Nobody is missing any point.  Any alternative fuel source is going to take decades to replace most fossil fuel usage (where it can or should).  Oil is still needed for machine lubrication and such.  Any new source of oil is going to take decades to start having an impact on fuel consumption and costs.

Solar/wind power are currently laughably inefficient.  Any efficiency that would become economical would be 20-50 years in the future.  And these are totally useless for vehicles.

Ethanol and other grain-based fuel sources might work for Brazil for a while but are impractical for a nation of 250,000,000 vehicles like the US which is not only the largest ethanol producer in the world but one of the largest producers of grain crops.  We'd need to divert food resources for larger ethanol production.  Ethanol is expensive to create and, although a reusable biofuel, could have a devastating impact in a major crop failure - not only in fuel but in food (which has never happened in the past, ever - he said very sarcastically).

Electric may become a viable full alternative (compared to hybrids) eventually.  And hybrids may be the gateway.  What is needed here is a means to ramp up efficiency vs. weight (of the hundreds of pounds of batteries!) so that fully electric cars are more reasonable both in cost and weight-to-efficiency ratio.

Unfortunately, most alternatives are even less efficient that gas-guzzling combustion engines (at 25%).  And some of these are much more expensive, if not due to complex processes, due to the lack of infrastructure which would expand production and lower costs.

Here's the fact: It will take at least ten years (more like 20-30) to retool completely our fuel source infrastructure.  There is no bandaid to fix this quickly.  I'd expect that near the time we've reached the hump going towards a fully alternative infrastructure, we will have gas going for $10/20/30 per gallon.  Pinch those pennies, ride public transport, get a hybrid, fly less.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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