The issue of peak oil has been hashed out enough on this blog that it seems safe to assume a basic understanding of our dependence on cheap oil, and the near-inevitability of a global production peak in the first third of this century (and even possibly in the next five years).
Unlike some eco-malthusians on the left, it seems self-evident to me that our beloved political elites and the craven majority will respond to the coming crisis by discovering in themselves a newfound love of nuclear power as a source of electricity generation, and ultimately probably hydrogen production for both public and private transport. Coal seems likely to replace petroleum as the chief source of plastics production (it is more expensive, but not prohibitively so), and biotech crops that greatly reduce or eliminate the need for fertilizer could well play the dominant role in agriculture. The use of renewables will almost certainly increase as well, as will organic farming, but these things are simply not scalable enough to supply our energy or agricultural needs even here in the west.
However, even if the west is able to successfully cross the bridge to a post-oil economy, what becomes of the developing world? The transitional period (between the onset of peak oil and the successful implementation of a post-oil energy and agricultural infrastructure) is likely to be rocky in the west, with (in a worst-case scnenario) hardship and dislocation the norm, but the impact on the developing world could be nothing short of catastrophic. Without the resources (intellectual and fiscal) to replace existing oil based power generation and transportion with nuclear and hydrogen-based systems, the ability to transport food, provide basic services, and maintain order in an environment of ever expensive oil could have near-apocalyptic implications across the global south, with political instability, famine, war, and even genocide becoming widespread in significant parts of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Will the democratic gains of recent decades be undermined? If the west is unlikely to provide nuclear technology to the developing world in ordinary times, this unwillingness will almost certainly increase in a period of potential political destablization - no?
These are just preliminary thoughts. What are yours?