Petroleum forever???

[Left]

I'm reading this, wanted to see what y'all thought:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/

[AFK]

It means we will never get off of fossil fuels, ever.  And I always suspected it was the truth.  There have been so many doom and gloom scenarios about running out of oit trotted out over the decades that have come up empty. And as long as the people know there is still oil they will still demand to be able to use oil, because fuck doing the hard thing of switching over to technologies and fuels that are less damaging to our environment.

[Left]

It means we will never get off of fossil fuels, ever.  And I always suspected it was the truth.  There have been so many doom and gloom scenarios about running out of oit trotted out over the decades that have come up empty. And as long as the people know there is still oil they will still demand to be able to use oil, because fuck doing the hard thing of switching over to technologies and fuels that are less damaging to our environment.

Well, crude oil is going to keep rising in price, yeah, until it no longer becomes an attractive fuel to run our infrastructure on.
But cars run on natural gas just fine.
There may be more creative ways to deal with global climate change than through just cutting hydrocarbon emissions:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/16/white-paint-carbon-emissions-climate

Another? No-till agriculture-though this research says carbon sequestration's variable:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090225132349.htm

Another one that may be just workable in my somewhat-wonky brain:
Genetically-engineering sea plants that would hypothetically work like a sort of speeded-up, oceanic duckweed.  Grow, take up carbon, die and sink.
(But that's just my own half-baked thinking)

[Left]

Still working through the article, I got off work and had to drive home...
(http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/?single_page=true)

Worse, that remaining pillar becomes so big and important that in almost every nation, the government takes it over. ("Almost," because there is an exception: the United States, the only one of the 62 petroleum-producing nations that allows private entities to control large amounts of oil and gas reserves.) Because the national petroleum company, with its gush of oil revenues, is the center of national economic power, "the ruler typically puts a loyalist in charge," says Michael Ross, a UCLA political scientist and the author of The Oil Curse (2012). "The possibilities for corruption are endless."

Yes...ours is the only government to not nationalize oil and gas.
It would be an oversimplification but somewhat true to say it works the other way around here.
Our government is a somewhat-captured entity.

Reason for edit:add quotations