The energy crisis has no easy solutions. Solar, wind, and all the other green technologies are not going to work, they simply cannot produce anywhere near the amounts of energy we need. We cannot depend on some fancy technological fix; we don't even have any guarantees that fusion can be harnessed on an industrial scale. Alternative biofuels like ethanol have problems of their own, and although it is possible that they may play a role in replacing petroleum, it will be, at best, a minor one. The discovery of massive new petroleum reserves is unlikely, and even if they should materialize, they will only postpone the problem.

We're stuck with fossil and fission for the forseeable future. And in spite of their problems, they will give us at least a few decades, and at most, a century or so to transition into a new energy economy. The one thing we can do right now is figure out ways to conserve. We need to reduce energy usage, develop more efficient ways of using the energy we can't do without, and to modify our society and infrastructure in such a way that we do this without breaking our back economically or drastically degrading our standing of living (that would be politically impossible). Conservation does not mean turning down the thermostat a few degrees, it means altering the way we live as a society. For starters, we can stop the false economies we exploit by building energy-inefficient building and transportation systems. And we're going to have to think, in the long term, about altering our cities and our settlement patterns. You can save more gas money by moving near to your job than you can by driving an econobox from a distant suburb.

The market may eventually be what saves us. The reason we are so wasteful in our use of energy is because fuel has been so cheap. It will remain cheap as long as supply keeps up with demand. If energy prices continue to rise, and do so at a steep but manageable rate, we will have the incentive to invest in the hard choices we need to make to cut back on consumption. It may turn out that the Arabs are our best friends after all.