That guy Bush, famously said, "Do you realize we have 250 million years of coal?" Stumbling on his words once again, he was really told to say, "250 years", but nonetheless surprising coming from someone who thinks the world is 6000 years old. But, really? 250 years? Well, yes and no. Like, depleting conventional oil stocks we have used up all the "good stuff", the high grade anthracite, and we have even plateaued on our bituminous coal production. That leaves, sub-bituminous coal and, finally, lignite... after that, it's pretty much, just rocks. That is, there's less bang for the buck, the lower the grade. So, yes, we might have 250 years left, but it won't be clean and it won't be cheap. So, we should really start thinking about bringing alternatives into the public discussion. I have no doubt that coal will be used, and it does have a place, but I think we will be disappointed with what it can do for us, as a civilization, compared to how we have organized our societies on cheap conventional fossil fuels. There is a firm place in the future for all types of alternative energy, wind, solar, tidal, hydro, wave action, fusion (and maybe even conventional fission, if we want to keep the lights on), but we should also be making "other arrangements", as James Howard Kunstler says. That is, we should be reorganizing our cities, finding better, more efficient ways to carry doing the things we are doing. But, we should also keep in mind, that there will be no solution that will make things, "like oil was". So, we should also try to pull ourselves psychologically from the addition to oil. That may be the hardest of all.