if you're not familiar with the concept of peak oil, to summarize it's the notion that for any finite resource, production of that resource can typically be represented graphically by a bell curve, where the peak production rate (for oil measured in barrels per year) is reached and from then on production rates decline.



For more than half the oil-producing countries in the world, peak oil has already been reached when looking at national (not global) production. For U.S. production - peak oil occurred in 1970! However, our demand for oil did not decrease, so we have imported more and more oil from foreign sources to make up the difference.

There is a lot of debate about peak oil, including some folks who claim that peak oil is all a propaganda ploy by oil-producing countries and companies to squeeze more dollars out of their barrels of oil. While it is probable that OPEC and companies like BP inflate their reserves in order to seem on more solid footing to keep their stock prices afloat - peak oil is in reality a no-brainer. Oil is a finite resource, therefore there *is* an end to oil that we will all have to live with. There are other sources of oil that have historically been cost-prohibitive to extract - heavy crude, tar sands and oil shale which we might be able to transition to, but there will still be a peak in global oil production, and it is very likely occuring now or soon enough. The Catch-22 of peak oil is that one cannot typically see that the peak has been reached until several years after, and by that point it is much too late to stave off the sociopolitical consequences that will occur in the mad dash to secure a dwindling supply of resources.

While switching to other fuel sources seems like a good idea, those too will have their peaks. Coal, Natural Gas, even nuclear power - uranium does have to be mined - will have their peak (some think peak uranium has likely occurred already). How anyone can not think going renewable (wind, solar, water) is the answer is beyond me.