It took a while, but Europeans have finally noticed that the price of oil has run completely out of hand. Honest to God, I didn’t realize that fuel had become as expensive as it has either, until I returned back in the Netherlands and had to buy fuel for in the car; slightly above 1.60 euro per liter for normal fuel (at the gas station I went to). That’s ridiculously high (say $2.50 per liter, that’s $6.25 per gallon if I am not mistaken).

With oil prices breaking all records, the next shock for consumers is already at hand with electricity and natural gas prices set to skyrocket.

Vitali Minakow has already changed many of his habits to cope with the daily frustration at the gas pump. He takes fewer vacations, rides his bike to work and reaches for the phone instead of meeting friends in person. “I used to just fill the tank up and drive off,” says Minakow, a forklift driver from the western German city of Osnabrück. “But that just doesn’t work anymore.”

Minakow feels trapped. No matter what he gives up, gas prices still squeeze more and more from his wallet. “My salary has stayed the same for years,” he says, “but gas just keeps getting more and more expensive.”

Germans are experiencing a particularly unpleasant kind of energy crisis. They conserve electricity and gas where they can, but costs for heating the house, driving, cooking and taking a morning shower are making a bigger and bigger dent in the household budget. Since the price of a barrel of oil first broke the $135 mark last week, filling the gas tank of a Volkswagen Golf now costs more than €80 ($125).

A commuter who makes the daily, 65-kilometer (40-mile) commute between the northern cities of Lübeck and Hamburg will fork out an additional €500 ($778) this year just for gas. Heating and electricity bills have also recently climbed to that point that they now account for 40 percent of total housing costs. If the trend continues, utility costs will become a “second rent,” complains Franz-Georg Rips, president of the German Tenants’ Association.

For economists and consumers alike, all previous calculations are now out the window. Whereas earlier a majority of experts predicted robust growth for 2008, they now see an economy in serious danger.

The result in Germany? Political unrest.

Last week witnessed the first victim of this new mood about the economy: the grand coalition’s climate package. The set of measures to limit CO2 emissions was supposed to be passed in the cabinet on Tuesday. But the grand coalition’s partners, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the CDU, couldn’t agree on how many additional costs could still be imposed on their constituents in the face of rising energy costs. Once again, the program was put off.

This new oil and energy crisis is bringing up plenty of questions, and not just for the two main political parties. How can consumers absorb the costs? How much climate protection can be imposed on consumers if the costs of oil, natural gas, gasoline, and electricity are also rising? Should energy taxes be lowered or increased?

Lowered or increased? They’re joking right? Is that even a question in Germany right now?

In the Netherlands it’s reasonably calm… for now. People are complaining but they don’t seem to be blaming the government too much… yet.

In the coming weeks we will see increasingly more Europeans call for an energy project Americans have been calling for, for months already. Obviously we can’t become energy independent - neither can the US - but we can become less dependent on (foreign) oil.

It seems to me that the US and Europe would benefit from a joined Energy Program; we are allies, we share the same principles - roughly - and we both would greatly benefit from its results. If the energy crisis deepens, and it probably will, our respective economies will suffer tremendously. Something has to be done; we can both invent the wheel ourselves, or we can work together, save costs, and have better results.

It would be wise to work on this project together.

Which is why I consider it probable that our politicians will decide to do it by themselves.

We need more nuclear energy, more wind energy, and we need to exploit our own oil fields more. We have already waited too long.

Will it get better if we don’t do anything? I think not:

Hardly a day goes by without the Chicago Board of Trade registering a new record price for a barrel of oil. And, every day, consumers feel the consequence of this most immediately at the gas pump. Last week, prices for super gasoline and diesel in Germany broke the €1.50 per liter barrier — and there is no end in sight. Experts predict that, by the end of 2009, oil prices could rise to $200 (€129) a barrel. On Wednesday, Airbus CEO Thomas Enders warned that, were that to happen, Germany’s aircraft industry would “collapse.”

$200. That’s insane. $100 was already insane. $135 is insane. $200 is…

Very nice for Saudi Arabia, Iran, and so on.