Indeed, oil displaced coal despite still vast untapped reserves of coal, and coal displaced wood without denuding our forest lands. Innovation is already altering the power source of motor vehicles, and much research is directed at reducing gasoline requirements. At present, gasoline consumption in the United States alone accounts for 11 percent of world oil production.
Moreover, new technologies to preserve existing conventional oil reserves and to stabilize oil prices will emerge in the years ahead. We will begin the transition to the next major sources of energy perhaps before midcentury as production from conventional oil reservoirs, according to central tendency scenarios of the Energy Information Administration, is projected to peak.