The opportunities and challenges going forward will be to figure out how to maintain an acceptable standard of living that is sustainable. Each person can benefit himself and the planet by investing in the future rather than simply consuming for the present. Insulating an attic is investing in the future; investing in a new big screen HDTV is simply consuming for the present. Investing in infrastructure, like solar panels, that provide a future return, means that their is less required throughput in the future to maintain the same standard of living. Our society focuses on consumption (throughput) as the end all and be all and then represents all that in GDP. Increasing GDP, year after year, represents failure, not economic success. Tearing down one's house to build a new one creates a lot of GDP but also represents the destruction of wealth.

Whats interesting is that you can lose a lot of GDP without impacting gasoline demand.

The luxury car example it takes just as much gasoline to go buy a cheaper toyota vs a BMW.
You lose a significant amount of GDP but the oil usage has not changed.

Someone that makes 100k a year used the same amount of gasoline per year as someone making 50k.

Going to the store and buying day old bread uses just as much energy as buying fresh bread.

I could go on for ever but you can see economic activity can shrink a lot before demand changes.

Growth in demand does not happen but the leap from growth to actual decline in demand is quite large.