Reply #46: The planet doesn't need anything. Human civilization needs oil...

[Ozymanithrax]

Yes, we can come up with technologies that use oil less intensly, but we then have to build an infrastructre. Human civilizaton has built an oil infrastructre. Changing to something else requires that we develop the technology and then build the infrastructre to utilize that technology. To day, improvements in efficiency have only driven an incrased use of oil. If it works so well in one applicaiton, lets use it somewhere else.

Without some way of guiding an entire civilization, I don't think it will chage.