The triple-digit oil price likely isn't an aberration related to Saudi hoarding or escalating violence in Libya. Peak oil should be considered a current and permanent feature of our collective predicament.

If the 2011 oil peak plays out like 2008, the high price of energy could push the global economy into another recession. The economic contraction related to high energy prices will bring the price of oil back down again, only to repeat the cycle.

The political, business and cultural opposition for active policies to better price energy and carbon, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, and break from fossil-dependent transport is overwhelming in most jurisdictions in North America. Absent other solutions, fossil fuel consumption is kept down using the recession and austerity policies.

Canadian economist Jeff Rubin writes that "recessions have been the only sure fire way America has cut back on its fuel consumption and the need for oil imports". Economic contraction and restructuring is a destructive energy strategy but has become the default setting of many political and business elites. A result is that ongoing economic restructuring is incorporating energy decline with cruel social and economic justice implications. 

Richard Gilbert writes that we're "we’re effectively using the blunt tool of economic recession to reduce oil consumption in the face of supply constraints".  As one alternative, he proposes "oil-proofing" Canada's transit network. 

We should be moving as quickly as possible into electric traction. The way to get the most for each dollar invested in this transition would be to convert diesel bus routes to electric trolley bus routes. Conversion of a two-way route costs about $5-million per kilometre, including overhead wires, substations, and vehicles. Thus, for the $8-billion that the Ontario government through Metrolinx is to spend to add a 25-kilometre streetcar line in Toronto, 1,600 kilometres of roadway used by buses could be electrified, about 80 per cent of the total length of such roadway.

If the busiest routes were converted, this would mean that almost 100 per cent of transit trips in Toronto would be electrified, instead of the present 50 per cent (the share carried by streetcars and subways). Toronto’s transit system would be effectively proofed against oil crises. Some bus electrification of this kind would be worthwhile in all of Canada’s communities with a population of 100,000 or more, and in many smaller ones. European experience suggests that bus electrification can pay for itself over time.

Bus electrification would be particularly important in Eastern Canada, which is especially vulnerable to convulsions in oil markets because more than 90 per cent of the oil consumed there comes from or via another country. Moreover, unlike almost every other part of the developed world, there is no access to a strategic petroleum reserve.

Public outcry, organizing, and the active and experimental deployment of alternatives can be used to ensure a short-term decline in the availablity of energy contributes to our collective well-being and dignity rather than worsening both. Public transit is an ideal place to get to work on this crisis.