There isn't anything that is as efficient as fossil fuels and as long as they are inexpensive and plentiful, they should be developed and used...damn, I haven't heard the words peak and oil together for a long, long time.
I just wish all those who are big on these products would be willing to pay the full ticket. Why should I be happy to pay more for electricity?
You might consider the following: why is gas so much cheaper in the US than in most other countries? It is because it is subsidized. So is coal, so is natural gas.
But you also miss another very important issue: fossil fuels are the source of many, many, many unique chemicals that cannot be produced in any other efficient way. Simply burning up that source seems crazy. You will find that $100 bills burn just fine, but it would be rather crazy to start your fires with them. But it WILL work.
You should also consider the security of fossil fuels. 1 dirty bomb in a coal producing field will have knocked it out for, what, 100 years? Where do you get your energy then? Declare war I guess?
Having diverse sources of energy is a good thing, and concentrating on a variety of clean methods primarily is the best.
Creating subsidies that encourage a good thing, which results in a development of an industry which progressively gets cheaper, is good strategy.
The price of solar panels has dropped more than 90% in the last year or so. Why? Because there was a market for them.
Patton was stopped during WWII because the 3rd Army ran out of fuel. We can continue to follow this model, with the associated risks, or we can look at other models.
