Well, sure. If we don't ever get to this:
>> Our only hope is to get there sooner rather than later.
then, yes, we'll die. Or something nearly as bad. And we'll deserve it!
Remember that the "there" we need to get to is: something more profitable than oil to burn. I have faith in the future; it's the present that gets me down.
Frank wants to know if oil is cheaper to get than milk from a cow: why yes, thanks for asking, it is. But he's confusing the retail price of gasoline in the US ($2.30/gal) with the cost-of-production of crude oil in the producing countries (<< $5/bbl). The difference, as I bet you can guess, is a lot more than the difference between the inputs to a cow and a finished gallon of milk at Safeway. There is, as they say, the rub.
An incredible amount more.
Wojtek says that a heavily subsidized train is the way into DC from Baltimore, and I don't disagree (though he sounds like he wants to federalize Greyhound in the process ...). I wish we had more heavily subsidized trains, or if we didn't have to call that subsidization at all: we don't call our airways or freeways subsidized, we don't need to do it for our busways and passenger railroads. There are of course other problems with railroads that make them useful in one a certain number of cases (which I'm all for). And even the ones that are good are sometimes stymied by the fact that it's a rail: Amtrak in California has a nice train from Sacramento to San Jose (+/-) and want to extend it to Tahoe and Reno. Impossible due to overcrowded tracks over the Sierra ... and good luck building another track. Fortunately, a lot of the Bay Area -> Reno traffic is already bus-bound. But still: mass transit is mass transit, and I look forward to even more in the future including air taxis to use the underutilized sky and airports in the US.
Wojtek objects to my label of gas tax as 'arbitrary' and calls it an efficient means of collecting user fees. As to 'arbitrary' I suggest he drive around this vast country of ours and compare how much tax he pays in each little hamlet; and maybe Doug will go with you and find out how much of that tax is spent on externalities. Color me stubborn, but I don't think there is such as thing as an efficient user fee: we all use the infrastructure whether we drive or not, so we all ought to pay for it. Unequally, if we can manage that. The only progressive tax we have in the US is the income tax, so I'm all for taking everything that the government pays for and putting it under one tax: the income tax. Yes, that includes Social Security and Medicare.
/jordan