Well it's a crisis. According to media reports it was a crisis from the day the first farmer parked his tractor in front of a fuel depot.

But is it a crisis? My mother, who is rather charmingly attached to over-exaggeration, once said to me that she was "desperate" to put the washing out.

I said to her that I thought it might be better if she downgraded her level of hyperbole, otherwise she'd have no language to use when the Germans invaded.

It will of course be a crisis if the police, the emergency services and the buses have no fuel. It will be a crisis if deliveries of food and supplies to and products from businesses are unable to be moved.

It will be a crisis if meals on wheels cannot get to the elderly.

It'll be a crisis if anything essential is affected - businesses, hospitals and the rest.

It'll be a crisis if the bus company cannot get access to fuel and has to continue to pay wages with no income.

It'll be a crisis if the blockades drive your business to bankruptcy.

But frankly, for the rest of us at the moment, it's just a damn inconvenience. And depending on your political allegiance it'll give you another chance to have a go at the Government, Opec, farmers, car drivers or any of your favourite targets. But the situation does raise some interesting questions about how we operate as a town - or a city.

Not being able to drive at will could give us a moment's thought about how and when we use our cars. Is there the slightest chance that not being able to use of our cars will make us think exactly what we use them for and whether we need to?

Already I can feel the bristles going up on the back of the necks of those people to whom the car is a religious symbol of their independence.

It sometimes seems that these people think that my dad and all the others who fought in the war to defend democratic freedom did it solely to enable them to drive a car. The rhetoric of the car lobby seems to position a 'right to drive' above the right to vote.

But, rhetoric apart, we all know in Brighton and Hove that part of our ability to be a successful, prosperous and clean town or city depends on our ability to take some pretty radical and sure decisions about transport policy. We want better public transport, many want park and ride and everybody wants less smog and fuel pollution.

What we're not so good at is taking responsibility for our own part in achieving these goals.

On park and ride at the moment the council, which would have to take the decision, seems to be paralysed.

And not surprisingly. The Greens took seats off Labour in the last election by claiming that the council was not environmentally friendly enough and only they could save the eco-system. They successfully appealed to what you might call the fluffy bunny tendency of Labour defectors.

The result? Labour is understandably nervous about losing further seats to a Green Party that, with the luxury of opposition, is able to scupper a serious debate about something which many people think is one of the keys to the prosperity of business in the town. But whatever anyone feels about park and ride - and personally I have heard both sides argued eloquently - you do just wish someone would rule it in or out for definite.

And what we as individuals who care about the city can do is to say 'a plague on both your houses, you the car mad and you the green luddites' and promote sensible discussion about it.

What we can also do is to think before we drive. This week we're having to. We must save petrol until the fuel companies get their act together and get supplies into the garages. So we are sharing school runs, or kids are once again walking to school. We are sharing worklifts, shopping trips. We are even switching to public transport.

Although sadly with the buses having to run a Sunday service from the weekend, we will see them at their worst because there will be fewer buses than there should be and far more people.

But all these things might at least give us the chance to think how our town might work better with more restraint in the way that we use our cars. Let's not get into a war of words about whether cars are good or not - they are here to stay. It's about how we use them.

That's what will determine how environmentally-friendly a place to be we are.