The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Sure, it hurts to pay $3.00 per gallon when we remember gas being less than a dollar. The average 2-driver American household now spends well over $4,000 per year on gasoline, driving an average of over 40 miles per day. We have placed ourselves in a very vulnerable position over the last couple of generations, with inefficient vehicles and long commutes. It is our right to choose this lifestyle, and it is our right to have to afford it. The anger at Big Oil is ridiculous. The call for government intervention is dangerous.

Americans are honestly ignorant of how the market works. The obvious solution to higher gasoline prices is to use less gas or adjust your household budget. Alternative fuels will be made available just as soon as businesses can afford to do so - this works without government investigation or interference. It's too bad that our nation's collective ignorance might prevent things from developing of their own accord.

More from that Economist article:

What of the notion that oil scarcity will lead to economic disaster? Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren of the Cato Institute, an American think-tank, insist the key is to avoid the price controls and monetary-policy blunders of the sort that turned the 1970s oil shocks into economic disasters. (article here - Wulf) Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and the former chief economist of the IMF, thinks concerns about peak oil are greatly overblown: “The oil market is highly developed, with worldwide trading and long-dated futures going out five to seven years. As oil production slows, prices will rise up and down the futures curve, stimulating new technology and conservation. We might be running low on $20 oil, but for $60 we have adequate oil supplies for decades to come.”

The other worry of pessimists is that alternatives to oil simply cannot be brought online fast enough to compensate for oil's imminent decline. If the peak were a cliff or if it arrived soon, this would certainly be true, since alternative fuels have only a tiny global market share today (though they are quite big in markets, such as ethanol-mad Brazil, that have favourable policies). But if the peak were to come after 2020 or 2030, as the International Energy Agency and other mainstream forecasters predict, then the rising tide of alternative fuels will help transform it into a plateau and ease the transition to life after oil.

The best reason to think so comes from the radical transformation now taking place among big oil firms. The global oil industry, argues Chevron, is changing from “an exploration business to a manufacturing business”.

And why would that be?