HT: The Oildrum
In The Coal Question from 1865, William Stanley Jevons examined for how long British prosperity could rely on cheap supplies of coal. His estimate was that within a hundred years, or perhaps one or two generations, coal production would decline due to increases in the cost of mining.
Given that coal was a non-renewable energy resource, Jevons raised the question
Are we wise in allowing the commerce of this country to rise beyond the point at which we can long maintain it?
His central thesis was that the UK’s economic prosperity was transitory given the finite nature of its primary energy resource, which was coal.
I must point out the painful fact that such a rate of growth will before long render our consumption of coal comparable with the total supply. In the increasing depth and difficulty of coal mining we shall meet that vague, but inevitable boundary that will stop our progress.
Although British coal production peaked in 1913, plainly Jevons got peak coal wrong in terms of limiting economic growth and this Industrial Revolution.
Jevons failed to appreciate that as the price of an energy source rises, entrepreneurs have a growing incentive to invent, develop, and produce alternatives, use coal more efficiently and develop technologies that cut the cost of discovering and mining resources.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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