That's unfortunately an radically and overly pessimistic view of things.

-For one, we don't run out of energy for at least another 100 years. We have plenty of coal and lignite for at least current  energy consumption for that long. Nuclear fuel is also fossil but isn't even remotely as abundant as this.

-Duncan's view misses advances in technology completely. In the 1700's people didn't even know they had to boil their water to keep it from contamination. The same thing goes for  residential isolation or even something as simple as a bicycle. In the 1700's people didn't ride 5 miles to work. Now they can just by using a bicycle as a human force-multiplier. Duncan acts as if all these advances in effiency, that are just common sense nowadays, don't mean anything and would vaporize instantly. A totally insane assumption.

Society as a whole doesn't 'forget' simple survival skills easily. Just go ask your local green radical to get plenty of details on living more sustainable.

Let's take a look at the food situation for example:

-An incredible amount of food that doesn't even get to the human food chain is already being produced. Up to 25% of all food in the world is being destroyed by a variety of pests (grasshoppers, rats, cockroaches etc) while in storage. This doesn't mean they eat it all, just spoil or contaminate it. Just think of rat droppings in a wheat silo and you get the idea.
Reducing this is quite feasible, even when pesticides become more expensive. It just isn't done because food is cheap enough as it is for most producers, so in order to protect the price, they don't protect the overproduction as zealously as you would think.
Once food becomes more expensive producers will become more  motivated to actually protect overproduction.

-Then there is the production of non-food items, like tobacco and cotton, unessential foods, like tea and coffee, and the production of second-stage food, meat. Some of these are totally superfluous to human existence and fall in the category of luxuries. Others can be scaled down enormously or replaced. This alone creates vast stretches of land available for the growing of food. A higher price for food is all that is needed for farmers to switch from tobacco or tea to wheat or corn.

-Then, there is an incredible amount of waste at the consuming end. A 2005 study in Britain exposed that about 1/3 of all the food UK consumers buy goes unused, spoils, or is otherwise wasted. Thats ONE THIRD of all the food bought in the UK. Elimination of all waste is impossible but again, people waste more when the item they waste is cheap.

And this is just talking about the food issue. Food is not an issue. It's the way we waste resources that is.

--

And let's look at transport. The idea of travelling around the world on a jet plane is a total and complete luxury. Over 95% of humanity hasn't ever seen the inside of an aircraft let alone fly in one. Airplanes can be totally skipped and are absolutely unessential for both everyday life and for food production. The industrial revolution cruised along for a 100 years before the Wright brothers came along and empires stretched accros the globe long before that. Powered flight just for research, defense and emergencies is just fine and quite possible for indefinite periods, by using bio-jet-fuel or fuel derived from coal.

The same goes for personal vehicles. The idea that everybody should be driving 3-ton heavy semi-armoured trucks with 6 times as many seats than required, at high speeds, just for fun, is again, a luxury. Not just that, with the knowledge that we've known oil to be a finite resource for decades, it is also totally, utterly, and completely insane. It is so selfish and arrogant as to bewilder the senses.

You can easily create a small, one-seater vehicle for people driving to work and back that does 100 Miles per gallon or more. That's actually easy. The fact that's it's not being done is because driving big trucks is an emotion, an irrational behaviour. And if there's one sound item that's come out of 100+ years of psychology it's that irrational behaviour is incredibly difficult to change. Not just from outside, but also from within. Perhaps gasoline at 10$ a gallon might put a brake on that behaviour.

Take that figure of 100 mpg and apply it to the current world population on one side and the current number of cars on the other. If you take 700 million cars that run on average about 20 mpg and convert that same fuel use to 100mpg, you see that at the current consumption can easily power 700mx5= 3.500.000.000 cars. So more than half the current world population can drive around in their own personal vehicle to work and back everyday. (not that that is either necessary or desirable of course)

Again, it's not in how much we use. It's in how much we waste.

I think that Mr Duncan's issue with reality has more to do with the fact that he doesn't like the idea of altering his personal habits, which is of course very normal because it's irrational behaviour, and that's perfectly human. It is also perfectly human to blow perceived threats up to immense proportions. There's no science in it though, just emotion.

"Every other production car entered used more fuel. We've got a long way to go before we can practically get to 100mpg, let alone 250."

A four seater that runs 100mpg has been demonstrated. Besides, electrically driven cars achieve that milage everyday.
And making a 100mpg one-seater is incredibly easy.

I'm not scared of 100$ or even 200$ oil. I welcome it, sooner rather than later. It will pull the plug on our over-inflated, self-indulgent, arrogant, polluting, and utterly irresponsible way of life in a way that not even the most stalinistically inclined government could do.

Yes, we have to make big adjustments. No, it will not destroy our civilization.