I'll believe it when I see it.

People ran out and filled their tanks with $3.18 gas every time they dropped by 1 gallon. Now, it's just the same ol same ol. When prices go up now it's with a mixture of indifference and relief.

Whenever there is a price rise, people have hissy fits, claim the prices are exorbitant and then settle in after not very long. Americans' houses are brimming with cheap goods, our fridges are jammed with all sorts of crap, and the buses still don't run on time. People freaked out in March and now are back to the same-old same-old. The money might be coming from their daily Starbucks/cigarette machine/newspaper/Big Gulp budget. Its not going to completely change until the prices are like those of Europe. Even then, people will find the money to drive.

in the sense that it's all out of control ... we can all now share some of the panic felt by those folks with adjustable rate mortgages... we're all being "nibbled" to death ... and the American way is to just "charge it" in anticipation of a better tomorrow.

1) turnover in apartments

1a) increase in subletting

1b) increase in renting condominiums

2) increase construction for new residential space in urban surroundings especially construction close to public transit stops

3) decrease in home furnishing sales

3a) interior design gurus start advocating minimalist living spaces.

an increase in any of these indicators, demonstrates the impact increasing fuel costs have on people's behavior. These changes reflect fundamental alterations to life (i.e. surrendering livable surroundings for urban spaces) that would have been unthinkable in a time when energy took a smaller part of the household budget.

Human history shows that economic mobility comes from geographic mobility. In other words, you go to where the money is. The aberration of the past 50 years caused by inexpensive personal mobility has been that going to where the money is was something you could do by yourself given a car. Now, with higher energy prices, you will need to move your entire life where the money is which restores us to a historical norm. In the past however women just went where the men went. I'm not sure how it will all play out but the options are:

1) return to the single income, mother at home with kids

2) one person following their career, the other person making do with what ever work they can find.

3) married but living separately according to work geography.

3a) look for an uptick in open marriages or affairs.

3b) look for uptick in paternity testing.

4) married until jobs do us part (decreasing length of marriage).

5) further increase in the age of first marriage.

6) replacement of marriage by cohabitation.

and people think we have a problem with birthrate now...

There's the offshore and arctic drilling and the Iraqi oil and the Research and Development all being promised as some future aid ....

Hey, the Saudi's say they'll increase production and OPEC is considering increasing production ... just hang in there.

Hey, maybe we can sue OPEC! yeah, that's the ticket.

Anything to avoid facing the reality that NOT only is gas unlikely to go down to what it WAS -- which as some may recall wasn't "cheap" then -- but that our fearless leaders managed to not predict or prepare for this disaster.

And like the mortgage crisis, all those SUV owners are just gonna have to eat it, all those long distance commuters (living where they can afford the rents) they're gonna have to eat it too.

Those solutions .... well they're all down the road a bit ... quite a bit ...

Lucky us. I would have preferred if they just went on a ticket writing fury like they did after Katrina, to pay for the budget gap in fuel at the end of 2006. Now after a 75% increase in January they want another 16% next month.

I think the social contract between the government and the governed is officially broken. They look on us as checking accounts and/or criminals.

I was in a board meeting for my church last night and there were four mentions of gas prices... two board members report that when they don't *have* to drive somewhere, they're now staying home. Our pastor mentioned that he made his education plans based on last year's plane ticket costs, and those have changed. And then we got to wondering what impact gas and food prices are going to have on our congregation, especially if they continue to go up.

In related topics -- use of our food pantry has gone up. We have finally installed a timer rather than turning the swamp coolers on and off manually and many of the decorative lights that "couldn't" be changed to CFLs two years ago have now been changed.

But the price of gas continued to rise in April, and Americans drove about the same number of miles, month to month. What that might suggest is that there are indeed limits to how much we can change our driving habits, before further improvements get increasingly difficult.

Or just take longer to implement. Have to wait for the lease to expire before moving closer to work, etc.

because gas is $4 + per gallon and they just don't want to pay that much, or are they driving less because because gas is $4 + per gallon and they have NO money because they are in an economic meltdown? The people I know what are doing well have not cut back at all. Everyone else is suffering and simply can't go out.

80 cents a gallon isn't going to signal the end of the world. BUT when gas is $7/gal sure, there will be cops at every gas station rationing it out at gunpoint. But my neighbors have a lot more guns than the cops, so good luck with that.

Go somewhere because they're bored.

And when gas is cheap the going of here-and-about is made easy...

Comfortable, fun. Good road, open spaces...all that. American!, even.

When that ceases to be the case they're finding something to do about the house.

When the easy goes away....so does taking that little drive.

'Full stop'.