Peak petroleum: fuel for public health debate.

摘要

"The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power," declared H.G. Wells in his 1914 classic, The World Set Free. "Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal." And if energy use is a defining feature of human history, energy is also, "a critical, yet hugely neglected, determinant of human health" (Horton 2007). This issue of the Journal focuses on a key part of the contemporary energy picture: petroleum. When The World Set Free was published, the world's first major oil well in Azerbaijan was nearly 70 years old, and Pennsylvania's Drake Well had just turned 50. The petroleum era was underway: gasoline-powered automobiles had appeared late in the 19th century, Ford's first assembly line was just opening, and automobiles would revolutionize transportation within a decade (Flink 1990). Plastics manufacturing from petroleum feedstocks would soon explode with the development of polymerization, upending materials science from packaging to textiles to furniture (Fenichell 1997). The Green Revolution, beginning in the mid-20th century, would rely on petroleum for irrigation, mechanization, agro-chemicals, and transportation to lift millions out of hunger. (Pimentel and Pimentel 1996) As one energy executive wrote, "More than any other raw material... petroleum has shaped our lives..." (Maugheri 2006).