End of the oil age in sight?

For instance, transport consumes well over 60 percent of America’s oil needs. Ultra-light cars and trucks, fuel-efficient aircraft constructed of revolutionary new materials, hybrid vehicles with fantastically high mileage per liter of fuel — all these things are already rolling forward. It needs only a few well-placed incentives and tax breaks to unleash a vast cascade of innovations and inventions that could reduce oil demand dramatically in the advanced world, either through large efficiency gains — simply not using nearly so much oil — or through substituting other fuel sources, such as natural gas, clean coal, eventually hydrogen and, at the margin, wind and solar power.

This process of replacement will be mainly driven not by government strategies or laws but by profit-seeking enterprise. Immense new opportunities for wealth-creation, plus new markets, many new jobs and whole new industries are undoubtedly on offer for those smart enough to see the way things are going.

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