I know this is a long post, but worth the time to think about it.
We depend on gas so much as a country and a world for that matter that society could literally collapse. Economic experts are predicting that at the current rate of inflation of gas prices takes us right up to $6-$8 gal range in the next 5 to 10 years.
**the following prediction is based on scientific and historical fact **
With the level of inflation we are on the path of, over the next five years it will cost more to ship food than companies can charge for it because most Americans can not handle the kind of inflation it will bring on. Bread and other grain product will virtually disappear because turning it into fuel will be more profitable and with that goes the price of feed for livestock driving the price of meat through the roof and unaffordable to most.
Once the threshold is met and the swelling mid-lower class cannot afford food, you will have rationing. Shortly thereafter, you will have civil unrest. Rioting will turn into total lawlessness and the police and emergency services will lose control and desert their posts. People will start to organize into gangs and small militias in order to take what they need to survive and to protect themselves.
The government, which is entirely dependent on gas for the war machine as well as police and emergency services domestically, will have to move to martial law, and we will be governed by the military (pulling valuable resources from our international defense). When people are panicking and starving they no longer care about a democratic process, they just want food and water...Our democratic republic will most likely begin to collapse with a total struggle for power going on between many individual representatives state by state causing the system to become inoperable. Eventually (just like ancient Rome) a leader will emerge and we will fall into a dictatorship.
The only next logical step is that since other countries are falling apart as well...someone is going to attack someone and world war III will commence as a war for oil. The end of civilization as we know it is here.
It is my opinion that the US/European allies cannot come out completely victorious and could end up in a stalemate with the east due to the vast manpower of China and India dividing occupation of the planet 50-50 with them, much like the Roman empire was split into east and west when Constantine ruled. We can now follow either the path of Eastern or Western Rome. Either we fall into a feudal system of powerful land owners protecting surfs in exchange for working the land...or a religious leader emerges and people stay in line and work for the better of the state based on religious beliefs (the only way to really keep the masses in line).
Sounds a lot like the bibles prediction, no? And the scary thing is that it is already happening. Is it even remotely possible that we band together and conserve long enough to refit our entire society to operate on a different fuel source? Well we better get fucking started! You decide.