Of course peak oil is inevitable. The only question is just when.

This year, this decade, this century, it's got to happen some time, but may be not soon.

As a keen sailor I started to get excited in the late 70s, when the subject was first talked up in the media.

Beauty I thought, I'll build a 150Ft sailing cargo boat, & transport goods up & down the coast, as the trucks disappear. A great life was offering.

Good thing I didn't rush into it, isn't it?

Ahhh, 579 you fall into the same old trap.
Oil is not going to run out for 100s years.
It is just that conventional crude oil has peaked.
It is now a little below the 2005 value.
The problem is can the other components of supply make up for the
decline that will occur in conventional crude oil.
Some say it will some say it won't.

Even the IEA says we will need another Saudi Arabia every few years.

Problem is, as fossil fuels become scarcer or harder to extract, the energy cost in getting them will escalate, so we could well be using fossil fuels to obtain fossil fuels, just as we could end up growing crops to provide fuel to grow crops. A dog chasing its tail comes to mind.

I don't think it is fair to say that people who believe that peak oil is a problem 'can't wait for it to run out'. I'd just like us (companies, governments, etc) to be thinking seriously about the changeover to other fuels. For a start, I'd limit coal extraction in Australia to companies which are also heavily investing in future fuel research. Nuclear may well have a role, but it can't fill all the gaps.

Never seem to hear much about peak wood or peak tallow these days. Electric motorcycles are already feasible, and could replace their petrol powered counterparts in much of Asia.

http://motoring.asiaone.com/Motoring/News/Story/A1Story20101115-247260.html

Higher oil prices will speed the change.

There's more going on with alternate fuels than you are about to give credit for. And i am not talking about growing crops to make fuel.
Oil extraction will eventually become more time consuming to get out of the ground. When an oil well is opened it only has free flow for a limited time, then it has to be suction pumped,or water displaced. Costs will rise, but all these oil wells are not going to run out in the same decade or century.
I would be a little skeptical about gas fired power stations costing more. Gas is delivered in a pipe. Coal is delivered by extraction with gigantic mining equipment. So i don't know where the imballance of cost would be. I haven't herd the Arabs worried about where their next dollar is going to come from, seeing that oil is running out. How many oil wells are there around AU with caps on them, left for emergency use only. America used to put oil back into pumped out oil wells, they probably still do.

We're running out of oil again, huh? Yep, that's been happening pretty regularly for the past century or more.

To carry Fester's analogy: you don't hear much about Peak Flint these days, either.