(Source: The Infrastructurist)

The so-called peak oil debate has taken many twists and turns over the years. After long being an oddball survivalist preoccupation, the debate gathered mainstream momentum a few years ago as oil prices began a long ascent from around $30 per barrel to $147, where they topped out last summer. By the time a barrel of West Texas crude was rising eight bucks a day, scarcity seemed like the best and only explanation–that no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t pump enough oil to meet demand.  OPEC cut production, inventories rose, and it seemed like, in fact, we had plenty of oil for the foreseeable future and the whole thing had just been hedge fund shenanigans.

Maybe not, Raymond James now cautions. “We believe that the oil market has already crossed over to the downward sloping side” of all-time total production, say analysts at the financial services company. While cautioning that nobody but historians can be sure, they believe production peaked in 2007 for non-OPEC countries (Russia, Norway, Mexico, etc.) and last year for OPEC (Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, etc.). “It is entirely intuitive to conclude that if both OPEC and non-OPEC production posted declines against the backdrop of $100/bbl oil–when the obvious economic incentive was to pump at full blast–those declines had to have come for involuntary reasons such as the inherent geological limits of oil fields.” In other words, we had a perfect environment for testing the peak oil hypothesis, and the results are in. We’ve peaked.

My reponse? Yawn. We’re all unemployed Prius drivers anyway these days. Oil is an anachronism.

The biggest immediate crisis would be in transporation, because that’s where most of our oil goes. When gas hit $4 per gallon last spring, the financial strain was hitting the breaking point for many households–particularly outer suburban households. The arrangement of many American cities started to look insane: Working class people commuting 50 miles by car each way to their jobs?

The answers in this scenario would have to be rapid. No 30-year development plans. Instead: find cheap and efficient ways of getting lots of people around, and find them pronto. As a start, that would mean making it much easier for people to ride bikes, take trains, and form van pools.

Peak oil has always been an eye-roller in the establishment debate. It’s not clear that Obama has ever even been *asked* about it.