The NYT draws attention to an op-ed in the top science journal Nature, arguing that peak oil (though the authors don’t use the term) is posing a huge strategic economic risk to the US, and that our government isn’t doing enough to deal with it. The Nature piece is gated behind a subscriber firewall, but the Times characterizes it thus:

James Murray of the University of Washington and David King of the University of Oxford point out that global oil production appeared to hit a cap of about 75 million barrels a day in 2005. Since then, they note, small supply bumps have caused big price gyrations, yet even when prices spike above $100 a barrel, supply appears incapable of rising to meet the demand.

The professors make only a glancing mention of the term “peak oil,” a widely promoted and widely attacked concept, but their argument resembles some of the less feverish versions of the peak oil case.

They essentially argue that oil supply now represents a large strategic risk to global economic growth, and that smart governments ought to be developing comprehensive plans and pushing hard to move their citizens into more efficient cars, onto public transit and so forth – a greener energy path that would also be good for the climate.

As the Times says, the peak oil argument has never received serious treatment in a journal as prestigious as this one.