I do hope you are wrong that oil comes down to 3 dollars per gallon. In my opinion that is not enough incentive to make long term changes in this country. Ultimately I'm not all that interested in what is causing high fuel prices. I only wish that people would understand that high prices are a necessary evil. Only when you affect someone's pocketbook, will you get them off their asses to do the right thing. If prices are too cheap, there is zero incentive to seek out alternatives.
I cannot disagree with you more.
I believe if you give people real choices, they will be able to choose, in the long run, what is best. Seriously, if gasoline is at 90 cents at gallon and there are no mass transit options, no hybrids, no electric cars available, what can you realistically expect? Likewise with mass transit, and city leaders, state leaders, and federal leaders build an entire national infrastracutre based on cheap oil, it's the poor schmuck's fault for taking a 2 hour business trip on an airplane instead of the same trip at 18 hours on a train that costs twice as much? Or the commuter who faces a 45 minute car ride to work versus taking the joke of a mass transit system that costs the same amount of money and takes 90 minutes? C'mon!
It is the fault of several Presidential administrations, numerous Congresses and every *(*@!!! state and local government that we're in the fix we're in. Now could the average person have demanded change? Of course. And some of us have. And look where that's gotten us. Change must take place from the top down and so far we've elected fools and smarmy liars who have told us what we wanted to hear.
I'm convinced government at every level has stuck their head in the sand because it's been easier, and more profitable. The prospect of expensive oil has been like the 900 pound gorilla in the room no one wants to talk about. Having said that, the markets will correct themselves but it may very well take a year or two or three before gas prices drop. If memory serves, we didn't do just a whole lot about correcting our behavior in the late 70's and early 80's when gas prices were close to this level (adjusted for inflation).
I still maintain if the federal government organizes a Manhattan Project-like effort to come up with alternative energy sources, it would happen within a decade. Then of course there is the matter of absorbing such change into the national infrastructure. But I'm also convinced that such an effort hasn't been undertaken because it's far easier to tell the voter what they want to hear and to focus on much more critical matters like gay marriage.