If you are going to criticize, at least get your facts straight. Peak oil did happen in the 1970s. American peak oil, that's it. The reason we have had the las

If you are going to criticize, at least get your facts straight. Peak oil did happen in the 1970s. American peak oil, that's it. The reason we have had the last couple of decades of Middle East adventurism is because the US stopped being the largest oil producer back then. OPEC would not even exist if that was not the case. Conventional Oil has supposedly peaked sometime in the 2005-2010 timeframe, though you are correct that more innovative extraction techniques have compensated the lost of conventional sources so far. However, you grossly overestimate the capacity of price signals to conjure up solutions out of thin air. Instead, what has allowed a more or less sustained living standard on the face of steady per capita oil consumption are countless hours of engineering devoted to efficiency. At the end of day, the tragedy of the Peak Oil movement of the past decade is something that happens to a lot of geeks. They were able to calculate a fairly accurate mathematic model of the raise and fall of production, but their predictions of doom failed to grasp the fact that society adapts to changing conditions. Their economic models turned out to be too simple, and both private and public sector reacted by taking measures that would have been imposible to predict on a quarterly profits only analysis.