MORFORD: Stay home, read, have sex

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 6/4/8 | Mark Morford

[SmithL]

Will insane gas prices finally pummel us into evolving? How bad will it get?

It should be a truly fascinating — albeit possibly enormously grim — thing to watch, one of the more dramatic and revolutionary market-driven shifts in modern history, upheaving everything we've become so accustomed to and changing behaviors and attitudes and alliances and political agendas and ass-girths and no I'm not talking about the "Lost" finale or the new 3G iPhone or how Brangelina's twins are a sure sign of the Second Coming.

It's the massive, painful spike in gas and oil prices, that most wonderful/frightening harbinger of doom/change/turmoil known to modern society that is fast turning into a calamitous global hurricane, ready to wreak havoc on just about every aspect of modern life, and that includes food and transport and sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll and just about everything else that makes America, America.

What, too dramatic? Not by much. The initial signs are all in place. The price of a barrel of oil is soaring, production levels are peaking, the world economy is shuddering in the face of a permanent production slowdown, even the most staid economists and prognosticators are blinking hard and saying holy hell, we really have no idea how this will all shake out.

You can already feel the initial clenching. As a nation, they say we're already driving about 4 percent less than we did last year, which translates into 11 billion miles per month, which, for gluttonous and wanton Americans, is technically considered "a lot." SUV sales are tanking fast and trading in your old gas hog is increasingly difficult as rampant feelings of comeuppance and I-told-you-so smugness from small car/scooter/bike owners spread across the land...

[whipitgood]

I expect that the U.S birthrate will show a significant upward trend as a result of higher gas prices. We should know in about 8 months. Less driving, more parking!

[wayne_b24]

that area of market street has too many CHURCHES for his taste (cough)...