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How would you live without fossil fuels?

The recent hike in the price of fuel had Otto thinking long and hard about the $100 it took to fill the tank, and the swiftness with which the 65 litres burned up over 450km (yes, it's that kinda car).

A week and a half's worth of commuting. What happens when that $100 becomes $200 for ten days' travel? Twenty bucks a day just to get to work and back, not including tolls.

At what stage do you say: 'Bugger it, I'm standing at the bus stop and jiving with the kids on their way to school or swimming in the sea of human sardines packing themselves into the trains?'

Sure it's not fun, socially inhospitable and, unless it's just Otto's strange aftershave, a dead cert some recently released/escaped lunatic is going to get in your face on the crawl through the subterranean world that is the underbelly of our outer suburbs.

There are some benefits. You can peer through the grime encrusted windows at the herds of immobile automobiles penned behind the level crossings watching the train arthritically heave itself across a major arterial as they sit and silently curse.

If you're lucky enough to travel against the rush, you might even get a seat and read the paper. In fact, the advent of phones that play music, broadcast radio and even make calls means that the time on the train is not limited to reading the cartoons or finding out which football player has been rubbed out again.

But this all presupposes you live near a public transport node and work near one too.

Personal transport is nearer and dearer to the hearts of Australians than almost any other country. And for one very good reason. It's a bloody big country and you can travel a decent number of clicks each day to shuttle between your des res and the work face.

So the sad truth is we'll be burning holes in the disposable income side of the family budget to fill the tank come hell or high water until the fuel supply dries up.

Peak oil scaremongers, greedy Chinese, manipulative Arabs and South Americans and grasping governments everywhere will ensure the glory years of cheap fuel are gone for good. And that's before Big Kev's new Carbon Tax flays you even more for daring to determine your own personal transport schedule.

It's no wonder June 2008 registered the highest number of new vehicle registrations in our history, at a shade over 106,000 units.

That's an awesome number and it smacks of the desperation Aussies are feeling.

Desperate to get shot of the old gas guzzler and into something with a sticker on the screen that promises mid to high single-digit litres per 100km.

Desperate to buy a new petrol or diesel driven car while they can before the automobile, as we have known it becomes extinct.

Desperate to own a new car before that joy is sucked from our dry little mitts.

Of course the next outcry from the consumer's lobby will be why the combined fuel figures quoted on the windscreen in the showroom bear little resemblance to the real world driving experience.

We never used to care much about how far we could go on a tankful. At least not like the Euros, who have obsessed over such things for decades.

Once the number of kilometres squeezed from a tank after a week's shopping, dropping the kids at school, soccer, drama, music and swimming lessons are calculated, there may be some head scratching… so best you know this now:

Those fancy numbers everyone quotes are not REAL WORLD.

They are generated by driving a car on a rolling road through a pre-determined test cycle that pays scant attention to aerodynamics or vehicle weight. Six-speed gearboxes with unfeasible overdrive ratios were invented because fuel consumption tests for the highway cycle required the vehicle to be in the highest gear.
 
But really, what is the real cost over the course of a year of the increase in fuel prices from $1 to $1.50? Depends on your distances, but even if you're moaning about $70 bucks a week, just try working out how you'd manage without it and the stark reality is far worse.

After the first week of juggling buses and trains, and maybe the odd cab (if you could find one) you'd be jack of it. You'd be late home, the kids' after school curriculum would be comprehensively curtailed, and the trip to the supermarket would make 'Nightmare on Elm Street 43' look like a picnic with the Vicar.

For any business person who values their time, public transport will never add up. Spend 90 minutes instead of 20 getting to a meeting and you've thrown away more than the cost of a tank of juice in billable hours already, and the opportunity cost of the business you could have been doing will be far greater.

The government knows we can't survive without out cars so they'll keep loading us up with more taxes, letting the oil companies profiteer their way to hell and back, and we'll just take it.

Our kids will have a different view though. They'll be oblivious to the 'joys of cheap fuel' of the old days. They'll probably wonder why we even want to burn petrol or diesel creating smog and ozone holes, when there are far more exciting energy solutions around the corner, some might even be renewable energy sources.

They'll adopt green and friendly fuels quickly -- and they'll accept the cost of a kilometre of travel being ten times what we pay now as the cost of moving from place to place.

The car companies will quickly adapt because they have huge workforces to keep busy and investors to shower with dividends. Well, those will be the car companies left after the dinosaur companies melt down and evaporate, that is.

Many of those car companies adapting will be Chinese, unaffected by the jittery Wall Street wipe-out brigade who have the power to vaporise shareholder value in seconds on the strength of often nothing more tangible than locker-room rumour.

The (unlisted) Chinese will survive and prosper, and when they see the market for vehicles powered by those other than fossil fuels is booming, they'll be in with the solution and we'll thank them for it. Anything to stay independently mobile.

Of course, if there is still some oil left, even if it is mega-bucks per litre, you could always ride a motorbike or a scooter, using a third less fuel to cover the same distance.

If you think about it, it is crazily ironic. We used to enjoy our own thriving car industry, exporting our know-how to the developing world and importing their crude low-rent wares.

Now we're reduced to surviving on our exports of raw iron ore, which the now almost developed world turns into cheap transport solutions. They're driving the latest cars and we're backing off fossil fuels for pedal power.

Did some one say 'four wheels bad, two wheels good'?

Funny ole world, eh.

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