[Vman455]

What gets me is the sense of entitlement we have regarding cheap fuel. I read an article on Bloomberg this morning which quoted several Californians at gas stations saying things like, "It's outrageous!" and, "I don't understand it." Even though this spike is temporary, the long-term trend is obvious: finite natural resource+increasing worldwide demand (especially Asia)=prices go up, and will go up until we run out of the stuff. To be blunt, people like Old Mechanic's daughter who have premised their living arrangements and commutes on cheap gasoline forever will have to make tough decisions about how to restructure their lives in the future; we all will. We will also see the ramifications of this not just in pump prices, but in every other aspect of our economy that depends on oil, from farming and commodities, to food prices at the local grocery store (those products didn't magically appear there, after all--every calorie of food energy in a grocery store represents roughly seven calories of oil energy invested in its production and distribution). There's an argument to be made for high gas prices being bad on an individual level inasmuch as they introduce hardship, but on a societal level they're in our best interest if we respond appropriately and change how we use and think about energy. The writing's on the wall, to borrow an analogy from the Old Testament. The question is: who's reading it?