Gregory Clark, a professor from University of California, Davis wrote a brilliant article about how it will be like living with lower energy consumption. For some reason this kind of life is already reality in many places outside the US. London, Singapore, or many cities in Asia.

Many people think mistakenly that modern prosperity was founded on this fossil energy revolution, and that when the oil and coal is gone, it is back to the Stone Age. If we had no fossil energy, then we would be forced to rely on an essentially unlimited amount of solar power, available at five times current energy costs. With energy five times as expensive as at present we would take a substantial hit to incomes. Our living standard would decline by about 11 percent. But we would still be fantastically rich compared to the pre-industrial world.