Charles C. Mann Quote

President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 invited all forty-six U.S. governors to the White House to decry the imminent exhaustion of fossil fuels and other natural resources—the weightiest problem now before the nation. Afterward Roosevelt asked the U.S. Geological Survey to assay domestic oil reserves, the first such analysis ever undertaken. Its conclusions, released in 1909, were emphatic: if the nation continued the present rate of increase in production, a marked decline would begin within a very few years. Output would hit zero about 1935—a prophecy the survey repeated, annual report after annual report, for almost twenty years.

Charles C. Mann

President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 invited all forty-six U.S. governors to the White House to decry the imminent exhaustion of fossil fuels and other natural resources—the weightiest problem now before the nation. Afterward Roosevelt asked the U.S. Geological Survey to assay domestic oil reserves, the first such analysis ever undertaken. Its conclusions, released in 1909, were emphatic: if the nation continued the present rate of increase in production, a marked decline would begin within a very few years. Output would hit zero about 1935—a prophecy the survey repeated, annual report after annual report, for almost twenty years.

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About Charles C. Mann

Charles C. Mann (born 1955) is an American journalist and author, specializing in scientific topics. In 2006 his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus won the National Academies Communication Award for best book of the year. He is the co-author of four books, and contributing editor for Science, The Atlantic Monthly, and Wired.