I have trouble with this negative attitude.  Your point seems to be that efficiency improvements are not going to cut it and that development of windpower is a waste of money. Both might be true, however, rather than simply stating  this, and concluding that demand destruction is "not going to be pretty at all" I would also like to hear your opinion on the measures you would like to take to soften the impacts of PO.

No matter how gloomy the future might be, we should try to develop the best possible course of action and spend our "creative energy" productively.
So no windpower for you, but  will you just sit and wait until the world falls apart around you?

In the long run we need to switch to renewable energy, if it turns out the flux of that energy is not sufficient to maintain our current lifestyle we need to start rethinking that lifestyle now. An important aspects of that is a longer term view that will make efficiency improvements viable now rather than later (when it might be too late).  Labeling such attempts beforehand as "government induced madness" is not productive at al.