We appear to be on Hubbard's Peak. The view is rather cloudy, and the effect of the climb down will depend on how precipitious it gets. I tried to get into this on another tech list, but the moderator was not pleased, and killfiled.
5000 years of history shows how, when resources get tite, the power elites shed unprofitable provinces. Just as with the Roman empire, once peak power is past, the most recently acquired provinces are given back to barbarism first. Thus it is that Sub-saharan Africa, which was last to join the global market empire, is the first to go.
Its a good bet that South Africa will be next, and with it the gold and diamond mines. There are mines in Central Africa which are already slowed or shut down. Thus, we could expect the new processes to produce industrial diamonds will get more innovation. Silver has been proposed to replace gold on printed circuit contacts, and in fact, *pure*, not sterling, silver is quite good at resisting corrosion and maintaining good connectivity with even lower resistance.
But another thing that history shows us that the power elites are subject to group think, and just when you think they should cut back to invest more in R&D, they instead *increase* their exploitation to maintain their lifestyles. The cost of management goes thru the roof until it collapses, as historian Jared Diamond shows in his latest book by that name.
OTO, as oil prices rise, there'll be new opportunities in technologies like coal conversion into liquid fuels. Ethanol, however, is mostly hype, and only affordable as long as agribusiness has the fuel and petrochemicals to keep on raising corn. The price of corn has already doubled in recent years, and if agribusiness expenses rise, the price of ethanol will rise even faster. There may be opportunities from sorghum, sugar cane, and switchgrass, and most especially in conversion from ethanol to butanol.
BOTOH, as oil prices rise, greed being what it is, violence will increase trying to control remaining supplies, and political demagoguery will try to justify the use of force... that itself is likely to damage infrastructure and drive oil prices up even faster.
Wind power, which is already amotized cheaper than nukes will open up careers in aeronautical design, electrical generation, and automated process control of the airfoil and magnet flux in the generators.
However, LeBlanc in "Constant Battles" and Diamond in "Collapse" both note that larger political entities tend to fracture, the dissolution of the USSR, being an example. The contrast between the rapid adaptation of the Baltic nations to the global market and the failure of the industrial complex & factory farms of southern provinces is instructive.
Diamond says that after a system collapses, those regions which have a homogeneous population, lots of forest, and a diverse local resource base rapidly take advantage of new opportunities. Areas which have minorities tend to be led by demagogues who scapegoat, which leads to violence, civil war, and genocide. But without minorities, people have no one to blame and therefore seek real solutions.
Which will open up many areas of innovation that have fairly low startup costs. Regions that have lots of small farms find new ways to produce food without having to go to banks and boards of directors with a new bsiness plan. With agriculture, timeliness in response to the weather is critical.
With high fuel prices, they wont be trucking veggies in from Mexico, but more liklely be converting farm trucks to run on wood gas to bring in local produce. Greenhouse and hydproponics will be used to extend the season. But wherever there are large supplies of food or some other vualable resource, security systems will be increasingly in demand.
With high oil prices, and higher mortgage payments, people wont be buying new cars. Not only will the demand for automotive repair go up, so will the installation of rebuilt or salvaged small car engines and hybrid retrofits. The demand for long range wireless communications will rise as telecommuting replaces vehicle traffic.
With the loss of new car sales, new home sales, new furniture sales, many, if not all, of the commercial broadcasters will go out of business to be replaced by narrowcasting systems targeting those few niches which still have disposable income. Hence the bandwidth now used by FM/VH/UHF will become available for spread spectrum phased array wireless networks operating at frequencies low enough not to need clear line of sight.
Computers and communication equipment that run on just a few watts will be in demand. Even if the grid stays up, its likely to be dirty power with frequent black and brown outs that will require much longer battery backup.
YMMV depending on where you are. Regions that depend on gas fired utility will have severe shortages. Mountainous regions, like the Ozarks, that have low populations with lotsa hydroelectric dams will only experience outtages after lightning or ice storms, altho a shortage of fuel and replacement equipment may make outages extended.
There may still be hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, forest fires, tornados, & snowstorms, but far less available to deal with them. I frankly dont expect a nuclear disaster such as stipulated on "Jericho", but the fact that the series is on CBS is indicative that people are worried. That worry can easily be converted into profitable innovation, but also expect lotsa scams.
I was born on a farm in 1939, lived most of my life rural, and the many mistrepresenations of the challenges and opportunities in that TV show makes me even more worried. The Urbanite script writers and actors are just so utterly clueless, but yet, in a large way, are entirely indicative of where the American mind set is at.
If you can see beyond the group think of the American Way of Life, there wll be many new directions innovation can go that will be rewarding. A few careers will be promising across a wide range of fuel prices and social organization or civil unrest depending on where you live.