The basic premise of Peak Oil is that humankind has already burned up most of the easy-to-acquire oil and natural gas in the world -- the stuff that we can easily pump right out of the ground. Past peak, everything else costs more energy to get out than it did before, causing a spiral in costs and availability. The question is when we hit that tipping point. When we hit the peak (and many say that happened in 2006), then the cost of energy begins to inevitably rise dramatically and rapidly. For modern society, when oil hits $120/barrel to $200/barrel (or $5-$15/gallon), then all sorts of things begin to go awry.

The same premise can be applied to nearly all our fundamental resources. Aquifirs have been drained for agricultural irrigation. Obvious rivers have been already been dammed. The easiest-to-get copper, magnesium, iron, and other minerals vital for modern life has already been harvested -- when energy was cheap! Natural gas is getting harder to find. Gold, platinum, silver, and titanium are all oversubscribed. Energy-intensive fertilization and monocrops have made even most topsoil a depleted resource, unable to grow much without pumping energy-expensive fertilizer upon it.

We are hypothesizing a 20% per year increase in energy and material costs over the next ten years (note: oil was $50 a barrel two years ago, and has recently exceeded $100), and for most resource commodities because of it:

• Increased transportation costs for everything starts creating a fundamental worldwide recession/depression -- putting the current "just in time" delivery and distribution systems, and globalism in general, in jeopardy
• Commuting costs, suddenly dramatically higher, start eating into the viability of suburbia (see The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler), deeply affecting home values in those areas, creating even more economic strife
• Alternative energy sources start being economically competitive (though still expensive) -- solar, wind, water, coal, nuclear -- but can't ramp up quickly enough to prevent the worldwide depression
• Fundamental products like food (meat, produce, even flour) rise in price as fertilizer, mechanized production, and transportation costs rise
• Airfare and air transport become much more expensive
• High-energy, high-fertilizer, transport-heavy agriculture becomes increasingly untenable
• Trains will likely become cost-effective again (helping large urban areas more than remote areas)
• Internet use -- for telecommuting, entertainment, delivery efficiencies, coordination of commuting, shopping, and more -- becomes a lifeline, not just a distraction
• The "consumer society" grinds slowly to a halt, causing dramatic disruption in China and much of the "outsourced manufacturing" world
• The "war on terrorism" is ratcheted up to a "war on Arab terrorism," the OPEC nations being an easy target of blame for "holding our energy future for ransom."
• Walking-distance centralization (walk to grocery stores, etc.) succeeds over driving-distance centralization (Wal-Mart, malls, etc.)
• Low-energy hand crafts, community gardens, bicycles, community cooperation, and friend networks rise in value and practical utility
• Steady-state models, rather than constant-growth models, for economic sustainability become much more interesting to economists and citizens.

This Scenario promises a slow-motion, economically grinding spiral down into a worldwide, desperate depression. Even those lucky few with farms and fields will suffer, though perhaps not as dramatically as those in mostly urban landscapes.