Ranting about gas prices can help vent frustration for consumers, but after a while even that benefit starts to wear pretty thin.

Consumers feel powerless about controlling this segment of their household budget. Perhaps we shouldn't.

The plain fact is that gas prices are bound to stay elevated, or what Americans consider elevated, for the foreseeable future. The marketplace has demonstrated its willingness to pay higher prices without a significant decline in consumption. So when the price naturally sinks back even to last month's levels — and trends are already pointing in that direction — the complaining will recede and people will become accustomed to a new norm at the gas pump.

Moreover, the growing presence of that latent powerhouse of consumerism — China — will compound the demand for a global commodity that can only shrink in supply.

The only rational course of action that remains open to us is simply to consume less.

This is not as utopian a position as it may seem. Under the gas-cap law, wholesale prices rise and fall based on an index averaging Mainland prices. But consumers can have at least a modest effect on competing retailers, who are unregulated.

It's encouraging to hear anecdotal evidence of drivers already reconsidering unnecessary trips, and to see some heightened interest in smaller and hybrid-fueled cars.

But beyond the small steps consumers can take in the immediate future, the voting public must begin to make the promotion of alternative energy sources a political priority. Our national addiction to fossil fuels has got to end.