What happens after the oil is gone?

Yes, by definition. There aren't mines of gaseous hydrogen, you have to expend energy to electrolyze water.It's like charging a battery, in other words. A rechargable battery is a great energy storage system but it's not like you can just mine charged batteries; they have to be produced and then filled with energy from some other source.Hydrogen is another kind of battery, really. Oil is technically a kind of battery, too - it's million-year-old stored sunlight - but it was stored by natural processes. Using oil is kind of like spending a trust fund - much easier than getting a job.When we run out of stored sunlight, there's only the sunlight we're currently getting. That's all the "new" power we could ever have access to. But the radiative flux that reaches the Earth's surface is still several orders of magnitude ahead of the energy requirement of human civilization.

My understanding is that hydrogen doesn't have much storage density; there's less chemical energy in a bottle of pressurized hydrogen than the mechanical energy stored as pressure! Metal hydrides are better, apparently, but I don't know much about them. (Not my cup of chemistry.)For the most part, I think the "buzz" about hydrogen economy is about one thing - you can pump it into a car like gas.

Nobody lives in the "back woods", Coyote. Despite the lionization of "rural America", less than 20% of Americans have actually chosen to live there, what with the drug problems, rampant unemployment, terrible provision of public services, awful schools, and unavailability of culture. The "real world" is in the cities, Coyote, and it's you "rural Americans" who don't know anything about them.

Nope - drugs (meth, mostly), shitty schools, and unemployment is the rural America. Maybe you have to be from there to know it. Hardly anybody, though. That's the point - you rurals aren't salt-of-the-earth "real Americans", you're a small out-of-touch minority who nonetheless insist on everything else - especially urban policy - being run according to your wishes. Frankly a lot of us semi-urban types are tired of subsidizing your decadent lifestyles. Of course, rurals are basically "gubmint come save me" when it comes to farm subsidies, and rural America sucks down about 5 dollars in Federal and state tax expenditures for every 1 dollar paid in taxes by rural communities, individuals, and businesses. You should be a lot less concerned about people trapped in the Superdome with no transportation, food, or water and a lot more concerned about how your unsustainable rural lifestyle continues only by picking my pocket.

Who the fuck gives a shit about horses, Coyote? That's nothing more than one of your rural America elitist affectations. Do you think the average American knows shit-all about horses?Man, how out of touch with the average American can you get?(Also - what, are your horses just lazy? If it's so important for them to get up a hill, let them out to walk.)

I see we're at the part where the facts offend your delicate, elitist sensibilities - so they're simply rejected.Just the sort of narrow parochialism rurals are known for, I'm afraid.