The big energy squeeze is also hammering business, industry and governments, too, but if you think this is bad, just wait a few months until the oil price gusher hits $100-a-barrel.

Better invest your dwindling funds in that bike, or a sturdy pair of walking shoes. Because come this Thanksgiving, the world officially enters The Beginning of the End of the Fossil Fuel Era.

Meanwhile, we in energy-rich Alberta are awash in oil and gas wealth.

As I've written here many times, it's both a blessing and a curse: Albertans have learned from hard experience there's always some carpetbagger out there who's envious of that money, and is scheming to steal some for themselves.

Pierre Trudeau and his Liberals robbed us of $8 billion under the National Energy Program in the 1970s. And Liberals are still in power today.

In today's guest column we get an Ontario perspective from The Toronto Star's Ian Urqhart. He explains - as I've tried before - why Albertans need to keep both hands on their wallets...and a sharp eye peeled for eastern carpetbaggers.

Ian Urqhart

A headline in an Alberta newspaper this week said that the provincial government has "money to burn."

So true.

Every $1 hike in the price of a barrel of oil translates into an additional $99 million for the Alberta treasury.

And each 10 cent rise in the price of a gigajoule of natural gas brings in another $99 million.

This windfall is coming to a province that is already debt-free with no sales tax, the lowest corporate and personal income taxes in the country, and a budget that includes whopping increases in spending on post-secondary education (30 per cent over three years) and health (11.3 per cent this year alone).

That budget was predicated on the assumption that the price for oil would be $36 (U.S.). This week, the price nudged above $65.

For the Alberta treasury, that increase — and the related hike in the price of natural gas — means an additional $2.5 billion in unexpected revenues.

Money to burn, indeed.

You could see some of it burning this week at the annual premiers' conference, which Alberta's Ralph Klein hosted here in Banff.

The Alberta government spent lavishly — more than $1 million — to show off the province, which is celebrating its centennial, to the visiting premiers.

The premiers were conveyed from Calgary to Banff on a vintage steam-driven train, treated to a rodeo at a stopover along the way, wined and dined nightly with magnificent spreads of Alberta beef and lamb, and given a clinic by golfing legend Gary Player (who was flown in from London for the event), followed by a round at the famed Banff Springs course (green fee: $180).

(An aside: Klein encountered some criticism because part of the cost of all this —about $375,000 — was paid for by the corporate "sponsors" of the conference, including Bell, Canadian Pacific, CIBC, ING, SAP and TransCanada. In exchange, lobbyists for the sponsors were given free access to the premiers and their staffs at the various social events.)

While appreciative of the hospitality, the other premiers — struggling as they are with deficits and spending pressures they cannot hope to meet — look at Klein's bulging Alberta treasury with a combination of envy and fear.

They are fearful of the implications down the road if oil and gas prices continue their upward spiral and the Alberta treasury remains bloated.

Alberta is socking its excess cash away in rainy day accounts such as its Heritage Fund. But there is talk in Alberta that the province could use its new wealth to lower its already low personal and corporate income taxes to lure both businesses and high-salaried professionals (engineers, doctors, computer programmers, and the like) away from other provinces.

Alberta has already succeeded in attracting such businesses as Imperial Oil, which recently moved its headquarters from Toronto to Calgary.

But if higher oil and gas prices mean the westward flow becomes a flood, there will be panic in the other provinces.

Ontario, the longstanding "fat cat of Confederation" (at least in the eyes of the rest of the country), is particularly vulnerable due to the double-whammy effect of higher oil and gas prices. They both increase the cost of doing business in the province and drive up the value of the Canadian dollar, thus making Ontario's manufactured goods less competitive in export markets.

Ontario's Dalton McGuinty and the other premiers were too polite to raise this issue during this week's conference. But they talked about it privately, and they know that, sooner or later, they will have to confront it in the open.

Albertans know it, too, which is why with each rise in the price of oil, the anxiety level in this province goes up correspondingly.

They remember the last era of soaring oil prices a quarter century ago, when the federal government introduced the national energy program (NEP) to spread the wealth. It was seen in Alberta as a confiscatory move by Ottawa.

Klein did not do this. But at the microphone after one closed-door session, he did take the opportunity to underscore the point that Ottawa should keep its hands off the massive oil sands.

The oil sands, he said, "belong to us."