If you hang around here long enough you will find that the preferred solutions to the liquid fuel crisis all involve conservation.

Conservation doesn't require inventing new technologies to turn anything into anything else. It may involve doing the same amount of work while consuming less raw materials, but can also be as simple as taking the bus to work instead of driving.

As for real new technologies, when pressed I always promote the idea of a big push to explore practical nuclear fusion. A worldwide annual rate of about $300 billion for R&D is easily affordable, the US military budget alone is over $450 billion and this doesn't include the supplemental requests for the wars.

We don't know if a practical fusion system can be made to work, but it is worth spending the money to find out. Better this than pointless trips to Mars.

Ultimately (perhaps in 200-300) years the only sustainable sources of power will be solar and fusion. Fossil fuels will have been depleted and there is a strong belief that even Uranium will be scarce at that point. Most people feel that that is a problem for future generations to solve and thus prefer to go on with their present life styles. There is no way to force them to change their position. As Reagan said "posterity doesn't vote".


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape