Peak Prosperity, Released on 1/6/24

Many people asked me publicly and privately to respond to Doomberg’s recent piece entitled “The Peak Cheap Oil Myth.” I respect Doomberg a lot, and I always welcome a good challenge to sharpen my thinking, and it was time to revisit the US shale oil miracle anyway, so this was a win-win-win opportunity. If you are thinking, “I don’t really care about oil, or oil data” let me gently suggest that you should. Whether you care about oil abundance, or not, its presence or absence will affect your entire economic life more than anything else. Not just at the gas pumps, of course, but because oil is integral to every single thing that is manufactured elsewhere and shipped to you, every calorie of food that lands on your plate, and to the rate of inflation you experience. With an abundance of high-quality (and high net energy) oil everything is possible, including making and recovering from colossal mistakes. With a deficit of oil, everything gets harder and harder, and more and more expensive. Mistakes are expensive and sometimes irreversible.

Christopher Martenson is a former American biochemical scientist. Currently he is a writer and trend forecaster interested in macro trends regarding the economy, energy composition and environment. He is the founder of PeakProsperity.com. As one of the early econobloggers who forecasted the housing market collapse and stock market correction years in advance, Chris rose to prominence with the launch of his seminal video seminar which later became a book called The Crash Course. Chris’ latest book (co-authored with Adam Taggart) is called Prosper!: How to Prepare for the Future and Create a World Worth Inheriting.