Session Abstract

Anxiety over resource depletion and exhaustion has been a common theme of public debate in recent decades. Yet these debates rarely engage with the long, complex history of resource use and depletion. Recent debate over so-called peak oil is only the latest in a long history of concerns that a crucial resource will run dry and lead to catastrophic change. This panel will historicize today’s anxieties over energy and resource scarcity by exploring the dynamics and results of previous resource famines and examining how different groups of people understood and represented the subject over time. What was the final result of previous resource scares? Why did they not lead to catastrophic change? What kinds of stories have people told about resource exhaustion over time?  How have class, race, politics, nationality, access, corporate power, consumption and other factors influenced their narratives? How can historians engage with scientists when discussing such issues?

The four presentations in this panel offer an international perspective on the history of resource exhaustion and draw on insights from multiple wings of the historical profession. Jeffrey T. Manuel’s paper draws on recent scholarship in envirotechnical history to analyze a series of mineral famines in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His research calls attention to ways in which fears of resource exhaustion have been leveraged to promote specific technological fixes over time. Andrea Ulrich’s paper brings an important international and historical perspective to the pressing problem of phosphorus depletion. Ulrich points out that there is a long history of worries over phosphorus levels and that the scientific discourse on the topic has been uneven and often redundant. Paul Sabin examines a well-known 1980 bet over mineral prices to consider the role of resource scarcity debates in the rise of the environmental movement and the conservative backlash against it. He argues that disputes between environmental scientists and economists over how to view the future are central to the growing partisan political divide around environmental issues in the United States. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson explores the cultural resonances of a more recent scare--the community of American “peak oil” enthusiasts who believe that petroleum scarcity will lead to the imminent collapse of industrial civilization. By analyzing their virtual subculture, he calls attention to fears of economic depression and national decline manifest in the belief that the United States is indeed “running on empty.”

By bringing together a richly diverse group of historians to discuss these issues from differing perspectives, this panel will give much-needed depth and historical understanding the question of resource anxieties and exhaustion narratives. This session fulfills AHA President William Cronon’s recent call for public engagement from historians on the pressing issues of the day--a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the problem of resource exhaustion will allow historians to contribute meaningfully to contemporary public debates surrounding resource anxieties.