The truth is that the United States accounts for about 44 percent of the world's gasoline consumption. We drive more cars, more often and we've become dependent on fossil fuels about as stubbornly as a drug addicted is dependent on his or her next fix.

In 2003 The United States consumed over 119,000,000,000 gallons of gasoline which is an absurd amount of fuel to consume my any standard. Each day that equates to about 360 million gallons. The U.S. used about 138 billion gallons of gasoline in 2006. That's when the pain and expense of our addiction began to rear its ugly head and the search for a cheaper alternative fuel source began to grow.

Fuel prices began to spike in 2006 but have been rising steadily since the start of 2008, especially in western countries such as Canada and the USA. From that time forward the words Cheap Gasoline or Cheap Gas became extinct like the dinosaurs.

From the mid 1980s to September 2003, the inflation adjusted price of a barrel of crude oil was generally under $25 per barrel. During 2004 the cost increased to more than $40, then $50 per barrel. A sequence of events pushed the price of oil to exceed $60 per barrel by August 11, 2005, and yet we still continued to consume gasoline at a gluttonous pace.

The price for a barrel of oil, for a short time, exceeded $75 in the middle of 2006, then fell back to $60 per barrel by the early part of 2007 only to jump steeply to $92/barrel by October 2007 and went to $99.29 per barrel for December 2007. All the way through the first half of 2008, oil frequently reached record high prices. On February 29, 2008, oil prices peaked at over the century mark at $103.05 per barrel for the first time in history despite there not being a gas shortage, but the price also for the first time in history was based not on consumption but on speculation of future markets.

It was reported that a barrel of oil was priced at $110.20 on March 12, 2008, which was the peak of six consecutive records in seven trading days. The most current price per barrel cost ceiling of $138.83 was set on June 6, 2008. Consumers no longer look for cheap gas, but are settling for cheaper gas, meaning it's outlandishly high everywhere and saving .03 gallon has become a marvel to behold and be apart of in our economy.

Alternative fuel sources research, such as on Hydrogen as a fuel for cars and trucks has reached all time highs. The use of hydrogen fuel as a supplement to gasoline to run your car or truck is matching the rate of gasoline prices. Hydrogen is really the last true cheap fuel source because it is so abundant and the technology to separate it from water has become very fundamental and inexpensive to acquire.

Our enormous appetite for fuel, or addiction to big cars and trucks has seemingly met its match because for the first time in decades, due certainly to the highest costs of gasoline in the history of the world, Americans are now using less gasoline. In the United States, gasoline consumption dropped by 0.5% in the first two months of 2008 which was even higher than the .4% drop in consumption back in 2007.

Alternative cheap fuels such as ethanol and Hydrogen hybrids can be and are being built right at home. The one good thing about the higher prices of gasoline is that its forcing us to use a cleaner, a more reliable and a more abundant fuel sources that is better for our planet. After all, our planet is about 80% water and technology is finally able to tap into this cheap source of fuel just in the nick of time.