Standing at the edge of the asphalt driveway, watching the digital numbers spin upward with every tenth of a gallon pumped into the tank, it is hard not to feel a profound sense of exhaustion. Across the United States, the national average for regular gasoline has pressed upward, hovering comfortably past four dollars a gallon, with peaks reaching far higher in states like California and Washington where drivers routinely face numbers north of five dollars. Historically, prices this steep are not entirely unprecedented, echoing the grim milestones of the summer of 2008 when the global economy