The phrase is apt. You only have to think for a while to see the number a century of cheap energy (oil) has done to our "economy".

Because Americans have enjoyed the benefits of cheap oil for the better part of a century, we have energy surcharges in most everything we do. If Madam can get her nails done for 20 bucks and she has to drive three miles each way to her favorite salon and gas costs $4 a gallon and her SUV gets 12 miles a gallon, then her nail job really costs $22 plus a prorata share of her car insurance, maintenence, etc. When gas was cheap and salaries were high, Madam didn't sweat energy surcharges. As fuel shortages set in and gas prices increase, she'll feel them more. How will that affect her economic sensibilities?

If she had to push her 3,000 lb SUV to the salon and back, she wouldn't do it. If she had to walk there and back, she wouldn't do it. If she could take public transportation, she might do that (or she might not). In any case, the lady who runs the salon would lose some of her business. It will work like that across the board (airline bankruptcies, layoffs at Ford). Not an abstraction: we're in it now.

The higher the implicit fuel/transport surcharge, the more long established habitual stuff in our economy no longer makes sense. Those able to adjust to higher prices by cutting out energy frivolous stuff will be the lucky ones. Those who sell energy-frivolous stuff or deal in it will suffer. You can see signs of our addiction in our urban sprawl, in miles and miles of bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic, in our oil acquisitive foreign policy. Europen cities were built centuries ago on the scale of local pedestrian traffic. Europeans don't move around so much, and when they do, they use more public transportation. Energy use, mobility and mobility economics are deep-rooted cultural issues.

Now, wonder why you're being informed of this impending peak oil state of affairs by a retired Princeton professor and not the President of the United States. Deyeffus called the peak in 2005, less than three years ago. Nobody paid much attention then. So $4 gas may have a silver lining.