Santa Barbara Independent: Today’s sustainable energy advocates could learn a lot from studying the way ancient societies had to deal with the first global energy crisis: Peak Wood. The oil of its day, wood served as the principal fuel of our ancestors, who scoured the planet, fought wars, and exhausted their wealth to obtain it. The Romans, for example, delayed Peak Wood by expanding their empire into wood-rich areas like France, Spain, and Germany. The English did the same by colonizing North America. …