The Price of Change?

I have a friend, Jeff Brown, who says that it is going to take an $8.00 USD gallon of gas to get people (drivers, car manufacturers, the government, etc.) to make the changes necessary to really change their ways as it relates to energy conservation. Well, I felt this week that he was half right. There I stood on Sunday morning filling my Mini Cooper up with (the required) Super Premium gasoline at $3.99/gallon. Okay, it’s not really $4.00 yet, but that fraction of Abraham Lincoln can’t fool me…it’s $4.00 a gallon of gas! My tank took $49.76 of Chevron to fill it up. I would have normally topped it off, but I just couldn’t stand to see the numbers roll over to $50.00 to fill up a Mini Cooper! I have no recollection of the cost of gas when I first started driving but I do remember filling up my 1969 MG Midget for under $5.00 back in 1979. It’s 29 years later and I still drive a car that is about the same size but I pay 10X the amount of money to fill the tank! Eeegads! To put that in perspective that means that the house I grew up in that cost $12,000 would sell today at $120,000. Hmmm…I think my Mother can get more for the house than that. Okay, that means that the comic book I paid, $0.12 for would today go for $1.20! Hmmm…I think they are more expensive than that. Okay, one last try…The Gap jeans, I mean the real Gap jeans that that were $14.99 would be $149.99! Ha, see they didn’t go up that much. But, the D&G jeans I bought not long ago?….well….hmmmph. Okay, so Jeff is right, it’s going to take another doubling of the price of gas to get us on the bus, walking to work, car pooling again, riding our bicycles, putting locks back on our gas caps! I’ll be ready when it happens. Of course the question then will be, what do I do about those $300 jeans I have in my closet?