96 Octane fuel costs about 70 American cents per litre (roughly 2.2 pints) in my country, but it seems every event is an excuse for another price increase. World peace? Price goes up because oil producers are taking advantage of the stable market. War? Prices go up because supplies are restricted.

Reserves are running out, slowly but surely. Prices will steadily increase, research into alternative fuel sources will continue at its painfully slow and underfunded rate. Eventually petroluem will run out, and we'll be in the doo-doo, particularly western Europe and the United States.

I'm hoping that governments will start to take a serious, rather than token, interest in funding alternative fuel sources. Heck, hydrogen fuel cells have been in use since the moon landings, but relatively little progress has been made toward implementing the technology for everyday use. If fuel cells had got a tenth of a percent as much R&D as internal combustion has had since then, we'd have had non-polluting vehicles by the 1980s.