Is Americas Oil Age Already Waning?
The United States is at a crossroads: Americans want more oil, but they are split on whether it’s worth the international political cost or the environmental damage. The situation seems hopeless, unless you’re a geologically cross-trained political scientist, that is. Then the oil-politics paradox hints at a time of rapid change and innovation. That’s what it is beginning to look like to Karen McCurdy, a political scientist at Georgia Southern University who is applying geological concepts of change to political science. She’s coming up with a fertile way to study and learn about the connections among oil, politics, and democracy. McCurdy will be presenting some of her geological/political science research and some inklings of what it may say about the past and the future on Sunday, 16 October, at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Salt Lake City. Political scientists have traditionally viewed government and political systems in terms of how they stabilize and k
