$6 Per Gallon?

This article on Newsweek.com -- "Should You Pay $6 Per Gallon?" -- had me thinking hard about the price of gasoline as well as my recent automotive upgrade. After a few fill-ups and doing the math, my new light truck is getting 14mpg city and 19mpg highway -- losing a few mpg from the "new" rating (it's a 2000) of 17city/21highway in the last eight years and 80,000 miles of its life.

And in a previous post, "Fossil Eyes", I had talked about what it would take for me to change my driving habits. A European reader, KaiserMichi, commented that they weren't impressed (in Europe) with our gas price woes as they pay more than double our prices at the pump on a daily basis and have been for years.

The article makes some excellent points. I must admit that although $4 a gallon is inconvenient, it's really not the hardship that some make it out to be. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I drove a hundred miles a day or more, but I don't. And at present, I'm now spending the same as I have in the past for fuel to get to and from work. I'm using less gas, but the prices have gone up.

In short, I'd gladly pay $6 a gallon or more if it meant that a large portion of the tax went towards developing alternative fuel sources. It would also have more of an impact on my wallet and therefore my driving habits.

It's folly to continue to cry about high prices at the pump as long as, instead of fixing this problem ourselves with alternative energy, we are dependent for our crude on countries that hate us. Those countries must feed their own needs first and we are stuck paying the price for being last in line.

We've got to wake up and accept that gas prices aren't going down. And if we want to continue to drive our land barges that keep getting bigger, heavier, and more powerful despite the world's oil issues, we'll need to find cheaper, friendlier sources of crude oil or altogether alternative (read: oil-less) methods to power us from place to place.