Peak oil theory predicts that oil production will soon start a terminal decline. Most authors imply that no adequate alternate resource and technology will be available to replace oil as the backbone resource of industrial society. This article uses historical cases from countries that have gone...

The carbon curse is a new theory, related to but distinct from the resource curse. It states that fossil-fuel rich countries tend to follow more carbon-intensive developmental pathways than [if they were] fossil-fuel poor countries, due to a hitherto unappreciated syndrome of causal mechanisms....