[ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)

[Adrian Tymes]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 2:30 PM, The Avantguardian
<avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I just had a sobering thought while in the shower. Since most costs of doing business or even basic survival are tied to oil prices, then the cost of researching and developing alternative energies is also proportional to the price of oil.

Only to a point.  If the price of crude oil were to skyrocket to 1000
times its present level, there are already solutions that could and
would be brought online quickly, capping the price of "oil" as you're
using it here.  Yes, there would be a crunch during the transition,
but crude oil is not so completely irreplaceable that the lack of it
would be a holocaust.

More importantly, the oil companies themselves would be the
most hurt by this crunch.  That's why they're hedging their bets
with alternative fuels, in so far as this crunch seems likely.