No...the only real answer is a long term committment to wind and solar and tidal with hydrocarbon back ups.

What does long run / long term mean exactly? How many years do we have to get to the long run?

Here are some illuminating facts and figures.

We are producing and consuming about 87 million barrels of oil (liquids) a day. The EIA / US DOE projects world demand at 118 million bpd by 2030.

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Current depletion rates are about 4.5% per year. (In other words, current production depletes 4.5% of the proven reserve base.) If we deplete current production (87mm) by 4.5% per year to 2030, that means 55.4 mm barrels of 2008 daily production will be gone, only 31.6 mm barrels of daily production remaining. An additional 31 mm barrels (more than 87 mm barrels) would be needed to reach the EIA's 118 mm by 2030. Add 31 and 55.4 and you see 86.4 mm new barrels must be found and produced (added to the 31.6 mm daily barrels remaining) by 2030 to reach 118 mm daily barrels.

31.8 billion barrels per year

The world now consumes 31.8 billion barrels of oil per year. 1978 was the last year that this volume of oil was discovered and more recently discovery has been running at less than 10 billion barrels per year. It is an utterly forlorn hope that exploration and new discoveries may alleviate the current supply crisis.

In summary these secondary factors touted by the MSM, politicians and oil companies are nothing more than an excuse and a distraction from the core problem which is demand growth running ahead of supply growth for over three years now. If the USA, Russia or Saudi Arabia could turn on the taps and produce an additional 3 mmbpd, the oil price would fall tomorrow. But they can't and the only way the oil price will come down is by reduced demand brought about by pricing poor people out of the energy market and by deepening recession.

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Notice world oil (liquids) production has leveled off from around 2005. (Chart title is World Production: Business as Usual)

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What this means is that the world is already in crunch oil time. Oil is in short supply and it's getting shorter. To mix your metaphors, if the long run isn't right around the corner, the sky is falling now.