This makes me think of Clay Shirky's book "Here comes everybody".
I think the example of the whale oil industry's feeling of superiority until their rapid decline, is similar to Clay's example of the feelings of scribes during the advent of the printing press.
He talks about how the last people to be able to adapt were the people entrenched in the industry, who spent their energy justifying why change was bad rather than adapting and bringing their experience.
Often change is inevitable but a big enough change such as petroleum or electricity (or the internet) make it hard to predict how the future will pan out. People don't like change because it's unpredictable, so it's easier to deny it will or should happen.
We will find another/better way, but we still have a long time to find it, and it's probably just going to be shale oil, which isn't going to run out for a very long time. What comes after that hasn't been invented yet and there is no hurry.
The idea of a "sustainable" way of life is one which never encounters new problems. What it really means is a static way of life. It's not a bad thing to have a dynamic way of life which depends on human creativity to deal with the new and unknown.
I think tar sands and shale oil buy us out of the "classic" peak oil scare, which was that we had used up 50% of the world's oil and were headed for production decline. No, we've used up less than 30%... and can get much more, expensively and with massive cost to the environment.
I don't think an oil shortage is in the works just yet, but the era of cheap oil is gone.
Shale oil and tar sands are a joke. Maximum production will only ever be a drop relative to super-giant field output. You get poor energy returns due to enormous inputs of natural gas and fresh water and the intensive refining requirements. The ecological horror of these extraction methods alone means they will never scale. The impending scarcity of natural gas will nip shale/tar in the bud right quick, anyway.
In about three different ways in your post you said "Don't worry, somebody will figure out a way to deal with these big problems sooner or later." Do you realize that is a very childish mentality? Adults prepare for the future with the means at their disposal.
That is an extremely stupid comparison. They used whale oil for reading at night. Crude oil is a critical ingredient of modern industrial civilization.
And the implicit assumption that superior substitutes always emerge is also childish. Just because they figured out kerosene says absolutely nothing about our relationship to crude oil.
The argument that humans will "always find another/better way" has more to do with faith in humanity than it does about any commodity and it's successor.
Well that reads nice on a hallmark card, but back here in reality societies have fallen into decline, crisis, and famine many, many times because of resource shortages.
I think the example of the whale oil industry's feeling of superiority until their rapid decline, is similar to Clay's example of the feelings of scribes during the advent of the printing press.
He talks about how the last people to be able to adapt were the people entrenched in the industry, who spent their energy justifying why change was bad rather than adapting and bringing their experience.
Often change is inevitable but a big enough change such as petroleum or electricity (or the internet) make it hard to predict how the future will pan out. People don't like change because it's unpredictable, so it's easier to deny it will or should happen.