“Oh, if only more people were complaining about gas prices on Facebook!” you’ve all apparently been screaming at your computer screens, convincing others to tell you how they feel. To give some perspective, the Editorial Board at 1 Scaianalysis Esplanade started that trend.

I’m not an old man, but imagine me leaning back in my chair and running my hand along my suspenders as I say it all started in 2012. I found the number of options available at 7-Eleven confusing.

I posted with excitement as gas prices dropped during the pandemic with a capstone of finding gas for 99 cents.

Gas prices are now shooting back up, and as they push toward record levels, we’re stealing my idea, but instead of using it for good, we argue with each other on social media more than ever.

We’re also now placing stickers at gas pumps to let others know our political preferences.

In the stickers’ defense, they’d been popping up long before Russia invaded Ukraine, but I sent a note to the head of SMU’s Maguire Energy Institute to ask about the potential effect on the Texas economy. We are home, after all, to the Ewing family. I imagine Larry Hagman watching down on us, licking his lips in anticipation of another stretch of high oil prices.

Bruce Bullock at the energy institute responded:

“There are potential benefits.  The state’s Permanent University Fund which funds UT and Texas A&M is from production on state lands so it should benefit.  Localities with oil production tax reserves in the ground as property just like our houses so its value has gone up.  Finally the state should collect significantly more in severance tax revenues on oil and gas produced in Texas.“

It’s almost as though the issue is more complicated than it appears. And he didn’t even mention Larry Hagman once.

Another issue we’re facing is drilling slowed down during the pandemic, and it’s only just now getting close to the level from before society was discontinued.

Loyal Scaiaholics will recall I enjoy attending a transportation summit each year that studies how close we’re getting to having Rosie the Robot clean up our messes. At last month’s summit, I sidled up to the transportation director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments.

Regardless of whether you’re a leftist or a Trumpist or whatever adjective you prefer to demonize people who have different opinions than you on certain issues, he explains we need to start getting infrastructure ready for a post-oil future.

Michael Morris explains we’ve learned from the pandemic we might consider access to the internet a method of transportation.

Unless our ancestors had the foresight to massacre a bunch of plankton 100,000 years ago, we’re not getting more oil than what’s already underground. Did our ancestors do that? No. They didn’t have the sense to do that.

Even though Texas still has oil, and now that Larry Hagman is no longer trying to corner the market, Morris says [and it’s possible he was not specifically referring to Larry Hagman] we do have the sense to plan ahead this time.

Morris compares the idea of charging as you drive to wireless cell phone chargers.

The one issue, just a minor issue, will be how to pay for these roads to the future. It’s great cars are already getting more fuel efficient, but that leads to less revenue from the gas tax to build the roads.

We might ultimately turn to another emerging option to power our vehicles.

Back when I lived in Oregon, they had started a pilot project where people could sign up to pay a tax based on how many miles they drive instead of the gas tax. Some people were nervous because The Man would be tracking where they drive. MyOReGO, which sounds like a type of back injury, has been assuring people for about 15 years the computer machine they hook up to your car works more like a pedometer that just counts miles than a GPS that shows how many times you had to go to your secretary’s house at night because of a “paperwork snafu”.

I may be a bit behind on all this. I still plug my cell phone into a real-life charger that’s plugged into the wall each night and drive a truck I bought in 2004.