In some sense, peak oil happened. All of the easily accessible, abundant oil has been used up. Now you need a higher level of technology to extract oil. Because

In some sense, peak oil happened. All of the easily accessible, abundant oil has been used up. Now you need a higher level of technology to extract oil. Because that's more expensive to produce than the easy stuff, renewables are catching up. The stuff really is more challenging to produce, you need much more understanding and higher quality tools. Fortunately we're enjoying the compound interest of computers, software, material science and a million other fields that make difficult things simpler. I won't take your transition bet, but i would bet if we had to extract oil using only technology older than 2000, we'd be pretty screwed.