Herbert Stein was an American economist who served in both the Nixon and Ford administrations. He is probably most famous for formulating Stein's Law, namely, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." This is, of course, an obvious statement. But I think it cannot be stated too often in a global society that believes in infinite economic growth. I propose to take a subset of that growth to demonstrate Stein's point. The subset is world oil and natural gas consumption versus discoveries. It turns out that Rystad Energy, a major consulting…