ARe the Higher Gas Prices Changing America?

Bill McKibben thought so in End of the Open Road. So stats I heard in the past week says we are driving less. Airlines look to be in trouble. Still not seeing much of an increase in riders on Anderson's buses. I do know the wife and are not making any long trips that we do not need to do - long being outside of Anderson.

"One might argue that this is a momentary blip -- that soon the price of oil will fall or we'll discover some easy substitute and resume our steady expansion. But even if we're living through a temporary super-spike in petroleum prices, the trend is clearly toward scarcity. And replacement fuels, such as those from the sun and the wind, are by their nature better suited for dispersed, local use. Think about the kind of long-term investments people are making: You can't find buyers for the big pile with the three-car garage at the outer fringe of suburbia, but small and close-in homes are holding their value. One recent Texas study found that a house is worth $4,700 more for each minute it saves in commuting.

For the moment, watching gas prices roll relentlessly higher, we're transfixed by the slightly terrifying novelty of it all. But it won't take long for these changes to become permanent realities. This shift will change our sense of identity and expectation more than anything that's happened in decades."

Meanwhile, our monsoons have hit our and other states' corn crops. Which now means an impact on energy costs as well as food costs. The Herald Bulletin published Corn prices could rise, but stock should be plentiful:

One industry sure to be affected by high corn prices is ethanol production.

“The ethanol industry is struggling to pay for corn that has reached the $7 a bushel level,” said Christ Hurt, a Purdue University agricultural economist. “Hardly anyone can pay these kinds of prices and still have positive margins.”

Dave Hudak, plant manager at the Port Ethanol plant in Alexandria, said the price of corn will affect margins, but, he added, Poet is set up to weather these types of price increases.

He cited a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Monday that said 78.9 million acres of U.S. land will be used for corn this year, and the harvest is supposed to be the second highest crop since 1944. The highest crop was in 2007.

“The local crop is looking really good,” said Hudak of Madison County. “We’re anticipating local farmers will be meeting our needs.

“We have plenty of corn to get where we need to be.”