Surprising how little record oil and gas prices have been covered in the media, unless you count daily financial reporters covering the slumping dollar, crude supplies and inventories, the equivalent of a shell game.
I went past a gas station in San Francisco today that had regular unleaded for $4.19 a gallon, and it was a station that is typically one of the city's least expensive. Can you imagine the impact that will have on regular working people? Now imagine that figure doubled and you begin to get my drift.
Luckily, there's at least one national NPR show that is willing to investigate what an oil crisis or peaking oil might mean to the economies of our cities. This morning, I was interviewed for a 25-minute segment by host Carol Coletta of Smart City Radio.
The show will be online and on air by Saturday.
We discussed which cities are best prepared--and worst prepared--for an oil crisis based upon Common Current's new report "Major US City Preparedness for an Oil Crisis," which we released this month.
Strange days: last time I was in the media related to this subject in March 2006 (oil was about $60 a barrel) The New York Times had an exclusive and ran a column on the study I put together, and all the wires followed. Now with oil at $105 a barrel after hitting its all-time inflation-adjusted high of $111 a few weeks back, there is little coverage of what these price levels or further price rises may mean to our auto-centered economy, let alone our lives.
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