Following the deprivations of the great depression and World War II the developed world entered a new period of escalating growth, a post-1950s "great acceleration .. a surge in the human enterprise that has emphatically stamped humanity as a global geophysical force."[REF]
In 1956, American geoscientist M. King Hubbert's peak oil theory predicted an inevitable peak of oil production, first in the United States (between 1965 and 1970), then in successive regions of the world - with a global peak expected thereafter [REF].