I can't afford a new vehicle that gives me far better gas mileage and neither can many other middle class and poor people.

Rising gas prices are hurting the lower income segment of our society far more than the richer members. I would also like to install solar panels on my roof but lack the money to do so.

Every time gasoline prices or the price of electricity increases, many find it extremely difficult to live within their budget. Also since everything we buy involves the trucking industry at some point, increasing fuel prices cause the price of all the goods we buy to increase.

My son in law drives an 18 wheeler for a trucking company. His truck holds 240 gallons of diesel fuel and it would cost over $1000 dollars to fill it completely. He usually fills his tanks every other day and it costs $500. His truck which is brand spanking new gets 6 mpg. Many of the loads he carries involve the transport of cardboard boxes from the facility that makes them to other factories that fill them.



The next time that you pick up a box of cereal at your grocery store take a minute to consider how may trucks were involved in getting that box to your grocer's shelf. First the log trucks that take the trees to the factories that make the boxes and since the cereal boxes are packed into correlated cardboard boxes, two separate factories could be involved. Then you have to add all the trucks that transport the corn, sugar and other ingredients to the factories where the cereal is made plus the trucks that bring the correlated boxes that hold the individual cereal boxes to a distribution center where they might be sent to a separate warehouse and then trucked to your grocery store. Twenty separate trucks or more, some traveling hundreds of miles, could easily be required so that you can purchase a box of corn flakes.

Not only is the economy negatively effected by consumers who have less money to buy products when gasoline prices increase but also the cost of the products increases because diesel fuel prices increase at the same rate.

I don't see any easy solutions to this problem at this time. In the future, perhaps 10 to 20 years, we may develop and refine technologies currently in development and we may be able to overcome our dependence on fossil fuels and move toward green energy.

I understand that currently it is hard for green energy to complete against fossil fuel and that raising the price of fossil fuel may close the cost difference. Unfortunately, the people who will suffer the most from such a policy will be those who can least afford it. But if we continue to hurt the environment by using fossil fuels, we may all pay a far higher price.

It's a real conundrum.