Is this a true supply and demand question? Well it is true that the booming Chinese economy is consuming vast amounts of natural resources including oil, but the United States is still the world's largest consumer of oil and related products.

The peak of oil consumption in the US is in winter, with oil being used for heating and in recent years there have been big surges in the price of oil at this time.

As supply is limited by OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) the price can be somewhat governed by the amount of oil they let onto the market. As oil is a limited resource we might be inclined to believe that that oil will run dry in the near future but the reality is, as the price of crude increases, the cost of recovering oil from remote, inhospitable places become more and more viable.

There are masses of such types of oil reserves all over the world that are only now being seriously looked at as a viable resource.

In Alaska, for instance, there are vast oil fields that are deposited in sand under the ground. This oil, once considered worthless is now starting to be extracted from the sand and will be a resource that will last well into the millennium.

As a result of our overwhelming need for oil we are now facing the world's biggest problem in history, Global Warming.

Caused by excessively high levels of green house gases in the atmosphere, global warming is a direct result of the burning of fossil fuels such as oil. As the levels of gases build the heat that the sun produces is trapped in the worlds atmosphere rather than being able to dissipate back into space. Hence the name green house effect.

The green house effect can be seen on another planet, Venus. Venus can reach 480C as a result of green house gases and of course life at these temperatures for humans is not possible.

Unless we can curb our consumption and reliance on oil, coal and other fossil fuels we run the risk of heating our planet to a level where the sea levels will rise as a result of melting the polar ice caps which will displace hundreds of millions of people.

Even worse than this we could be creating the demise of the entire human race by making the planet uninhabitable.

So the true price of oil is not what we pay at the pump or the bowser but the price is life itself.

Governments around the globe are starting to take notice but unless the major consumers start to reduce their consumption the efforts of countries who have been working towards World green house gas reduction will fail.

There are steps that you can take as an individual also. Try taking public transport to your sports game or local bingo hall or better still watch the game on television or play bingo online.

What you do matters and if enough people start to think about the effect we have on the planet and on our children's future we can force Politian's to take notice and act.

Man kind came together once before to stop the production and use of CFC which deplete our UV protecting layer of the atmosphere ozone, so there is no reason we can't beat this global problem.