"victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (2,000 of which are dead...)"  Excuse me, but humans were the least impacted species by this spill.  It killed more than 250,000 sea birds, 3,000 otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 whales, and that doesn't even count the animals harmed who died later or gave birth to mutants due to the spill.  The real victims of the spill were not humans, all of whom in the area almost certainly drive and are thus partly responsible for it.  Check this site out if you want to see the real victims of the Exxon Valdez spill:  http://oils.gpa.unep.org/facts/wildlife.htm

Re "the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas," the U.S. has the lowest gasoline prices in the world by far.  Quit crying about gas prices, you sound like some right wing anti-environmental jerk.  Gasoline averages around $6/gallon in western Europe, and it should cost at least $10/gallon everywhere!

Jeff Hoffman

Yo, JD,
The price of oil may not be as high as it would be if you ruled the world; and indeed, it remains well below its 1979 peak, in inflation-adjusted terms. But it's absurd to deny that its price has "skyrocketed", as this chart will show.

Since 1999, the real price of crude has surged by something like a factor of six.

Has this been a boon for the environment? Maybe not. U.S. consumers have cut down on gas consumption a bit since crude stabilized above $50/barrel a year or so ago, but not by much. Meanwhile, as David points out, the royalties the oil majors pay to host countries have been flat. That has meant a windfall in profit for the oil majors--and encouraged them to invest in  more capacity: i.e., dig more oil wells. Ultimately, bad not only for humans, but for the birds and otters you mention above.

$10/gallon gas? Sure, sign me up. I despise cars; I find driving a distasteful, and thankfully relatively rare, necessity. Surely, the car, and the vast billions of dollars that have gone into building out the infrastructure that serves it worldwide, was a grave and maybe fatal error for humanity. Traditionally praised even by liberals for his interstate-highway program, Eisenhower may yet draw widespread derision as a fool. (Certainly, and I am anticipating your retort here, JD, he was a villain (and oil-company shill; see Iran, Shah of) in foreign-policy matters).

But getting to the $10 level, by market forces alone, might prove our final undoing.

There will likely be enormous profits made in the final leg of a "peak oil" scenario, and much of the windfall may well be spent trying to squeeze out the last drop of crude. There is more work to be done than merely cheering on higher oil/gas prices.