In recent times, people from all over the world have been reeling under the effects of increasing energy costs. Fuel prices have doubled in many places in just over a year, sparking protests from drivers and the common people alike.

Everything in this world is really much more interconnected than we like to believe, both within and without. The increase in fuel prices have driven up transport costs and in a domino effect, it has pushed the prices of everything up, resulting in record inflations over the world.

In a way, I feel that the majority of the governments are rather powerless as they are held hostage to the increasing oil prices, besides having to cope with higher demand as their population becomes urbanized. United States is a net importer of oil and its representatives responded to the crisis by repeatedly calling for an increase in oil production from OPEC.

Nevertheless, we are also willing participants in handing over our money to the oil producers.

On the ground level, many of my car-driving friends including myself could also feel the impact of higher petrol costs and resulting inflations. I was in a cab one day and chatted with the driver about the recent adjustment in cab metering. He explained that the increase in cab fare was good for a while but the ever-increasing fuel price is driving him crazy and he is making lesser every month. He wondered how he is going to cope. Similarly, my friends curse and swear at the petrol companies for revising the price upwards 14 times in a few months. The petrol companies are so greedy, they say.

Nevertheless, we are also willing participants in handing over our money to the oil producers. For most of us, we chose and elected to be in a free economy driven by capitalism. Everything is therefore supply versus demand. One party provides a good and sets a price for selling and another party willingly pays at the price for it. Nobody pointed a gun at us to pump our petrol at Shell or Esso. Even though they fix and control the price as an oligopoly, we can always choose not to drive.

The way I see it, humanity is facing a global lesson in this crisis and we will emerge better from it.

While I said earlier that governments are powerless in this energy crisis, that is because governments are largely reactive rather than being proactive. Most governments fail to anticipate future demands and problems.

For example, a city might have doubled its energy consumption in a decade and what does the city government do? It builds another conventional power plant to cope with the increase. Now that the power plant is in operation, the pollution increases because of the additional plant, more industries and higher emissions from more vehicles.

What does the governor then do? He responds by starting a green campaign to try to reduce the pollution. We have seen too many of such examples in real life and we can largely predict their results. It will be too late, too difficult to reduce the pollution, in part being hampered by self-interest lobbies and citizens who are resistant to change.

Our world is putting in so much energy in “reacting” to events, rather than solving problems at their roots.

I sometimes feel that certain environmentalists are very much like some of the anti-war participants. While both groups have good intentions and serve a role in making the world a better place, some of them focus so much energy on fighting pollution and rallying against war that they forget about creating clean energy and peace respectively.

Mother Teresa was once asked to attend an anti–war rally and she refused, responding to those requesting her attendance by saying, “But if you ever have a peace rally, let me know and I will attend.”

Similarly, we need to focus our energy on creating the world that we would like to see instead of fighting problems. When we focus on what we do not like, the more of it we experience. This is the law of attraction. The universe is absolutely neutral and reflects to us what we focus our creative energy on. That's why we are co-creators.