The fear of the fall can cause the search for the solution to prevent the fall.

The fundamental logic of peak oil is sound, even though a bell curve is not appropriate when considering the global economic consequences: at some point any finite resource must run out, exponential growth always means the last half of a finite quantity is consumed in one doubling period. It’s not a law of nature that alternative tech will appear just at the right time, and in one sense we got lucky with alternative oils and renewables. To the extent that one can talk of “making our own luck”, I expect at least some of the people who developed all those solutions did so out of a fear of peak oil.