to $4 gas: beg the oil-producing nations to open their taps wider. Bush has been to Saudi Arabia twice in the past five months to plead his case for greater production. A summit of the Group of Eight nations in Japan in mid-June unanimously urged OPEC to boost output (global production of oil has been stalled at 85 million barrels per day since 2005). At the end of the month there was another summit, this time in Saudi Arabia, with a similar plea.
The response from OPEC members could be described as the diplomatic equivalent of shrug, or a yawn.
Lastly, $4 gas has become a political football, not just in Washington, D.C. and various state capitols, but on the campaign trail. This was inevitable, of course - but it’s no less dispiriting. Democrats and Republicans are hammering each other for their supposed role in the creation of this "crisis" - all with an eye toward the fall election.
It’s the same with the presumptive presidential nominees of their respective parties. John McCain wants to drill and accuses Barack Obama of being another tax-and-spend liberal. Obama fires back that McCain has no "vision." Round and round and round they go.
Meanwhile, the price at the pump slowly inched upward, a penny a day.
What is perhaps the most troubling aspect of all this hand-wringing and finger-pointing is the overarching message delivered by the media: $4 gas is an annoying impediment to continued growth and prosperity. We’re facing an economic headwind, they imply, to business-as-usual, nothing more. High prices have slowed down our hopes and prayers for the easy life, so the sooner
sooner we "solve" the "gas crisis" - whether it’s new oil, alternative energy, high technology, or magic fairy dust (to paraphrase author Jim Kunstler) - the sooner we can get back to the march of Progress.
It’s all just a big bump in the road, everyone seems to insist, and now an officially annoying one at that. It’s an attitude summed up by an economist at a company called Global Insight who put it this way in an interview: "Businesses that had been patiently waiting for oil prices to fall have run out of patience. We expect more of them to throw in the towel and [start] raising prices."
Which means the bump will get bigger.
But what if the breeze we feel is not a headwind at all - but something else? What if gas prices don’t come down, but keep rising instead? What if the planet keeps warming, as it now seems likely to do? What if the map in our hands - a map that we’ve been following since the early 1800s - suddenly went blank? What if the landmarks on our daily commute home were no longer recognizable? What if the stars in the night sky suddenly looked different?
What if the stirring we felt wasn’t a headwind at all - but the winds of change picking up speed?
