I think the non-elasticity of U.S. energy demand is overstated. It's easy enough for practically anybody to carpool, which can quadruple your effective MPG with hardly any effort. Today's bus service is horrible in most places, but that can be fixed by buying busses.

Crack neighborhoods turn into regentrified neighborhoods when the value of the housing changes. This certainly doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen in, say, a couple of years.

In the 1970s there was a huge push for energy-efficient houses and cars, and if the adjusted price of energy goes up again, there will be another such push. The technology for off-grid or nearly off-grid housing is available and not tremendously expensive.

From a technical viewpoint, this is not an impossible problem to solve. From a political viewpoint, it probably is impossible, though.