Unrest in Cairo, Egypt and Libya has kept the ever-looming $4-a-gallon gas on my mind.

It’s been said in the past few days that by the end of 2012, we’ll be paying $5 a gallon. I’m not trying to be a pessimist, but I can see $4 being the new standard low price in the coming years.

When I was in college, our science books had a gas pump handle on the cover. There was a flower coming out of the nozzle, a nod to the green movement, I’m sure.

In high school we were taught that there was only so much oil left in the planet. Yet every other year it seems a new pocket is found that would supply the world for a few years.

On the flip side, each year after oil reserves are discovered, it seems the area is cut off from exploration and drilling. Remember ANWAR and last year’s Gulf drilling stoppage?

But what will $4-a-gallon gas do? Raise the price of everything, basically.

As the gas prices go up, so do all other goods, as those goods must travel to our markets on roadways. And gasoline, despite what you might hear out of Washington, is the best fuel for the job.

I’ve already seen the price increases happen in restaurants. Some of my favorite eateries printed new menus after the last price increase two years ago and those prices have yet to go down.

Some people will go out of their way to save a few pennies on gas. Others, myself included, used to take the can of soda approach.

It goes like this: a can of soda costs 75-cents at the local quick stop. If you’ve got a 20-gallon tank, skip buying the soda. That way you can pay the extra 3.75-cents per gallon and it won’t affect you.

But the fact is that gas has risen 24 cents a gallon in the past week.

Clutch the pearls, Aunt Bea, we’re gonna have to make some big changes. The reality is that gasoline is something that Americans constantly need. For many, cars are a part of their identity, especially in the South.

Many of us have a car that is used just for cruising around. My father-in-law has a 1972 Chevy Impala that is shy of 70,000 miles as of this week. If our cruisers are taken away, then so goes a portion of our identities.

Think about spring and summer sports seasons and how much gas gets burned ferrying little Jimmy and Janey to practices and games. I shutter to think what the thousands of RV owners are thinking right now, seven months before the next college football season.

As a news junkie, I’ve been expecting the price of gas to spike over the past month. For several weeks now, I’ve been taking a drive during lunch breaks.

I drive a little car, so the gas prices won’t affect me as much as others. But my wife drives a huge van and when I went to go put gas in it the other day, I shuddered to think what is coming.

On one hand, I see the argument that Americans have a lot of leisure time and can afford a gas price spike. On the other, I remember all of the foreclosures that followed the last energy scare two years ago when families started using their credit cards to fill their gas tanks and eventually had nothing to pay the bank note with.

As of last year’s Census, there are 3,917 dwellings sitting empty in St. Clair County. For most of those homes, the families relocated. Some to apartments, others to areas where they could find jobs.

Maybe if so many of our jobs weren’t shipped overseas in the last 20 years while our oil continued to be imported we’d be in better shape.