See Rachel's Precaution Reporter PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE: THE CASE OF PEAK OIL by Dan Bednarz, Ph.D.

Turning specifically to public health, most textbooks acknowledge the importance of energy but only in the contexts of its environmental pollution challenges and its necessity to spur economic development and growth. There is scant literature on its scarcity or depletion; overall, it is taken for granted that fossil fuel energy will always be available and cheap. Historically, this is a pardonable but nonetheless an immense oversight or misconception that now must be rectified; and let me emphasize that many students are reading in their public health textbooks that we have a 50 year supply of petroleum remaining, and 300 years of coal.

Our discipline must revise its understanding of energy in its generic sense and petroleum in its uniqueness as more than a source of energy. For example, petroleum is integral to the cultivation, processing and distribution of food; and it is an ingredient of a vast array of products, from toothbrushes to pharmaceuticals to computer cases. Also it is associated with population growth and lifestyle comforts. I only mention transportation.

See also Public health in a post-petroleum world by G. Daniel Bednarz, PhD.