Horse & Buggy

Somehow, I managed to avoid most of the television coverage of Katrina until last night, when I stuck on CNN for a while. As has been repeated ad nauseum, the tragedy beggars the imagination, but that of course wont stop most major news outlets from giving it the old college try, after this short break.

A few months ago, Aaron Brown spoke to a writer here at the magazine, and they talked about what was then the most sensational TV news story–the Terry Schiavo case–and I was surprised almost to the point of admiration at how Brown described why that was a great story made for television news in the modern era, and why CNNs coverage of it had been good, even though in my gut, I felt unconvinced, and continued to suspect that CNN had been part of the problem rather than the solution. In that situation, it maybe was politically expedient–at least for the left–that the medias intrusiveness became indistinguishable from the intrusiveness of the republican U.S. Senate.

Anyway, while its important to document the terrible human toll Katrina has taken (and will yet take) on one of Americas great, defining cities, there comes a point when I want to ask: Well, what about the larger ramifications here? Why havent any of the majors reported that ninety percent of all oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are literally gone–as in not only offline, but missing? And that GOM oil accounts for close to two percent of all oil consumed by Americans each day? And that the long-feared spike in peak oil is probably upon us, with barrels of crude going for more than $100 a pop (resulting in at-the-pump costs–for all Americans, by the way–of up to six dollars a gallon)?

As I rode my bike in to work yesterday, I thought: Wouldnt it be convenient to believe that because Im a bike commuter, I am dodging the high cost of fuel? But when gas tops out at five or six bucks a gallon, I probably wont have a job to commute to. The ramifications for our economy are staggering, and coupled with the housing bubble, I had another thought. The Amish have had it right all along.