Update: Colin Campbell

I emailed James Kunstler recently, and asked him, in the light of shrinking demand (due to surging US inflation), whether he thought Peak Oil was imminent.

NVDL: Any new thoughts on when we'll see Peak Oil?

JK: Colin Campbell, former chief of geology for the French company Total (and leader among peak oil geologists) has updated his predication of peak and pushed it out three years from 2007 to 2010 based on his ruminations over deep-water ocean drilling.
Three years does not seem hugely significant to me.

And that word, significance, is what I think everyone is trying to decide. Everyone is going, "Is this something I really need to think about? Is this significant? Is this something I ought to concern myself with?"

A friend of mine sent me an article from the Seattle Times. Here's a snippet:

Study reveals huge U.S. oil-shale field
By Jennifer Talhelm
WASHINGTON — The United States has an oil reserve at least three times that of Saudi Arabia locked in oil-shale deposits beneath federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, according to a study released yesterday.

Intelligent people refer to this sort of thing to allay their fears, to allay real consideration. At first glance it makes a lot of sense. And it's normal in a fastpaced world to do that. But reality is more subtle than a fast glance. The reality is that although those shale reserves are vast, they are difficult to utilise, expensive, and cause a lot of pollution.

Getting liquid oil out of the ground is simple. You pump it, you pipe it, you refine it. It's a relatively straightforward, a relatively painless process.
When that oil is trapped in rock and gravel, you have to dig it out (enter trucks, conveyor belts, blast furnaces). It becomes fantastically more complex and expensive. And you consume 3 or 4 barrels of oil to get to the fifth. These increments to supply won't mean much (demand is screaming skywards) by the time this field comes on line.
Saying it represents 3 times Saudi Arabia is misleading. How much actual oil is recoverable, how much NET oil can be extracted? Probably a fifth of itself, at best a third of Saudi Arabia.

And the pollution from this process is horrific. Soil and rock is basically melted at extreme temperatures, releasing a helluva lot of toxic gunk into the atmosphere. We're already at a point where the massive amounts of heat energy pushed into the atmosphere is coming back at us as storms, floods, droughts (and associated fires). Protocols in place are trying to get us to cut down on these emissions, not double them.
You might say that a higher fuel price will make more expensive extraction worth it. I'd wonder about that. By building worldscale factories of this sort, massive amounts of carbon and crap would turn the atmosphere to filth. You might say, "As long as I can drive my car, I don't mind hazy days."
Well, think about that. The energy gained from this process would be lost in terms of even more massive storm damage and severe environmental reactions. It takes a lot of energy to rebuild wrecked cities and countrysides. Would the short term gains be worth it?

The message we are living out in our lives today is that short term delight is not worth long term dismay.

Society is defragmented and separated from itself. People are more attached to things than to each other. Couples divorce and squabble over mod cons.

But here is a message of hope. Use the information that's available to help you. Forewarned is forearmed. Don't have a wait-and-see mindset. Have a go-and-do mindset. Become a rubbick's cube - become a master of change and adaptability. Do what you can to help your local community situation. See what needs to be done and see that it gets done by you.
As Jim Kunstler says at the end of his book, The Long Emergency, "Learn to be good neighbours."

We may find a better world in time, where neighbours have the time and grace to greet each other, know each other again, and do family meals together in the garden. What is missing from our lives is a community of family. We need to be a community connected to the community of Nature. We need to accept that the we're connected to the world as one community. We have forgotten who we are, and now's the chance to remember where we, as members of the human race, belong in the world. Finding our collective place in this world. Each of us has to search in themselves to avoid getting us all lost.
We belong in the world. Not out of it, beyond it, elevated, untouched by it. We belong to something that sustains itself. We're not living that way. We don't live as though we belong to something bigger, deeper than ourselves. We live as though there's no tomorrow. We belong in the here and now, with all its urgent to-do's, and we need to start being here, in the Now, doing what's really important. That's how we'll get to a tomorrow that matters.