The whole issue of how much energy it takes to exploit energy reserves just seems to be really overlooked. The tar sands are just an example of that - the oil consumption frenzy of the world these days makes it lucrative for now is all.
For the US right now, most Hydrogen produced commercially is extracted from natural gas, and takes more energy then one gets back out of the acquired hydrogen. So you're using up gas reserves, as well as electricity (largely from coal) to get a net negative energy return, just in a form that you want. Even if you extract the hydrogen from seawater, it takes more energy to extract then you get back.
Iceland's hopes for a hydrogen economy make sense for them, since they have geothermal power to extract the hydrogen.
For all those praising the future of a hydrogen based economy, where is all that energy to produce hydrogen going to come from? We're pretty much tapped out on hydroelectric, so that leaves coal and nuclear. Wind energy will never make a huge contribution because noone seems to be willing to allow the turbines in their line of sight
(eg. read all about the complaints against the Nantucket Sound offshore wind farm). Solar power is also an eye sore to many, at least on a scale sufficient to make any real contribution to a national-scale grid.
As for oil, I don't like paying $3.00 per US gallon. And I do think the oil companies play short term shill games (ie. the price of a barrel of oil goes up on the world market today, and the price at the pumps goes up tomorrow? Even though they gas their pumping was purchased at a lower price days to weeks ago). This despite continued quarterly record profits for years now.
But, I also don't expect to be paying less in the future - that just is not going to happen. And the sad thing is, we've been watching this coming our whole lives, yet people are surprised
