Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil: An Australian View

This essay revisits the discourse on the limits to growth in light of peak oil, drawing from the article by Charles Hall and John Day. It reflects on the 1972 Club of Rome report, which highlighted population growth and resource depletion, and assesses its relevance today. The essay discusses how population growth and resource constraints, particularly the decline in oil reservoirs, pose significant challenges. It explores the relationship between population growth, food supplies, and human health, noting the impact of malnutrition and disease. The analysis extends to Australia, examining its population trends and strategies for addressing these issues through advancements in agriculture and a focus on food security. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for education and a biophysical perspective in economics to mitigate future risks.

Running Head: REVISITING THE LIMITS TO GROWTH AFTER PEAK OIL
Revisiting the Limits to growth after peak oil
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1REVISITING THE LIMITS TO GROWTH AFTER PEAK OIL
Using the Article “Revisiting the Limits to Growth after Peak Oil “summarize
the key learnings in terms of limit to growth. What are the means by which
Australia is now tackling these issues?
The article REVISITING THE LIMITS TO GROWTH AFTER PEAK OIL by Charles
Hall, John W. Day actually revisits the hot topic of the 1970 s regarding the world population
and the limited resources to support the humanity (Hall and Day 2009). In the year 1972, a report
had published as the Club of Rome Report which disclosed the current population growth rates
of that time and the depletion of the essential natural resources. The report was based on the
prediction of Thomas Malthus and his 1798 publication First Essay on Population who assumed
that an environmental catastrophe will be faced by the world by the year 2000 because “the
power of population is definitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for
man” (Hall and Day 2009).
However, the report was highly debated at that time because the resource conservation
missions and policies and various advanced technologies negated the assumptions. The
geometrical rise in the use of fossil fuel made people neglect Malthus’s prediction of wholesale
famine. The article of Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day, Jr. (2009) re- explores the
effectiveness and reality of the prediction in this century. The article brings forth the issue that
population growth and resource depletion is continuing relentlessly. The consequences of the
issue are not pleasant as it is giving rise to decline in the oil reservoirs which is a phenomenon
referred to as “peak oil”. After the maximum ascendancy the global production of oil is now
declining fast. In the year 1972 a book named Limits to Growth explicitly demonstrated these
issues but as Malthus pointed out “food is necessary to the existence of man……passion between

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the sexes is necessary, and will remain nearly in its present state”, it is difficult to control
(Neurath 2017).
The article concludes by supporting as well as criticizing the assumptions of the 1970s
saying that although the general assessment of the researchers at that time was less in terms of
time exacting and detailing, they were absolutely correct in their assessment of the coming
dangers of population growth and resource constraints. Therefore, it is time to reconsider the
issues and in the light of new world and new constraints especially the issue of “peak oil”. The
article recommends that in order to resolve the issue today people should make the issues central
to education at all levels of studies. Economics must be taught from a biophysical and a social
perspective (Hall and Day 2009). Only then there are some chance to save the world from stark
future.
The starvation, disease and deaths due to population growth – It was thought that the
cost-friendly fossil energy was sufficient to avoid famine and keep up with the needs of the
population. The agricultural productivity will be maintained and never face recession when
supported by the fossil energy (Coale and Hoover 2015). In this regard a scientist in the early
decades of the 20th century Garett Hardin quoted that “nobody ever dies of overpopulation”
suggesting that crowding is hardly a direct cause of death but can cause starvation and disease
which ultimately lead to death in maximum cases (Hall and Day 2009). For instance, in the years
1991 and 2006, the coastal residents of Bangladesh drowned in a typhoon though they knew that
these places were unsuitable to live but they had no other option to go in a congested,
overpopulated country. The survivors died out of starvation, squalor and disease (Hall and Day
2009). The population growth affects the flow of food supplies, quality of lives and the condition

