A friend of mine has totally drunk the kool-aid on this one and basically asserts that we should just give up and start
dismantling industrial civilization. I think this is utterly wrong
for several reasons:

1. Noone really knows how much oil there is. As Decius points out,
everyone who ventures to make a prediction has an agenda. The
supply will contract as existing fields dry up but that will
just raise the ante to develop e.g. Siberia and better
technology to explore and tap other resources.
1b. We won't run out of oil overnight.
1c. There's also the matter of coal which I think is generally
agreed to be much more plentiful than petroleum.

2. *right now*, fuel cells/solar/wind/nuke/... is more expensive
than oil but its only a matter of time that tech improvements
vs oil supply contraction cause the curves to cross. Gas
is going to have to cost a lot more than $2/gallon for people
to quit driving huge SUVs.

And then there's fusion power... everyone seems to have forgotton about that one. I have a great deal of confidence that sooner or later, it will be made practical. It may be the case that you have to have a plant the size of Rhode Island for it to be economical and then ship the energy around as Hydrogen or something.

I think the key is that none of these changes are going to
happen overnight. People will change their behavior as energy
prices rise. I think this will be a gradual process.

If the oil's there in the ground, why not use it? We're going
to have to cope with running out of it sooner or later so why
not sooner?

At the end of the day, the assertion that the end of petroleum
will predicate the fall of industrial civilization is just another
crackpot doomsday theory. Humanity will show unbeilevable
ingenuity in the face of the prospect of reversion to
a pre-industrial state.

RE: Observations and the State of Affairs - Peak Oil