http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency/?rnd=1139493180161&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1465

We know that our national leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament. President George W. Bush has been briefed ( by Mathew Simmons ) on the dangers of the oil-peak situation as long ago as before the 2000 election, and repeatedly since then. In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary."........

This piece takes excerpts from Howard Kunstler's book, The Long Emergency and gives a relatively quick read into many of the relavant issues we will be facing with the coming depletion of hydrocarbon resources.