Because first of all, people who talk about peak oil are usually disregarded as cranks--people akin to those who think the Illuminati were behind 9/11 or that the government houses alien corpses in Roswell, New Mexico.

Peak oil was even recently dismissed quite brazenly in a New York Times editorial by Michael Lynch, a former director for Asian energy and security at the Center for International Studies at MIT.

Lynch makes familiar arguments that 1) technology will improve, leading to the recovery of previously unrecoverable oil and 2) Peak oil theory is for cranks. Essentially Lynch argues, "Don't worry, oil will be around forever. Go back to sleep."

But here's the thing: We really can remove the word "theory." Even Lynch admits that the consensus among geologists is that there are roughly 10 trillion barrels of oil trapped in the earth--he argues that technology will push the recoverable reserves from 10% of that oil to 35%.

But still, then we have to admit that there is some point at which recoverable oil will vanish. It's a finite resource, and it will be gone if we use enough of it. This would still be a "peak" for "oil"--whether it happens in 200 years or has already occurred is the actual point of contention.

Either way, writing an editorial in the New York Times that essentially says, "Shut up, and don't worry where your energy comes from" seems like a banal, clueless thing to argue.

Oil consumption lies at the nexus of a host of problems from vicious, autocratic petro-dictators, to resource conflicts, to climate change--but it's certainly not pie-in-the-sky conspiracy theory to consider what would happen if oil ran out.

Okay, so that's hyper-ventilating a bit. Oil will not run out overnight, but the slow-rolling realization that oil reserves cannot keep up with the world's increasing thirst is in itself a terrifying proposition.

First of all, there are some key facts that no one can get away from. According to the U.S. Census Bureau the world's population is expected to increase from 6.7 or 6.8 billion where it is today to roughly 9 billion by 2040--numbers and a rate of increase obviously never before seen in human history.

Furthermore, the rapid industrialization, urbanization and rising living standards across the developing world will mean that many more people will be living high-consumption lifestyles, sucking up more and more oil to perform their daily tasks the way we Americans do it (U-S-A! U-S-A!).

Finally, all of those people will need to eat, and the only demonstrable way we have of doing that is with a heavily mechanized, completely fossil fuel-reliant system of industrial agriculture. Remember when oil prices spiked upward in the summer of 2008? What else was happening then? That's right: spiking food prices. Poor countries like Haiti were basically ripping themselves apart.

The point is that even if peak oil lies hundreds of years in the future or even if unconventional sources like oil sands or oil shales can make up the difference as demand begins to outpace supply, the world is looking at a long, painful detox from its oil addiction.

Even minor disruptions in the world's supply can wreak havoc on economies. No one really knows what caused the 2008 price surge (although speculation, demand from China and peak oil itself have all made the list of suspects). This disruption was a blip on the scale of minor inconvenience compared to some of the more frightening scenarios.

Imagine what would happen if a major oil producing country like Saudi Arabia saw its leadership toppled by extremists or the corrupt scum-government of Nigeria suddenly fell to the nascent rebellion within its own borders, shutting down that line of supply.

Whatever the case, it's not 'peak oil' that we should be worried about but rather 'oil,' period.

Or you can listen to the "Go back to sleep, everything's fine" argument, close your eyes and assume that it will be.