What Can We Learn From Peak Whale Oil?

The energy industry is based on what was once thought of as an inexhaustible natural resource, but over-exploitation and a growing reliance on oil has made extraction more and more costly and difficult as previously abundant areas have run dry. What’s more, in the areas where this natural resource has been depleted, what’s left behind is environmental devastation. We have reached peak oil–peak whale oil, that is. The year is 1846.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, sperm whale oil, known as spermaceti–which is extracted from the…