In many places throughout the world, gasoline (or petrol, as it's also called) has always been expensive, (consider roughly five American dollars to the gallon in the UK, for example) but in the United States, we've been relatively fortunate, enjoying prices in the mid to high two dollar range and, even just a few years before that, just less than two dollars for every gallon we pumped into our gas-guzzling road hogs. Lately, though, that's changed, and with prices climbing past the three dollar range, the on-the-road American is finally feeling the pinch, and he/she's not the only one who's suffering!

Consider for a moment all the industries effected by the increase in gasoline costs. Practically everybody has to drive to get to work, so cutting down on non-essential driving puts less miles on the car and cuts into the number of cars popping into the lube shop or repair garage for oil changes and maintenance. A rise is gas prices translates into a rise in the cost of everything, and I do mean everything, that gets shipped, carted, or otherwise shuffled from point A to point B, whether it be through the use of your local delivery service, a cross-country semi burning rubber across several states, or a jumbo jet flying packages and cheap plastic knickknacks from China to Los Angeles.

The computer this article was written on is a perfect example; while made up of a handful of different materials, a good deal of it is still plastic, a petroleum product. It was shipped in plastic, (with a couple plastic compact discs) on a truck (which burns gas) from a warehouse full of all kinds of plastic components that were all shipped from different factories using a variety of means (all requiring gas) and utilizing machines that require oil or grease to stay lubricated and, in some cases, even to operate their hydraulic components. And the power to operate these machines has to come from somewhere too, right? Oh sure, between nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, coal and a host of other means of generating electricity, the chances that a powerplant burning petroleum products might be powering that factory are slim (especially these days) but consider all the plastic components, all the grease and oil used to build and maintain the machines that generate our power, sending it shooting down power lines that also have their fair share of components that originally started out as crude oil in some form or another. But it doesn't end there, oh no! Those same lines that power the factory, the warehouse, and even my computer have to be manufactured somewhere, shipped, etcetera, not to mention the petroleum products used when something in the loop needs maintenance, between the fuel used to get the workers to their jobs, the plastic parts they haul with them, the gasoline pumped into the service vehicle, and a dozen other things, it quickly becomes clear that not only are we completely and totally dependent on this black goo that we're pumping out of the ground at an exponential (and yet strangely inefficient) rate, but that we're locked in a vicious cycle of dependence that's going to prove to be a hard habit to break.