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of human health. The food deprivation, hunger, poverty and malnutrition are closely connected
with the population growth issue.
Studies have found that the world food supply cannot meet the needs of the entire
population which is the root cause of hunger, poverty, malnutrition and disease (Warren 2015).
The high populated counties have inflated rates of undernourished people who ultimately die of
hunger and malnutrition. Surveys have found that due to high population and lack of food, the
malnutrition children suffer from infectious diseases causing death to more than 11 million
children under the age of five each year (De Onis 2017). Acute respiratory illness, diarrhea,
measles and malaria are among the biggest killers caused by population boom. The children who
are underweight due to starvation, are more likely to be struck by malaria and diarrhea. The
deficiency in Vitamin A weakens the immune system and increases the death toll per year
(Hickel 2016).
The problem of “peak oil” due to population growth- The oil production of the world is
getting highly hampered due to the finite amount to petroleum, gasoline and an infinite
population. In the year 1973, in the United States, there was a high energy crisis when the price
of oil hiked up to 9.5 $ per barrel and there was a gap of 5 % between the supply and demand.
People started lining up for gasoline ration (Hall and Day 2009). The electricity, food and home
heating oil equally became expensive. Again in the year 1979, gasoline priced $ 1. 60 and oil
priced $35 a barrel. The scientific reports displayed the rates of global warming, acid rains, loss
of biodiversity, depletion of the ozone layer, oil shortage, electricity shortage and also gasoline
line depletion are exceeding the limits and the world is falling apart. Although many
environmental issues are related with the concept of ‘limits’ such as the coral reefs and the rain

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forests are diminishing, the global climate is changing but the issue of resources and population
has now become the most serious issue in this respect.
When the major reasons behind this unprecedented population growth is explored in the
21st century, it comes out that improvements in public health, medical advances, increased
hygiene and sanitation, development of trade and transportation are the supports (Crist,Mora and
Engelman 2017). However, it should be kept in mind that all the above mentioned advances are
supported or aided by natural energy resources. Therefore, the entire circle is such: population is
growing by exhausting the natural resources, on the other hand this excessive use of resources
can drag the civilization towards a dark end. The energy resources mostly determine how much
people the earth can support and it is evident that some of those energy resources are at their
peak rates of production. With the growth of population, the energy consumption rates also
increase. In order to match the demands with the production, coal mines a dug deep, forests are
depleted and the oil is drilled in more complex environments. The decline in marginal returns
are ruining the new energy sources.
The lower prices have increased the consumption of resources – Countries have
continued to grow upwards (and marginal costs continued to fall) as the industries have found
unnoticed oil reservoirs with much more resource than those fields where the industry began.
The most important example is the black liquid that came gushing out when the ground was in
Texas (Hall and Day 2009). The carrying capacity of the earth for human has been expanded by
the advanced technologies collaborated with the market economics and various social –incentive
systems. According to Coccia (2014) it indicates that technology is a two-edged sword because
on one hand it is benefitting the world by cutting down the costs of the resources and on the

5REVISITING THE LIMITS TO GROWTH AFTER PEAK OIL
other hand increasing the consumption rates thereby ultimately pushing the world again towards
“peak” time and subsequent sustainability problem
The advanced technologies have reduced the costs of converting the natural resources
into energy. This fairly low expense of converting natural resources to energy is enabling most of
the countries to use natural resources as their main source of energy. The problem is that the
amount of natural resources that the earth holds are non-renewable and limited. According to
some researches an estimate has been given that says that the world is heading towards facing a
huge economic crisis if the consumption rates keep continuing like this and only oil for the next
20 years is left in the deep mines on the earth.
The Future scenario of the world- The main issue of the fossil fuel is that how long it will
be cheap and abundant in future. Almost two-thirds of the oil and natural gas supply have been
already used. Moe than 20 % of coal have been consumed. This is the petroleum age and human
lives solely depend on the energy resources but unfortunately this is going to end soon (Abas,
Kalair and Khan 2015). The oil recession issue which was realized in the 1970 s has been
realized by more than 50 most substantial oil producing countries. The question is not only about
how much oil is there down the grounds, but how much can be mined keeping in terms of the
sustainability of then civilization and future preservation of the resources. Almost all the great
reservoirs have been seismically dug and picked over. This issue which was ignored by people
due to the inaccurate understanding of its seriousness in the future years but it has come up as a
grave form of threat for the industrial society.
An overview of Australian population – There was a time after war years that Australia
had been running out of population and needed to welcome migrants to support the democracy
and save it from decline. Australia has a long and primitive history when the land was only

