Fred, it seems everyone has ideas on how to solve the crisis. Certainly conservation helps. It’s foolish to needlessly waste something so precious as oil. However, it does appear we aren’t going to be able to conserve our way out of it, because oil is used for far more than just gasoline. It permeates our entire economy.
Unfortunately, some so-called conservatives think government is the solution to the mess that government largely created. Do people really think the energy companies have better, more economical (read: more profitable) methods of filling our energy needs? Do people also think the energy companies are incapable of researching alternate energy sources without government assistance?
Want a solution? Start removing the byzantine layers of government bureaucracy and taxation that hinder our economy.
The demise of industrial R&D laboratories in the US is one of those paradox's for free market economists. Why won't companies do what is in their long term best interest? Answer, because it is not in their short term best interest. This is called an externality or failure of the free market. Furthermore, firms don't do R&D because they cannot capture the value of the R&D. If I invent a new technique for finding or extracting oil or using it more efficiently, it turns out that even if I can patent it, once the idea is out there others will figure out workarounds or improvements, so all I have done is drop my own revenue at my own expense.
There is an extensive professional economics literature on just this subject. Go read it before you profess that you actually understand diddly about the subject.
yup free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.....that includes energy....