Last oil shock

I ALWAYS THOUGHT geography was unspeakably dull. In school I was so contemptuous of the subject I did no revision and provocatively pat my head down and went to sleep during the exam, knowing the invigilators were powerless to intervene. Mrs Couch failed to see the fanny side of my score of 9 per cent and demanded a rematch. A few sallen days' revision lifted the tally to 27 per cent, and with honour served I was then allowed quietly to drop the subject.

Only many years later did I discover that geography contains a kernel-geology-that, although based on the study of ancient events, is essential for understanding the modern world. Taken with a dose of maths, it explains the basis of what may turn out to be one of the biggest crises ever to face humanity. How was it that Mrs Couch didn't know this, or couldn't make me see it? It was the mid-1970s, just a couple of years after the first oil shock, when the importance of oil and other natural resources was high on the agenda. More import antly, it was clear by then that an ingenious method for predicting when the oil would start to run short, developed by a Shell geologist named M. King Hubbert back in the 1950s, had already scored its first major success. In 1956 Hubbert predicted American oil production would go into terminal decline within fifteen years, and it did. The implication was clear: the same method could be used to calculate the date on which worldwide oil production would inexorably begin to fall. Half a century later, all the evidence suggests that moment is almost upon us.