Environmental factors aside: does it make sense to base the feasibility of one's economic growth on a substance that was ancient when the dinosaurs showed up? Which, furthermore, is now only cheaply extracted in areas of the world that are quite unfriendly to western nations? Sure, there's lots of oil left here in Oklahoma... but you have to "suck on the straw" a lot harder to get to it compared to Iraq or Saudi Arabia. The question becomes one of how much energy one expends to obtain energy.

It seems to me that we're not looking at the situation objectively. We have megawatts and megawatts of free energy thrown at us every day from a stable, reliable star. It's going to be here for billions of years to come. Sure, it doesn't make people as much money as extracting ancient sunlight (in the form of oil, coal, or natural gas) from the ground, but last time I checked, the sun doesn't fly airplanes into buildings either.

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Member of the vast Radical Middle conspiracy.

Oil is, in a nutshell, ancient sunlight. It is the stored energy from plant material that was fossilized long before the dinosaurs showed up.

That's why folks like me advocate a sensible, step-by-step transition from ancient sunlight to present-day sunlight as our energy source. This includes by-products from present-day sunlight, like wind. When you think about it in that paradigm, you begin to understand why simply drilling more wells and looking for more and more ancient sunlight is an exercise in futility. It merely postpones the inevitable: ancient sunlight cannot and will not sustain us indefinitely because it is a finite resource.

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Member of the vast Radical Middle conspiracy.

I sounds to me that maybe you have been standing in the Sun too long?

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Russian Imperialism is a greater danger to the World today than AlQueda terrorism

We have plenty of Oil left, that is not the issue here, the issue with the $4.00 a gallon is that oil has been overinflated by speculative investors i.e the guys in NYMEX...

In fact the US has enough refinery capacity and oil to last itself for a very long time, if it gets really bad we can just drill that. However, the money would be better spent developing new alternatives and retraining all the domestic oil industry staff (that nee retraining) into working in the new alternative, renewable sources.

Geo-Thermal is the most promising. By harnessing the power of the earth's core we would have a cheap way to power the whole world. Then again, the US government could sell the patent by Tesla who figured out a way to harness the power of electromagnetic waves around the earth that would give free electricity for everyone.......

(Look at the bottom paragraph if you don't want to read the whole link)

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I'll tell you this no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn
You may bury my body, down by the highway side,
so my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride.
You and I must fight to survive

Well, I have to admit that I did get a sunburn last week after doing some pool maintenance.

I favor a staged approach. Start with plug-in hybrids. Charge the car batteries with the new solar shingle technology on every roof. Have a program like Germany's -- where any homeowner can get a mortgage to add solar power to his house, and the power companies buy the extra. That alone will eliminate our dependence on politically-charged oil. We could free up tons of fuel to lower the costs for diesel engine vehicles, like 18-wheelers and farm equipment. That would bring down the price of goods. Not to mention halt the production of coal-fired power plants.

Plus, everyone makes money. I believe in "WIN/WIN" strategies. Going "green" can mean a lot more than just the environment, if we think this through carefully.

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Member of the vast Radical Middle conspiracy.

Sure it comes from dead dinosaurs, but if you are a creationist, it comes from dead dinosaurs and dead humans. And since, according to them, Jesus rode a dinosaur, he might be in a barrel of oil too.

Here's a great slogan - Put a little Jesus in your tank.

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Jack Kevorkian for White House Physician - 2008

SO what do we think is in store for good old Unlce Sam now that so much of its precious black blood is resting within South America? Perhaps the Monroe doctrine will rear its ugly head again? Perhaps Canada, Venezuela and Brazil will use their control of most of America`s (the landmass folks not the country) oil to assert dominance over the US of A? That could be interesting, an America where English French and Spanish are all taught as mandatory languages, and Socialism permeates even the most die hard regions of the States.

Of course you know that means America will soon invade Scotland to "save you from British oppression". Many of you may find yourselves in a secret prison, naked in a human pyramid with lightsticks up your arses. I hope you didn't have anything else planned for the weekend.

The current demand, the current estimate of future demand, the current price and the current estimate of remaining reserves.

Uh, yes of course the supply will last decades, even if current prices will, as expected, rise considerably.

But the end of the cheap oil era is already here. Oil is no longer cheap and there is no reason to suspect it will ever get any cheaper than now. Quite the converse.
And thank goodness for them. But I don't see what our hope in these alternatives making it big have to do with the era of cheap oil obviously coming to and end?
Yes, it does have to be very soon! The price of oil energy has changed from "nothing to worry about" to "energy crises!" in less than a year. It takes at least a decade to get nuclear power plant from intial idea to up and running. God knows how long it will take to get the transport sector changed from oil dependent to electricity dependent.

Some of us have been telling the rest of you this for years.