Peak gold? - whatever next?

According to Canada’s Globe & Mail newspaper, the bullion industry is now talking about “peak gold.”

Under the headline You've heard of peak oil. How about peak gold?, it states:

Many precious metals analysts and gold miners are taking a cue from the
claims that global oil production will exhibit a peak, and then begin an
inexorable decline accompanied by sharply higher prices. They're starting to say
the same concept applies equally well to bullion and may lead to outsized
investment returns from buying the yellow metal.

Believers in peak gold say that mining has a number of uncanny
similarities to oil extraction.

Laughable at first, it makes sense when you read the line that gold reached its “maximum output back in 2001” and has been extracted in diminishing amounts since then. Any non-renewable item extracted at industrial levels will become scarce. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. There is a caviat:

Because oil is consumed and can never be recovered once burned, it's a scarier
prospect than having dwindling gold output. Almost all the gold ever mined is
around in bars, coins and wedding rings, and could be recycled, if need be, so
the world will never really run out of the yellow metal.
The argument for peak gold has some peak oil advocates viewing it as a copycat move, a self serving justification for hopes of higher prices.

If nothing else, it shows peak oil has gone mainstream. I can't help but observe that this matter-of-fact reference to peak oil is in the business section - if you want the truth, turn past the news pages, and learn to decode business doublespeak.

What next, references in advertising?