Ok, let's move past "peak oil" and look at other peaking chicken-little markets, this time dealing with various green darlings. Now, if those commodities will be saved from shortage through innovation, what makes you think oil is any different?

Oil is expensive not because it's running out, but because the governments of India and China are subsidizing the true cost of the stuff to their citizens. Without the incentives to conserve that high prices bring, the two most populous countries in the world will consume an ever-increasing proportion of the supply. Fortunately the artificially-raised prices this foists on everyone else will ultimately make such subsidies impossible for those countries to afford, and the markets will force an adjustment. Eventually.

In the meantime, think of the high price of oil as one of the bills the developed world must pay to raise something like half the population of the planet out of misery. At least this form of indirect aid has observable benefits all around, without the need for a giant, inefficient, wasteful bureaucracy (*cough* UN *cough*) to "manage" it. Which is, of course, why progressives either ignore or attack the process. Can't have people in control of their own fate, they might realize they can do a better job than the elite can!