It is in our (and our government's) best interests to maximize the production of non-fossil-fuel energy sources, especially renewable sources. Erlich may have been off the mark by a number of decades, but he was not wrong. ...unless you align yourself with the "anti-science" people who claim the earth somehow keeps "making" oil.
Actually the earth will make a fresh batch of oil and gas created by photosynthesis (driven by solar energy) and compressed by geologic tectonic processes (driven by geothermal energy)...
in about 100,000,000 years or so. We'll just need to go back to the caves and wait it out, then we can burn it all up again in a few hundred years - exhausting the waste into our atmosphere with no consequences whatsoever. No worries, what could go wrong with that plan?
