loquitur

dc_dux, this is an unsupported leap of faith. I agree with you that this is a nation of innovators, but with the possible exception of the space program and perhaps the military (and even as to those, it's an issue of characterization), the government doesnt' and cant' force or direct innovation. Innovating is overwhelmingly done by people with some form of profit motive.

I'm not a physicist or engineer, so I'll just state that the following is my understanding, not gospel: "alternative energy" right now is problematic because nothing has the energy density petroleum has (meaning that it packs the most energy punch into the smallest mass of matter). Other forms are either less dense, more space intensive or location-locked (meaning that transportation of the source is problematic) or net energy negative after costs of production and delivery are factored in.

But that's today. Clearly there will be improvements in efficiencies, which will make some alternative forms of energy feasibe, especailly if petroleum prices stay high. But they will be complements, not substitutes, because they will never be compact/dense enough or transportable enough to substitute. Even if we switch part of our power generation over to wind, geothermal and biomass, we still will need petroleum (AFAIK we are already using all the plausible sites for hydro). So having a new source coming on line in 10 or 15 years will be helpful.

If you're proposing that there will somehow materialize a new source of energy we don't yet know about that will magically replace petroleum, I wonder where it can come from or what it would look like? What else will have as much "punch" and convenience as petroleum? This isn't a mystical or religious exercise; it's a scientific one. Is there any science about alternative energy sources that points to a plausible petroleum substitute?

The closest thing I have seen to something like that was an article in a British newspaper (let me find it........... ah, here it is) that discussed a recent biological breakthrough - some scientist found a way to engineer microbes to eat waste and excrete petroleum. To my mind that is the best possible alternative to our current method of relying on the world's worst regimes to supply us with our most crucial resource: it will require virtually no infrastructure adjustment by users; it's infinitely renewable; we know how to minimize pollution from it already. Is it scalable and commercially feasible? I don't know. Time will tell. But it's still petroleum.