Less than 1% of the world's oil has been extracted. Right now, oil is NOT a scarce resource, nor is it likely to be for some time.

This completely ignores the true cost of burning oil. I am not talking about the money it takes to get it out of the ground, refine it, transport it, and put it into your car.

The true costs are the irreversible damages done to the ecosystem by burning it. Particulate emissions; higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere; global warming; it's reassuring to know that 99% of the stuff is still there waiting to be burned. Probably by the time we get through 30% of it the planet will be unfit to support life as we know it.

Our great-grandchildren (or maybe sooner than that!) will look back upon our generation with astonishment, to think that we took this incredibly valuable chemical and of all the goddam things we could think of to do with it, we burned it to make our cars go and ruined the planet in the process.

tanstaafl.