The party's over. Maybe.

I've been hearing a lot of complaints from my moto-taxi drivers over the cost of petrol, which is roughly the same here as in the US. I'm not telling them that things may get very much worse soon.

Some petroleum experts are saying that sometime in the next year or two, oil production will peak and it'll all be downhill from there. The oil industry has another view:

"This is just silly," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Winchester, Mass. "It's not like industrial civilization is going to come crashing down."

The geologists I know take "peak oil" seriously. If they're right, what we're doing in the US with energy is insane. There seems to be very little effort on the part of the government to encourage people to use less oil, which seems hardly surprising considering the people running this administration.

Let's hope that some other energy source — sonofusion, say — becomes available soon. If not, things could get really ugly.