According to BBC from 07.11.07 the ever-weakening dollar and fresh worries about winter fuel supplies have sent US oil prices to $98 a barrel.
The effect was worsened by storms in the North Sea on Tuesday, which disrupted supply as prices inched closer to the $100-a-barrel mark.

Nonetheless, some analysts say that $100-a-barrel oil is inevitable.
The International Energy Agency has said that world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020.

How will we be facing that?? Are governments investing enough in other alternative sources??
If the price of oil rises to more than $100 a barrel, will alternative energy sources become more popular?
I think we are not really concerned about the real problem and the way it will affect us...
"The real shock about today's oil shock is that it isn't a shock"
Think about it, maybe your children won’t be able to fly…

Best wishes

Title in full block letters maybe.

It's a good topic. I'm going to move it to an appropriate location.

i trashed it for ALL CAPS.

you always have choice...whether or not its convenient, now that's a different problem. The west will never curb their tires until rapid transit become easily accessible.

that is true, in addition, Europeans elected to tax gas at 50% to subsidize the development of public transit, we don't do that in the USA. They pay around $7/gallon compared to our $3/gallon.

Maybe our (european) public transportations are more developed than in the US but using them as an alternative to car is not that much easier than in the US.
It's still impossible for 90% of poeple to go take the bus because car is too expensive: They would take two hours where by car, it would take 20 minutes. For many commuters and for most of the poeple living in the outskirt, it's unfeasable.
Workers would have to leave home at 4 am and be back home at 10 pm if they had to give up cars.

It's not much the slowliness of the busses, it's the time you wait for them and the time you have to walk to and from the bus stop. If you have to take a bus + a train or a bus + a bus, you easily take more than one hour and half for a ridiculous mileage.
In such situation, you can't go to the bakery buy a bread and be back for dinner.

Also "europe" doesn't tax gas "50%" to fund public transports. Gas taxes are usualy used for roads.
That means that a higher number of cars and gas consumption didn't bring more funds to the public transport system.

Abraxas'dad is right however if we consider Eastern europe, which is completely different from western europe as public transport traditions is concerned.

In Eastern europe, after the fall of the communism, a very effective an inexpensive, yet private and profitable network of microbuses (12~15 passengers "marchrouteki") took place very quickely. Poeple didn't have cars and they developed this mean of transportation unkown in the West.
This was developed before cars became popular.



Millions of poeple still use them today in eastern europe and it's cheaper than having a car.
Microbuses drive fast (sometimes quite in sportively) and drop you anywhere you want between or at busstops. (When I say "drop" it's literaly because they realy lose no time).

The West (europe like US) could solve part of their transportation problem by sponsoring this type of vehicle. But for some reason, the superbly ignore it and prefer thinking about huge infrastructural projects costing billions.
Huge projects are not bad but a fleet of one thousand microbuses would not cost even a tiny fraction of these project and would be operative immediately.

As we are talking about solution, there is no chance at all that a policitician read this.

 


Inside a "marshrutka" (click to enlarge): You can talk with pretty girls (under driving license age - LOL)

In the long term Oil will NEVER be, on average, cheaper. Oil is a finite resource and will reach peak production within the next 50 years.  That means that no matter what happens oil prices will on average steadily rise until it is so expensive that it is not worth to produce it. There IS a crisis, the question is whether or not we can prevent most of the damage it will cause.