Oil will never be “gone”; it will merely become more and more costly to obtain. As the price of production increases, the retail price will increase as well. Ultimately the price will rise to the point where middle-class consumers can not afford to purchase it. At that point, suburbia and the socialist freeway network will begin to die, and good riddance.
(One can make a case that the freeway system in already dying. The motor fuel tax take is already insufficiently large to bear the cost of building and maintaining new roads; from here on, tolls, or some other per-mile use fee, will be required to keep the roads drivable.)
It also bears mentioning that even the richest oil fields are useless if they are cut off from the U.S. Today, the U.S. military can guarantee our supply of foreign crude. Tomorrow? Unknown. Forever? Unlikely. When the U.S. military becomes unable to guarantee a continuous supply of foreign oil, petroleum will become a strategic mineral, and will be largely reserved for official and military use. Any gasoline released to the civilian market will be rationed, as it was in World War II.
I don’t know how old you are, but it’s likely that you do not remember the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks. The first one dealt the U.S. economy a blow from which it has never recovered; the second made a similar impact, and might easily have led to a nuclear war. Each was caused by a Middle East conflict that was small by modern standards. What do you think is going to happen when the Iranians and the Israelis finally have it out for real, nukes and all? My guess: $20.00 per gallon... or “for official use only”.
I was around for the bogus oil crises of the 70’s. Since then, we’ve learned that the US is sitting on top of a lot of oil. Back in the Cold War, we adopted a strategic plan to burn up the rest of the world’s oil before we started seriously hitting our own supplies. It worked for a while, but after the Cold War ended, we lost our focus and kept buying the foreign oil even if it increased our debt. If the middle east erupts into war, it will take years to ramp up our own production—thanks to the enviro-leftists, but we can always reduce consumption considerably.
Remember the early 80’s when the average V-8 had less than 150 hp and most cars had less than 100 hp? We can produce a car with 150 hp now that gets 30 mpg. We may have to just outright ban any vehicle that gets less than 30 mpg, but we’ll be in a national crisis, so sacrifices will be necessary especially if the alternative is to be herded like animals into the city.
Of course, the average FReeper will balk at the idea of driving an economical car because they seem to hit things a lot—or at least you would think that from their typical comments to a post like this. And the average “elite” leftist would consider himself above the masses and more deserving of a gas guzzler even if the rest of us get forced into econoboxes.
But if gas ever does hit $10/gal, our economy will be destroyed and the people will demand communism and the American experiment will be over. So don’t expect much help from the government on averting this because its been their plan all along.
So, I kind of agree with you.