Your contradictions don't hold up
The "yellow light" started blinking long before the artificial oil shocks of the 1973 Yom Kippur war. I remember reading articles in the '60s that pointed to increasing reliance on oil imports by the US. But the truth is that despite the dire outlook of the time, global oil reserves have increased significantly since then because of better technology. Back then according to the "Club of Rome" predictions of rising shortages in all commodities, by 2000 we were supposed to all be dying of famine in a hopelessly polluted world. Somehow it just never happened, which the greens today always overlook. You talk about learning from the past, but somehow the greens never do.
Fossil fuel producers don't have nearly the profit margins other industries have. It's consistently under 10%, which is puny compared to Apple and other high tech companies. They make a lot of money in absolute terms because energy is the biggest business on the planet, not because they are forcing us to pay artificially high prices. Besides, even if they did, isn't this a good thing? How often do you hear greens clamor for the government to raise prices artificially high through taxation? You seem to be arguing on the one hand that energy companies are ripping us off with artificially high prices while on the other hand saying that everybody is "failing to address the difficulties of this transition". You make claims without citing any examples that the oil companies artificially lower prices anytime alternatives threaten them. Have you been to the gas pump, in say, the last 10 years????
Look at economic history. Rising prices are the one thing that effectively causes the transition to new technologies. Mr. Neider seems to think that there is an absolute cap on what consumers will pay. But back in the '60s, nobody would *ever* have paid as much as 35 cents per gallon. That's about $2.50 today, and yet everybody today would be quite happy with that price. The truth is that our cars are much more efficient today, and people make other adjustments.
The history of commodity depletion is that we never somehow actually do fall off that cliff. Centuries ago Europe faced a shortage of wood to heat its homes, but managed to develop coal mining with increasing technological sophistication (the steam engine was originally developed to pump water out of coal mines). In the 1850s the world was running out of whale oil to light its lamps. First kerosene was developed as a substitute, and then electric lighting was invented. People who see continual disaster always lurking around the corner ignore history and are actually the ones who most easily fall prey to their emotions.
