I would respectfully disagree. As liquid fuel prices climb higher alternative methods of producing liquid fuels become more and more attractive.
There is a lot of research going into ways to turn CO2 into various precursors to fuel or directly into things that are liquid fuels. And the last generation of concentrating solar plants have shown that you can gather the heat very effectively if you need that. Photovoltaics are cheap and getting cheaper if your process requires electrons instead of heat. This is likely the way things will go for airplanes.
There are also a number of companies working on harnessing the wind for ships. There's the SkySail system which I believe is being deployed commercially already that's a huge, automated kite-sail. There are also people working on rigid, self-adjusting wingsails (Saildrone). Finally the folks at Makani could probably put many, many kite plane generator systems on a boat and produce a substantial amount -- perhaps even all -- of the power needed to make a large boat go.
These might require that boats get redesigned to be slipperier but as fuel prices climb inefficient ships look less like assets and more like liabilities. Given the choice between holding less expensive assets with high operating costs and more expensive assets with low operating costs plenty of businesses can find the capital to upgrade if the economics are there. And as fuel prices climb, the economics are increasingly there.
So while I agree that in the short, short term none of this helps, in the long term things can get a lot better incrementally.
There is a lot of research going into ways to turn CO2 into various precursors to fuel or directly into things that are liquid fuels. And the last generation of concentrating solar plants have shown that you can gather the heat very effectively if you need that. Photovoltaics are cheap and getting cheaper if your process requires electrons instead of heat. This is likely the way things will go for airplanes.
https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q=making+liquid+fue...
There are also a number of companies working on harnessing the wind for ships. There's the SkySail system which I believe is being deployed commercially already that's a huge, automated kite-sail. There are also people working on rigid, self-adjusting wingsails (Saildrone). Finally the folks at Makani could probably put many, many kite plane generator systems on a boat and produce a substantial amount -- perhaps even all -- of the power needed to make a large boat go.
These might require that boats get redesigned to be slipperier but as fuel prices climb inefficient ships look less like assets and more like liabilities. Given the choice between holding less expensive assets with high operating costs and more expensive assets with low operating costs plenty of businesses can find the capital to upgrade if the economics are there. And as fuel prices climb, the economics are increasingly there.
So while I agree that in the short, short term none of this helps, in the long term things can get a lot better incrementally.