And here we are, not even 20 years later, and America could potentially become a net exporter of oil. economics is hard because supply and demand are incredibly dynamic, and react far quicker than anyone seems to think.
That said, a non-Malthusian ending does not mean a happy ending, or even a better world than previously existed. Huge (long overdue, IMHO) investments in the commodity markets in 2006-2009 are going to keep us going for another few decades until another cycle of underinvestment bites us again. However, each time the invisible hand flings money from one pot into another there is uncounted costs in disrupted lives, environmental impacts, and national upheaval. Capitalism is far from perfect, but--at least in terms of resource allocation in dynamic information-starved systems--its the least imperfect solution we've got.
King Hubbert was laughed at when he predicted in 1956 that USA oil production would peak in a decade or so. It did.
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf
In 1998 Campbell & Laherrère predicted "The End of Cheap Oil" before 2010, due to the peak of conventional oil.
http://www.oilcrisis.com/campbell/endofcheapoil.pdf
The International Energy Agency called them "pessimists" :
http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/files/2011/04/weo1998.1302253...
In 1998-1999 the price of an oil barrel fell from $30 to $20.
In 2008 it reached $160.
These days it fluctuates between $40 and $70.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-cha...
In 2010 the same IEA said that conventional oil production had peaked in 2006.
https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publicatio...
And while the USA is fairly close to be a [net exporter of liquid hydrocarbons](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/12/09/no-the-u-s-i...) (not crude oil), the future of tight oil doesn't look good - Laherrere seems to forecast peak tight oil for 2018 :
https://aspofrance.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/lahall19march...
(it takes a while to collect the data...)
Sure, maybe we'll figure out how to economically extract even less conventional hydrocarbons (like shale oil = kerogen, which you have to "cook" before it can be used), but these will be even more expensive and polluting !
Not to mention capitalism is an umbrella term with many variants making it a works claim. As if you said "the best we have is cars".
That's part of the strength of Capitalism: You can tweak it, modify the regulatory regime, and it's still Capitalism. You don't need a revolution to modify some deep theory in order to improve how you regulate a Capitalist economy, or to adopt some ideas from the Socialist platform, like you would to modify a specific Socialist ideology.
And I think some people were... "disappointed", for lack of a better word, that this happened. That their fantasies of global collapse Soylent Green-style didn't pan out, that the lackadaisical masses who had the temerity to not give up all modern advances weren't punished by the Dread God Malthus. Call it Puritanical Luddism, call it Apocalyptic Deep Green, call it a dogmatic insistence that any system not under totalitarian control must collapse.