Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #105507

G. Daniel Bednarz, PhD, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Center for Public Health Practice, 3109 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, 412-383-2400, bednarzD@edc.pitt.edu

Within the next decade the amount of oil being extracted from the earth will peak and enter into decline, necessitating a transformation from a petroleum-based economy to one powered by alternative energy sources. Currently, there is scant discussion of how the public health system will prepare for and respond to this all-encompassing conversion. Nonetheless The Institute of Medicine's The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century (pp. 403-404) offers a starting place to conceptualize the decline of oil as a major environmental change that will affect the nature, structure, and functioning of public health. This paper has three objectives. The first is to summarize the empirically based literature on the decline of oil. The second is to outline for public health policy makers, practitioners, and academicians the ramifications set loose by the impending energy transformation. For example, because oil is integral to virtually all sectors of the economy— transportation, manufacturing and agriculture, to name a few, the economic disruptions created by the energy conversion will impose an absolute scarcity of essential resources. An irony is that the public health system could in this period of austerity be strengthened to preserve the collective health of the nation. The third objective is to stimulate research, training, practice, and education regarding the far-reaching public health repercussions of the impending energy conversion. For example, the mission of public health, “…assuring conditions in which people can be healthy,” will take on qualitatively and quantitatively different connotations in the post-oil era.

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