Of course not. By all means, we should use what we need to get us through to the move away from a finite fuel source.

Bad analogy. Paper is essentially renewable, and producing it is, all things considered, probably as energy intensive as producing the electricity that keeps that digital "stuff" flipping its ones and zeros.

Producing fuel from burning dead dino juice is less expensive than, say, farming algae to burn it, but only for the short term. In the long term, dino juice goes away and we get the gnashing of teeth that comes with $23 gallons of gas, the realization that our entire economy is based on cheap dino juice, and utter amazement that we don't have an alternative energy source in place.

Agreed :)

You haven't met my father-in-law.

The latter. Remember, in the 80s we had fairly fuel-efficient cars as a direct result of the oil crises in the 70s, in sharp contrast to the gas guzzlers from the 60s and 70s. But once fuel went back to being cheap, in the popular view there was no reason NOT to build big cars on truck frames that got gas mileage in the mid- and low-teens. There was no regard for change in demand that might come from other corners of the world, and certainly very little thought put towards what would happen if/when oil started to get too expensive.

It's that mistake I don't care to repeat.