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As I said... our problem is that even if we're pushing in one direction, you have the teeming millions of suddenly middle-class citizens (especially in China), who want to do it the American way. Thus, they're moving straight from bicycles to four door Buicks in large numbers, and are demanding more and more energy.
The Chinese government has had the foresight to massively invest in hydroelectric and other alternatives, but rapid industrialization is incredibly power-hungry.
The electric car initiative in China and the rest of the world still isn't quite at the US level... because at the current price levels, electric cars with the same size and convenience as regular cars (i.e.: they're not golf-karts with fiberglass body-kits) are still way beyond what most consumers can actually pay.
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2050... that's a long ways away. My hundredth year is 2075. That will be an interesting time... I hope by that time they'll have the technology to enable me to live another fifty years, so I can see the 22nd Century.
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Even in the worst case scenario, I see our life fifty years from now as being not that bad. Even our transport and power infrastructure break down, our information infrastructure will enable us to keep progressing in some ways, at least. Civilization won't break down completely. Perhaps we'll all be riding bicycles to work (clean air!) at the sugarcane plantation... and spend all our spare time on virtua-twitter...
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