I kept looking for the tags “editorial,” “opinion,” or, at the very least, “analysis,” above Robert Bell’s N&R front-pager on gas hitting $4 a gallon in the Triad. Whatever it is, it sure isn’t straight news:
There’s something about gas that’s so … so … American. Yes, that’s it.
We can smell gas. It’s the primal American car musk, eau d’car. We can feel it pulsing thro ugh the hose, filling our tanks and senses. We worship it. Ridicule it. Worry over it. Invest in it. Even go to war over it to make the world safer for our Ford Explorers. Yet unless we overfill our lawn mowers, we almost never see it.
Pee-yew. Where were the editors on this one?
Update: Here’s the straight news story, from the High Point Enterprise’s Paul Johnson, who has an interesting quote from UNCG economist Andrew Brod:
“I don’t see catastrophe resulting from this,” said Brod, a faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “What some people fail to understand about the economy is that the economy is resilient and able to find substitute products and technologies.”
High oil and gas prices will prompt more development of alternative energy sources that, over the long term, will lessen the country’s dependency on petroleum, Brod said. “At $4 a gallon, people care more about fuel efficiency, about a lower-consumption lifestyle, though it will cause pain in the short run,” he said.
