Twenty Dollars Per Gallon

How the rising price of oil will change our lives.

What does it mean to be middle-class? It means to have a home, to have a regular income, to have consumer freedom, to drive a gas-burning vehicle, and in general, to consume. And when people consume, they consume oil.

It takes oil to power your car, to produce your plastic yogurt cup, to harvest the grain that makes your bread, to transport the livestock that will be your meat. It takes fuel to ship the clothes, gadgets, and items middle-class people buy and use. It takes petroleum to create the chemicals and compounds that go into so many things we use today, including computers, cars, homes and infrastructure.

Middle-class life runs on oil. So we should pay rapt attention to things that could cause the price of oil to increase. As the price increases, our lives will indelibly change–and there are plenty of reasons to think that the price of oil will, in the long term, steadily increase.

There exist three distinct pressures on the price of oil going forward, the first being a throng of 2 billion people on the cusp of joining the ranks of Earth’s middle class. The second, simply: We’re running out of oil. The third: the threat of climate change and what it means for the price of oil.

Forbes