Not much we can do about gas prices, at least in the short-term

Anyone who drives a car is very well aware that gas prices have been getting much too high of late, and that things are getting worse.

Motorists are naturally getting more and more angry, and frustrated, as they try to come up with ways to deal with this.

There are some who have been calling for a boycott of gas station. While we certainly applaud any concerted, grass-roots action aimed at addressing this serious problem, we believe the fact is this is not going to do a whole lot of good.

We hate to sound cynical, but high gas prices are a fact of life. Sure, we can all agree that we won't buy gas Tuesday. That simply means many of us will make sure we tank up Monday, and many others will ride on fumes if they have to and fill their tanks first thing Wednesday. And since the people who set gas prices are fully aware of what's going on, would anyone care to guess what a litre of gas is likely to be going for Monday or Wednesday?

It's sad, but we're stuck with it.

The reality is too many of us depend on our cars, meaning we need the gas to make them go. Some of us are fortunate to be in situations where public transit is a viable option, and there are probably many more of us who could get by with buses and GO trains if we really tried. But for many others, it's either use the car or don't make a living.

The real problem with gas prices is they fluctuate. We are all used to the idea of inflation. We in this part of the world have been living with it since we started living.

We are used to the idea that just about every cost is going to increase by a certain number of percentage points annually. These increases are predictable, and we, as consumers, have it in our power to take these increases into account in our financial planning. But how to you plan to deal with something as volatile as the gas market.

A quick check of the Web site www.torontogasprices. com at about 3 p.m. Monday revealed the cheapest litre of gas in the Greater Toronto Area was going for $1.04.9, and that was in nearby Caledon. The average price of a litre of regular unleaded gas was $1.07.854. But a week before, the average cost was $1.03.462, and the figure was 97.393 cents a year ago.

It's hard to budget when prices jump around like that.

There have been some who have charged there's some collusion between the gas manufactures, but the fact is no one has ever come up with proof. When dealing with something as frustrating as the price of badlyneeded gas, some people will focus on any convenient scapegoat.

What we can be sure of is that as long as so many of us depend on gas for our cars, the prices are just something we will have to live with. The alternatives are vehicles that run on something other than gas.

While we believe technology is capable of finding something that could do that, it's not going to be available to several years at least.

In the short-run, we're stuck.