[AndrewJ]

I think gas and oil prices will start to level off eventually, but only once we have diversified our transport systems away from using primarily oil and gas.

Oil is just an energy resource, the same as the sun or the wind. Unfortunately for us oil contains a HUGE amount of energy for it's low cost of extraction. Oil prices will only get so high that they become uncompetitive with solar/wind/hydro.
Unfortunately for our economies, that price is orders of magnitude higher than todays prices.

Every time I get down about the current energy situation, I just have to remember that in 1941 over half the population of Miami used solar hot water heaters, and the only reason that they don't today is that the price of fossil fuels went down drastically after WWII.
The change from solar power to fossil fuels in Miami only took about a decade with the proper economic incentives (cheap natural gas and oil)

Given the proper incentives the return to solar power should take no longer.