We are not of course _suddenly_ running out of oil at all. As the resource gets more scarce the price goes up and other resources are becoming increasingly viable alternatives. This is already happening with alternative energy sources incl ethanol etc. The changeover from oil to alternatives is not sudden but slow, has already begun, and I do not think it is going to be catastrophic in any way. In fact, I suspect that the next generation will not even really notice much of this transition taking place at all.
A different matter may be the effects of true catastrophes like volcano eruptions or earthquakes etc. and their impacts on certain natural resources. That then would be a sudden lack of certain resources after a catastrophe... - which is the opposite from what your colleague enquired about.
Cornelius
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Från: Discussion List for Contemporary and Historical Archaeology genom dan Hicks
Skickat: on 2009-01-14 15:48
Till: [log in to unmask]
Ämne: running out
A colleague in Contemporary History, who is working on catastrophes after the sudden lack
of a resource (he's thinking mainly of oil), has asked me for examples of similar sudden
lacks/running out of essential resources that may have been studied by historical
archaeologists. I was hard pushed to think of anything much, although this would seem to
be the kind of thing that we should have thought about as a discipline -- does anyone have
suggestions of published studies on this general theme from the archaeology of the modern
period?
Dan
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contemp-hist-arch is a list for news and events
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