One thing to remember is that none of this is going to happen overnight. The world isn't going to run out of oil overnight, nor will a shift in thinking about alternate fuels. Think how a mere 20 years ago recycling was scarcely an afterthought, now it's a multi-billion dollar industry. Likewise with smoking in businesses and public places being the norm, now you have entire municipalities with non-smoking ordinances. My point is that changing of thought processes on a scale of such magnitude has to happen slowly by its very nature. We'll get to a point to where petroleum will be overtaken by other alternatives, technology advances virtually guarantee this, but it will never go away entirely. There will always be a market for it - much like we'll always have landfills and there will always be smokers. Even though the homebrewers may forever be relegated to their own niche, or may even become extinct, the key is that we're seeing the beginnings of a change in thought process, however small, that over time will effect change on a global scale. The precedents are already there. The fact that we've had flex fuel vehicles in production in this country for more than a decade, and that the large oil companies have started jumping on the biodiesel and ethanol bandwagons (far more than during the 70's era crunch,) would seem to support this. We're a long way from cheap,
truly clean fuel; it's going to get way worse before it gets better, but we'll get there in time. Hopefully before 1/4 of the plant and animal species are wiped out, as they're predicting by 2050.
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