"Peak Oil And Famine: Four Billion Deaths"

At some point in the early years of the 21st century, there will be a clash of two giant forces: overpopulation and oil depletion. That much has been known for a long time. It is also well known that population must eventually decline in order to match the decline in oil production. A further problem, however, is that it will be impossible to get those two giant forces into equilibrium in any gentle fashion, because of a matter that is rarely considered: that in every year that has gone by — and every year that will arrive — the population of the earth is automatically adjusted so that it is almost exactly equal to its carrying capacity. We are always barely surviving. Population growth is soaring, whereas oil production is plunging. If, at the start of any year, the world’s population is greater than its carrying capacity, only simple arithmetic is needed to see that the difference between the two numbers means that mortality will be above the normal by the end of that year. In fact, over the course of the 21st century there will be about 4 billion deaths (probably about 3.6, to be more precise) above normal.

Let us refer to those 4 billion above-normal deaths as "famine deaths," for lack of a better term, since "peak oil" in terms of daily life is really "peak food." There will, of course, also be famines for other reasons. It is also true that warfare and plague will take their toll to a large extent before famine claims those same humans as its victims.

The increase in the world’s population has been rather simple: from about 1.6 billion in 1900 to about 6.1 billion in 2000 [9]. A quick glance at a chart of world population growth shows a line that runs almost horizontally for thousands of years, and then makes an almost vertical ascent as it approaches the year 2000. As Gordon and Suzuki said in 1990, "more people have been added to the Earth during the past 40 or 50 years than have been added since the dawn of man"...

Another point to keep in mind is that the relation between population and oil production is one of cause and effect. The skyrocketing of population is not merely coincident with the skyrocketing of oil production. It is the latter that actually causes the former. With abundant oil, a large population is possible — ignoring, of course, the fact that environmental degradation may eventually wipe out those human numbers anyway. Without abundant oil, on the other hand, a large population is not possible...

Incidentally, carrying capacity does not increase in direct proportion to the number of barrels of oil per person, because as the population goes up there is more strain on the environment. As a result, we were comfortable enough with 1 barrel per person in 1940, but less comfortable with 4 barrels per person in 1990...

Human population will collapse in any year in which there is a difference between the initial population and the carrying capacity...

The famine deaths do not become zero until nearly the end of the 22nd century, when the population reaches about 1 billion, with almost no oil left, duplicating the conditions of the year 1900 or earlier...