First of all, if you believe me to be retarded then I have no use for our discussion. A Libtard, to me, is a personal insult and I will thank you to refrain from such insults. I have not insulted you nor will I as many rightist here will agree.
We do not support drilling because drilling is not an answer - it is not a long term solution, it is non-renewable even by your standards of drilling more, deeper, further out in the ocean, on the poles, whereever, oil is a bad idea and we will have to get off the stuff either now, at some cost, or later at great cost. Foresight seems forever to escape rightist "planners". We are producing more oil in this country than we have in a decade and the prices have not fallen, in fact we are exporting more gas than we have in a very long time, and still the prices remain high.
I have not said anything against natgas nor will I, there are some dangers but we are at the point where we will have to cope with some of them.
You are presuming, still, an abundance of easily recoverable crude - and you presume wrong, as things progress you will see what we are beginning to see now, wilder and wilder fluctuations. As I said that no one refutes - saudi wells are yielding more and more salt water and less and less crude - they are pumping from the all time largest field on earth, it is hundreds of miles long and half a hundred miles wide - do you really think that we have not, with 100 years of exploration, satelites and high tech, seached most of the planet for a deposit that large? barring deep sea and polar areas - there aren't any more of those in the world. Keep track of large finds for a while and see what comes of it.
The price of fuel will not gradualy increase because the saudi wells take up the slack, at the point where they refuse to do so you will see huge spikes and shortfalls.
Play with that. consider a true half a million grl a day shortfall for 6 months, now consider a million brl shortfall for a year and tell me that your prices will be gradual and people will just "use less".