Some perspective on US oil consumption
US oil consumption, February 1979: 21,287 thousand barrels/day
US oil consumption, August 2008: 19,267 thousand barrels/day
(This is simply an illustration of the decreased oil intensity of the American economy.)
Source: EIA
Also, an interesting side note to the leaked IEA report (if anyone has a link for the original Financial Times article, I’d appreciate it) that has gotten largely overlooked is that the IEA projects oil consumption to fall in the developed world from now until 2030. They project all demand growth to come from the developing world.
A related thought prompt: Macroeconomists have different models to represent the short run, the long run and the very long run. Peak oil models of oil production represent the long or very long run. Is the exclusion of price from peak oil models (and, thus, treating demand as exogenous) like the classical dichotomy in long run macroeconometric models? If so, does this undermine the basing of policy decisions on peak oil?
This is a question of time horizon, scale and feedback loops.
