But the west is already feeling the effects of peak oil in the form of so called "stagflation". The industrial and living inputs are rising in costs, so people spend less, but the prices do not go down, because everything becomes more difficult and more expensive to manufacture. Just look at the prices of basic commodities like grain, rice (especially rice), steel, etc.
The leaders prefer to call it "financial crisis", because everyone feels that finances are human invention (at first it was a sort of information system that should have helped with rational resource distribution, until those who should have guarded it broke it down), therefore people think that it is easier to fix - just change a few parameters, and we are good. On the other hand, once you start calling it "resource shortage crisis", much more panic will arise.
But it is exactly that - just look on the political and economic changes of the last decade. European social states are being dismantled for rabid "snatch what you can" volatile environments hostile to long-term planning. Trust is going down, expectations are bleak, poverty is on the rise. One eighth of Americans are on food stamps, unemployment is at all time high (but because long term unemployed and prisoners are not counted, it does not look so bad). In Britain, families are starving. Here in Czech, I see homeless people dying on the streets - it was never this bad before.
Welfare program and social care programs are being scrapped, with my generation facing the thread of old age in poverty.
The planning periods are getting shorter, fast, short term gain is preferred to long term investment. International tension is rising too, with what seems to be a new round of cold war in race to snatch the remaining resources. Proxy wars on the fringes of the big empires (China, USA, Russia) are fought non-stop (Iraq, Lybia, Syria, Sudan). Polar exploitation is seriously considered, and desperate method of resource mining are introduced (shale gas hydraulic fracturing).
