Fantasy. If we stopped using gasoline tomorrow, it wouldn't change the big picture of petroleum consumption vs production.
Why is it everyone in this country sees gas consumption as the boogy man in the crude oil story? A barrel of crude can (more or less) be cracked into fixed percentages of petroleum derivitive products. IOW, the part that becomes gasoline is basically unusable as some other product. If you use less gas, that portion of the barrel cannot be then turned into heating oil. When 60% of the US is blocked from oil/energy exploration, particularly when some of that area is extremely fertile for energy, the problem is inevitable.
There is no shortage of oil, simply the political will to allow it to be harvested.
Repeat after me, the United States government is the boogyman here.
Fantasy. If we stopped using gasoline tomorrow, it wouldn't change the big picture of petroleum consumption vs production.
No, the statement that I copied from the article is very true, not at all fantasy. America is very addicted to gas-guzzling SUV's and Land-yachts, and massive trucks, and Hummers, etc. etc.... It's apparent on every highway. I know. I see it every day that I'm on the highway. And I see it everywhere I go.
Your other points are all valid but misdirected towards the statement I referenced, which most accurately stands by itself. It may not be THE primary reason that we find ourself between a rock and a hard spot when it comes to the current oil situation, but it certainly is an important element in the overall list of things that are causing this problem that we find ourselves in.
President Bush did say one thing correctly in his SOTU speech. We had better break our addiction to oil and it's derivatives and learn to be a more responsible user of those resources rather than become a worse glutton demanding ever more and more, before it's too late. We all personally have to start somewhere, in some manner that we can have a direct effect, and what we drive fits that circumstance precisely.