There is a difference between Peak Oil "Output" vs Peak Oil "Demand". The article is about demand and not production capacity which won't matter once the demand starts to go downhill... will never be zero but will not be something that can prop up regimes that have sucked the life out of their people for more than half a century.

Well, in the past, did we have viable alternatives? Genuine question.

Today, we have much better tech and scale in batteries, solar, wind, etc. Not to mention a fairly consensus desire to move off oil for climate change reasons.