So it been a long term interest of mine that the primary supply of energy in the world today is a limited resource. Its part of human nature to spend ones resources until a habit is formed before suddenly realising the barrel is nearly empty. So for many decades now we have used almost free energy with not a lot of interest in the cost and the sustainability of supply.

Go look at : http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/update

There you can see the work of people who have analysed the oil supply who dont have a vested economic or social interest. If this prediction ( the mean of a number of learned peoples estimates) is correct then the following might well be the case in as little as 5 yrs.

Cars will be a serious luxury affordable by the very rich only

Food will become the most expensive commodity in our lives

The world economy will never get out of its current spin and back to full 'growth'

Why? Because the cost of oil is in nearly everything we do. The food we eat, our transport costs, the cost of nearly all our goods, and the costs of heating and water. 

Politicians don't like to talk about this issue because there is no way they can get votes for it. Its an uncomfortable truth to be ignored in case they get the blame for not having prepared.  Instead they discuss global warming - which is more likely to be a natural phenomenon and out of our control in reality (thats another debate).

The current western society is completely unsustainable in a world where oil is in limited supply. The in-elasticity of the supply of oil means that prices will be highly volatile. Soon the $150 peak we saw in 2008 will be a normal and frequent occurrence - its no mystery that every time the world economy tries to get going again, the oil price rises sharply. That is because oil supply can only just keep up with demand.

And despite an exponential increase in exploration, the number large fields being discovered is diminishing steadily. Sure there is half as much left as we've all burnt so far - but that half is mostly hard to get to, and will cost more to extract - Energy return on energy invested will fall from 8:1 to 2:1 before we are well through the existing 'reserves', making that oil do less useful work for us. And yet al the time global population and demand for energy is every increasing.

So what to do? Well I'd make sure you have some land to grow veg on, keep a horse and grow some wood for the winter. And try to cut your energy consumption by a factor of 10. Don't live in the desert, build houses that have thermal mass and good insulation, drive cars that are better than 0.5% efficient in practise, install a ground source heat pump. etc. etc.

As long as the pace of change isn't too fast, it could actually be a whole load of fun learning how to survive in the post oil era, making better use of energy and learning some good basic skills.