Personally, I think the predictions of global petroleum-related cataclysm are exaggerated and excessive. But so are predictions that all will be fine and we will feel no pain because someone really smart will come along to solve it all for us, and the worst that will come of it is that we have to trade in our Lexuses and Town & Countries for solar-powered, emissions-free scooters made of hemp and old shoes and used silicone harvested from recycled porn stars.

We should be so lucky. In a perverse way, I love this place, this place where all predictions fail, this place where no one knows exactly what the hell will happen. Will an oil crunch force major nations of the world to work together in unprecedented, selfless ways for the betterment of all humanity? Or will it push insular, angry, fearful nations to kill each other over dwindling resources (aka: "the Bush Method")? Or will it be a wacky, volatile mix of both? Let's go for one last long, leisurely drive, and talk about it.

San Francisco? We're lucky. We're already a walking city, compact and navigable and even I can easily stroll from my flat in Alamo Square all the way downtown in about a half hour, with only three or four slightly nervous glances over my shoulder as I pass through the housing projects and only recoiling for about 10 solid minutes as I endure a particularly hellish, grungy five-block strip of the Market Street corridor.

Mmm, walking. It's refreshing and depressing. Plenty of horrors loom. Merciless oil companies will likely push harder to develop brutal, environmentally rapacious methods of extracting oil from alternative sources like tar sand and small puppies and oily teenagers, ruthless techniques that were formerly prohibitively expensive, but now more economically feasible.

Far from reversing or even slowing their environmental impact, they could simply amplify it a hundredfold in a ruthless drive to maintain gluttonous profits. It will be wonderful, it will be terrible. Like the models used to predict global warming,

It's the massive, painful spike in gas and oil prices, that most wonderful/frightening harbinger of doom/change/turmoil known to modern society that is fast turning into a calamitous global hurricane, ready to wreak havoc on just about every aspect of modern life, and that includes food and transport and sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll and just about everything else that makes America, America.

What, too dramatic? Not by much. The initial signs are all in place. The price of a barrel of oil is soaring, production levels are peaking, the world economy is shuddering in the face of a permanent production slowdown, even the most staid economists and prognosticators are blinking hard and saying holy hell, we really have no idea how this will all shake out. A full tank of gas will become a true luxury item.

Stepping hard on the accelerator will seem like a crazy indulgence. Lengthy road trips will be a more decadent joy, the equivalent to a case of wine or a shiny new watch or that other wildly expensive liquid that now runs about 10 bucks a gallon, known as "bottled water."