Can't agree about conservation being over-emphasized--opposite is true in the US, where the trend is towards over-consumption, and has been ever since the invention of cars.

Also, petroleum is a filthy, polluting source of energy that is the cause of more problems than it solves either in transportation or heating and electricity.

The infrastructure economies based upon the mobile car society are also much more expensive than infrastructure required for societies with a large investment in mass transit.

Eventually, we will end up with a transportation hybrid, that utilizes some low level polluting energy source for small private transport vehicles that are hooked up to a mass system.