Also, in the days before deregulation became a fad, there were extraordinarily successful industrial R&D organizations that did carry out speculative research, such as Bell Labs.

The idea that the dependence on "Middle East oil" could have been lessened is seriously misleading. Gas turbine technology is best suited to very large installations. In an internal combustion engine, one needs a high compression ratio to get good thermal efficiency. In a gas turbine engine, this is most easily achieved by making a (very) large engine that runs at a relatively constant speed. There are major practical problems in making small high compression gas turbines (among other things, conventional axial or centrifugal flow compressors do not scale well to small sizes). The result is very poor fuel economy. Chrysler wasn't the only manufacturer to build a gas turbine powered car. Rover built one in the 1950's. At best these efforts demonstrated passable, but not exceptional performance coupled with VERY high fuel consumption. This may not have seemed like a big issue when oil was a few dollars a barrel. It would be completely unacceptable now, even if one allows for the flexibility of being able to use various types of fuels. There just isn't enough of any reasonable alternative fuel to operate existing private and commercial vehicle fleets, especially if there is a massive fuel consumption penalty.

It should be noted that, in the aftermath of Katrina, there were all kinds of reports going around in the media that were greatly exaggerated. On the other hand, it is known that people trying to escape from the area were turned back or even fired on ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10623960) .

Both the Nazis and Japanese were preoccupied with economic issues; specifically the acquistion of raw materials such as oil and metals. The economic blockade of Germany in WW 1 had severe effects on both the military and the civilian population. The German and Japanese military plans were focussed on the control and exploitation of oil resources - among other things, this was a major motivation of the German military campaigns in the southern part of the front with the Soviet Union. Of course, when you believe that your people are superior to others, it is very easy to rationalize wars of aggression aimed at seizing economic assets. This observation certainly applies to both the German and Japanese regimes of the time. It is instructive to read the "The Vampire Economy" a description of the Nazi efforts to create the basis of a war economy prior to the actual outbreak of hostilities ( http://mises.org/books/vampireeconomy.pdf ).

Humans often have a streak of optimism. I am old enough to recall 1950's claims that electricity generated by nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter". Certainly new technologies will make a contribution. the question concerns the extent of this contribution. The evidence is that the economic and political effects of peak oil will be destabilising. Under circumstances where there is a clear shortfall in supply, prices will rise rapidly, aided by speculation. This will choke off economic activity and prices will collapse as demand falls off and speculators bail out. Consequently oil prices, while following a generally upward trend, will exhibit wide swings. On the upswings there will be intense pressure on politicians to find some short term solutions (Drill Baby Drill!). The temptation will be to blame environmentalists and evil foreign governments will be irresistable. The economic situations that trigger the downswings will create political pressures of their own. Some of this should be starting to sound familiar, even allowing that there have been other contributing factors to the current economic and political situation, such as "financial innovation" and asset bubbles (such as the massive overbuilding of housing in US and elsewhere). There is a real danger that the future will become ugly.

Does the phrase "Ownership Society" mean anything to you? Look it up on Google. Much of the current problems stem from the fact that, in the absence of any effective regulation, it was possible to create financial instruments that could be used to sell mortgage investments to third parties as absolutely safe AAA rated securities when many of the mortgages were issued to people who could not possibly afford them. And who were the people who were consistently against regulation and, working from positions of power, did their level best to dismantle existing regulations and undermine the enforcement of any that remained?