Realizing that it’s generally considered passé if not altogether wacky to talk about New York City transportation policy and politics in the context of global energy business, a Wall Street Journal story this morning confirms that global fossil fuel production appears to be hitting a plateau. In other words, Peak Oil is no longer a crazy idea and the faster that New York City can reduce its dependence on gas-guzzling cars and trucks, the better off we’ll likely be. From this morning’s paper:

A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are
endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a
practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be
pumped every day.

Some predict that, despite the world’s fast-growing
thirst for oil, producers could hit that ceiling as soon as 2012. This
rough limit — which two senior industry officials recently pegged at
about 100 million barrels a day — is well short of global demand
projections over the next few decades. Current production is about 85
million barrels a day.

The world certainly won’t run out of oil any time
soon. And plenty of energy experts expect sky-high prices to hasten the
development of alternative fuels and improve energy efficiency. But
evidence is mounting that crude-oil production may plateau before those
innovations arrive on a large scale. That could set the stage for a
period marked by energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled
competition for fuel.

The outstanding Oil Drum blog also notes two related but extremely wonky studies by Stuart Staniford and Sam Foucher. The studies suggest that daily production from the world’s biggest oil fields are declining at a much faster rate than previously projected.

And, as he does every Monday morning, author James Howard Kunstler puts the issue into perspective; this week, following a trip to the outer reaches of New York state exurbia:

Of course, I am aware that my ability to venture easily into the
outlands of Washington County, New York, is not something that I can
take for granted much longer. A year or so from now, I may have to plan
ahead, even make sacrifices, to travel so distantly from where I live. In
the meantime, I wonder with the keenest curiosity what is going through
the minds of the people who dwell out there. Surely they’ve noticed
that gasoline is $3.25. One can easily imagine the granite countertop
in the kitchen where the bills are piling up, the frightening invoices
from Master Card and Discovery, along with dunning letters from the
company that "services" the mortgage. One can imagine the feelings of
despondency creeping up the veins of the household lord and his lady as
they contemplate the distress sale of their motorboat, jet skis,
snowmobiles, and RV — and the futility even of trying.