When you read the comments and speculation that follow articles like this you realise how lost the ordinary person is out there. Very few people see any connection between suburbia and cheap motoring and cheap and abundant energy. You can't have one or two without the other.
Reeling from the housing bust and the banking crisis, it’s hard to think that the energy shock — the one that carried the average price of gasoline to a peak of $4.11 a gallon last July — was much more than a minor player in the economic downturn. But there’s the uncomfortable fact previous oil shocks, like the ones that came with the 1973 oil embargo, the 1979 Iranian revolution and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, were also associated with recessions. And the 2001 recession, too, came on the heels of a run-up in oil prices.
The housing bubble saw people of lesser means traveling further afield to buy homes. That gave them long commutes that they were able to afford when gas was $2 a gallon, but maybe they couldn’t at $3. Housing in the exurbs got hit hardest, and one reason why is that high gasoline prices made it hard for people to lived in them to keep up with their mortgage payments, and hard for them to sell their homes without taking a steep loss. |
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