In an excellent article in Business Week, Eugene Linden explains the meaning and possible consequences of Peak Oil.
“Peak oil refers to the point at which world oil production plateaus before beginning to decline as depletion of the world’s remaining reserves offsets ever-increased drilling. Some experts argue that we’re already there, and that we won’t exceed by much the daily production high of 84.5 million barrels first reached in 2005. If so, global production will bump along near these levels for years before beginning an inexorable decline.
“What would that mean? Alternatives are still a decade away from meeting incremental demand for oil. With nothing to fill the gap, global economic growth would slow, stop, and then reverse; international tensions would soar as nations seek access to diminishing supplies, enriching autocratic rulers in unstable oil states; and, unless other sources of energy could be ramped up with extreme haste, the world would plunge into a new Dark Age. Even as faltering economies burned less oil, carbon loading of the atmosphere might accelerate as countries turn to vastly dirtier coal.”
Surprisingly, no mention is made of what this would mean for food production, but as more coal burning would accelerate climate change with negative effects on farming, and as food production in the West is totally dependent on oil and gas inputs, we can safely say that Peak Oil equals Peak Food and declining oil equals declining food.