Takes massive amounts of natural gas and water to harvest it.
So at the end of the day, it will be $15 a gallon. Sorry, try again.
There is ONLY a handful of intelligent and solution-based options:
Fusion. Better yet, Cold fusion. To make you all feel warm and fuzzy, we are closer to acheiving Fusion than we are to curing Cancer.
Solar. Huge amounts of real estate, and cloudy days make for a shitty day on TV. Get some books, go to bed early.
Wind. This is the ... THE ... strongest fuel of the future. Europe is way ahead of America in the curve here, but Wind power is becoming more and more efficient, and quite frankly, beautiful. I love those enormous turbines (The ones in Hawaii are 750 KW, the ones in Pennsylvania / NY are 1.5 MW, and the new ones in Europe are 3MW. The new ones are approximately 4 times the height of the STatue of Liberty. Pick up National Geographic this month)
Water currents: lots of countries are currently (Ha-ha) playing with this source of unlimited and strong power. It looks good, but it's for very localized power generation, And often found hand-in-hand with:
Geothermal: Iceland handed us our asses on this one. And by "us" I mean the whole non-icelandic world. Talk about free and powerful. If hydrogen transportation turns out to be the wave of the future, this will be the new Saudi Arabia. Thank god.
And that IS IT. The hydrocarbon, if it's not gone now, WILL be gone within ours or our kid's lifetime. And we need to switch before it's too late - Because this shit should only be used for manufacturing and materials. Moving vehicles and heating homes on hydrocarbons is cheap, but it's stupid because no matter how little you use, it's still not coming back. You're taking all the material in the ground and tossing it up in the air.
That's the major change in life. You'll soon be paying $100 for a "plastic" lawnchair because it will need to be made out of that still-experimental spider-fiber coming out of Israel. Which means the chair will be stronger and more lightwieght than Carbon Fiber, and will last forever. But when Hydrocarbons are gone, forget about things like food packaging and mass-market sneakers. All the anti-leather people will be shitting kittens when they see the cows off to slaughter to make honest to goodness leather goods because the rest is prohibitively expensive.
And the space program ? Whew.. forget about that shit. Cruise liners ? No way. Jumbo jets ? nope. In 20 years these things will be vague memories. You'll have a chance to vacation on the open seas in large sail boats, and you'l have to fly from town to town in Cessnas for $300 a head.... IF we're lucky. But, with a strong electrical grid and more intelligent design work (Which we're doing, believe it or not) everything you use will be electric based - And dino juice will be a thing of the past.
Within 50 years people will load, 10 at a time, into electric prop planes to go places, electric-only trains will carry goods across the country, and maybe offer you and your tiny car a lift to another state for next to nothing. And if Fusion happens to be the way of the future - We're all looking good.
So don't waste time with this shale shit. We're on the brink of a disaster, and what we need to do is suck it up and take the plunge. You can all start now by following the trends I've been seeing on the highways: Drive slower, make your trips more important, and at least consider using a scooter or something to get around your neighborhood.
-> Steve
IF you're , We're, really careful, considerate and sensible, we can not only pull through this - But we can actually progress towards a bright future of sci-fi like proportions.