You know there’s been a basic shift in our thinking when the news that the price of gasoline will rise to about $4.15 a gallon and stay there for a year or more is greeted with a certain amount of relief.

The price prediction announced Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Energy would have been a little hard to swallow six months ago when the average price of gasoline was about a dollar less, but now it almost seems like a reprieve. In fact, to many Americans, the prediction seems almost too good to be true. Even the news story reporting the figure pointed out that the energy department’s predictions often turn out to be optimistic.

Although $4.15 a gallon isn’t high enough to make most Americans leave their cars in the garage, it does make many of us think twice about making an extra trip, especially to an out-of-town destination. It also conjures up some sober contemplation of how dependent Americans have become on highly available and relatively inexpensive transportation.

Our entire lifestyle is built on the expectation that we can travel anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat and that almost any product on the planet easily can be delivered to our doors. We haven’t worried about our friends and families being flung around the globe because we always knew that an airplane flight could bring us together, in most cases, in a matter of hours.

Grapes from Chile in the middle of the winter? No problem. As long as grapes are in season somewhere on Earth, they are in our supermarkets. A seafood lover stuck in Kansas? It costs a little more, but today’s catch on the east or west coast can be on your plate tonight. There are people still living today who remember when oranges were such a rarity in Kansas that they found them only in their Christmas stockings. The world has certainly changed.

And it seems to be changing again. Perhaps higher gasoline prices are only temporary, but that seems unlikely. Perhaps that good old Yankee ingenuity will find new ways to easily move products and people around the globe. Or maybe the cost and availability of transportation are about to force Americans to stay a little closer to home, with both their travel plans and their purchasing habits.

It’s a sobering thought.