ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the public health implications of rising energy prices and growing energy insecurity associated with a tightening of global oil supplies, and considers what peak oil' might mean for the future of globalization, development', and discourses of economic growth and progress'. It discusses some of the implications of peak oil that have been identified for the health care system and for population health. Peak Oil should be understood as an emerging threat to public health, and in particular an emerging threat to health equity. The public health sector can respond to this issue through three primary routes surveillance, mitigation/adaptation, and supporting new ways of measuring progress' and new development paradigms. Traditional notions of progress have relied heavily on economic growth rates that have been dependent on cheap oil, using measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that actually benefit' from oil spills and the ensuing clean-up.
