Comment by AngryData

It does work, but the problem is gasoline has distorted our view on how much energy we are actually using. Most people would shrug at using a single gallon of gas to drive to the store. But telling them they gotta cut down an entire tree just to drive to the corner store doesn't fly as well. Of course if we used all the energy in the tree instead of just what can be distilled off it would reduce the amount used quite a lot, but nobody is going to switch to steam boiler powered cars that they gotta fire up 45 minutes before hand.