I found the article "The End of Cheap Oil" by Campbell and Laherre very useful to help understand the whole peak oil issue... It is a little old- Scientific American, March 1998, but thorough.

A compelling book that offers insight (in a very readable way) into the approaching Peak Oil crisis is "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophies of the Twenty-First Century" by James Howard Kuntsler.  I have recommended this book to almost everyone I know.  Those who have read the book now look at our future as a species in an entirely new light.

Laurie, this is magnificent!  Little Dog tells me she definitely wants to run this experiment, pronto.

I know I'm weighing in way late on this.  I am mainly using it to clarify my own thoughts on the issue.  Unfortunately I don't think Umbra has it right when she says preparing will only be a good move, regardless of what happens.  I am part of a local environmental group struggling with what end up being diverging responses to the threat of peak oil.  On the one hand, there's a lot of survivalist personal preparation one could engage in.  That tends to be uncomfortable for most in our group on moral grounds.  But the alternative appears to be so milquetoast as to be essentially ignoring the problem we set out to respond to in the first place, namely, working on increasing awareness and expanding local resources/options for people in our area (we are an isolated small town, complete with strip and few options on some of the more important fronts, like transportation and energy choice).  For the time being we are headed (headlong, with lots of energy, projects and enthusiasm) down path number two, but all the while actual preparedness seems to elude us, even receding while we're distracted.

I should also say that education and awareness where we are are a tall order.  Green, sustainable, triple-bottom-line, whatever -- it's all foreign, largely discounted and actively reviled.  For the benefit of those sitting in the midst of primed enlightenment, it's just a wake-up call about middle-American willful blindness.

Entirely separate from all that are the difficulties associated with choosing one's battles between as Umbra mentioned global warming and peak oil.  Keeping both in one's sights, along with the greater good, acheivability and a major overhaul of the insides of most American's heads has me a bit dizzy.