My sparse blogging this week is partially explained by my Salon feature published today, “Why is gas so expensive?”
I am accused by commenters of being too easy on the oil companies and not paying enough attention to the falling value of the dollar — both of which are reasonable criticisms.
But I’d like to add one note, in response to a reader who criticized me for calling China’s appetite for oil “bottomless.” Yes, the U.S. still dwarfs China, in terms of absolute consumption of oil, but the relevant metric is this: demand for oil is dropping in the U.S. In China, it is rising at a growth rate that beggars description, when extrapolated over just a few more decades. But I still think, just as high prices are changing behavior in the U.S., so too will they eventually affect Chinese consumption patterns.
