by Suzy Charnas

Created on: June 30, 2008

High gasoline prices *are* the solution. Already, demand has dropped in the US and it will continue to drop as more alternatives are found and actually used by people who can no longer afford to compete for gasoline with other nations with rising living standards. (Ours, in case you hadn't noticed, has been falling, at least since George W. Bush and his gang of Libertarians in Republicans' clothing took over the nation). The price of gasoline will continue to rise until there is no more gasoline to buy, for us as well as for everyone else, as the costs of extracting oil that is tougher and tougher to reach and to process continue to impact what users have to pay.

With no other option, the entire world will be scrambling like mad to maximize not just the use of alternatives but the development of new sources of energy that *don't* depend on enormous inputs of oil-based fuels to create them. With all that brain power bent on this goal *because* of the high price of oil, various stop-gaps will be found and implemented, and solutions will be devised. They will not be solutions that return us to our previous levels of planet-wrecking convenience and waste, but those levels were unsustainable to begin with and giving them up sooner rather than later may be our one chance of changing the reckless and destructive way that we live before we push the planet to the point of no return and lose it entirely. We're smart, we're determined, and we do actually know how to cooperate when the chips are down (and oh boy are they down right now and for the forseeable future); so our chances of pulling the victory of survival on a basis more attractive than simple barbarism from the jaws of the defeat we have so assiduously brought down on ourselves are probably pretty good.

But without the high cost of gasoline - if, say, our governments found a way of artificially suppressing oil and gas prices until the very last drop from a pump anywhere - minus exacerbated scarcity plus the inevitable consequence of a skyrocketing black market - nothing at all would be done until that very last drop, and then we would have no option but the destroy each other over the scraps of our "good life" until all that was *left* was barbarism - or extinction.

So be grateful for the relentless climb of the price of gas. That's the only thing capable of spurring us to bring our behavior into line with the realities of limited resources so that maybe, just maybe, we can find ways of preserving a future worth having for our kids and our grandkids, a future that sidesteps the absence where cheap oil used to be and still brings us somewhere that human beings can still live good, rewarding lives.

Learn more about this author, Suzy Charnas.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.