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Policies emerge to address building commuter rail systems, expanding public transit systems, and funding the development of fuel cell technology and a hydrogen infrastructure to support it. The entire world economy, production and consumer, will adjust to find new sources of energy and to maximize energy efficiency in products and property.

Of course a shift away from petroleum and hydrocarbon fuels to renewables and hydrogen, creates other problems. It will take energy - electricity - to produce hydrogen, and a new generation of renewable generating plants and nuclear plants will be essential. Nuclear is a proven technology, but has issues of its own. The high level waste and finite uranium supplies that will require we focus attention on waste repositories and recycling technology. Expanding solar, wind, hydro and geothermal will mean making a step change in production capacity for things like solar cells and wind turbines. It will take money.

Funding the changes will not be easy, but it will be necessary, so it will certainly happen. Those trillions of military dollars we currently spend to prop up a doomed oil economy should help cover the cost.

The death of the oil economy, like our own deaths, is not something we care to think a lot about, but it approaches relentlessly. That brings me to my point. Invert those gasoline price signs, and they become doomsday clocks, counting down to the inevitable. Maybe seeing them ticking ever closer to zero will spur us into action - before its too late.

Learn more about this author, Jim Mcinvale.
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