Oil Prices and Recessions

You might like to take a look at this Paul Hodges blog. It argues that the US (and by implication it should be true of other Western economies) has suffered a recession every time that oil costs rise above 3% of global GDP. Hodges points out that oil costs are currently about 5% of global GDP and guess what the economic state of the US is? I'm no economist but Hodge's arguments strike me as a tad simplistic; and he hasn't established a causal relationship. Nevertheless, there is plenty of food for thought surrounding dwindling oil supplies, slow progress to renewable forms of energy, the high costs of the latter, an exploding global population, increasing lifestyle expectations of emerging nations (especially the BRICs) etc. Worrying times!