The End of (Cheap ) Oil

The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrates that we are:

a. addicted to oil, and
b. are willing to do anything to get it.

But the consequences are dire, as Richard Heinberg points out.

http://www.straight.com/article-325613/vancouver/richard-heinberg-what-end-oil-age-looks

This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet.The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner, what we will end up doing anyway as a result of resource depletion and economic, environmental, and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff. Everybody knows we must do this. Even a recent American president (an oil man, it should be noted) admitted that “America is addicted to oil.” Will we let this addiction destroy us, or will we overcome it?

So why don't our governments invest in alternatives to oil?