As Gas Prices Soar, the Marketplace Reacts

“I don’t know what happened,” he mused. “All winter long we’re selling SUVs, and no one ever asks about the gas mileage. But this week practically everyone who came in here wanted to know, ‘What gets the best mileage?’ We’ve never had that happen before. I had nine Civics on the lot last week. I have one left, and I don’t know if Honda can make them fast enough.”

Even accounting for the blarney of salesmen who will always make their product precious and scarce so you think you’d better act quickly, this still struck me as a harbinger of… something. New York City’s northern suburbs, where I live, are home to women who until recently were waiting for the day they could trade their Ford Expedition for an Excursion, maybe some day an Extravaganza that was even more impossible to park. We may shop at Whole Foods and buy hormone-free milk for the kids, but natural sensitivity and ecological awareness stopped at the garage door. As a neighbor once explained to me, when she was behind the wheel of her Expedition, it was the only time she felt completely in control. And as long as gas was cheap, there was no incentive to do anything different, beyond the moral imperative to be good environmental citizens.

Time