If finite is the case, it's still a long time from now. All I see is there is more and more showing up every day. I don't like the idea that energy has to be so expensive before new technology is developed. Flood the earth with oil and bring gas prices down at the pumps to $1.00 a gallon or less. That would put more money in people's pockets and the economy than anything else. How much could food prices come down if diesel was 80 cents a gallon. $1375.00 on heating oil for the season instead of $5500.00. That's real money. How many homes, businesses, schools, and governments could save just on heating fuel alone.
Everything will be booming. Then pay down the debt, fund research for new technology, get the space program back up and running, etc. etc. Use oil to do it. Use oil to save the pensions, use oil to repair roads and bridges, and use oil to make new ball fields etc. etc. Use oil to make itself cleaner.
I could see every house in the future having its own safe power plant or something, just like now we have water heaters and furnaces. You have this little box in the corner that runs everything. No more power lines. You need money to do this. Use oil to develop it. Not oil to run it.
But you can't do all this if no one has any money. No one has any extra spending money - from families and friends, to cities and towns, to the federal government. FREE THE OIL. Use the natural resource of the world to save the world.
But only for ten years. After ten years oil prices have to go back up, so it gives us ten years with lots of money to figure it out.
Not purposely raise the cost of energy, drain any extra money people have, make them live with less for something we may not even have any say in the outcome. Trying to develop new ideas without any money is the hard way to do it. Get the economy booming first, and use cheap energy to get there. We need another industrial revolution - not go back to the 17th century before oil. Use oil to get us back in the black and then to the green. We need an OIL revolution. I know you guys will chop this up with many reason why it can't happen and shouldn't . If I were smarter like you guys I probably would not have written it. Spending $20.00 a week on gas instead of $100.00 (that is just one person) a week would go a long way for everyone. What does the bankrupt state of California spend on fuel every year? What does the US government spend? Everyone will benefit all the way around. Just seems to me oil is the best way out of this mess right now. Then figure out how to get rid of it. Probably could do it in less than ten years.