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David Fleming
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Hubbert Linearisation plots the total “cumulative” production of a resource against the declining output year-by-year, producing an approximately straight line which, when projected into the future, gives an indication of when the resource will be exhausted, and how much it will by then have produced. See Kenneth S. Deffeyes (2006), Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak. Note that linearisation was not Hubbert’s first method: for a summary of Hubbert’s contribution see David Strahan (2007), The Last Oil Shock. Or to witness Hubbert’s prescience first-hand, watch the remarkable 1976 video clip, “Health Facilities and the Energy Crisis: A Conversation with M. King Hubbert”, available at https://vimeo.com/19340602 .

Campbell’s first book to signal the oil peak was Colin J. Campbell (1991), The Golden Century of Oil. His most influential article was Colin J. Campbell and Jean Laherrère, “The End of Cheap Oil”, Scientific American, March 1998, and his most influential book was Colin J. Campbell (1997), The Coming Oil Crisis, which contains a bibliography of the most important publications before that date.

See also L.F. Ivanhoe, “Updated Hubbert curves analyze world oil supply”, World Oil, November 1996, pp 91–94; David Fleming, “The next oil shock?”, Prospect, April 1999 and “After Oil”, Prospect, November 2000; Kenneth S. Deffeyes (2001), Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage; Jean Laherrère, “Estimates of Oil Reserves”, IXIAS-International Energy Workshop, Ladenburg, 19 June 2001, available at http://tinyurl.com/2zhjdt ; Roger W. Bentley, “Global gas and oil depletion: an overview”, Energy Policy, 30, 2002, pp 189–205; David Fleming, “The wages of denial”, The Ecologist, April 2003; and Steve Sorrell, Jamie Speirs, Adam Brandt, Richard Miller and Roger W. Bentley, “Global Oil Depletion: An Assessment of the Evidence for a Near-Term Peak in Global Oil Production”, UK Energy Research Centre, 2009, available at www.ukerc.ac.uk/asset/865EFEEF%2D4727%2D4146%2D87D03A239D0A1DC4/ .

For a summary of reputable estimates of the oil peak from the 1970s, see Steve Sorrell, Richard Miller, Roger W. Bentley and Jamie Speirs, “Oil Futures: A Comparison of Global Supply Forecasts”, Energy Policy, 38, 9, 2010, pp 4990–5003.

David Fleming
Dr David Fleming (2 January 1940 – 29 November 2010) was a cultural historian and economist, based in London, England. He was among the first to reveal the possibility of peak oil's approach and invented the influential TEQs scheme, designed to address this and climate change. He was also a pioneer of post-growth economics, and a significant figure in the development of the UK Green Party, the Transition Towns movement and the New Economics Foundation, as well as a Chairman of the Soil Association. His wide-ranging independent analysis culminated in two critically acclaimed books, 'Lean Logic' and 'Surviving the Future', published posthumously in 2016. These in turn inspired the 2020 launches of both BAFTA-winning director Peter Armstrong's feature film about Fleming's perspective and legacy - 'The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?' - and Sterling College's unique 'Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time' online courses. For more information on all of the above, including Lean Logic, click the little globe below!

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