The Government don't seem to care and they oil companies seem happy to milk the cash cow while they can. I can imagine many environmental conscious politicians will say "good" that driving is becoming unaffordable and jump into their limousine to go to the airport to catch a plane from London to Wales (or whatever). Meanwhile people need to get places.
You could argue that mass driving was never affordable. We just pushed the massive bill into the future and hoped we'd not be around when the collector would eventually come calling.
And this is exactly it: we need to redefine value to include the social and ecological consequences of a given action. Profit margin as a sole or primary indicator just doesn't cut it anymore.
Food prices, fuel prices, shortages of goods, economies running on fumes, devalued currencies, institutions that spent all their credibility on Covid, people see the ruling class as out of touch, etc, etc. It seems like the masses are being squeezed on all sides. Some nation, somewhere (I don't think it's gonna be the UK) is probably gonna reach its breaking point if this continues too long. Will they do an economic tailspin like post-Soviet Russia. Will they go out with a bang like Libya? IDK, I don't have a crystal ball.
Pound falls, oil price rises, now people are shocked petrol costs a lot of pounds...