Despite the hype, the world is in no immediate danger of running out of fossil fuels. Oil--the most transportable and most usable fossil fuel--is becoming more expensive, and natural gas--less transportable than oil--has been subject to some localized shortages. What is happening is that the easy oil and gas (that is, the oil which is cheap to extract, and the natural gas close to the markets which consume it) is becoming scarcer. As a result, prices are going up, making it more economical to extract and transport the more expensive reserves and enriching those countries which still have easy oil and gas.

Another consequence has been more overlooked: the reemergence of fossil fuel reserves as a strategic asset. A couple days ago, Bolivia nationalized its natural gas industry, and Russia has effectively nationalized its natural gas industry over the past couple years through political maneuvering.

Neither country is one which can be trusted (under current leadership) to refrain from trying to leverage this control into political advantage.

And that fact should scare anyone living in Brazil or Europe. In fact, I would lay odds that the people whose job it is to be scared of things like energy shortages are busy being very scared right now. Bolivia exports most of its natural gas to Brazil; and many European countries depend mostly or completely on Russia for their natural gas (several former soviet-block countries get 100% of their natural gas from Russia).

The unintended side-effect of this state of affairs is likely going to be a dramatic acceleration in the development of alternative energy sources in some countries.

If you're Poland, and you get 100% of your natural gas from Russia, a country with recent memories of former imperial glory and a political system structured very much like the Sicilian Mafia, you're going to be doing two things right now. On the one hand, you're going to be very very careful to not annoy your neighbor to the East. And on the other hand, you're going to be scrambling like mad to find something to replace Russian gas in order to remove that particular claw from the bear.

I don't know what those alternatives might be, but I suspect some combination of new gas pipelines to other countries and investment in alternative energy sources. Even if alternative energy is significantly more expensive than the fossil fuel sources, it will be worth it for them to remove the political and strategic risk.