs, which would lead to a drastic spike in food costs. See Egypt for an example of what happens when that occurs.
Finally, the Ehrlich/Simon bet. Again, compelling at the time, but the bet ended in 1990. 21 years ago. That's hardly a compelling statement on the state of the world in 2011. What would the result of that bet been had it been replayed from 2000 to 2010? From looking at this:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/
it looks like all 5 metals in the bet have risen in price over the last decade.
EDIT: I found one reference to peak oil on the Hydrogen page, but it's given no serious analysis.
But the idea behind peak oil is that even a relatively small decline in oil can lead to drastic increases in prices, which would have devastating effects on the world economy. Peak oil isn't even addressed in McCarthy's writing, as far as I can tell.
Related is agriculture: McCarthy portrays it as an issue of water and arable land. But it's also an issue of fertilizer, and fertilizer production is dependent upon petroleum. So if we have a drastic spike in petroleum prices, that will lead to a drastic spike in fertilizer costs, which would lead to a drastic spike in food costs. See Egypt for an example of what happens when that occurs.
Finally, the Ehrlich/Simon bet. Again, compelling at the time, but the bet ended in 1990. 21 years ago. That's hardly a compelling statement on the state of the world in 2011. What would the result of that bet been had it been replayed from 2000 to 2010? From looking at this: http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/ it looks like all 5 metals in the bet have risen in price over the last decade.
EDIT: I found one reference to peak oil on the Hydrogen page, but it's given no serious analysis.