A certain number of my readers are old enough to remember things like pulling into the service station for two dollars worth of gas, knowing that was plenty for an evening roaming the town– in fact that would probably make your tank half-full.

I suppose they would yell for anyone in the station office to come out for a laugh if I held out a “toonie” (or is it “two-nie”?) and asked for gas today. The attendant would have to be pretty good with the pump to get it stopped at about a liter and a half (not as much liquid as the milk jugs we buy— but notice that gas is cheaper than the milk).

We’ve been using up oil, and many other natural resources, for some time now. Back in the 1800’s when men invented mechanical things to ease our work load, and the “Industrial Revolution” started, things were initially fired on coal, and steam was used as the means of moving things, both outside with trains and ships, and inside the factories. Gradually we became more sophisticated, and along came cars and trucks, then aircraft, and we wired ourselves together in electrical grids and started enjoying the Good Life. But we were gradually relying on oil as the fuel; coal took on a smaller role because it was cumbersome, dirty, and difficult to get out of the ground.

Oil was great… black gold, Texas tea. We all moved to Beverley Hills and put in Cee-ment ponds and enjoyed ourselves.

But things would not last forever. Someone said on TV the other day that we have just crested the hill of oil availability versus demand. It’s very unlikely that any more cheap oil will be discovered on this planet. There is lots of oil, but getting it out is just not cheap. We’ve burnt it like mad and made it into every plastic Veg-a-matic thing we can think of, and now we feel particularly annoyed that China is a growing machine that wants more and more of it, just when things are in short supply.

If in the back of your mind you thought maybe, just maybe, things would moderate and you would see the price per liter for gas drop back to under $1.00, forget that. We will not see gas under $1.00 a liter again. In fact within the next few years we may well be wishing for gas under $2.00 a liter. It’s onward and upward, doling out a product that is steadily declining in supply.

We’ve made some benefit from the current situation here in Canada. We’ve known of the wealth of oil in the Tar Sands for some time, but it never was really worth the cost of getting it out. Now it suddenly is, and we’ve thrown all caution to the winds in the effort to make money off that. Northern Alberta has become the old west again, as settlers move in, prices rise, wages are high, drinking, gambling, and prostitution lurk in the dark corners, and no one worries the way they should about pollution—“progress” is the byword, in the form of profit.

The Maritimes are being decimated by this resulting ‘go west young man” philosophy. Thousands have left Nova Scotia alone in search of their fortune (or more to avoid bankruptcy at home), and the migration is just starting. Following a poor spring lobster season around here, and a lack of market for lobsters even if there was a good catch, rumors are that many are heading west this summer. “For Sale” signs dot the landscape, “moving sale” signs decorate the posts.

This change to higher and higher oil prices will have a profound effect on our society. It’s not been a long time since we started relying on oil for our energy needs, really only a century. But, it’s like the man who goes to the fridge time after time for a cold one, reaching farther and farther into the shelf, until he finally takes a look and realizes, “Gee, I’m almost out!”

The “almost out” brings the usual dual response… get more, and use less. The “get more” trip to the local store produces the discovery that there is little more to be easily had, and what there is costs a lot more than it used to. The “use less” is a good ideal, especially with that pile of empties growing in the back yard, but our society has trouble with that. We may well use less when we fuel our cars—sales of efficient models have grown, and generally people are driving less, but in a rural area, it’s downright tricky to wait for a bus on the corner, or take your bike to the store ten kilometers away for the week’s groceries. (And when we get there, we find the prices have soared, since most goods are brought in by trucks burning fuel, and farmers are switching from growing grain in favor of corn and other crops for ethanol fuel.)

While using less in your car is a possibility, many people spend more for home heating fuel than they do for car fuel. “Driving less” in the home might mean turning the thermostat down to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. People are going to suffer, and all of us turning to wood fuel has predictable consequences— not enough of that, and we’ll reap air filled with the smoke of chimneys.

We’re all in this together, I guess, and the future will come whether we like it or not. Perhaps it will bring a better world in the long run, as we desperately search for replacements for energy that as a by-product do less damage to the environment than our thirst for oil has done. Perhaps we’ll meet our needs by sticking up nuclear plants left and right, and have one of those pop off every few years, I don’t know.

It might be a bumpy ride, but while you’re hanging on, notice that the gauge is close to empty.

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