It all seems so quaint and distant now, that debate about the cause of sharply rising oil prices during the first half of this year. When homes and jobs and the whole damn economy seems at stake, the pump has stopped, at least in the media's focus, appearing to be such a threatening object.
And looky here: while most of us have had our attention elsewhere, on pigs and lipstick and Bill Ayers, the price of oil has plummeted from its earlier mid-year high. Just the psychological effect of all those "Drill, baby, drill" chants must have forced it down.
Or it could be that a weakening economy produced falling demand. Or even that, just as the price rose in close coordination with a drop in the value of the dollar, the price has fallen as the dollar has regained value (since world oil transactions are valued in dollars).
But that would mean that all the nostrums for changing the equation on the production side--measures that would, most experts agree, take years to have any effect, have far less power to change oil prices quickly than reduction in demand for gasoline and other petroleum products. And that would mean conservation, far from being, as Dick Cheney once ridiculed it, just "a sign of personal virtue," would be the most immediately effective way of dealing with -- what's that cliche again? -- pain at the pump.
