A.Oil isn't just going to run out one day. As has been shown recently, when it gets to high, people and businesses use less of it.
B.Because A is true, people and businesses will be looking for alternatives to what they currently use oil or it's byproducts for.
C.Because B is true, other people and businesses will be looking to find those alternatives.
It might hurt. We might not have all the swell things cheap transportation has brought us, or at least as many of them. But us changing from oil to other sources of energy isn't, by itself, going to knock our civilization down. And the govt funking up the market by favoring certain industries over others isn't going to help. Especially not at the Federal level.
A. That may be very true but it does not change the fact that much of country needs oil and low gas prices to have their lives in place.(suburbanites)
B. This is also true but name good by products for oil that would work well on a national scale. The fact is that there really aren't any and any of these would only be buying us some time unless a miraculous invention is found.
C. Yes this is part of human nature, it doesn't change the overall facts.
I don't personally think the "oil crisis" will knock our civilization down by any means anyways. I think it might create something on the scale of a second great depression with some regression in the process but this will reverse it self fairly quickly. I actually have to strongly disagree with you think the government would somehow mess things up. If anything private industry will and the govt will need to take tough action to get through this future rough period.(nationalization etc)
