MIA: any acknowledgement that when crude prices jump on the start of public awareness of PO, as they will, it will cause enough economic contraction world wide to slow demand for oil substantially.   Once demand slows, crude prices will temporarily drop, even after PO, but the scare should be enough to propel the adjustment process (more hybrids, less wasteful use of oil, more nuclear, solar, wind, etc.)  Of course, eventually world economies will start growing again and quickly crude prices will spike even higher, and the whole recession, adjustment process will begin again.  The net result of all this is that the world as a whole will have a lot more time to adjust to PO than is contemplated in this discussion.

Skipped over: the very important discussion of regional hegemony, bilateral deals, and production cutbacks by exporting countries to conserve their resources.  These trends, as noted, will exacerbate the effects of PO (opposite to the effects of economic contractions discussed above).   While this part of the discussion was exactly on target, I think, it failed to emphasize the early manifestations that we are seeing almost every week whereby China in particular and India less so are making bi-lateral deals that reduce the supply side of the global "free market" in crude.   This is the future staring us in the face from headlines in our papers nearly every day.  It is truly mind-boggling that such clear indicators of the direction of the future can be either misunderstood or ignored by virtually every single American (and European, so far as I know) political "leader".