Rethinking Our Relationship to Nature, 1920–1959 109
to individual, for research, training, and dem-
onstration projects, and (2) enter into contracts
with public and private agencies and institutions
and individuals for research, training, and dem-
onstration projects.Source: A. United States Annotated Code, Title 42: The
Public Health and Welfare (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing,
1995), SS7401, July 14, 1955, pp. 27-28. B. Public Law 159,
United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 69 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1955), 84th Cong. 1st sess.
chap. 360, July 14, 1955, pp. 322-23.Sec 5. (a) There is hereby authorized to
be appropriated to the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare for each of the five fis-
cal years during the period beginning July 1,
1955, and ending June 30, 1960, not to exceed
$5,000,000 to enable it to carry out its functions
under this Act and, in furtherance of the policy
declared in the first section of this Act, to (1)
make grants-in-aid to State and local govern-
ment air pollution control agencies, and other
public and private agencies and institutions, and
Document 94: M. King Hubbert on Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Energy (1956)
At about the same time that the federal government was assessing the extent of U.S. natural resources [see
Document 89], M. King Hubbert, a Shell oil geologist, was studying the known fossil fuel fields in the United
States and elsewhere. Although his predictions that U.S. oil production would peak at the beginning of the
1970s, if not sooner, and that world production would peak in the early twenty-first century were initially pooh-
poohed by many, by the 1990s, the overall accuracy of his predictions about U.S. oil production were widely
accepted, and his methods for determining the production peak of mined resources were being used to develop
up-to-date estimates of world oil supplies.^6 Then, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the drilling
technique known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking) began to be used, and previously inaccessible deposits of oil
and gas, whose presence Hubbert acknowledged, became available, disrupting half a century of concern about
the impending effect of oil depletion on national security and domestic well-being.
Hubbert expected that nuclear energy would eventually replace fossil fuels, but he viewed oil as an essential
resource for the near future.In the present review an attempt has been
made to obtain an approximate idea of the world
situation with respect to the requirements and
supply of fossil fuels, and of whether nuclear
energy from uranium and thorium will be able
to replace that from the fossil fuels as the latter
approach their inevitable exhaustion The initial
supply of fossil fuels, reduced to a common unit
of energy, consisted of about 70 percent coal, 14
percent petroleum and natural gas, and about 16
percent oil shale and tar sands. Should the world
continue to be dependent upon its fossil fuels
for its energy requirements, the peak of coal
production would probably be reached with the
next 200 years, and that of oil in about 50 years.
Of these initial fuel reserves, the United States
had about a third of the world’s coal, and about
half of its oil shale, but only about an eighth of
the initial supply of oil. Of this last, one third
has already been consumed. The reserves of coal
and oil shale in the United States are sufficient
for a few centuries, but the production peaks for
both oil and gas will probably occur in the com-
paratively near future. With regard to uranium
and thorium, the heat obtainable from 1 gram of
either of these elements, by means of the breeder
reaction, is equal to the heat of combustion of
3 tons of coal, or 13 bbl [barrels] of petroleum.
The uranium equivalent of all the fossil fuels in
the United States is only about a third of a mil-
lion tons. The so-called high-grade ores of the
Colorado Plateau will yield possibly 100,000
tons of uranium, but the large reserves are con-
tained in the low-grade deposits of phosphate