3. Strategic Resource Trends: Peak Oil and Sweet Water
There are two key resources that business has taken for granted for at least a century:
cheap fossil energy and the availability of sweet water. There is a growing consensus
that the availability and cost of these two vital resources are going to significantly
change over the next decades.
Geologist M.K. Hubbert, who worked for Shell Oil, predicted in the 1950s that the U.S.
production of fossil energy would peak in the 1970s, and that world production would
peak in the decade of 2010. This forecast was denied by the oil industry until recently.
However, the U.S. production did peak during the 1970s, despite massive investment in
exploration and new extraction techniques. Many signs indicate that Hubbert’s forecast
will be true for the world as a whole.