I hate to sound like a troll, but LATOC is mostly BS. To start with, the graphs he uses show oil peaking in the year 2,000 at 70-75 Million Barrels per day. In 2,006, the world is producing and consuming 85 million Barrels per day. If he is that careless with numbers, how can we take him seriously? Plus it reminds us that Campbell has made inaccurate predictions before on oil production.
Savinar is not an economist, and there isn't any real economic analysis there to justify his assertion that a 5% decrease in supply right after peak would lead to a quadrupling in price. That this happened 30 years ago when oil started around $10/barrel is not too relevant. (I think this country actually decreased its consumption about 15% during this period, which eventually led to lower prices. There are lots of questions about which economists don't have the answers, but the simple question of what happens to price if supply decreases by x percent is within an economist's domain.
And the assertion that $10/gallon gas would cause our whole system to collapse is not really supported either. Europe has $6.00/gallon gas, which for their average income is about equivalent to $8.00/gallon. They are doing fine. Their trains and buses are better, and their cars smaller, but they drive a hell of a lot. I drove through Europe last year (with a diesel getting about 50 MPG) and the traffic was scary.
Savinar's assertion that switching to hybrids would not help because of the energy used in constructing the vehicle ignores the fact that 10-15 million cars are sent to the junkyard every year and replaced with new cars. This is a given, whether they are replaced with Suburbans or Prius'.
The Prius has some battery recycling issues, but the reduced weight of metal would probably save on manufacturing energy use compared to what the average American drives now. The only grain of truth in his line of argument would be that if we accelerate the junking of our existing fleet to replace it with hybrids, then there would be a greatly increased energy cost for manufacturing.
His argument that conservation does not help because the money saved is used for other energy intensive purchases would hold only in an expanding economy. In a contracting economy, the money we save by conserving energy will go to purchase food and other necessities that we previously took for granted.