"Might be the best thing that ever happened. That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger and it would not kill us."

I think you're exactly correct. Plastics came along as elephant ivory for billiard balls became rarer and rarer, and so on.

It really doesn't matter if those $4 are taxes. In the US the price seems to be exquisitely sensitive to availability, which is a world-wide matter. the price of oil produced in Southeast Asia and consumed in Japan has a bearing on the price of gas in the US.

And the reality is that someday there will not be enough petroleum available to fuel the world's energy requirements, and reducing our reliance on it sooner rather than later makes sense.

On the other hand, obvious substitutes for many applications, such as nuclear plants, won't become attractive until folks are given the choice of having their power off between 10 PM and 5 AM, having their energy prices triple or looking at nuclear power plants.

Then they may get rational about it.

I think it was Al Gore's thesis, too. Maybe not nuclear plants, but price will encourage developing substitutes. In fact, it's the only thing.

And in the rest of the world the price of gas doesn't seem to have forced a major switch to alternatives.