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inhabited by the aboriginal people (Hunter and Carmody 2015). After the European invasion the
land started being filled by migrants giving rise to a multicultural and democratic nation.
However, the country is suddenly going through the problem of overpopulation. This is mainly
due to the level of development that the country is running with. According to news reports the
country has added more than 400,000 people to its population in a year (Hastie 2018). Although
they are not building new cities, the major cities of the country like Sydney, Brisbane,
Melbourne and Perth are swelling with new residents (Hastie 2018). The current population of
Australia is 24.13 million where Perth is 2 million, Melbourne is 4.9 million, Sydney is 5.4
million and Brisbane is 4 million. It is predicted to swell up to 4.5 million, 8 million, 8 million
and 4 million respectively making a total population of 36 million by 2046 (Hastie 2018).
How Australia is dealing with the problems – Since agriculture is intricately linked with
the issues of population growth, hunger and human survival, in Australia it is one of the most
innovative, sophisticated and technically advanced industries. The county is succeeding in
feeding large amount of population at the same time keeping in notice the amount of energy
consumed. Food security is what the country focus on most. They believe that food security can
support the health and wellbeing of the country (Cheeseman 2016). The country was remote for
many years and therefore has enjoyed high quality, cheap and safe food for decades which
enables the, to produce enough food to feed each member of the entire population. Although the
country cannot claim to have solved the global food scarcity problem. At a global level they only
serve 2 % of the Asian population but they have enough food resources for their people own
people (Berry et al.2015). Their agricultural capability consists of adaptation to migration and
climate change.

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They follow a realistic view of the population growth and structure their agricultural
operations accordingly. They focus on producing foods that demand lesser energy resources and
labour cost. Energy is used in the agricultural industry for pumping water, cultivating,
harvesting, heating, drying and storage (Jones and Warner 2016). After the harvest, the
processing, storing, packaging and transportation also requires energy. The Australian food
sector knows to apply current practices in each step of the supply chain to consume less energy.
They are using fuel –efficient engines, precision and compost fertilizers, monitoring on the
targeted water delivery and not exceeding that amount for irrigation (abc.net 2018). They prefer
to use high –tech processing devices reducing the energy use in huge amount of food production.
They are using the local renewable energy sources as much as possible in the entire food chain.
The dependency on fossil fuels are reduced by avoiding the disposal of waste products. The
geothermal solar and wind are also used as a substitute to fossil fuels. They produce biogas by
using the ‘wet processing wastes’ in anaerobic digesters. In this way the Australian continent is
trying their best to eliminate the problem of hunger and malnutrition caused by high population
growth and also at the same time maintaining the energy usage rates.
Australia through the past few years has taken the energy resource consumption control
into grasp. They Australian government have realized that energy –efficiency can promote
stronger economy, cheaper energy bills, cleaner and healthier environment. The use of smarter
energy can reduce the environmental impact and preserve the remaining energy resource
reservoirs. The Australian Government has set a mission to advance energy productivity(abc.net
2018). They have also released set of priority policies which are the main focus of the
government. The Australian continent is tackling the issues of oil resource evaporation smartly.
It can be seen from the past years that they have placed moratorium on the car-reliant shopping

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centers. Keeping in mind that the diesel shortage will postpone the important clean energy and
essential rail project implementation, the Australian government has set aside the gas and oil
fields of diesel by legislation to avoid the dangerous effects of peak oil and de-carbonize the
economy(abc.net 2018).
They have developed the public education programs especially in schools rather than
educating the adults. Since the public participation in the issues are much essential they have set
the country on a war footing. In this respect the example of Musasino city taken where primary
school kids are taught to separate waste streams into seven streams rather than teaching the
adults. They area also made aware of the current situation that the world is in and what are future
implications of such behaviors. Motorists have been prepared for rationing the petrol(abc.net
2018).
Another effective step taken by the country is The blue box recycling system which was
primarily a waste management system applied by Canadian municipalities to gather waste
materials from the households for the purpose of recycling. In this program all forms of paper
materials, glass containers, steel cans, plastic packaging and aluminum cans were used for
recycling. Australia has realized that their best alternative fuel for transport is natural gas (cbc.ca
2018). Therefore, they have focused on developing compressed natural gas for trucks, buses, and
machines that are used for mining. The major issue is that there is no more time for transition to
green or hydrogen cars. The world is not running out if technology but running out of energy.
Keeping in mind this factor the country has increased the use of renewable energy to produce
electricity because electrification in the transport system has been considered to be one of the
effective solutions (MAISCH 2018).

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Apart from these the regulatory and financial system has become strong to fight with the
issues. Sudden price hike in the fossil fuels has proved effective and ban in the use of certain
substances such as chlorofluorocarbons has also been proved beneficial. The Green Tax or the
Carbon emission tax system on vehicles has up to greater extents reduced the energy resource
issues. The country is in the process of constructing advanced and efficient transport systems
which will run without depending on the fossil fuels (MAISCH 2018). The country is also
heading towards strategic planning of environmental sustainability policies which will bring a
better and healthier future for the country and the world as a whole.

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