Well, that was overly alarmist.
Peak oil is not a theory, it is a fact. It has to be true. Eventually supply must exceed demand and when that happens simple laws of economics take over and the price of oil will skyrocket. The only way peak oil cannot be true is if abiogenesis is true and occurs much more quickly than even abiogenesis theorists believe.
The thing is that the new sources of oil that are being used have a very poor Energy ROI. That is, it takes a lot of energy to retrieve the energy you wish to produce. The tar sands in Canada and Venezuela for example, take a great deal of energy to extract a really low quality petroleum. The same is true of the Arctic and Antarctic oil sources where extraction process is much more difficult and the oil produced is much lower quality (i.e. it contains more impurities such as heavy metals, sulfur, and unusable carbon).
On the flipside, we have alternative energy sources. There is hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, nuclear, and other non-carbon sources. The problem is that none of those sources have the Energy ROI of oil, coal, or natural gas. They simply do not and likely never will - at least in our lifetimes.
Does it mean the end of the world? Of course not. Most of humanity's existence was lived without igniting fossil fuels. We built fantastic cities, wrote brilliant literature, discovered amazing scientific, theological, and philosophical concepts before Karl Benz ever invented the automobile. What it may mean is that currently we live unsustainable lifestyles with McMansions, low mpg vehicles, poor mass transit, high volume energy usage, and mass consumerism (i.e. producing, shipping, and selling a lot of cheap junk that no one needs).
One thing to keep in mind is that we don't know the exact time of peak oil and the dates are not concrete, they change when variables change. With better technology we can improve energy ROI.
As for the end of the universe...that too is finite. After all, there is a finite amount of Hydrogen that can be turned into Helium.
