Gas at $3 a gallon . . . who cares?

A beautiful weekend here along the south shore of the great big pond we call Lake Erie and everybody is movin' and groovin'. The roads are full of traffic and the lake is full of boats — sailboats (it's the weekend of the local annual Snow Flurries Regatta) and power boats of all sizes and shapes. Hey, the yellow perch are biting like crazy and the bars are still open at Put-in-Bay. Gasoline at $2.94 a gallon and marine fuel at $3.40 a gallon. Who cares? I can't see that anybody has cut back on their driving or their recreation. People are still cranking down the road in their Navigators and F250s, and enjoying life. Makes me wonder what price fuel will have to climb to before we change our fuel use habits. We're spoiled. We've always had cheap energy but those days appear to be over. It makes me think back a decade or so ago when Dr. Jim Beard was on the speaking circuit and predicting that the two biggest economic challenges we'd face in the future would be energy and water. The goodly Dr. Beard, as usual, was one step ahead of the rest of us.

— Ron Hall